The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 50 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 1 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
In-office SDRs significantly outperform remote peers, says Ashley Kelly
“We pivoted about nine months ago, I want to say, and started hiring in office more. And you do see the in office SDRs perform much higher than the ones that are remote, especially for outbound, just because there's so many learnings sitting next to each other.”
Brex tripled SDR revenue in six months by compensating reps on revenue
“When it worked at Brex, we were able to three X the referring revenue that SDR has brought in within six months.”
Brex saw Stage 2 leads collapse after tying SDR compensation to revenue
“The other thing at Brex is once, once we started copying them on revenue, the S two is absolutely tanked.”
Inbound SDR teams perform best when reporting to marketing
“If you're a heavy inbound org for SDR there's a lot more science to it. And being really tightly aligned with the team that's driving the funnel Is where you have that feedback loop that is so important. And so when you think about an inbound funnel you're thi…”
Outbound SDR teams are more successful reporting into sales
“Now, if you have a big outbound org, there's more of like an art to sales development at that point, you have to be a lot more proactive in the way that you're engaging cold accounts. You need to be able to educate them on a product. They probably have no idea…”
Sales development will become GTM's standalone third pillar
“I think I actually am very bullish on sales development if you can't tell. And I think it's the third pillar within the go to market function. And I think that it can stand alone.”
Startups should hire a junior AE as their first sales rep
“I would probably hire a like junior AE, someone that has done the prospecting, but also knows how, how to close and someone that can be in the weeds and helping build out the process and scale.”
US sales candidates freely admit to being money motivated
“I think that's a UK or a European thing. I think in the States hiring, like, absolutely people have no problem saying that they are money motivated.”
SDR candidates using AI in writing tests demonstrates resourcefulness
“Maybe it doesn't matter and they're being resourceful and they're using tools that you know, that, that are gonna make them a better SDR.”
Expecting SDRs to heavily qualify leads at target accounts is bad practice
“Actually, so there's one where AE's pushed back a lot saying that they, the SDR needs to go do more qualification and needs to go you know, warm the deal up more for them. And I think To me, that's BS because if I'm a good AD, I want to take any conversation t…”
Ashley Kelly predicts sales development will reach C-suite status by 2034
“I will be a Chief Sales Development Officer. I think that sales development will sit at the executive level within 10 years.”
The best account executives and sales leaders start as SDRs
“I would say the top AEs and best leaders that I've ever worked with have started their careers as sales development reps.”
Rippling employs over 200 outbound SDRs
“Outbound is definitely still a thing. I have over 200 of them that would definitely prove otherwise or prove what I'm saying accurate”
Outbound sales fail when teams replace fundamentals with shiny tools
“To me, the most important thing to remember is that there's no silver bullet. And I think where companies make a lot of these mistakes is that they get excited about the new shiny object and they kind of follow it like sheep. And then they put all their eggs i…”
AI will eliminate SDR busywork to enable human personalization
“I do think where it will help SDRs though, is eliminate a bunch of the busy tasks. And so like the hardest part about being an SDR is the little details that you have to pay attention to all day, every day. And that could be. Cleaning and scrubbing your accoun…”
SDR teams need strategic autonomy, not order-taker status
“A lot of companies view SDR as more like order takers. And I think it's super important to give SDR orgs like the autonomy and the ability to really build their own strategy and execution.”
SDR Cross-Selling Works from a CAC Payback Perspective for Multi-Product SaaS
“And so when you have SDR resources that are able to go into the database and be able to find the customers that we are able to cross sell, I mean, we have so many different products. We have the luxury of being able to do that. And it works from, you know, a C…”
A company's first sales hire shouldn't be fresh out of college
“I do think your first hire should be someone like not fresh out of college and definitely not their first SDR role.”
Founders must be primary sellers and storytellers early on
“In my mind, a founder should always be the main seller. Definitely the main storyteller, right? And that's how you create the content that you need to build your sales playbook is what is the vision? Like, what are we solving here and what are we building and …”
Former recruiters make the best tech sales development representatives
“My favorite hires that I've ever made are people that actually come from recruiting that want to make the transition into tech sales. And a lot of that is because They're super organized. They're making calls all day to people who are probably not in the marke…”
Cold calling is the hardest SDR skill
“I'd say the hardest part about SDR is the cold calling. And there tends to be a lot of resistance with that. It's much easier to hide behind sending emails. Right. And so if you find people that have already built their confidence and found their voice over th…”
SDR interviewing requires evaluating traits, not past sales performance
“When you're interviewing salespeople, you can actually ask like, what was your quota attainment? What's the biggest deal that you've ever sold? Right? Like there's like, you ask for experience and it's like the complete opposite for sales development because y…”
Citing a parent's advice is the worst SDR interview answer
“I'll tell you the worst answer you can get is when someone tells you, well, because my dad or my mom was in sales and they think I'd be good at it. And I'm like, oh God, like you have no idea what you were signing up for.”
