12: Top Business Development Rep (BDR) - Reid Oliver of Vidyard on Leveraging Video to get more Meetings

0:08 Scott Ingram: You're listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast, where we deconstruct world-class sales performers to provide insights and strategies to help you improve. To learn more, visit us at top1.fm. Here's your host, Scott Ingram.

0:25 Scott Ingram: Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Reid Oliver. Reid is the top business development rep at Vidyard and focuses on the large enterprise space. Welcome to the show, Reid.

0:36 Reid Oliver: Thanks a lot, Scott. Glad to be here.

0:39 Scott Ingram: We're gonna do something a little bit different today, different for me anyway, and that is since Vidyard is in the video marketing space, it seemed only appropriate that we also record this as a video in addition to the audio that we typically do for the podcast. So if you're listening to this and you'd like to see my head talking to Reid's head, you can go over to top1.fm/12. That's the number 12 for episode 12, and you'll see the video video, and we'll also have all of the show notes and links to anything else that we talk about throughout the show today. So, uh, like we always do with the show, I'm going to ask Reed to start with the top 3 things that have set him apart and allowed him to get to the top of the leaderboard.

1:19 Reid Oliver: Absolutely, and I think that's a great way to kick things off. I think in the BDR world and in sales, we're often living life in the fast lane, heads down. So when I had the opportunity to think through these, it was a great for me to really reflect and kind of see how I've gotten to here and what steps I've taken. The first thing, thinking all the way back to the beginning of starting out in my role, something I think was imperative was asking a ton of questions and really learning. So I'm lucky enough that I'm in a position that I have a manager who's a rock star across our company. He's always open to learning new things and helping us grow. So I really leveraged that early on and I asked a lot of situational specific questions. Whether it be how to handle current messaging, what strategies to go into accounts with, and it really helped me ramp up really quickly and get to where I wanted to be in the role. And then not only my specific manager, but I also tried to really be a sponge and soak in everything that my peers were doing when I saw that they were being successful. So whether that was somebody in a role that I wanted to move into at some point in the company, somebody who was doing really well in the BDR spot, I tried to pick and choose things that I saw them doing that were working and put them into my own processes and really try to make a fit there. So that was a big thing for me at the beginning. The second thing is just actually taking action from what I was learning. I think it's easy to have one thing go in one ear and out the other, especially when you have a lot going on, but to actually be meticulous in what you're learning and actually action that knowledge to your day-to-day processes is a really big thing. It doesn't matter what you're reading or what you're hearing, in blog posts. You really need to actually put it towards your day-to-day and see what's being successful. And then the final thing, the final thing that I thought of, it's something that I really try to apply not only in my role but also in my day-to-day, is just to be gritty. One of my favorite TED Talks by Angela Duckworth is around perseverance and really being hungry to succeed. And I think if you come into your role, if you come into anything in life, being hungry and being willing to do whatever it takes to kind of get to your top role or where you want to be, it's going to allow you to do those little things and really push through and kind of get to that top leaderboard spot.

3:30 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's great. And that's a great TED Talk. I recommend folks listen to that. Reid, it sounds like there's a lot of learning. So you're not only taking advantage of your leadership and your peers and the people around you, but also different information sources and putting that into action. What are the most common, or what does your information diet look like? What are you listening to? What are you watching? What are you reading? That's informing that process that you've built for yourself?

3:56 Reid Oliver: Yeah, that's a good question. I think my information diet is really consistently evolving. Here at Vidyard, we have a few different channels where we share a lot of blog posts, industry news, whether it's video-specific or just in the business and tech world. So I take advantage of reading a lot of that content. It's something that I know is trending and it's worth sharing within our company, so I really focus on that. I also do a lot of reading. Our company is lucky enough that we have a library where every new hire will put in a book that they think has helped them get to where they are today. So I've taken full advantage of a number of those books. A few that I've read when I first started out in technology was Marc Benioff at Salesforce, his sort of memoir and how he started out that company. Recently I read Fanatical Prospecting by Jeb Blount, and I actually grabbed a few of his strategies and I'm using them every day in my role here. It's neat what you can grab from different information sources and kind of apply them to your day to day.

