David Buonfiglio on BDR Playbooks, AI Outreach, and Sales in Every Role

Transcript

0:03 We have another episode of Tailwinds.

0:05 Today we're joined by David. David, anything people should know about you?

0:10 Um, hi Austin. Um, my name is David Bonfilio. I'm a fractional VP of sales.

0:15 I work with a company called Sales Acceleration who helps support my practice as a fractional VP of sales.

0:22 Um, and uh, I work with small medium-sized companies helping them uh, to ramp up and scale their revenues. um

0:32 typically companies in the you know call it four or five million up to 20 $25 million and um companies that maybe have

0:42 plateaued uh maybe lost their best salesperson maybe their owners trying to you know get ready to sell but trying to

0:50 make uh help companies uh scale and grow that revenue and maybe to the point where they can hire a full-time guy. So I'm a fractional VP of sales been doing

0:58 it for a couple about two and a half years now. Nice. Before we uh recorded this episode, you were talking about um some of the nuances on the different

1:06 generations and getting their prospecting. I'd love to dive into that. Uh where would you like to start?

1:12 Okay. So, um I was working with a company u a consulting company. they

1:18 consult the medtech medtec space and she was really looking for, you

1:25 know, an inexpensive way to um to try to create some lead genen.

1:32 Um, and so she had these interns that were doing various things, you know, content or research. And she said,

1:41 "Gina, Dave, do you think you could turn could turn them into um some, you know, effectively a business development represent, a BDR, right?

1:52 And so they're they were they're younger, they're um, you know, recently graduated or in some one instance, uh, one of the interns that we had, she was still in college.

2:02 And so um so I'm like yeah well I'll give it a shot. We'll see how that goes. Yeah.

2:08 So the first thing we did was we um we drew we drew upon uh the sales playbook that we had built.

2:16 We had built a sales playbook for this client. Mhm.

2:19 A sales playbook of around 50 60 pages that covers, you know, covers all of the nuts and bolts of what you'd want um

2:28 documented for sales, you know, for a company sales process and handling objections and ICPs and all that stuff.

2:38 And there was some, you know, and we had done some scripting of some, you know, some outreach language.

2:46 So the first thing I did was I built out uh a training module pulling from that from that playbook.

2:56 Uh and I you know and we got them on the call. I think we did two sessions of it.

3:01 We reviewed you know what the language is, what we're trying to accomplish, what what what should they do, what

3:07 should they not do. Um uh and then we um you know and then I was able to pull

3:15 lead lists from a platform that I have access to. So I pulled a couple hundred leads, gave them the lead lists

3:24 thinking, "Oh my gosh," you know, and these, by the way, these are kids who are smart, just finished their PhD,

3:33 you know, like really smart like intellectual type people. I'm like, "How the heck is this going to go? when they're, you know, working the phones for an hour or two hours.

3:43 Yeah.

3:43 Gosh, this this concerns me because they may they may get 15 minutes into this and go, "What what do you this is

3:50 stupid?" Um, given, you know, given their background. Yeah.

3:56 So, uh, turns out they did really well.

4:01 Um, I will tell you that we we tried to set up a little bit of, you know, not accountability, but just recording. We didn't have a CRM. That was a problem.

4:11 But we set up a spreadsheet, started tracking how this was going. And I will tell you that we ended up with, you

4:18 know, over the course of several months, we ended up with several pretty darn good leads

4:25 um with some highle folks. Um it was and I and I will tell you that that that

4:33 they were such high level people, smart people, I think helped because they could engage in higher level conversation when they did get people on the phone.

4:42 That was really nice. Um so I will tell you that you know I I think the younger

4:50 I'm going to sound old here. you know, the uh the the rap on the younger generation.

4:58 Uh I had a new sort of perspective on it because they did a pretty darn good job.

5:04 They they made their calls. They were they, you know, they got hung up on a bunch of times, you know, like BDRs, you know, obviously happens.

5:15 And um and they hung in there. they just hung in there and they and and they we got some really good high quality

5:23 appointments out of it. So anyway, I was um I'm kind of ram rambling, but um it was an interesting experience working

5:31 with younger really very you know young 20s 30s um on that kind of business

5:38 development and prospecting because it gave me you know a sense that you know this was these these guy these kids were

5:46 were into it and wanted to succeed at it.