Repeating interview role-plays with feedback tests candidate coachability
“If someone gives you feedback on the role play, And then you do the role play a second time. If you're not implementing that feedback, then you're clearly not what we talked about earlier, coachable, right?”
Sales leaders should rely on SDRs to discover software tools
“One thing about tools in general with my SDR is like, I usually rely very heavily on them because they are the ones that are in the weeds all day, every day. And like, they're trying to make their lives easier too. And so when they come to me with a tool that …”
SDR teams are typically among the first departments cut during layoffs
“There's one of the first orgs to go typically is SDR.”
Rippling now hires experienced SDRs due to post-layoff talent availability
“It has changed quite a bit that now we hire more people that are coming from the SDR role because there's more talent out there that's available.”
Ashley Kelly Hired Zenefits SDRs After Only 30-Minute Phone Screens
“We had huge hiring goals and I remember we hired people off of just 30 minute phone screens and that was it. So it was a true, like just needed to get butts in seats as fast as possible.”
Ashley Kelly puts new SDRs on the phone by week two
“One thing that's very unique, I think, to the way I've always built teams is I have my reps on the phone by week two. So you've got, yeah, working their books and on the phone by work by week two.”
Ashley Kelly ramps SDRs over four months with progressive quotas
“It actually takes them until month four to be on full ramp, but every month leading up to that, they do have some sort of quota so that they learn that muscle that they like build their pipeline.”
Rippling sets fully ramped SDR quota at eight S2 opportunities monthly
“A full month's quota, if they're fully ramped is eight S twos a month. So on month one, it's like two, and then the next month is four, the next month is six, and then they're on eight.”
Outbound sales sequences take two weeks on average to become effective
“When you start working account or contact on average, it takes about two weeks for a sequence to start actually being effective.”
Bad SDR hires are identified by month two via input KPIs
“Month two. And it's not even usually based off of the S two performance. It's usually based off of their ability to master the KPIs that come before that. So how many calls are they making a day? How many emails? We expect a certain amount of accounts and cont…”
Proactive SDRs who reach out to VPs early become top performers
“And the ones that immediately put time on my calendar, I swear are the ones that end up being successful. And it's not because of anything I did like at all, it has to do with like their proactiveness and the fact that they actually give a shit about their car…”
SDRs far behind target on day 22 can still reach monthly quota
“I could have a rep right now at the 22nd and they do not, they're not even close to target, but we still have at least six days of selling that we can like make an impact on this month and they could get to their quota still.”
Rippling uses fast-start spiffs requiring 50% quota in week one
“We've done a lot of spiffs that are what I'll call a fast start. And so we'll Want people to get, you know, halfway to their quota by week one of the month. And so then they're like already pacing and set up for the rest of the month.”
In-person events are highly effective for selling to HR leaders
“HR people love, love going to events, and so we've had a lot of success at the last couple SHRM events we've been to.”
Rippling offers lateral career transitions outside sales for high-performing SDRs
“Our promotion path is not just to AE. There's different routes where people can go across the business because My commitment to them is, you know, if you're a good contributor to the team, you're positive, at least performing the best that you can, like we wil…”
Imposing U.S. sales playbooks on international teams never works
“If I sit here being an American and, you know, try and put all of my playbooks on them and all my, you know, ideas that are so great it's never going to work, and so building that trust and understanding that the different cultural differences is super importa…”
SDRs should start in inbound roles for six months
“What I typically do though, is I do hire people into the inbound role and then we move them into outbound after about six months.”
New SDRs should copy top performers completely before trying to innovate
“To go find the top performer on the team and shadow them and copy every single thing that they do. And then from there, Add your own little secret sauce and figure out like what your expertise are. I think too many times people come in trying to reinvent the w…”
One-third of Rippling SDR managers were promoted internally
“In fact, if you look at my org today, about a third of my SDR managers have actually come from the SDR role internally.”
Rippling's SDR org supports 31 business functions
“We support about 31 different functions across the business.”
Relevancy in interview email tests predicts SDR success
“Being able to be relevant with your information of why you're reaching out to a company, why you're reaching out to that persona specifically and seeing someone connect those dots in their email is, is a Good sign that they will be a good SDR.”
Rippling recently started using Clay for outbound personalization
“We just started using clay to help with personalization.”
Rippling uses a 70% base and 30% variable SDR compensation model
“As far as the comp structure, we do a 70% base salary, and then we do 30% based off of their variable, which is tied to their quota.”
Rippling SDRs only receive quota credit when AEs advance deals
“Their quota is based off of what we call stage two opportunities. So basically a demo has been held by an AE. The AE has decided, yes, this is a director hire within one of our personas. It's something that can actually be a customer of ours. We have next step…”