In this exclusive interview with Alexine Mudawar, CEO at Women in Sales, she talks about how to promote gender diversity in the sales industry, her sales prospecting techniques that include the "Triple Threat Prospecting" methodology, the most common challenges she sees SDRs face in their roles and how to overcome them, sales productivity tips that can help salespeople be more effective, the most valuable sales metrics to track for SDRs, and how her background in Taekwondo influenced her career in sales.
1. What strategies can help promote gender diversity in the sales industry?
Use a language checker for job postings: When you're putting up a job posting, use a tool that runs your language to check if it might potentially dissuade certain candidates.
Reach out to university students: Start talking to less experienced people to help them explore what a career in sales looks like. If you start to identify candidates earlier on, that may change what some of the diversity within sales teams looks like today.
2. What is your "Triple Threat Prospecting" methodology?
When you're going to reach out to someone to prospect them, use these sales prospecting techniques:
1) Pull up their LinkedIn profile so that you have that in front of you.
2) Pick up the phone while you're on that LinkedIn profile. If the call goes to voicemail, leave them one.
3) Send your prospect an email telling them that you just left a voicemail and why you called.
That way, they'll have seen your face via a LinkedIn notification that you viewed their profile, they'll hear your voice via your voicemail, and they'll see that you followed up with an email that you promised you were going to send.
3. How can SDRs overcome challenges they face in their roles?
Some of the most common challenges in the SDR role is moving into the AE role within their organization.
Here's how Alexine recommends overcoming that challenge:
- Try to suss some of this information out during the interview process.
- Make it clear that you're looking for an organization where you can be promoted to the AE role within X number of months.
- Ask for tangible examples of reps who have actually moved from an SDR into an AE role (and ask if you can meet with them).
- Ask if there are specific goals posts or metrics that you need to hit in order to make it happen. If so, can you put it into a plan that you're working towards?
Get really crystal clear on what it takes to move into an AE position so there are no surprises along the way.
4. Top tips that can help reps be more productive
The best way for Alexine to be super productive is by being hyper-organized with her calendar.
Here are some of her sales productivity tips for organizing your daily calendar:
- Task out everything you have to do.
- Have a priority system in place to make sure everything you need to do by the end of the day gets done.
- Block off time in your calendar for specific tasks like follow-ups, pricing proposals, etc, to stay focused.
- Use a colour system in your calendar to make it easier to separate tasks.
Another tip is understanding and respecting your own limits.
If you're always working at full velocity and trying to be as productive as possible, you might eventually burn out. Start paying close attention and understand your tells before it happens.
If you need to take a day off, or a half day off, or vacation time in order to slow down and reset so you can be more productive in the long run, then go for it.
5. What's the most valuable sales metric to track for SDRs?
"The most valuable sales metric that I think SDRs can track—and this isn't gonna be a popular opinion—is actual revenue closed-won from deals that you sourced," says Alexine.
Although this might not benefit you in the short term because a lot of SDRs aren't paid off revenue, it will help you understand what deals actually have a chance at closing and which ones are moving to closed-won.
That way, when you move into the AE role, you know which deals to go after and you have an easier time focusing your pipeline accordingly.
Bonus - How has your background in Taekwondo influenced your career?
"A lot of what you're taught in the general practice of Taekwondo is about anticipating your opponent's next move," says Alexine. "And a lot of that psychology can be repurposed into sales."
Watch the full interview for more detailed responses above.
