Do the work. Be a team.

Adam Sockel (00:01.59)
You're listening to Bold Calling, a podcast presented by Orem where every episode we're bringing on the biggest and brightest minds in the tech and sales industries for discussion about their biggest challenges and the unique ways they're working to solve them. I'm your host, Adam Sokol, and I am extremely excited today to be joined by the head of revenue at Rocket Shipping and just absolute content extraordinaire Troy Barter. Troy, thank you so much for joining me today.

Troy Barter (00:26.863)
Thanks for having me, Adam. Happy to be here, man. you know, love the product, have for years. So it's awesome new top on the podcast, man.

Adam Sockel (00:34.35)
I always appreciate that. So we're going to dive into some of the data from our just released 2024 state of sales development report. I want to kind of get into like the sales development representative aspect of it specifically. But before we do that, I would love to kind of, you you've got the platform here, tell people basically, you know, what it is that you do and why you kind of love the SaaS sales space as much as you do.

Troy Barter (00:59.439)
I love the SaaS sale space because I have perspective. It's really the best way of putting it, which is I sold cars and I sold door to door, both residential and B2B from 2006 to 2013 before I ever got into tech sales. So I made a very low amount of money for doing a very high workload, very high stress workload.

Adam Sockel (01:02.958)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (01:23.257)
borderline manual labor walking around the suit and tie in August in Florida banging doors and then getting into tech sales the amount of money that could be made and the relative ease comparatively to the other sales that I had done.

Adam Sockel (01:38.382)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (01:40.589)
Like I had no plans on looking back ever since and I really never have and have no plan to. mean, I think the best way of looking at it is like everything keeps moving to a subscription model, even things where it doesn't make sense to. Like, I already own Photoshop. Yeah, but.

we want you to pay monthly anyways, even though you already own that old license, like, I don't think it's leaving anytime soon. Long story short, I think it's a pretty safe bet there. And I think, you know, and you kind of alluded to it a bit with the report that you guys have. A lot of the things that have worked over the past 10 years for me are continuing to work. There hasn't been massive pivots that people kind of pretend that are necessary a lot of the time. There's minor ones, but

Adam Sockel (01:59.086)
You

Troy Barter (02:25.881)
they're not really as massive, I think, as people make them out to be, which makes it where you can really dig in and get very good at it. And the things that you're investing in, there's a high return because there's a longer runway for you to be able to use the skill sets that you're learning that have worked previously.

Adam Sockel (02:42.197)
I need to know what you were selling door to door before we move on.

Troy Barter (02:45.065)
dude, all right, so it's a lot. So I sold Verizon Fios, but I was good, which means that if you're good, I didn't get the Fios territory. So I only sold business phone packages back in 2008. All the people that sucked got the Fios territory because it was a free upgrade. Easy, easy commissions. I didn't get the easy ones. I sold Quill office supplies.

which is literally office supplies, door to door. And you're like, hey, like, here's the catalog. Like, how are you on paper? Like Dunder Mifflin door to door, basically. I did deregulated electricity in Chicago, in New York City. And I did home security, like ADT. I think that was it. So like four or five different things door to door.

Adam Sockel (03:23.212)
Yeah.

Adam Sockel (03:28.954)
This is like the Batman quote where Bane says something of like, lived in the darkness, I was born in it. Like you were born and bred and cast in the fire of sales. Good Lord.

Troy Barter (03:40.491)
It's yeah, I mean, the best way of looking at it is like, I get it. If you, you know, had a traditional route nowadays, which is like, you know, you go to high school, then you go to college, you know, maybe you get a business degree or a liberal arts degree, whatever you got. And then you move on to be an SDR somewhere. They bring you on as an SDR. Man, it's a tough job. Toughest thing you've probably ever done up until that point, unless you played real rigorous sports or something else that you had to overcome, maybe that was like out of the norm. It's tough.

But when you bring in somebody that's like, they have to still have the mindset of like, they're not wildly jaded and they still believe in opportunities and they haven't been completely like, their mindset hasn't been ruined. But if they still have a good attitude and they have that door to door experience, they'll mop the alternative that I just talked about like legitimately every single time. They just have too much mental toughness. The other job was too difficult.