4:52 Scott Ingram: Before I keep digging into this conversation with Reid, and we are going to go quite deep into his strategies and kind of what's working in his, in his role as a BDR, I wanted to thank my inaugural sponsor, which is Nudge, and these guys literally are making this show possible. So your action here is easy. You get to sign up for something that is free that will help you. So Nudge is a modern sales platform that uses AI to help you find insights on your prospects and customers. It's a tool that I use every day, and it keeps getting better. They just added a Chrome plugin, so it shows up right inside my Gmail and I get to see some of those insights on my contacts as I'm in Gmail. So to get your own free account, go to top1.fm/nudge, N-U-D-G-E, top1.fm/nudge, and you get… you can get your free account. So Reid, talk about a little bit more about your role in, in specifics and how you got to number 1. And in particular, I'm interested in what you mean by What is a large enterprise these days?

5:54 Reid Oliver: Yeah, absolutely. So large enterprise for us, we base it off of revenue. So we're looking at companies who are above $1 billion in annual revenue. My role specifically is to identify who in that revenue basin could benefit the most from our solutions. So my real goal is to understand what a company is doing within their video strategy, And that's across the organization. So some things are easy to pick out from a marketing standpoint. I can see what videos they have on their website. I can understand what campaigns they're running. When it comes to internal communications, that often needs to be a bit digging a little bit deeper, which is something I can touch on later. But my end goal is to understand how I can bring value to the company and who the right people are to talk to at that company. Because at the end of the day, I need to be able to book meetings with my account executive. That are actually having meaningful conversations and where we're providing value on our end and where they're interested to hear how our solution can help them on theirs.

6:53 Scott Ingram: Great stuff. And Reid, quantify your results for us a little bit. What does it mean to be number 1 at Vidyard?

6:59 Reid Oliver: Sure. So we're measured on how many meetings we're able to book with our account executives, as well as how many of those are deemed qualified opportunities. Myself, over the past 6 months, I've been at around about 140% of my quota attainment. Um, sales is really a, uh, an up and down process. Sometimes, sometimes you have ups and sometimes you have downs, but it's, um, I've been able to kind of, um, mesh those months together and really, um, end up hitting my numbers towards the end of it.

7:25 Scott Ingram: Very good. So let's talk about some of those specifics. Uh, there's been a lot of interest in some of these SDR, BDR type of conversations that we've had, and I really like to dig into the process. So walk us through kind of end to end the research that you're doing, the prep that you're doing as you get ready to, uh, get into one of these accounts, and then what works? I mean, in today's day, what are you finding most consistently is helping you open up some of those doors?

7:51 Reid Oliver: Sure. There really are, there's a ton of tools out there, and a lot of them are fantastic, and I think you really need to pick and choose which ones are going to benefit your style the most. So for me, it all begins in the research phase. We use Salesforce here, so I will often look into accounts and run specific reports on whether we've had conversations with them in the past, whether we've met with them at conferences. If we've never had any sort of interaction with them, I'll go even deeper and do things like follow the company on Sales Navigator, set up Google Alerts, just so I can understand when people are interested in the video process. Because if you can understand when a company has a reason to invest in video or to invest in their digital strategy, you're going to be more likely to have that conversation. I really begin with the research phase and try to understand, does it make sense to be reaching out at this point in time? And I find that research is one of the most important things, whether it's the company or whether it's the specific people, because if you really feel in the back of your mind that you're reaching out for a purpose and for a reason, it's not going to bother you whether you're interrupting their day or whether they're just too busy, because you're coming in there with real value and you really want to help and you really believe in the company that you're standing behind. So I think that's a big part of how you find the companies that you're going after and the people specifically that you're looking to contact.

9:09 Scott Ingram: And I assume the research you're doing is one kind of high level within the company. Like you said before, it's not just kind of the marketing angles, but how else might they be using video and then kind of connecting the dots between the individuals and what they care about and how Vidyard is going to impact their own roles. Is that accurate?

