From 0 To 30K Dials - 9 Principles That Helped Me Get Unstuck And Generate $500K In Sales

[Tiago]

If you're anything like me, that moment before you're about to make a cold call, your body tenses up, the phone weighs 500 pounds, the fear's kicked in and you're frozen.

You've experienced the FREEZE. You're literally paralyzed, and suddenly you have to watch another YouTube video on how to get over the fear of a cold call. You research a bit more on your prospect. You rehearse your script. Or even better yet, you search for a NEW script - because that one's gonna be the miracle one.

Look, you're not alone.

I am the least likely successful case of an outbound SDR. I had never done any sort of cold calling, and when my manager at my new offer told me the expectation was to make 200 dials a day, I secretly told him to F*ck off.

I told myself all the possible excuses. "Nobody picks up the phone anymore, it's not possible to generate business by calling people, I'm not made for repetitive work."

But deep inside me, I knew this was something I had to do, because I was so terrified of doing it. Business is an engine for personal growth and I knew this was my next level for growth.

Every single day for the first 10 days of calling, I had a mental breakdown and cried. I told myself that this was too hard, questioned what the F*ck I was doing, was hard on myself for sucking at something. It was one of the hardest challenges I've ever had to overcome.

Fast forward to eight months later, I did over 30.000 dials, generated about $500K in sales, talked with C-level executives of billion dollar companies, Hollywood movie directors, high ranking military officials, and was even offered to manage the SDR team.

Here are my 9 principles on how to heat up from that frozen state, start making those dials and god forbid, even have fun doing it.

1. Start Small ​

While I had the expectation of doing 200 dials per day, I didn't put the pressure on me to start that way. For me, what was way more important was progress.

So I set a small target of being 10% better every day. My first day I did 16 dials, hoping and praying no one would pick up. So I just did the math, and the next day I had to do 10% better, which was 16 + 1.6 = 18 dials. And the next day 20 dials. Then 22, 24, 26 and so on.

It may seem small and too slow of a progress, but what matters is THAT you are having progress. Goals that are too big, for example 200 dials, would've scared the hell out of me and I wouldn't have done them.

Start small and create a target to improve every single day.

2. Get to the next dial​

When I started, before doing every dial I would research about the person and look up in the CRM if we had any history with them.

While that sounds great - there's one problem. It leaves room for the little monster in your head to grow. And that monster will always tell you all the reasons the call will go wrong, you'll put the prospect on a pedestal and create resistance towards calling.

Don't do that.

Dial first, then research about the person while it's ringing. It'll increase your efficiency and leave less time for the monster to show up. And believe me, he will show up.

3. Mimic, Model, Master​

For the first 10.000 dials, mimic exactly the script you have in front of you, word for word. Don't deviate, don't add your flair yet. You may believe there's a better way to do things, but don't do it yet.

Your goal here is to create the muscle and get yourself comfortable with talking with your prospects and not sound like an absolute baboon on the phone.

For the next 10.000 dials, it's time to model. Now you can start adding your own personality here and there. You can change your tonality, let the script have more personality, change a question. Don't change the structure and the core of the script though.

A lot of SDRs make the mistake where they think they know everything and don't follow any script anymore, and their results start tanking because of that.

Master. You understand the essence of the script, exactly what each segment of the script is designed for, and you can modify the script to how you enjoy talking.

You can still have the script printed out in front of you, and you're freestyling a bit more. Be careful because you still need to get all the information from the prospect that the original script was designed to obtain.

4. Have a daily mastermind or accountability group​

One of the reasons I succeeded is that every single morning, we had a 30 minute meeting with other SDRs where we would role play and declare our targets for the day. Human beings have some inherent in our nature that we don't want to disappoint others. If we tell our accountability group we'll do 75 dials today, we will make sure we do those 75 dials.

Don't do it alone, get a group who's committed to your growth.

