Treat Your SDRs Like Closers
I break down why SDRs aren't just booking appointments—they're actually closing deals every single day, and how treating prospecting like a real sale will dramatically increase your appointment-setting success.
Learn the exact framework I use to help MSP SDRs understand what they're really selling and why most people get this completely wrong
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Welcome to Repeatable Revenue, hosted by strategic growth advisor , Ray J. Green.
About Ray:
→ Former Managing Director of National Small & Midsize Business at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where he doubled revenue per sale in fundraising, led the first increase in SMB membership, co-built a national Mid-Market sales channel, and more.
→ Former CEO operator for several investor groups where he led turnarounds of recently acquired small businesses.
→ Current founder of MSP Sales Partners, where we currently help IT companies scale sales: www.MSPSalesPartners.com
→ Current Sales & Sales Management Expert in Residence at the world’s largest IT business mastermind.
→ Current Managing Partner of Repeatable Revenue Ventures, where we scale B2B companies we have equity in: www.RayJGreen.com
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Transcript
If you're an SDR working in an MSP or you're an MSP business owner who's managing an sdr, listen up.
Speaker A:Because most people get this part of the process where you're, you're setting appointments in the prospecting completely wrong.
Speaker A:Because SDRs are not just setting appointments, they are selling like actually closing deals every single day.
Speaker A:And if you're not approaching this part of the process, like, like you do any other part of the sales process where you are closing deals and signing contracts and getting money, you're leaving a lot of opportunity and revenue on the table.
Speaker A:I'm going to break it down here real quick.
Speaker A:In a consultative sales process, you've got different steps, your calls, you've got the initial appointment, qualifying call that maybe leads to a full discovery, that leads to an assessment that may lead to a proposal.
Speaker A:Your process may be different.
Speaker A:But selling MSP services is a consultative sales process.
Speaker A:And every consultative sales process can be broken down into steps.
Speaker A:Now here's the thing.
Speaker A:Every single step is a sale.
Speaker A:When I'm making outbound calls in sdr, I'm selling the initial appointment, probably a qualifying call.
Speaker A:In that qualifying call, if you're qualified, I'm selling the discovery call.
Speaker A:At the end of that discovery call, I may be selling the assessment and moving into the proposal process.
Speaker A:And in the proposal process, I'm selling the deal, I'm getting the signature, I'm getting the actual money.
Speaker A:Each stage comes, comes with its own sale.
Speaker A:It's a micro sale that moves the deal forward.
Speaker A:It's not just one sale at the end.
Speaker A:And all of these things are administrative steps in the process.
Speaker A:It's a series of steps and it's like a chain.
Speaker A:Something breaks along the way.
Speaker A:If your close rate at any of these other stages falls off a cliff, the deals are not going to get closed.
Speaker A:So what is the SDR actually selling?
Speaker A:They aren't selling managed service contracts, they aren't selling, you know, firewalls.
Speaker A:They aren't selling cybersecurity.
Speaker A:They aren't selling any of the stuff that you're going to be asking for at the end.
Speaker A:What they are selling is something that you have an introductory offer, like something that they are offering in exchange for time.
Speaker A:Time is the price that the prospect is paying to buy the thing that the SDR is selling.
Speaker A:Now if you say the SDR has nothing to offer now, they aren't really selling anything.
Speaker A:Like they're just, they're setting an appointment.
Speaker A:There's no real value proposition there.
Speaker A:You're not going to get many appointments because time is a price.
Speaker A:And a lot of times this is a B2B sale.
Speaker A:You're talking to business owners, you're talking to CEOs.
Speaker A:Time is oftentimes harder to ask for than money.
Speaker A:Like, I'm stretched for time.
Speaker A:And when a service provider says, hey, can I just get 15 minutes, 30 minutes with you?
Speaker A:I say, look at my calendar.
Speaker A:Like, I would rather write you a check than I would give you 30 minutes of my time without understanding the real value that's associated with me.
Speaker A:So your SDR is selling something in exchange for time and the amount of time that they're asking for, whether it's 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 45 minutes, 60 minutes, many of you are asking for like a, you know, a quick initial introductory call.
Speaker A:Many of you are asking for the full discovery call.
Speaker A:The more time you're asking for, the higher the price that's associated with it.
Speaker A:Now, the product or the value prop that they are offering, I call it the introductory offer.
Speaker A:But like the value prop that your SDR has may be that 15 minute discovery call, right?
Speaker A:It may be a cybersecurity assessment, it may be a free training to, you know, teach employees on how to avoid phishing scams, whatever that SDR is armed with, to offer an exchange for time.
Speaker A:That's what they're selling.
Speaker A:That is the very first sale that you are making in your entire process.
Speaker A:Your SDR is making that call.
Speaker A:They are talking to the prospect.