5:49 Yeah. So, I mean, I think a lot of people have motivation problems with just being a BDR even when they're being compensated. I mean, were the Did you

5:58 guys put in a pay structure for them to do this? Okay.

6:01 So, um we did um the um they were making an hourly wage, you know, as a as an intern.

6:10 We gave them um titles. We we we allowed them to update their LinkedIn profiles

6:17 to include the company, you know, and that kind of thing. So that when if they people ever looked at their LinkedIn profile because we were using LinkedIn as one way of sort of breaking through.

6:30 But we were paying them basically a an hourly wage uh intern wage. Mhm.

6:35 Uh and so they were um yeah, so they were getting a small stipen or a small wage to do the work and um and they were

6:45 all interested in getting some experience, you know, for their for their resumes, too. So yeah.

6:51 Um and that ended up, you know, was excuse me, funny, but um the the challenge was getting them to

6:59 use all of their hours that we had allocated to them.

7:03 Yeah. you know, we'd give them 20 hours a week or whatever and they're busy and they got stuff going on and so they might use 15 of

7:12 them. Um, which you know we encourage them to use what they you know what we had allotted but um so yeah they did

7:22 they did have some um some compensation just for the time.

7:26 Yeah. And then were you getting any objections from them because they were saying, "Hey, I took this internship to do X and now you're asking me to do Y." What did that look like?

7:34 Yeah. So, um, no, not really because they just wanted these interns wanted

7:42 just an an in to the company. They wanted an in to, you know, and one of them came in as a

7:49 sales intern. the second person applied to be a different kind of intern, but we said, "Okay, for you to become that kind

7:58 of intern, you have to do this one first." And so she said, "Okay, fine. I'll do it."

8:05 Um, and then the third was it was part of a broader thing for her. So, um, no, it wasn't it wasn't too bad. That that's

8:13 another piece of this that was kind of surprising and you know was relatively pleasant was that they were sort of

8:22 mentally you know prepared to to take on this what can be a hard job. You know

8:30 I mean from like a professional at a desk setting it's got to be one of the hardest because you're constantly dealing with rejection. you know,

8:38 successes are so hard to come by and then you have these interns that are just stepping up and stepping into a role where it sounds like some of them,

8:45 you know, were like a little bit outside of the scope of what they originally intended. It's very cool to see that they were you were able to motivate them

8:52 into, you know, stepping into a role and I think I because I really did try I really tried to make it as turnkey as I could for them.

9:01 Yeah. The training was such that like I you know the the um the outcome that we we were asking for was to set up an

9:10 appointment with me. That was what we were trying to do. Yeah.

9:14 So that they would make an appointment with with a prospect with me. I would have the, you know, the the fir, if you

9:22 will, the first sales call and then we would try to create one more call with the CEO to create the larger

9:30 opportunity, get a sense of what the solution looks like and then maybe, you know, send out a send out a a contract.

9:39 Yeah. So, their job was to set up calls.

9:42 Yeah. uh with me and um and we gave them Oh, the other thing I did too, by the

9:49 way, was I gave them I made and not I I built a small little customized GPT in

9:57 chat GPT so that they could put in the prospect and it would write out the email that they wanted to send

10:06 to to the prospect. So they didn't have to write out specific customized emails every time. I did build them build them

10:15 a small little, you know, little GPT just so they could um it could be more efficient in generating that uh that copy.

10:25 Yeah.

10:25 Uh for outreach. So um and that they they actually kind of like that that kind of worked for them. So that's you

10:34 know Yeah.

10:36 Did you have the a rule in place where it said you had a I've talked to quite a few people and they were like, "All right, if you use AI, you have to then

10:43 go edit it before sending it or did you say it's fine and send it?" Yeah.

10:47 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I I it was a very specific uh it was a very specific tool. I made

10:54 it very clear. So it you know it didn't it didn't do a whole lot of you know creating other things. It was very

11:03 specific in its then. So, but yes, clearly we wanted to make sure that they they were reading and reviewing the stuff that was it was just an email. It

11:11 was a it was an email template, you know. Yeah. Um, and you were saying Oh, sorry. Yeah. Go ahead.