Without my men's group, my work colleagues, girlfriend and friends, I wouldn't have succeeded in this. Ask for help and have people keep you accountable.

5. Track everything​

The sheer nature of tracking things will automatically make you become better at it. Track your dials, pick up rates, booked rate, show up rate, deal %, dial vs appointment %, pick up vs appointment %, booked vs show up %, show up vs deal %.

Because I was tracking everything, I saw that month by month, my numbers continuously got better. This gave me great motivation that I was on the right track. If you base your progress on how you're feeling, you're destined to fail. Base your progress on hard facts and numbers.


The fun thing about this is that you can divide the commissions you made on that month by the number of dials, and then you know exactly how much money each dial makes. If you did $5k in commissions and did 3300 dials that month, you know that every dial you make is generating you $2,12.


6. Network 30 minutes every day with people who are a step ahead of you​

One of the reasons that I was able to do so well as an SDR and even receive the offer to become manager of the SDR team is that I was constantly asking for help. I always networked with people in sales who were having better results than I was.

Sales takes a month to learn and a lifetime to master, never get to the point where you think you know it all. There's always more to learn, and if you commit yourself to progress, people will want to share with you what they've learnt along the way.

7. It's gonna suck at the start​

There are no shortcuts. The big difference is that peak performers know that it's always crawl, walk, run. My first dial I had someone tell me "You have absolutely no confidence in the phone, why should I ever be confident that your company can help me?", and he hung up on my face.


I curled up in a corner and cried and almost gave up. The key is it to get back on the game. It's not easy. It will suck at the start, there's no sugarcoating it.


A mentor of mine, he was the #1 salesperson for ADT Security Services in the country. On his first week, he knocked on 600 doors without getting a single sale. On his second week, he knocked on another 600 doors and got only one sale.


Even the top salesperson in the country was bad at the start. Don't be delusional, it's gonna suck.

8. Don't search for the magic script​

There isn't one. I know I fell into the trap of thinking that If I had just the right script, things would become much better.


And to be clear, I do think some scripts are better than others. But if you're at the start of your SDR journey, what's more important is for you to feel comfortable on the phone. A great salesperson with a terrible script will outperform a bad salesperson with the greatest script in the world. Because, and I know it's clichê, but it doesn't really matter what you say, it matters how you say things. Your tonality, inflection, pauses, stutters are what make you human and relatable.

9. Relax​

Take a chill pill. I've found that the more laid back and relaxed you are, the more prospects will want what you have. Once I've adopted a chill mentality, and I wasn't so fixated on having the prospect buy, lo and behold, my results improved.


But this will only happen after you have mastered the process and done several thousand dials. There's no way around it.

I sincerely hope these principles help you move forward in your journey as they've helped me. I'm only where I'm at today because of the generosity of my mentors. I fundamentally believe that what goes around, comes around. This is my gift to you.

 

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[MarcoAguilar]

Great advice. Probably the principle which I resonate the most with is Starting Small. Most of the times we set big, enormous goals, which in many cases we dont achieve and end up frustrated and quitting, but when we achieve smaller goals we progress a lot over time and maintain that positive feedback loop.

Again, great advice and thank you for taking the time to share your experience with us. Best of luck on your future sales.

 

[RicardoGrande]

Ah nice and right up mate, didn't realize you became SDR.
Yeah the first couple of hundred suck, but once you realize you can build lists and just dial it gets easier.
Especially after the 100/10/3 rule sinks in in your hindbrain in regards to completely cold outbound.

Is your job feeding you lists through hubspot or salesforce or do you have to source manually?
And you mentioned gate-keeper busting through to c-suite, about what range is your avg sale, and about how many contacts do you have to average to get to a discovery call and then a sales call/close?

 

[Parks]

This helps a ton. Thank you, good thread

 

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[heavy_industry]

Pure gold.

Especially the fact that you've put so much emphasis on the process-oriented thinking.

It doesn't matter how bad your skills are when you first start. By making constant progress in small, measurable, incremental steps you will be able to master anything and conquer any obstacle you have in your life.