Adam Sockel (04:27.884)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (04:33.635)
And when they get into that one, the SDR job actually isn't tough. It's tough comparatively to everything else in tech sales, but it's still really easy compared to a lot of other jobs that are out there. And having that perspective, it's hard to give someone that unless you've lived it. It's doable in ways, but it's very tough. It absolutely is an unfair advantage.

Adam Sockel (04:56.77)
Yeah, I talk all the time with other people on the podcast about how when people have call reluctance in my mind, it's because it's a more active no versus like an email of someone who just ignores what you're sending them. It's a passive no, but compared to door to door, like door to door is when someone tells you no, that is like the most active directly in your face. No, can get so comparatively the SDR work feels like it probably hurts a little bit less to be told no in that aspect.

Troy Barter (05:25.135)
Yeah, I mean, in Tampa Bay and like St. Pete going business to business, like I have friends that like that you knock a pawn shop, you're running the risk of having a gun pulled on you. Absolutely. Like physical altercations and stuff like that. Because if you're going door to door, there's a lot of people that go door to door and they're not all great. There's a very high chance that you're going to run into someone that was completely screwed over by somebody that looked just like you.

Adam Sockel (05:35.937)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Sockel (05:45.367)
Yeah.

Troy Barter (05:51.535)
and may have had the same badge that you had on from an old independent corporate licensee that was working for Verizon at the time two years ago. So it was like legitimately risky. And then you get into tech sales and you're in air conditioning on the phone. Worst case someone curses you out and you hang up and then you get to just dial the next one instead of walking to the next business park. So you don't miss a door. You know, we worked tight to the right, which meant we only took right turns. And we worked the entire zip code including residences.

Adam Sockel (06:03.597)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (06:21.485)
just in case you'd go into an offshoot residential area that's not like gated, but like just, you know, a standard old residential area. And there'd be a business in there sometimes. And sometimes that would be like one of the good ones because no one found it. So like you were, we were pounding the pavement back then. And you know, I know it's like the old uphill both ways, like old people, I'm 40 now and all that, but like, dude, it's for real. Like it really is. I still teach people door to door, two doors down, my neighbor has a pool company called Pool Duck.

Adam Sockel (06:30.381)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Sockel (06:37.313)
Yeah.

Adam Sockel (06:41.623)
Yeah

Adam Sockel (06:46.177)
Yeah.

Troy Barter (06:50.817)
And they go door to door and I was like, dude, I was gonna do that. Like was gonna do a pool cleaning company because no one does it door to door once a week. Like I'll go there in the morning and there are 17 year old dudes that are like going door to door. And I'm like, guys, you have no clue how much you're gonna kill people in like a year or two if you just like follow what I'm telling you here. And they're murdering it already. Like they're gonna be like an instant six figure hire in tech sales. Like within a year, it'll be easy for them. Like it's a...

Adam Sockel (06:56.525)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Sockel (07:12.14)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (07:16.579)
Yeah, man, it really is something. And yeah, there's a lot of risks involved for sure. I think it's like back in the day, old folks would be like, you should serve in the military for at least a year to like build character, which like I get that. mean, I'm like, I'm a pansy. I wouldn't want to do that. I'd be terrified, honestly. I couldn't possibly respect those guys more. But like, if you're in sales, if your first year is door to door and you can stick with it, it's going to give you...

Adam Sockel (07:22.498)
Yeah.

Adam Sockel (07:26.934)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Sockel (07:36.139)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (07:43.539)
like an unfair advantage for the rest of the time that you're in sales. I haven't done door to door in 16 years and I'm still leaning on that grit now and it still works. So mean, there's something to it.

Adam Sockel (07:52.107)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I like I gotta ask you so much about the door-to-door aspect, but I suppose I should get to the main point of this conversation, which is the SaaS and tech stuff. I do wanna ask you, like I said, I'm gonna kinda throw you some various stats and different aspects of this report at you, and I wanna kinda get your take and your reaction to it. And one of them is, we asked for this report for people who may not have read it yet, we did a double blind survey of 1,000 sales leaders from 10 million to $1 billion ARR companies. So very wide ranging, and then we kinda.

a bunch of cross tabs and really got some really interesting information. And one of the things we found is when we asked them like what teams in your revenue organization are driving the most pipeline right now. Last year it was SDR. It was the SDRs and the AEs were driving the most amount of pipeline. This year it's the two kind of biggest numbers were customer success slash account management and then ABM from a marketing standpoint are driving the most. And so along those same lines though.