11:18 I was going to say and you were saying you thought that there was also some good success here because you had some higher level individuals with maybe more advanced degrees.

11:27 um you know is that something that you would say like hey in general maybe start thinking about you know looking for higher level individuals or

11:33 promoting STRs within a I don't know a path that allows them to be more tenured rather than like their first year and that's all your SDR team is um you know

11:42 what are your thoughts on that I think you know what that's very specific to the industry and to the company that's that would be my thought right

11:50 like be this was a this was a consulting company that consults to medtech. So this is fairly high level stuff,

11:58 you know, you're talking regulatory stuff and quality control things and, you know, and clinical trial stuff. I mean, you

12:07 know, fairly high level. And so, you know, you wouldn't want BDRs,

12:14 you know, you you'd want somebody in a BDR position that could, you know, could have some level of conversation around

12:22 that or at least sound, you know, reasonably um uh informed about what's going on,

12:30 you know, and what they're trying to accomplish. So um but I I can I can certainly appreciate uh companies that

12:39 um whose output and whose products or services are less complicated, simpler to understand, simpler to communicate

12:47 that there might be an opportunity, you know, that you wouldn't have to necessarily have PhDs uh doing this work. I happen to have a

12:56 PhD doing this work, you know, um which was which was kind of nice. But that being said, certainly,

13:03 you know, depending upon uh what the product or service is, you know, I'm sure that there's a range for that.

13:11 Yeah, it's going to take a little bit of discerning and you're going to have to kind of sit down and look at what is our what is our ICP, who are we talking to,

13:18 who are we getting on the phone and call from there.

13:21 That's right. We were calling on VPs, you know, we were calling on directors and VPs. Yeah.

13:27 And um and frankly, we got all of our appointments at the VP level.

13:35 And so, yeah, if you're going to have if you're going to conduct a conversation with a VP, um you know, you're gonna have to be able to handle yourself.

13:45 Yeah.

13:45 You know, for for a minute or two. So, um, yeah, that that was actually turned out to be what I thought was going to

13:54 be, uh, something that caused some slowdown or difficulty actually ended up being an asset instead of a liability.

14:06 Yeah. I mean, would you almost say that like the more tech like if you're the higher up and the more technical the role that you're talking to, probably

14:14 the more technical the person you have to get? like maybe I I like match the SDR to the IC in some degree.

14:20 I think I that's I mean that seems reasonable and and my experience with this would bear that out.

14:27 Um you know it it definitely requires some level I mean of you know if you're employing or

14:36 you're putting in place a BDR team or you're trying to create some sort of lead genen solution for yourself. I

14:43 think you gota that's part of what you have to bring into into your thinking. Yeah.

14:49 Who are the people who are the people who are going to be you're going to be talking to? Those people are going to be smart. Those going to be people are

14:57 going to be educated with master's degrees, you know. Um I was, you know, one of the one of the appointments that

15:04 they made for me was someone with a PhD in in chemistry. Yeah. Like holy heck. Really? You know.

15:11 Yeah. you know, um, that's a smart person. So, anyway, you know, that's that's not everything, you know, that's

15:17 not, you know, and and education doesn't necessarily mean, you know, higher level

15:25 conversation, but it's something I think you you roll into the calculus on this.

15:30 Well, and it, you know, generally speaking, if you if you have a couple people that have PhDs, they're going to have more similar personality types than

15:38 maybe like I have like an MBA. I don't have the same personality type as a PhD.

15:42 I'm a little more, you know, let's mess around and find out and let's like let's go out there and like try stuff out. And a lot less calculated.

15:49 So, I would imagine that maybe like me reaching out to a PhD, I'm not going to default to a matching personality type

15:56 the same way as a PhD to the same industry or same Yeah. general science, you know, they don't have to be chemistry to chemistry,

16:04 but it seems like if you take that and you go, "All right, take two people who are similar going to get along and get them on the phone to each other."