 

[constant]

If you're anything like me, that moment before you're about to make a cold call, your body tenses up, the phone weighs 500 pounds, the fear's kicked in and you're frozen.

You've experienced the FREEZE. You're literally paralyzed, and suddenly you have to watch another YouTube video on how to get over the fear of a cold call. You research a bit more on your prospect. You rehearse your script. Or even better yet, you search for a NEW script - because that one's gonna be the miracle one.

Look, you're not alone.

I am the least likely successful case of an outbound SDR. I had never done any sort of cold calling, and when my manager at my new offer told me the expectation was to make 200 dials a day, I secretly told him to F*ck off.

I told myself all the possible excuses. "Nobody picks up the phone anymore, it's not possible to generate business by calling people, I'm not made for repetitive work."

But deep inside me, I knew this was something I had to do, because I was so terrified of doing it. Business is an engine for personal growth and I knew this was my next level for growth.

Every single day for the first 10 days of calling, I had a mental breakdown and cried. I told myself that this was too hard, questioned what the F*ck I was doing, was hard on myself for sucking at something. It was one of the hardest challenges I've ever had to overcome.

Fast forward to eight months later, I did over 30.000 dials, generated about $500K in sales, talked with C-level executives of billion dollar companies, Hollywood movie directors, high ranking military officials, and was even offered to manage the SDR team.

Here are my 9 principles on how to heat up from that frozen state, start making those dials and god forbid, even have fun doing it.

1. Start Small ​

While I had the expectation of doing 200 dials per day, I didn't put the pressure on me to start that way. For me, what was way more important was progress.

So I set a small target of being 10% better every day. My first day I did 16 dials, hoping and praying no one would pick up. So I just did the math, and the next day I had to do 10% better, which was 16 + 1.6 = 18 dials. And the next day 20 dials. Then 22, 24, 26 and so on.

It may seem small and too slow of a progress, but what matters is THAT you are having progress. Goals that are too big, for example 200 dials, would've scared the hell out of me and I wouldn't have done them.

Start small and create a target to improve every single day.

2. Get to the next dial​

When I started, before doing every dial I would research about the person and look up in the CRM if we had any history with them.

While that sounds great - there's one problem. It leaves room for the little monster in your head to grow. And that monster will always tell you all the reasons the call will go wrong, you'll put the prospect on a pedestal and create resistance towards calling.

Don't do that.

Dial first, then research about the person while it's ringing. It'll increase your efficiency and leave less time for the monster to show up. And believe me, he will show up.

3. Mimic, Model, Master​

For the first 10.000 dials, mimic exactly the script you have in front of you, word for word. Don't deviate, don't add your flair yet. You may believe there's a better way to do things, but don't do it yet.

Your goal here is to create the muscle and get yourself comfortable with talking with your prospects and not sound like an absolute baboon on the phone.

For the next 10.000 dials, it's time to model. Now you can start adding your own personality here and there. You can change your tonality, let the script have more personality, change a question. Don't change the structure and the core of the script though.

A lot of SDRs make the mistake where they think they know everything and don't follow any script anymore, and their results start tanking because of that.

Master. You understand the essence of the script, exactly what each segment of the script is designed for, and you can modify the script to how you enjoy talking.

You can still have the script printed out in front of you, and you're freestyling a bit more. Be careful because you still need to get all the information from the prospect that the original script was designed to obtain.

4. Have a daily mastermind or accountability group​

One of the reasons I succeeded is that every single morning, we had a 30 minute meeting with other SDRs where we would role play and declare our targets for the day. Human beings have some inherent in our nature that we don't want to disappoint others. If we tell our accountability group we'll do 75 dials today, we will make sure we do those 75 dials.

Don't do it alone, get a group who's committed to your growth.

Without my men's group, my work colleagues, girlfriend and friends, I wouldn't have succeeded in this. Ask for help and have people keep you accountable.