9:27 Reid Oliver: Yeah, exactly. We actually had Jill Rowley at our office earlier this week. She's a social selling guru, if you will, and she talked a little bit about how in order to be interesting, you need to be interested. And I really like this because it's something that I try to be in my research phase. I try to actually be interested in what a company's doing, maybe understand their business model, maybe understand what that specific marketing executive wants to have for their goals. And as I have experience more and more speaking with these professionals, I can kind of understand what priorities they have, what they'd like to hit, but every individual company is also different. So if I'm able to take the time and kind of be really interested in what I believe they're looking to accomplish, it often transpires into more likely to them being willing to chat with me as well.

10:11 Scott Ingram: Yeah, awesome. I know Jill Rowley quite well. We were actually colleagues back in Eloqua days, so she's great. Reed, talk about… so you've done the research, now you're prepared to go after the account. What does your outreach look like?

10:25 Reid Oliver: Yeah, so we use SalesLoft here at Vidyard. It's really great because it allows me to to schedule and have my priorities set when I go into the day. I have specific cadences that I have built out where it's a scenario where I have different emails set for different personas, and then I personalize each of my emails based on the research that I've done. So some of it is going to be from a template so that it can save me some time, but I'm always going to be adding 2 or 3 personal touchpoints throughout that cadence, and it's a mix of Emailing, making phone calls, and then also having social touches. So whether that's liking posts on LinkedIn, commenting on different articles or forums that I see online, it's all about having different angles and mixing up the variety of the outreach that you're doing. And in my case specifically, I've been trying something in the large enterprise space. It's even more difficult to actually get these people's attention. So I actually work something where I can understand as soon as an email is actually getting into their inbox or whether they have opened up a video that I've sent because we're able to track that on our end, I'll put them into something that I call a hot cadence where I work specifically on a one-to-one basis, I move in more of a consultant basis and I try to even deep further that research and kind of understand exactly what they're looking to do in order to book that meeting. So it's almost my own marketing funnel if you will. On the BDR side.

11:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's really interesting. And talk about… I'm sure you're doing some really interesting things in the way that you're using video in your prospecting. Talk about that.

11:59 Reid Oliver: Yeah, video… to drink my own Kool-Aid here at Vidyard… video has been a game changer for me in terms of cutting through the clutter. I mean, I think I see every day LinkedIn posts about how many emails executives are getting, or we often see people who write, oh, this is another poor BDR or SDR prospecting email. So I try to really think differently, and a huge part of doing that is including video in my email strategy. So I found personally just including a thumbnail of myself or with a, for example, a whiteboard will add some personalization and say, hey Scott, my click-through rates on my emails have actually gone up by between 5 to 7x, and I'll even take that further and I'll put together a short demonstration of where I see on their website that we can provide value or how I noticed a campaign coming up that I think we would be interested in. So the whole point is kind of just to get somebody to actually take that 10 seconds while they're scanning to say, okay, this looks interesting to me, and then boom, you're able to actually follow up and understand and hopefully book that meeting and have that conversation with them.

13:00 Scott Ingram: Yeah, and what is that tool? Because you guys actually have a tool that's available to not just those that work at Vidyard.

13:07 Reid Oliver: Yeah, absolutely. It's called ViewedIt. There's actually a free version that you can use. It's a Chrome extension. And the whole idea is you can either send what we call a selfie video, I'm sure what I look like being recorded right now, and insert it right into the body of the email, or you can also share your screen and you're gonna show up in a little bubble on the corner and you can walk through different things that you wanna share, whether it be something on their website as I mentioned, something on our own platform, but I found it to be a really effective communication medium above and beyond just the emails or just the phone calls. And there's even different ways that I'll use it. I'll use it initially if I'm trying to just reach out from a cold touch prospecting standpoint, but I also find it's really powerful after a meeting to kind of recap, hey Scott, this is what we talked about today. It was great having that conversation. I wanted to put this short video together just to recap what we spoke about so you can have this on hand when you review this on your end. So there's different ways that I'm finding that it has been effective, but the number one on the BDR side is just being able to cut through that clutter and get the And I think that's so powerful.