16:11 And I, you know, how many times are you going to really have a PhD as a as your business development rep? Probably not a

16:19 lot, but if if to your point earlier, if it ends up being sort of your stepping

16:28 stone, Yeah. Right. Okay. Pay your dues. Do this for three months and then

16:36 yeah, you know, and then we can start working you into the stuff that you really, you know, you went to school for that you really want to do the the hide more

16:45 technical stuff. Then you might, you know, if if you set it up in that way, then, you know, it's not as crazy a thought of being able to employ.

16:56 Well, especially in a consulting setting. I feel like consultants, accountants, lawyers. I mean, those are a lot of situations.

17:02 That's right. Business services, right?

17:05 Accounting. Um, sure. Fractional or financial financial services. That's exactly right. Mark, even marketing, you know.

17:14 Yeah.

17:15 Um, I mean, you know, I know plenty of lawyers where to make partner, you have to be bringing in customers. Well, what are you doing constantly? You're

17:23 prospecting. It might feel and look different than the traditional sitting at the phone handling but you are out there networking or you

17:30 know making calls and you know if you're going to be a consultant you probably are going to be expected to if you want to hit partner bringing in customers and

17:38 you know it's not a bad thing to be able to get on the phone and you know call somebody out of the blue or work your network to get to that person to be able to bring in that business. That's a

17:47 really good point, uh, Austin. I think um and that world of you know that you know lawyers

17:54 uh you know partnership all of that kind of you know that high level stuff really does in large measure

18:02 as I understand it rely on a person's ability to prospect and close you know

18:10 do all the stuff that that that sales people you know are typically associated with salespeople lawyers are not sellers they they probably that's the last thing they probably want to think about.

18:21 But um but you know it's as I have said many times and you probably have as well you

18:29 know there are very few jobs that aren't sales in some way or another. Yeah. Right.

18:36 We all need to sell in some capacity and and in that regard you know prospecting is part of selling. So we're all, you

18:45 know, in some measure for the most part somewhere in that, you know, participating in that continuum.

18:55 Yeah. I think there's a big part where we just there needs to be a general mindset shift for people who aren't professional sellers to understand what

19:03 sales actually is. You know, you get in you talk to somebody who's seasoned, but they know what they know what it is.

19:07 They know that there's a bunch of misconceptions. Yes, we've all had the the bad interaction with a person that wasn't a great salesperson, but then

19:15 I mean I I worked in project management on the operations sides of the side of the biz. And the more I learned about being a professional seller, the more I was like I was an account

19:23 manager. I I was doing sales throughout the entire thing. Yes, we made sure the operational things happened, but we were

19:30 also doing renewals and scoping the next project and you know helping them figure out that and so it's like but and we're going through this in a very structured

19:38 way and in our minds we're like no we're project managers but you know I'm like actually we were account managers and I should really reframe how I perceive my

19:47 role and more importantly how I perceive what the sales process is and what a good professional seller is doing in their day-to-day role.

19:55 That's right.

19:55 Yeah. as a as a founder of my own company and I failed a couple times. The biggest reason that we haven't failed is

20:03 that I'm I'm fully on board with the concept that my full-time job is sales and then there's the rest of what I do filling it in. Um, and I think, you

20:12 know, when you talk about somebody who wants to make partner, somebody who wants to, you know, do any of these roles that are professional services, it's like you should probably consider

20:20 yourself a salesperson first and then somebody who's delivering it second or at least not be afraid of the concept, right?

20:28 Yeah. I've I've had so many people in my um as I haveworked for the last several

20:36 years with people met so many people and so many of them say the same say the same thing to me they say Dave I could

20:44 never do what you do I could never be a salesperson there's no way I could do that and these are people who are bright and

20:52 smart and engaging and funny and and are like 90% of the way there knowledgeable

21:02 uh of being able to, you know, sort of be able to sell themselves or sell their business or their product, but there's

21:10 something that holds them back from that last one step, that last 10%.

21:14 And uh that's I've always that's been something I've noticed about to you, you know, to your point, lawyers know that

21:23 the last thing they think about is being a seller. But yeah, but they're if they're good at their job

21:30 and they passionate about their job and they get and they can take that passion and transfer that passion to somebody else, that's selling.