Speaker A:They are saying, I have this thing in exchange for this thing.
Speaker A:This thing is what I'm offering and what I'm asking for in exchange is for time.
Speaker A:And when you understand that, you understand your SDR is selling, it is.
Speaker A:There is a close to make.
Speaker A:There is an ask, there's a value prop, there's a price, and there's a way of asking to confirm that this deal is actually closed.
Speaker A:And the reason this is so important is because once you make that shift in mindset, once you make the change from, hey, I'm just making some calls and reading a script to book an appointment, right?
Speaker A:Why wouldn't somebody just want to hop on a call with me for 15 minutes?
Speaker A:Because they're busy, they have other shit to do when you make the shift to, hey, we have to treat this like a sale, like we have to coach this the same way we coach the proposal at the end of the deal, right?
Speaker A:Do you go in into the final deal after you know, all of the steps in your sales process without a proposal, without some type of template or playbook or script that you're going to follow?
Speaker A:I hope not.
Speaker A:No, you go in, you're prepared, right?
Speaker A:You're going to be asking for, you know, 5,500 bucks a month, and you're going to be asking for an agreement like you've probably, I hope you've thought through, hey, how am I going to approach this deal?
Speaker A:What are the problems?
Speaker A:What are the pains?
Speaker A:How are we going to make the thing that we're offering our managed services deliver more value than the price that we're asking?
Speaker A:Same concept applies for your sdr.
Speaker A:So you start thinking about, hey, you know that script you're reading?
Speaker A:That's a pitch.
Speaker A:Let's take a look at that.
Speaker A:Does it help us get our foot in the door?
Speaker A:Does it actually sell the thing that we're selling?
Speaker A:Does it clearly articulate the, the reason they may want to buy that thing?
Speaker A:Does it help them understand what the benefits are in buying that thing?
Speaker A:Like, what's the value that's associated with me?
Speaker A:And is that in the script?
Speaker A:Are we delivering it?
Speaker A:Are we articulating it?
Speaker A:Is the prospect understanding it?
Speaker A:Is what we're offering worth the price that we're asking?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:If we're asking for a quick introductory call, but we're asking for 60 minutes, does the value that somebody is going to get equate to the price that they're going to pay?
Speaker A:Probably not.
Speaker A:You want to make sure that the offer and the price are related, that you're offering more value than you're asking for in return.
Speaker A:And when you think about it this way, you also start to see, hey, you know, the objections are treated the same way as the objections later in the process, right?
Speaker A:When we go to deliver our proposal and we get some price objections, we, we don't just say, oh, okay, cool, well, we're out again.
Speaker A:At least I hope not, right?
Speaker A:You, you should be armed with at least some questions to better understand that objection.
Speaker A:To understand, like what's behind the objection.
Speaker A:Very much the same process with the sdr and I get.
Speaker A:You have an hour.
Speaker A:When you're sitting down with a proposal, you've got five minutes on this call.
Speaker A:Yes.
Speaker A:The time is that you have is different, but the concept is the exact same.
Speaker A:The objections that you're going to get probably predictable.
Speaker A:Just like the, just like at the end of the process, hey, I have a provider.
Speaker A:Don't have any time.
Speaker A:Um, we're already getting, we already have a, you know, third party assessment where you, like, you could sit down and carve out, you probably got five right.
Speaker A:That can account for 80% of what your SDR is going to hear.
Speaker A:In terms of objections, are you armed with the, the questions that are necessary to engage that question to understand what's behind it, to keep that conversations going?
Speaker A:And the other thing that's really important about this is, this is why I, I feel so strongly about not just taking anybody and putting them on the phone.
Speaker A:When you're doing the SDR role, like this is a sales job, whoever's going to be doing this role, they don't have to necessarily be a seasoned sales pro, but they've got to understand, you've got to understand if it's you, this is a sales job and it's going to require some sales training, it's going to require a sales mentality, it's going to require understanding that you're asking for something in exchange for a price.
Speaker A:There are going to be objections.
Speaker A:And your job is to close a deal.
Speaker A:And the people that take that craft seriously and the people that take that trade seriously and that process seriously are going to significantly outperform the people that don't.
Speaker A:In the MSP world, that's massive.
Speaker A:It is massive.
Speaker A:The difference between one appointment a week and two appointments a week, when you factored the lifetime value of a client, oftentimes hundreds of thousands of dollars or more, 3,500, $5,500 contracts.
Speaker A:When you're, even when you're working with other SMBs over the course of five or 10 years with a relationship like, do the math on that.
Speaker A:An extra appointment a week is a hell of a lot of money.
Speaker A:And that's why I feel so strongly about the SDR's role.
Speaker A:And the process that you're using leveraging the same psychology is a closer at the bottom of the funnel.
Speaker A:The closer is going to what they're going to have to build the value.