All of these sales leaders, 75 to 80 % of them said, expect to add more sales development reps in the next 12 months. And they're investing two to three times in the tech and the training of these reps. So SDRs are driving less pipeline, but they appear to be more valuable than ever. And I would love to get your thoughts on why you think that is and how you're seeing the SDR frontline role.

evolving.

Troy Barter (09:23.571)
I think they're driving less addressable pipeline year in and year out in actual deals because of how the model has kind of changed over time. So when I started in 2013 as an SDR, I rolled up to the director of sales the same way the AEs rolled up to the director of sales. That director of sales had one goal, which was to bring in revenue for the company.

by any means necessary as long as it was done, you know, obviously with, you know, morals intact, as you went in with integrity, but

over time that changed even there. You work at a startup for, I was there for six years, Verizon acquired them. It felt like I worked at nine different jobs in different companies. It was all the same place. Even the place changed. We moved offices like three or four different times to nicer spots as we got acquired and got more funding and went public and things got better and everything like that. But it moved from SDRs and as an SDR back then, by the way, I got paid when the deal closed. I didn't get paid when the AE accepted the pipeline.

Adam Sockel (10:13.56)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (10:28.513)
you know, there's a lot of arguments where it's like, well, that's not fair, but I never understood that. And I kind of still don't and no one's ever given me a good explanation where it's like, well, you can't possibly pay the SDRs just on what closes because what if the stuff doesn't close? Well, if the stuff doesn't close that the SDRs bring in, then you shouldn't even have them there. What are we talking about? That means that you're paying somebody for absolutely nothing if the deals aren't closing and you're like, well, they're not in control of that. Well, that's understandable. But if your SDRs aren't setting up pipeline,

Adam Sockel (10:50.337)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (10:57.507)
that is closing, your model's broken. You either have a product that doesn't work, you have a sales process that doesn't work, there's something that's broken there. But the way that they tried to fix that is by saying, well, we can't expect the SDR to get paid that way. A lot of times it's enterprise too, where they say they have to wait too long. There's ways around that too. You could give them a higher salary and still comp them and still manage them towards the overall number with milestones along there. But what happened was,

Adam Sockel (11:15.629)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (11:25.097)
SDRs became like their own thing and they have an SDR manager and the SDR manager nowadays like rarely answers to the person that manages the AEs a lot of the time. So they're not working in tandem. That SDR manager, the way that they typically get compensated is by hitting their target amount of AE accepted pipeline and the SDRs are paid the same way. So they don't actually have any financial reason to care whether or not the deal closes. And that leads to

Adam Sockel (11:53.365)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (11:55.023)
this contentious relationship between the SDRs and the AEs. my AE won't accept the pipeline that I just put up that has no notes and is with the janitor's sister's cousin. Because I have one sit away from my target, could you pretty please accept it for me? And their manager is not telling them, well, you're not doing the right things. You're not developing the pipeline the right way. You haven't built a relationship with your AE to find out what they like.

about particular sits, what they're going to get excited about so you can work accordingly to set things up that are more likely to close. They're in agreement with the SDRs. So then it's like this team versus this team when they're supposed to be working together because they don't share a common goal. And it becomes this massive issue. And then SDRs want to get promoted. And it's like, why the hell would anyone want to promote you guys? Because you're not even setting up pipeline that's closeable. How would you possibly know how to close pipeline whatsoever?

Adam Sockel (12:29.623)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (12:54.871)
And I think that's where SDRs have become less valuable. It's not because of market conditions, in my opinion. It's not because the games changed. It's because the way that they're incentivized in their expectations are way out of whack for what's actually going to bring in business. If you can't compensate an SDR based on closed one revenue, if you can't figure out that model, your model is broken.

Adam Sockel (13:22.167)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (13:22.337)
It's really that simple. I've never had someone be able to explain to me otherwise in a way that made any sense whatsoever. That's my hot take, Adam, when it comes to that type of stuff.