5. Track everything​

The sheer nature of tracking things will automatically make you become better at it. Track your dials, pick up rates, booked rate, show up rate, deal %, dial vs appointment %, pick up vs appointment %, booked vs show up %, show up vs deal %.

Because I was tracking everything, I saw that month by month, my numbers continuously got better. This gave me great motivation that I was on the right track. If you base your progress on how you're feeling, you're destined to fail. Base your progress on hard facts and numbers.


The fun thing about this is that you can divide the commissions you made on that month by the number of dials, and then you know exactly how much money each dial makes. If you did $5k in commissions and did 3300 dials that month, you know that every dial you make is generating you $2,12.


6. Network 30 minutes every day with people who are a step ahead of you​

One of the reasons that I was able to do so well as an SDR and even receive the offer to become manager of the SDR team is that I was constantly asking for help. I always networked with people in sales who were having better results than I was.

Sales takes a month to learn and a lifetime to master, never get to the point where you think you know it all. There's always more to learn, and if you commit yourself to progress, people will want to share with you what they've learnt along the way.

7. It's gonna suck at the start​

There are no shortcuts. The big difference is that peak performers know that it's always crawl, walk, run. My first dial I had someone tell me "You have absolutely no confidence in the phone, why should I ever be confident that your company can help me?", and he hung up on my face.


I curled up in a corner and cried and almost gave up. The key is it to get back on the game. It's not easy. It will suck at the start, there's no sugarcoating it.


A mentor of mine, he was the #1 salesperson for ADT Security Services in the country. On his first week, he knocked on 600 doors without getting a single sale. On his second week, he knocked on another 600 doors and got only one sale.


Even the top salesperson in the country was bad at the start. Don't be delusional, it's gonna suck.

8. Don't search for the magic script​

There isn't one. I know I fell into the trap of thinking that If I had just the right script, things would become much better.


And to be clear, I do think some scripts are better than others. But if you're at the start of your SDR journey, what's more important is for you to feel comfortable on the phone. A great salesperson with a terrible script will outperform a bad salesperson with the greatest script in the world. Because, and I know it's clichê, but it doesn't really matter what you say, it matters how you say things. Your tonality, inflection, pauses, stutters are what make you human and relatable.

9. Relax​

Take a chill pill. I've found that the more laid back and relaxed you are, the more prospects will want what you have. Once I've adopted a chill mentality, and I wasn't so fixated on having the prospect buy, lo and behold, my results improved.


But this will only happen after you have mastered the process and done several thousand dials. There's no way around it.

I sincerely hope these principles help you move forward in your journey as they've helped me. I'm only where I'm at today because of the generosity of my mentors. I fundamentally believe that what goes around, comes around. This is my gift to you.

Love this. Thanks for posting it.

 

[Tiago]

Great advice. Probably the principle which I resonate the most with is Starting Small. Most of the times we set big, enormous goals, which in many cases we dont achieve and end up frustrated and quitting, but when we achieve smaller goals we progress a lot over time and maintain that positive feedback loop.

Again, great advice and thank you for taking the time to share your experience with us. Best of luck on your future sales.

You're welcome @MarcoAguilar. I've been reading Mini Habits by Stephen Guise, and now my process goals are to get one NO, and do one dial after a NO. It's much more manageable than "I have to do 200 dials today". It's more about consistent progress.

Ah nice and right up mate, didn't realize you became SDR.
Yeah the first couple of hundred suck, but once you realize you can build lists and just dial it gets easier.
Especially after the 100/10/3 rule sinks in in your hindbrain in regards to completely cold outbound.

Is your job feeding you lists through hubspot or salesforce or do you have to source manually?
And you mentioned gate-keeper busting through to c-suite, about what range is your avg sale, and about how many contacts do you have to average to get to a discovery call and then a sales call/close?

@RicardoGrande At my previous offer, they gave me a list to call. These were leads that in some way expressed interest in what we had.