14:12 Scott Ingram: It's actually how this conversation got started. A couple of your colleagues are fans of the show, and they sent me a ViewedIt video and said, "Hey, you know this is actually something we think your audience would really dig." You know, let's let's talk about maybe sponsoring an episode. And I said, "Ah, you know I'm full on sponsors. We're we're 100% focused on Nudge and Influitive, who are our sponsors right now." I said, "But I do think that there's a lot of value in this particular tool," and and I asked for the number one person. Let's just kind of check. Cheat and, uh, and have them on the show. So that's, that's how Reed got to the show. But I think what makes ViewedIt so powerful and interesting is so much of all of this automation of email and these processes, people see through it, right? They can see that, you know, even if you are personalizing a little bit, it looks like I could be one of 100 or one of 1,000 today. And I think taking just that couple of minutes to send that one-off video, especially if you can, you know, have something that says, hi Scott, or whatever it is. This really is personalized, and I think that's so much more attention-grabbing and so different. So, you know, again, it's one of those things. It'll work for a few more months, and then everybody will be doing it. We'll have to go find the next thing, but for now, I think it's a really interesting tool. So, Reid, as you're looking at this, I mean, obviously a video is a piece that's having an impact. As far as… and maybe it's the variety that is the spice of prospecting in this case, but what do you see most consistently gets you that conversion? I mean, if you're thinking about sales from a funnel perspective, what is typically the thing that converts and allows you to get to the meeting?

15:52 Reid Oliver: Yeah, that's a great question and something that I often try to reflect on. I think I touched on it a little bit earlier, but the biggest thing that I try to do is just be different and kind of separate myself. From the masses in the BDR space. So what I'll often do is I'll just try to find something, something that's going to pique somebody's interest. So for example, one of our marketing ops guys on our team, he was recently named to the Hines Top 33 Game Changers list, and I always read things like that, and it happened to be that I noticed there was 5 other people named on the list who were also companies that I'm working with currently in the large enterprise space. So it's a matter of Hey, hey, congratulations on the award. We'd love to hear a little bit about what your team is doing. By the way, we're also somebody that's honored in this space and we'd love to connect, or something like that. When it's not necessarily just the consistent ask of, hey, do you have 5 to 10 minutes to chat? Because you want to be able to provide value from the beginning on. So sometimes I'll even have emails where it's not necessarily an ask at all. It's more acting from a consultative space and just saying, if you'd like to learn a little bit more about how companies similar to X are using our platform to achieve results like this, I'm happy to help and kind of work with you on that.

17:05 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I think what you said that resonated the most for me is you just have to find a way to separate yourself and differentiate yourself from all of the other BDRs, SDRs that are reaching out. And you just have to be really creative. And in a lot of ways, I feel like doing it's the right thing, right? You want to learn, you want to grow, you want to seek this stuff out. But seeking out the specifics of you know, what the best practices are in the industry, they quickly become what everybody is doing, and then they just don't work anymore, and then people go make fun of them on LinkedIn.

17:37 Reid Oliver: Exactly.

17:39 Scott Ingram: So, Reid, let's take a step back. What's your origin story? How did you get started in this sales path?

17:45 Reid Oliver: Yeah, it's funny you ask that. That's kind of the typical question in the interview process when you're moving into sales, and I don't think I've really locked on an answer yet, but a big part of me getting into sales is All growing up, I was big into sports. I liked the competitive nature of it. I liked the idea of being on a team, but also being able to kind of control your own destiny. And I really like sales because it's essentially, it's what you bring to the table is what you're going to get out of it. So whether you're the one going to the office and really grinding through and really pushing to kind of get your numbers up, it's what you bring. And I like being able to control it of that aspect. And then I also think I really love having conversations with people and kind of learning what people are doing, learning about new businesses. From a young age, I worked at a golf course for 6 or 7 years where every day was, hey Scott, how are you today? Oh, brutal weather, huh? But just having those kind of conversations, and I think it's made me comfortable in meetings to kind of familiarize myself and personalize myself, even in sending videos, just having that personalized appeal. So I like the communication value in it as well.

18:46 Scott Ingram: Awesome. And of your accomplishments today, what are you most proud of?