Adam Sockel (13:33.389)
I love that, but along, like I said, kind of looking at the data, interestingly, we are seeing people saying like, we're planning on hiring more SDR headcount in the next 12 months. And on top of that, what we saw, and this was a really interesting stat to me, is in 2023, turnover was really, high. like 55 % of the time when a SDR left the SDR role, quote unquote, it was to leave the company. This year,

Troy Barter (13:58.886)
Yep.

Adam Sockel (13:59.617)
what we're seeing so far is like 80 % of SDRs who leave their SDR role, it is for a different role in the company. So they're staying there, like they're kind of keeping that organizational knowledge internally. like, what are you seeing in your conversations, in your experience, in your leadership? Like, are you seeing SDRs are sort of like being viewed differently as like, their job is changing? Or I guess like, how do you see the role?

Because to me, like at first glance, I was like, this makes no sense. They're driving this pipeline, but they're more valuable. Like what to you, what is it? What does that all say?

Troy Barter (14:32.973)
I mean, if they're driving less pipeline, they can't possibly be more valuable, but maybe they're more scalable. In other words, the other efforts that drive the pipeline, like for example, at Rocket Shipping, I can tell you what drives the most pipeline. And it's insane. We're probably one of the only companies that it really is this way. Our CEO drives the most pipeline. Gabe Paganin is an absolute monster salesperson. And he knows the product better than anybody there by a mile.

And he is incredibly good as a salesperson. And he closes massive deals to this day, that it makes it very difficult for the sales team to catch up with. That's like my task is to figure out like, how can we get the so we don't need Gabe, and the sales team slowly replaces Gabe. So the company becomes more valuable, and makes Gabe more valuable by being less valuable to the company. It's a very weird thing there. I think

Adam Sockel (15:19.447)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (15:32.375)
It's interesting with stats, you can get statistical information, the report that you're saying, and there's so many different ways to look at it and like extrapolate what the results are and then figure out the reasons why that is. So like why are SDR staying and moving up? The biggest reason if I had to guess, and I'd guess that I'm probably right just based on my experience over the past couple of years.

it's because good luck going out there in the job market and finding something else outside of it. If there's a job posting, people you're getting 300 or 400 people applying to tech sales, partially very small amount because well, probably a large amount, but not just me. A lot of people like me that have been beating the drum on social media about how great tech sales is over the past three to five years. And then everyone wants in, you know, I've made posts that get hundreds and hundreds of 1000s of views about getting into tech sales.

Adam Sockel (16:03.81)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Sockel (16:28.129)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (16:28.343)
Like that leads to people starting to look into it and leading to people starting to apply for it and like created a monster, you know, again, not just me, a boatload of people that have done great work like on social media. But now it's like, if you want to get that AE role, and you're an SDR, you're not leaving there to go somewhere else and become an AE when you've never been one before, who's going to take that risk when they could hire someone from within?

Adam Sockel (16:52.617)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (16:56.749)
where they already know, all right, that SDR that's internal knows the product. We know that they're a good culture fit. We know that they have a great attitude. We know that they prospect at a level that if we expect an AE to prospect, they can handle that. We know all of these things that lead to them more than likely being a better fit than even an AE with an AE experience that's on the market. So if you're an SDR trying to come in, there's no way that you could possibly get that role.

Back in the day, that might've been the case when the market was so hot and everyone was hiring for a million different roles and less people knew about tech sales. Now it's different where I think people more than likely are getting promoted from within. Also, those people are cheaper. You hire an external candidate and they cost more money nine times out of 10. So there's a boatload of different reasons there. I think like, is the SDR role more valuable?

Adam Sockel (17:41.143)
Yeah.

Troy Barter (17:53.229)
because people need to hire more of them, I think it's more than likely the SDR role has become less valuable. Not because it can't be valuable, but because the expectations are lower than where they probably could be sometimes, which leads you to say, all right, the SDRs that I have dial the phone 40 times a day. And if I need SDRs to dial the phone 120 times a day, I need to hire another two SDRs.

