Virtual SDRs & the importance of immediate response — Aaron Bollinger // Kronologic

Quotes

• “One of the strongest advantages of Office SDR is that they are really tied into the pulse of the business and what your business is capableof what their best at. The cons of that though are there are human beings that are going to keep the normal hours. They are going to have human limits on capacity.” -Ben (Guest)“When we start to think about a virtual SDR, breakdown what are humans exceptionally good at. Why do companies over and over again, across industries invest in humans to do this function? And what it ultimately boils down to is they’re selecting for people that are good at being customer-facing.” -Ben (Guest) “I think a lot of it comes down to the volume versus the level of care and customization. For a lot of leads and lead channels, speed the lead is the most important thing and that’s where technology really shines.” -Aaron “On the other end of the spectrum, you need to have a very customed outreach that could involve hours of research before we can provide the perfect outreach for a response, that’s where humans with expertise really shine.” -Aaron“First of all let’s set a definition. I would categorize these as hand-raisers. Someone who is self-selecting as ‘I want to speak to you.’ We see that your likelihood of qualifying that lead and having them enter the sales cycle is 21 times not 21%, 21X greater if you are able to establish two-way communications with them within 5 minutes versus just 30 minutes.” -Ben (Guest) “We’re not talking hours, we’re not talking days we’re talking a minute by minute drop off in the likelihood that you will be able to ultimately engage that proper sales cycle with these individuals.”-Ben (Guest) “That’s fascinating to me. There is a more than 20X difference if you’re responding within 5 minutes essentially after they fill out the form to indicate that they are ready to talk.” -Ben (Host) “The single greatest contributor is that B2B buyers are consumers at heart. Our consumer experiences shape our expectations when we go to make a B2B purchase. What I mean by that is your B2B buyer is not going to pick up the phone and have a conversation with a salesperson to get education at the base level of the product. They are already doing that.” -Aaron “They are so far down their vendor selection process by the time they ever ask you for contact that they already got it narrowed down to 2 or 3 vendors. What they are really trying to do now is establish a method of communication where they can get a couple of below the waterline of questions answered and then they will advance to the proposal and quote phase.” -Aaron“A lot of that time is solvingthe company’s problem and not the customer’s problems. What I mean by that is the company tends to be more focused on making sure that we have a system that will allow our ‘no-fly zone’ rules to be enforced or make sure that communication is single-threaded.” -Ben (Guest)“I would say that a lot of that delay is from a systems-level perspective trying to assign these leads to the right places but then there’s also the human component. This is the core of the issue.” -Ben (Guest) “It seems that there are a couple of different processes here that are in play. One is the qualifications. Does the person that filled out this form have the pre-requisite lead form, should we respond to them? Then, there is the who is going to respond to them? Then there is, is that person awake? And then there is the actual conversation to be had about the meeting that is scheduled.” -Ben (Host) “The power dynamic in a B2B buying situation is completely backwards for that to work. If I’m a B2B buyer evaluating 2,3,4,5 vendor and all I’m trying to do is have a quick conversation to narrow it down to my final two vendors, I’m not going to do that work. I’m going to wait for those vendors to actually take the work off my plate and be aggressive and try to get in my calendar quickly.” -Ben (Guest)