Speaker A:They're going to have to address the objections oftentimes proactively.
Speaker A:They're going to have to get the yes, they're going to have to get the confirmation.
Speaker A:And that's the same thing that happens at the top of the funnel.
Speaker A:So when someone says, yeah, sure, I'd love to meet, you know, just, just, just go ahead and send me.
Speaker A:Some times it's not a closed deal.
Speaker A:It's like the, the verbal that people get all the time at the, at the end of the close, in the, in the proposal meeting when someone says, yeah, okay, I'll set the appointment, and then they don't show.
Speaker A:It's the same thing as being ghosted later in the process when somebody does say, yeah, we'll go ahead and do that, send me the contract, we'll take a look.
Speaker A:And then you can't get a hold of them.
Speaker A:Nothing's really closed until it's actually closed.
Speaker A:Now what's that mean to you?
Speaker A:Like, how do you, how do you, how do you take action on this?
Speaker A:Like, what's, what, what do you change as a result of this?
Speaker A:First of all, I would get really clear about what it is I was selling.
Speaker A:What is my offer?
Speaker A:Is it time with the CEO, a 15 minute call?
Speaker A:Is it this assessment?
Speaker A:Is it the, you know, a free training?
Speaker A:Is it the, like, whatever that is, get really clear, write it down.
Speaker A:This is the value proposition that we are offering.
Speaker A:This is the product that we're essentially having our SDR sell for us.
Speaker A:This is it.
Speaker A:Second layer to that.
Speaker A:What is the price that we're asking for it?
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:That's going to be the amount of time that you're asking.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And then third, what are the benefits to our prospect that we are selling to buy this thing?
Speaker A:And this is the really important piece because if you can't articulate why somebody would want to buy this product that you were selling, why they would not want to necessarily spend this, this amount of time on this particular product, if you can't articulate benefits, you can have a really hard time setting appointments consistently because again, it's a sale.
Speaker A:And if you don't understand the benefits of somebody buying what you're selling, it's tough to sell.
Speaker A:So how would I do this?
Speaker A:Once I articulate this is the offer, let's take a cybersecurity assessment.
Speaker A:So I'm an sdr, I'm making phone calls, I'm trying to get somebody to take the first step in getting a free cybersecurity assessment.
Speaker A:So I want them to hop on a quick call for 15 minutes with my CEO so they can talk about, you know, the, get an introduction, talk to the company and you'll start moving the ball forward on getting the free assessment.
Speaker A:In that assessment.
Speaker A:Why would somebody want to, to buy that assessment?
Speaker A:Why is it worth the 15 minutes of their time to explore this as an option?
Speaker A:Well, like one reason may be, hey, you can check for any vulnerabilities in your network.
Speaker A:Maybe you're a sitting duck right now.
Speaker A:Maybe you have all kinds of gaping holes like sitting on your network.
Speaker A:In fact, talked to somebody on a sales coaching call yesterday that did an assessment and found out, and this is at a, at a university, the MSP that they were working with, had not updated firewalls and done a couple other things in six years.
Speaker A:Like, in six years, years they'd been sitting there vulnerable.
Speaker A:Thankfully, nothing had happened.
Speaker A:But as a business owner, I may want to know, hey, is, is my data, is my client's data susceptible to, you know, getting hacked?
Speaker A:Am I at risk of some type of ransomware?
Speaker A:So the peace of mind or the knowledge that my network is secure and that I'm in good shape, well, that's one benefit.
Speaker A:Now, I could take that one layer deeper and say, why would that matter?
Speaker A:Well, gosh, like, what's the cost of, Of a ransomware attack?
Speaker A:I checked into a hotel recently, ironically, at a.
Speaker A:At a cybersecurity event.
Speaker A:And they speaking there, and I show up and they hand me.
Speaker A:They're like, hey, we can't print our keys right now.
Speaker A:They said, we need to basically manually take your credit card information.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:And then we're going to hand you this piece of paper, and we need you to take it to the eighth floor.
Speaker A:And on the eighth floor, there's an employee sitting there, and she's going to walk you to your room and let you in.
Speaker A:So, okay, it was ransomware.
Speaker A:Like, they had had their system taken over and they were, you know, figuring out, how are we going to try to get this back?
Speaker A:Now think about that as a business.
Speaker A:What's the impact of that?
Speaker A:What's the cost of that?
Speaker A:One layer deeper.
Speaker A:You've got the cyber security assessment.
Speaker A:You've got, you know, some of the threats, the vulnerabilities.
Speaker A:What's the, what's the cost of some of those vulnerabilities?
Speaker A:Okay, what are some other benefits of a cybersecurity?
Speaker A:Well, you know, maybe it's.
Speaker A:I'm getting what I'm paying for with my current provider.
Speaker A: u know, I'm paying, you know,: Speaker A:And, you know, I'd like to know, am I getting what I paid for?