Adam Sockel (18:08.671)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (18:22.531)
Whereas back in the day it was be no dial the phone 120 times in the day and we're good, which is, know, not to, you know, say a commercial like we just closed. don't know if you know, Adam, like we bought or I'm like yesterday for us, which like we expect to be able to not have to hire that many more SDRs because we have a, we have a solid piece of tech that will enable us to dial the phone way more than we are.

Adam Sockel (18:36.545)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Sockel (18:42.187)
Yeah.

Troy Barter (18:50.451)
without a boatload of stress in doing it. And that's a reality. That's not a forced ad or anything like that, but it's true. There's a lot more software out there that you can leverage. It's kind of wild that people can't like, they're like, and SDRs and orange and the juice is what you can get out of them. They're barely squeezing it, man. Like there's more that they can get out of the SDRs that they have. like, I think,

Adam Sockel (18:53.613)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Sockel (19:10.431)
Mm-hmm

Troy Barter (19:17.027)
They're worried about burnout, but I can tell you from experience, a hundred manual dials in a day won't burn you out if you're in a good environment. It ain't as many as you think it is. It takes a few hours out of your day. We all work an eight hour day, supposedly, right? I don't know, man.

Adam Sockel (19:33.869)
Let the record show I connected with Troy to do this podcast episode because I love his content. I did not know you guys were getting warm. I'm glad that you have it. Also, this is one of those moments where I kind of just want to ask you small questions and get out of your way because I'm loving I'm loving these rants. These are fantastic. Listen, I totally get it. I want to ask you a little bit more about, you know, SDRs and AEs. One of the things we saw here.

Troy Barter (19:52.419)
Gift and a curse dude, I talk too much.

Adam Sockel (20:02.189)
in the report is about 40 % of organizations have for every one str, they have about five AEs. So basically, like an str is responsible for building pipeline for that many AEs. Yeah, it's really your face your facial reaction there, which was ridiculous. Yeah, and actually only 3 % of respondents said they had more strs than AEs. So I'm just curious your thoughts on what that like how you would build out

Troy Barter (20:18.585)
Yeah, it's like the opposite of how it used to be.

Troy Barter (20:31.023)
Yeah, I will never change my opinion on that. That is a stupid way to run business. And I can tell you why. What they're doing there is like, well, we have one dedicated SDR, we have five AEs. Why is that? Well, I mean, let's call us made to say this is what that actually is, right? We decided to have one person that costs less money develop pipeline for five people that costs more money. And to make up for that, we're going to have the five people that cost more money

Adam Sockel (20:31.958)
that relationship.

Adam Sockel (20:36.749)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (21:00.985)
do the job of people that cost less money to do it. That makes no sense at all for like 15 different reasons. But the largest one out of everything, right? I'm a big sports fan, I'm a big New England sports fan, was blessed to also be halfway from Tampa. So I saw Brady's whole career for both of my favorite teams, right? You don't bring Brady in the block, right? You bring Brady into throw touchdowns. You don't bring Steph Curry in because...

Adam Sockel (21:23.895)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (21:28.777)
of how amazing he is as a shot blocker and defensive rebounder. You bring them in to shoot threes. You bring your AEs in to have the highest closing percentage physically possible. That's their number one job to get the largest deals in the fastest, the most often with what you give them. When you tell them when you have five AEs to one SDR, and you say, well, you guys are going to have to prospect. What it tells me is you have those people have no clue what it actually takes to build a full pipeline.

Adam Sockel (21:35.693)
.

Adam Sockel (21:57.709)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (21:57.975)
And if you're expecting someone to build pretty much all of their own pipeline, and learn and sharpen the axe and get as good as you can as an AE and follow up with those deals and update the CRM and probably manage that SDR for that manager as well. Number one, what the heck's the manager doing? Probably nothing like that's the first call center that you could get rid of right off the bat. But like you're wasting money and you're unraveling

what makes that model work, which is specialization, SDRs, you've got one job, develop real pipeline that can be closed for your AE. AEs, you've got one job. There's three things that I want my AEs to do, and none of them are prospect for the record, right? With our model currently, they prospect because they're full cycle AEs. We don't have SDRs right now. But as we scale, I don't like my AEs to dial the phone at all.