Now I'm doing lead generation entirely myself. While it is more work, I prefer it because I can control the whole sales cycle, and it's virtually teaching me how to build a business and acquire customers.

The average sale was between 5k-18K USD. Since I have people's direct phone number, I didn't encounter many gate keepers.

I would have about 5% pickup rate. I was using a virtual dialer, so lots of my calls showed up as spam, that's why low pick up rates.

Then from the people I picked up, about 40% appointments were set, and of those, about 70% would show up. Of those that showed up, close ratio was about 37%.

Pure gold.

Especially the fact that you've put so much emphasis on the process-oriented thinking.

It doesn't matter how bad your skills are when you first start. By making constant progress in small, measurable, incremental steps you will be able to master anything and conquer any obstacle you have in your life.

@heavy_industry Yes, to me process is all that counts. If you direct enough energy at something, don't give up, consistently look for ways to improve and ask for help, it's very difficult to fail.

The problem is that many people think they will come out of the gate swinging right at the start.

They probably won't, and they'll probably suck. I know I was bad at the start.

You just gotta keep at it, and embrace the suck.

Love this. Thanks for posting it.

@constant Happy it could help.

 

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[RicardoGrande]

At my previous offer, they gave me a list to call. These were leads that in some way expressed interest in what we had.
Now I'm doing lead generation entirely myself. While it is more work, I prefer it because I can control the whole sales cycle, and it's virtually teaching me how to build a business and acquire customers.
The average sale was between 5k-18K USD. Since I have people's direct phone number, I didn't encounter many gate keepers.
I would have about 5% pickup rate. I was using a virtual dialer, so lots of my calls showed up as spam, that's why low pick up rates.
Then from the people I picked up, about 40% appointments were set, and of those, about 70% would show up. Of those that showed up, close ratio was about 37%.

Dude congratulations on taking the list building into your hands. So would that be almost all of the 30k numbers you yourself found? I couldn't imagine how many weeks of work that would've been, especially if you're getting high quality data like the direct numbers of the owners.
Granted I'm doing my own but I've only been able to dig up about 2.6k at this point but that's around my dayjob and I haven't even went for the highest quality info like you have.

And yeah, building that system so it's an automatic, daily thing is critical. Life got a lot easier once I implemented the daily "I will find 15 numbers in the morning, then call them near the end of work day" and the calling got easier after about 300 and you stop getting heart palpitations and shaking and realize "If this person needs what I have, this will be the best call they'll have all week.

Do you have any additional plans to boost your earned income/call ratio? If you're contacting Owners directly it sounds like you've done most of the work.

 

[Tiago]

Dude congratulations on taking the list building into your hands. So would that be almost all of the 30k numbers you yourself found? I couldn't imagine how many weeks of work that would've been, especially if you're getting high quality data like the direct numbers of the owners.
Granted I'm doing my own but I've only been able to dig up about 2.6k at this point but that's around my dayjob and I haven't even went for the highest quality info like you have.

And yeah, building that system so it's an automatic, daily thing is critical. Life got a lot easier once I implemented the daily "I will find 15 numbers in the morning, then call them near the end of work day" and the calling got easier after about 300 and you stop getting heart palpitations and shaking and realize "If this person needs what I have, this will be the best call they'll have all week.

Do you have any additional plans to boost your earned income/call ratio? If you're contacting Owners directly it sounds like you've done most of the work.

The 30K numbers was on the previous offer I was on, that was provided by the company.

Now I'm taking things into my own hand and creating lists for myself. I've changed industries, so right now I'm not going directly for the customer, but I'm creating partnerships with people who have 10-100 of my potential customers.

That's my plan on boosting earned income/call ratio. Doing higher leveraged work, and not going for sales one by one.

 

[maras2137]

A nice one. Don't talkin' shit about "miracle game changin' script". You are right! No shortcut! Only working with determination can pass trought the process with awards.

 

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