18:50 Reid Oliver: I think personally, a thing that I like in my current role is that I've been able to align myself in a space that a lot of my teammates will come to me to ask maybe specific situational questions, maybe ask about a current account that they're going into, they're not sure what they want to do, or even to like sit in on a call and shadow it. But the fact that I've been able… that I'm somebody in their eyes that they can go to really means a lot to me. But at the same time, I end up learning a ton from them too, because it's kind of a different scenario that I'm not used to, and I'm able to take on sort of a leadership or a coaching role. So, I think I'm really happy that that's something I'm able to take part in.

19:23 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's really interesting. And typically I would ask the question later, but I'm starting to have some suspicions here. Where do you think this evolves for you? Where are you hoping to take your sales career?

19:34 Reid Oliver: Yeah, I'd really like to get into a full-on account executive role. Sometimes when I'm working with deals on the early stages and I see things transpiring, It almost pains me to not be able to kind of continue on. That being said, I have full trust in my account executive that I'm working directly with, but I'd love to be able to have that closing aspect in an account executive role. But also in the longer timeline, time horizon, I would like to move into a management role too, because as I mentioned, I love the opportunity to work with others, kind of share what's working for me, and then also gain knowledge from them as well.

20:09 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's awesome. You know, I think a lot of individual contributors, the management path isn't necessarily right for them. But what I heard in your answer that, that sort of spoke to me is you really care about that contribution and that coaching and impacting other people. So I think you'd make a pretty good manager. So, so Reid, let's go in the other direction. And I want you to dig really deep here, lay down on my leather couch, talk about the time that it was the hardest. Like, what's the biggest challenge you've had to get through, uh, in, in this portion of your career?

20:36 Reid Oliver: Yeah, so the hardest time that I've had here at Vidyard, I initially started out as an SDR, so that means that I'm getting inbound leads, having a lot more conversations. 2 months in, I was fortunate enough that I was doing well and there was also an opportunity for a BDR role that had opened up, so I moved into that. I was thrown right into the large enterprise space, which is arguably one of the toughest to get started in just because it's a whole different strategy, it's a whole different ballgame. In the conversation sector. And I actually ended up being, I think I was at 38% of my quota that month, which I included in the numbers at the beginning. But it was a pretty big wake-up call because it was something where I was kind of cruising along thinking that I was doing really well, and that was sort of a roadblock that I hit. And it was something that I really had to evolve with. And to kind of tie back to what we spoke about at the beginning, what that meant for me was going to others who had worked in large enterprise and just setting meetings with them and saying, hey, can I talk about what you did, what I'm currently doing, and try to figure out a game plan here? And I was eventually able to get out of it pretty quickly, but it was, uh, it was a low point in the, uh, in the career.

21:44 Scott Ingram: Yeah, well, I'm glad you shared that. And, and again, tying it back to what helped you get to the top was also what got you out of the bottom, it sounds like.

21:52 Reid Oliver: Absolutely.

21:54 Scott Ingram: So Reed, I've, I've improved my questioning on, on this line. So the first question I've learned to ask is, are you a morning person Are you a night owl?

22:02 Reid Oliver: I am more of a night owl myself.

22:05 Scott Ingram: Okay. So as a night owl, I'm curious about what is, what does your evening routine look like? Talk me through that.

22:13 Reid Oliver: Yeah, my evening routine is really getting myself ready for my morning routine because I know that my mornings aren't, aren't as strong as my evenings. So a lot of my end of day is going through my calendar, setting specific reminders that I know that I need to do both in the morning and all day next day. It's prepping what sort of tasks I'm going to do outside of just emailing. So whether that be planning out social touches or actions that I want to take, if somebody asks me to send them something, I'm making sure that I have all of that prepared. I'll even use tools where I can schedule out my emails so that I'm taking care of them in the nighttime for the morning. So I'll even go as far as that. But it's really a planning phase in the evening and kind of getting ready for that next day.

22:55 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And how, when is that? How long does that take? I mean, give it, give us a little bit more detail about what your process is there.