Speaker A:Like, am I.
Speaker A:Am I getting the value of the investment that I spend every month?
Speaker A:Because, I don't know, I'm kind of flying blind here, you know, like, I trust that that company is doing what they're supposed to do, and I've had them for a long time, and they seem to have decent service.
Speaker A:But, you know, my.
Speaker A:Might be good to have somebody else, you know, take a look at that.
Speaker A:Why might that matter?
Speaker A:Well, you know, we're.
Speaker A:We're looking at making some investments in a business, and, you know, the budgets are fairly tight, and if I Could, you know, allocate some of that money elsewhere or probably more importantly, you know, make sure that every investment that I'm, that I'm making is getting the full impact of what I'm paying for.
Speaker A:That matters a lot.
Speaker A:Let's say the assessment isn't just cybers here.
Speaker A:It's like network too.
Speaker A:Okay.
Speaker A:Like, well, you know, we've had a lot of downtime recently.
Speaker A:Like, I've had some employees.
Speaker A:I, you know, as a CEO, I used to run a company.
Speaker A:Like, real story.
Speaker A:I used to run a company, had terrible.
Speaker A:It.
Speaker A:This is long before I knew that.
Speaker A:I, you know, there were a lot of good options.
Speaker A:But I, you know, I had employees coming to me all the time like, oh, you know, I can't get this working.
Speaker A:I can't get this done.
Speaker A:And they won't respond and they won't do this.
Speaker A:And I'd be like, oh, have Jimmy, you know, help with that.
Speaker A:Like, he's, he's kind of good with that stuff, you know, so I'm, I'm wasting Jimmy's time and I'm dealing with, you know, pissed off employees.
Speaker A:It might help if I'm getting an assessment to know what's, what's causing some of that downtime.
Speaker A:Like, what's, what's causing some of those challenges.
Speaker A:You know, what are the things there?
Speaker A:Now this is what I mean.
Speaker A:Like, there's a whole exercise that you could sit down and say, what are we selling?
Speaker A:What are we asking for to buy that in terms of price?
Speaker A:And why in the hell would somebody even want it?
Speaker A:Like, what is the benefit that's associated with it?
Speaker A:Now, I can tell you this, the companies that have the strongest introductory offers, meaning they're very clear in what they're offering, they're very clear on what they're asking for, and they're very clear on the benefits.
Speaker A:Book a lot more appointments and make a lot more sales.
Speaker A:Now, there are plenty of companies that say, hey, you know what, we're just going to make 150 phone calls a day.
Speaker A:We're going to ask for everybody for 15 minutes and we're going to hope.
Speaker A:Serendipitously, we come across some people that say, you know, we're in the market for an IT company.
Speaker A:This is good timing.
Speaker A:And like, I'm not, not criticizing, that's fine.
Speaker A:Like, you will find some appointments, you will find more appointments.
Speaker A:If you've shifted your mindset to, hey, this is a sale within a sale and we've got to make a close, which means we've got to understand what we're selling, the price we're charging, and why anybody would want to buy that thing.
Speaker A:So my recommendation is go through that exercise.
Speaker A:Like, if you're, if you're the business owner thinking through, hey, you know what, what are some really creative offers that we could make?
Speaker A:I mean, it's a blank slate.
Speaker A:You could just have a brainstorming session.
Speaker A:Like, hey, you know what, what, what could we offer that's unique?
Speaker A:Like, what could we offer that nobody else is offering?
Speaker A:Or you can take some offers that other people are offering and, and just do it better.
Speaker A:But there's a really good exercise here for you to, to think that through and get creative around what that offer is.
Speaker A:If, if, if not creative, clear.
Speaker A:And as an sdr, you really want to know what you're selling, right?
Speaker A:Like, at any point in the sales process, that'd be like somebody closing MSP services and not understanding the services.
Speaker A:It's a longer sales cycle.
Speaker A:Yes, it's a more complex sale, but it's a sale nonetheless.
Speaker A:And to sell something really well, you need to understand what you're selling, and you need to understand the benefits that are associated with it and even better, the consequences of not buying that thing.
Speaker A:So as an sdr, I would go through this exercise, clarify it myself, and if I couldn't get clear, talk to my manager, talk to my owner, or talk to somebody about, hey, can we get some, some clarity around this so that I can ensure the script that I'm using, the way that I'm delivering it, the objections that I'm going to receive, can all be dealt with with absolute clarity and the best skills that I can possibly bring.
Speaker A:So I hope this has been helpful.
Speaker A:I would love to hear what is your offer?
Speaker A:Like, what is it that you're selling and what are the benefits?
Speaker A:So go ahead and share that, and if this has been helpful, go ahead and like the video.
Speaker A:Look forward to hearing from you.
Speaker A:Adios, Sam.