21:41 Yeah.

21:42 And you know that's selling. So I mean so go please forgive me for this and we've c we kind of gone off the prospecting thing.

21:52 Don't worry about it. It's a good conversation. Yeah. Um I often use the definition of sales from

22:00 the one that Zig Ziggler provided. Now Zig Ziggler was an old time, right?

22:05 Oldtime sales trainer, you know, I mean a thousand sales books have been written since he did his

22:13 thing. But he said that sales was he defined sales as a transfer of emotion.

22:21 I'm excited. I like what I have. I need to transfer that feeling, that emotion

22:28 to you. And if you get that feeling, then I am selling you. And I've always thought that's a really good definition.

22:38 It's despite the despite the fact that it's old and it's probably, you know, somewhat the rest of it might be

22:45 somewhat dated. I've always liked that definition of sales, a transfer, promotion. Anyway, yeah. I mean, but you know, I think it's

22:52 super relevant because, you know, you worked with a bunch of people who weren't supposed to be sales showing up and being sales and making that transition.

23:02 I mean, do you have a recommendation on like, you know, somebody looking at it and willing to say, "All right, I'll take the first step." Like what that

23:09 first step would be. Would it be prospecting? Would it be just acknowledgement what they're already doing in their dayto-day? Well, I think the first the first thing I would do if

23:19 you know if you wanted like let's say you're in a job and you realize that there's some sales elements to this, right?

23:26 I would I'd read a sales book just, you know, and and there are so many good ones out there. I I'm of course I'm not

23:35 I'm not going to be able to remember the ones that I read, but yeah. Um, but there are plenty of good ones out

23:43 there and they all are relevant to someone who like you said like you know someone who deals with customers

23:51 in any capacity. Yeah, there is selling going on or internally when you're project managing, right?

23:59 Project managing is there is a lot of selling in project management, right?

24:06 So, I would tell you that um read go out and find a like do some do some research,

24:13 read a sales book, one that's really dedicated to sales.

24:18 Yeah. and see if it applies because it will there will be elements of that that will apply to the work that you do on a day-to-day basis even though you don't think yourself as a salesperson.

24:28 Yeah. I almost feel like there's a whole new series of like books where someone just needs to write sales for project

24:34 manager, sales for operations, sales for HR, right?

24:38 And just go like like go through look at the structure of a typical job and then say this is actually where you're directly related to sales. This is where you're

24:46 kind of indirectly here's a couple ideas on how to practice that just to bring it into your day-to-day. I mean, even if you think

24:54 about an initiative within a company to some degree, you you know, you really are just a salesperson internally trying

25:02 to figure out how I can, you know, build a coalition of people, my buying committee, get them on board with this idea that you have on something you want to change.

25:11 Yeah.

25:11 Make bring that change into place. And then I mean that's you know kind of prospecting finding the teammates you're going to work with and then putting

25:19 together the plans seeing if it's a yes or a no then making value realization after you do the initi like get their initiative into place.

25:26 Um so I'm thinking of a project management stuff aren't I? So but but it's like I think there's like a whole way to transfer it.

25:35 Well hey David I I appreciate it. We've talked about this keeping this episode about this length. So I want to you know make sure we stay on time. Uh there's that project management coming right

25:42 into pack into place. Um but before we you know we sign off um any final thoughts or anything you want to drive home about the discussion we had today?

25:53 You know we didn't talk a lot about AI and I it's note now now and that's

26:01 noteworthy nowadays right when you when you talk business everyone wants to talk AI.

26:07 Yeah. Um, but I will say this. I will say that the research says that of all the C jobs out there in companies and in

26:15 in the business world, the one that might be least affected by AI is sales.

26:23 100% agree.

26:25 Use AI, use it as a tool, but you know, the foundational stuff that we all do, including that work at prospecting, is

26:33 very human. So maybe that's a call to action for people to start understanding what parts of their job are sales because that's going to be the most safe part from when AI starts taking parts away.

26:43 That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

26:46 Cool. Y David, I really appreciate it. Great conversation. Uh really thank you for taking the time. Course.