Adam Sockel (22:41.641)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Sockel (22:49.921)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (22:53.837)
because what I want them to do is close business. If they're not in a meeting and working to close business, they need to be doing one of two things, following up with what's out there or working on ways to get better as an account executive, whether it be courses, whether it be learning from the other AEs that are there, whether it be brushing up on product knowledge, those things will forever get you more as that closing percentage raises than what you'll get out of them spending half of their day developing pipeline.

Adam Sockel (22:53.943)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (23:21.295)
because you can't develop a full pipeline in half a day. to me, again, it's another thing where I don't understand it. No one's ever explained it to me. I've never seen a financial model where it's like, well, here's why we would wanna have five people that cost way more money and one person that costs less. And also when you're promoting from within, you've got one choice now to promote from within. those AEs that are building that pipeline,

Adam Sockel (23:39.025)
you

Troy Barter (23:49.517)
I guarantee they don't all have the same closing percentage. So like take the bottom two and make them SDRs. What are we talking about? You immediately get higher closing percentage, those AEs now get to build momentum because they have more deals that they're presenting to every day. The best AEs have constant pipeline, constant people that they're talking to, it builds up natural indifference, it builds a flow, there's a million different things that that does, raises your closing percentage, raises your pipeline, and you save money.

Adam Sockel (23:52.492)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (24:17.805)
Like I don't know where that would possibly be a negative. So it's really interesting. Who knows, maybe the smartest people in the room are smarter than me and I just haven't gotten explained properly, but I've never seen where that makes sense. Yet it seems like that's what everyone's doing.

Adam Sockel (24:22.273)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Sockel (24:35.603)
So I want to ask you about, because you mentioned like a SDR should have, they should be doing one thing. should be building pipeline. How do you look at career path thing if you are hiring from within? Like how do you approach like, okay, I'm looking at my SDRs and they're absolutely crushing it at this one thing at this building pipeline. But now I do want them to take another step and whether that is becoming an AE or, you know, customer success, whatever they end up going to. Like how do you look at career path thing for

I didn't mention you don't have SDRs at the moment at the current organization. Yeah.

Troy Barter (25:06.893)
Yep, but I have before for sure. Yeah, both at Panadoc and at Verizon Connect slash Fleetmatics. We had the very traditional model when it came to that. First off, it comes down to what they actually want and why they want it and figuring that out, right? I want to be an AE. Why? You know, I want to be a team lead. Why is that? What's your North Star? Do you want to be a team lead forever? Do you want to? no, I want to move to VP of Sales. All right, well.

You may want to be an AE first, you know, there's ways around it. But having closed business is definitely a big help when you're eventually going to need to manage people that are closing business. There's a way around it. you know, I think what's made me do well, both on social media and as a manager at pretty much every place I've ever worked at is people can tell pretty quickly that I've really done the shit. They can tell that I'm the real deal. They can tell that I've really closed business. I've really cold called. It's not a joke. It's not a facade. It's obvious that I've had that experience. And

Adam Sockel (25:55.757)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (26:05.719)
If you don't have it, you're not gonna get the same level of respect from reps, you're just not going to, and you're also not as much of an asset to them, because how are you gonna close the business better than them when you've never done it before? So that doesn't mean that it's impossible. Some people like they love building pipeline, but they wanna pay it forward. They'd love to lead people. That's what they wanna do.

by all means. And there's even models where you can be a VP of sales development at some point, depending on like how you build yourself up and everything like that. And there's no wrong way of doing it, it really comes down to what they want, why they want it, figuring that out. So they really like, are motivated to do the work that's necessary. And then from there, the career path starts with, right, well, like I just wrote an article on LinkedIn about this on my newsletter, which is like, you want to concentrate on the task at hand and get great at that first.

because there are other people that are also want to get promoted. And if you're doing half the results as the other person that wants to get promoted, it is unfair, and probably unwise to promote you over that person. Like that's kind of first thing is like, all right, well, how are you performing at what you're doing? You've got to get good at that first, you can't just come in, be middle of the road or worse play politics and get promoted in my world. That's not going to happen. I've seen it happen. And I've seen it fail.

Adam Sockel (27:25.655)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (27:28.771)
You know, like you need to get great at what you're doing first, particularly if you're going to manage those people, but even AEs when it comes to SDRs, if you're not managing them, you've got expectations on them. And you better have done it yourself at a fairly high level to be able to say, Hey, let me help you out here. Here's what I did and invest a little bit in the SDRs that you have. But that's in terms of like, tapping someone on the shoulder about it. I'd say it's like the second that I see momentum. Like if I see momentum, like at all,

The way I used to do it is I was in control of the inbound and the outbound and we didn't have them designated. you didn't get any inbounds when you started, you were just outbound. But if I saw someone start to kind of crush it, and I did a boatload of work, I looked at like all the old months and months of results. And I was like, I was looking for like a Mendoza line of like, when somebody gets to a certain level, does it predict that they're definitely going to be successful? Like do they if they reach a certain amount of completed sits in a month.

Adam Sockel (28:07.074)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (28:26.967)
is there like almost a guarantee that that means that I've got an A player. And I found it where it was back then, because this was ColdCon and these were, again, they were putting up stuff that was really closing. We had a very high closing percentage, 10 completed sits. I found that generally if you got to 10 completed sits, you were probably going to be an A player from here on out. So if I saw someone getting close to that and starting to build some momentum, first off, I'd feed them a couple of inbounds.

Adam Sockel (28:30.572)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Sockel (28:40.397)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Sockel (28:51.478)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (28:51.671)
let's put some fuel on the fire here and let's get them pumped up and get them going. They already see something tangibly changing that's a positive in their career right off the bat. That's exciting. Then you want more of them. You want more of them. Let's keep this thing going. And then it's let's talk about down the road and where you want your career to be. And I'm going to be here to provide you with whatever development that you need on that side. And that's what it is. like you got to do the effectively do the job before you get it.

But you know, that's how I always did it. Like I always told people like, no one's ever promoted me the room promoted me, you know, little harder when you're remote. But like anywhere else, was like everyone knew when there was a promotion available was a foregone conclusion that it was going to be me because I already did the job basically, I did it all. Like so like any chance that I could get in front of the room, I was getting in front of the room. I was looking up stuff and trying to find extra value ads that I could give to my manager ahead of time. Hey,

Adam Sockel (29:25.207)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Sockel (29:34.381)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (29:45.199)
Do you think that we should try this? I'm willing to do it. I'll meet with the guys early before we start. I'll meet with the guys at lunch. Hey, can we take a half hour and do this? I was being proactive, long story short, on making sure that everyone knew, yeah, I'm not just gonna say I want this. What are you gonna give it to me? And be like, no, I'm gonna do whatever I can to prove to you beyond the shadow of a doubt that I'm the right man for the job ahead of time. And when that comes to being an AE, I always say this to SDRs and it's good advice, is...

Adam Sockel (29:55.425)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (30:13.807)
If you're crushing it and they won't promote you, right? You're at 120 % to target every month. Go to your boss and say, hey, I get it. You can't move me up yet, right? I'm probably producing so much pipeline that you can't afford to move me out of the role that I'm in, but I am over target every month. Could we do this? I'll do the exact same role that I'm doing. Once I get to 100 % of target, a certain size deal will come to an agreement on it. It has to be smaller than a certain size. You know, I'm not handling large deals.

but half of everything else that I put up, I'd like to be the full cycle rep on so can get some reps in. Because I've been working over the past three months being proactive about learning everything. I've been working with the AEs. I've been doing all of the trainings that we have available. And I feel like I'm ready. What I'd like to do is prove it to you, but not prove it to you that are things within my target. I want to do it once I'm outside of my target. And I don't even want all of it. I want 50 % and I want it under a certain amount to make sure that I'm not causing any issues with pipeline. And I still produce for the team here.

And one or two things are going to happen there. They're going to say, yes, go for it. And you're to get promoted really quick if you're good, because managers can't help themselves. So if you're the new shiny toy and you're whipping ass, they're going to promote you. I've seen it happen a million times. Soon as they're like, God, this guy's doing way better. Let's bring them up. Like, let's move them up quickly and faster. Or they're going to say, yes, and you still don't get promoted. But now you actually can leave and go somewhere else, because now you have verifiable proof that you've been an account executive.

Adam Sockel (31:41.036)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (31:41.059)
I've closed deals. Here's how I did it. You want to see my book? You want to see my closing percentage? You want to see my sales cycle? I documented the whole thing. I'm ready to go. So if they say yes to that, you're either moving up there or you have a chance to go somewhere else. If they say no, it's time to start looking. Because you can't possibly have done anything else there to earn the ability to move up. So I know that was a lot. But that is like that's the best advice I can give the SDRs.

Adam Sockel (32:00.384)
Yeah. No, Troy, I'm not in sales. I'm in marketing, but I'm ready to run through a wall for you right now. Good Lord, you should have been a football coach instead of that. Not saying you're not crushing what you're doing, but Jesus, this is great. I got one last question for you. You know, we look at these reports as a way to like understand what's coming and what we've really seen is, you know, and it's fortunate for the platform that we

Troy Barter (32:15.631)
Appreciate you.

Adam Sockel (32:29.965)
that we have here. We empower people to get into more conversations and it really does look like ultimately the more things change, the more they stay the same. The more conversations you can have, the better opportunity you have to get good at it and to build pipeline, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But I want to hear from you as kind of a takeaway here. Last question. Do you see sales development changing dramatically in the next 6, 12, 18 months? Or do you really think it is going to be like, no, put your nose to the grindstone, pick up the phone and start having

That's how you get good.

Troy Barter (33:01.561)
think it'll change if the SDRs don't change. I do. I think that it'll it'll turn into basically AI. Like the SDRs are realizing that like the low hanging fruit is in automated email, automated DMS. And there's ways of automating it where it's, it's not personalized. Like, hey, I saw that you went to this high school. It's personalized to their problems based on the industry that they're in, which is good personalization, in my opinion. And they're like, we can just leverage this. The issue is that everyone's doing that.

The other issue is, is that if you're an SDR and you're doing that, then no one needs you because if you're not, if you're not manually doing something in the role, you're, you're basically pushing your replacement to the manager ahead of time. Look at all the stuff that I figured out. All right, cool. Now that you figured it out, we don't really need you anymore. You know, you can't say, you could say, look at all the stuff I figured out on this cold call that I can do. All right, well, you need me to do the next call, you know? So.

I think that if SDRs don't realize that the biggest value that they have, and I've been saying this for a few years now, they're gonna get replaced for sure. There's gonna be less SDRs, which means that there's gonna be less AEs really, more than likely, and there's going to be less opportunity in tech sales. And you're gonna get back to where sales is gonna be a lot of tough in-person stuff that I used to do, and a lot less of this.

cushy remote stuff that we're enjoying right now. You know, I'm literally sweating right now because I just ran before I did this, right? And then hopped in the shower quick and was like, all right, let's go. I can't couldn't do that a few years back. Like there's, but that's a privilege. And that means that you need to put the work in as well. like, so what are the things that make you valuable as a human being doubled down on those things? All right. The other things that you figured out are great.

Adam Sockel (34:32.247)
Mm-hmm.

Adam Sockel (34:42.164)
Mm-hmm.

Troy Barter (34:58.019)
those are there to augment you and make you better on top of the workload that you're doing every day. If you use it to completely rip and replace what makes you unique and special as a human salesperson, there will no longer be human SDRs. They won't exist. So number one, if you're listening to this and you're an SDR, please take my advice. It's not going to make me any more or less money. It's only going to affect you at the end of the day. Already moved up.

I already don't need to be an SDR anymore. All right. But if you want to, and you want people to continue to enjoy what you're enjoying right now, you've got to be able to put the work in or you're going to be replaced. It really is that simple. It's unfortunate, but it's true. You know, and that's why people that have a really, really solid, consistent work ethic, they're crushing the standard SDR nowadays. And it's not because they're even special. It's because they're special now. Back in the day, that was more people that were doing that.

which is why the SDR position was more valuable. The market hasn't changed as much as people think. The people's outlook and their willingness to put the work in has absolutely changed based on the tools that have become available to them.

Adam Sockel (36:11.391)
Y'all if you're not ready to pick up the phone and start ripping dials after all that, I don't know what to tell you. This was freaking fantastic. Troy, thank you so much for joining me today,

Troy Barter (36:20.621)
My pleasure, man.