23:01 Reid Oliver: Yeah. Um, it depends. It really varies on, on day to day. Sometimes if I'm, if I'm having a really busy week and I need to spend some time, I'll probably take an hour at the end of the night. Sometimes it's just while I'm on the couch watching TV, getting ready for the next day. Sometimes it's, I'm still focused in the office. Um, but a lot of it is working through our sales tool SalesLoft. Going through what my tasks are for the next day and kind of planning it out and saying, okay, this is what I need to do here. These are the steps I need to take. Why don't I grab a few articles that I want to share the next day or kind of take that next step? And it allows me to move through my day really quickly because the previous day has it all set up for me, teed up, if you will.

23:39 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's sweet. Is there a particular way that you try and structure that next day? I mean, do you… are you blocking out time? How are you doing that?

23:46 Reid Oliver: Yeah, absolutely. So I mentioned Fanatical Prospecting a bit. One of the major things I took from that book was setting up call blocks in my calendar. What I do is I switch it up between Pacific time and East Coast time, and I will vary it each day after day, but I'll set blocks where all I do is focus on making those calls. And it's actually gone a long way in getting more connections, having more conversations, but it's a good way to kind of focus only on one thing. So that's a big part of my day, and it's something that I use my calendar for. Uh, religiously, if you will.

24:21 Scott Ingram: Very cool. And I'm going to try something new, uh, with this episode. I haven't done this before. We're playing with a, a new tool. Uh, we also have a Sales Success Community that is a part of the show. That's where the Influitive sponsorship comes to bear. So that's hosted by Influitive. Um, and we're… since you're probably listening to this with your phone likely in your hand or within the next couple of feet, if you text top1, that's the number 1, so top1 to 444999, uh, that'll That'll get you into… that'll get you an invite to that Sales Success Community. We've got a lot of great resources in there. As I keep going with Reed, I'm sure I'll find something that I'll ask him for and we'll include that in the Sales Success Community as just a nice little bonus for you. It's totally free. Just a way for us to kind of give back and continue to build some community. So again, top1, text that to 444999. Quick caveat though, that's only going to work for about the 70% of our audience that is in the US. Uh, so Reid, I'm sorry, your Canadian friends and those who are around the rest of the world, you still have to go to top1.fm and, uh, and put your email address in there. So Reid, you talked before that there is a lot of different kind of tools and apps. What, what are your favorites? What are the most important, um, tools that you're using? I mean, we've obviously already talked about Salesforce, we've talked about SalesLoft. What else is in your arsenal? Sure.

25:40 Reid Oliver: Um, a few, a few Chrome extensions that I find, um, really help me out. I use a Chrome extension called Datanyze. Essentially, I can go on a website, see a predictable… what they're likely at in revenue, what kind of funding they have if they're a smaller company, what kind of technology they're using. So a big piece for us is understanding what sort of marketing automation system and what sort of CRM a company has. And that arms me with a ton of intelligence, especially if it's not a company that we currently have in our sales force. So I'm a big fan of that. We also use Rapportive, which gives me email addresses off of LinkedIn. So if it's something that we're not able to find good data on, we'll use that in addition to KiteDesk, which is another opportunity to grab data, whether that's email addresses, contacts, where people are moving within a company. Those are kind of just a few simple extensions that are all free that you can add at no charge as a BDR or as a sales rep. And then a big piece of my day-to-day is Sales Navigator on LinkedIn. I take full advantage of following specific prospects who I'm not connected with, following full companies and getting alerts on that end. So I'll often scan my own newsfeed on LinkedIn for information, seeing what's going on in my network, but I'll also fully live in the Navigator space where it's all the companies that I'm living with and contacting day after day.

27:06 Scott Ingram: Sweet. I just realized I have a very funny association with Rapportive now, and it's actually your fault. You guys did like a sales fails video, and I know Craig Rosenberg is in one of those episodes, and he's reading… it's all people, it's Craig Rosenberg and Matt Heinz and Kyle Porter and some of those guys, and they're all reading just bad sales emails, and Craig's reading something that says something along the lines of, Rapportive showed me your LinkedIn profile. Okay, what else you got? So anyway, good, good stuff, Kyle. What… Kyle, see, I'm thinking about SalesLoft now. Reed, how would you describe your style?

27:47 Reid Oliver: Yeah, my style is, is, uh, it's pretty heads down. I think when I'm at, when I'm at the office, I'm pretty focused on, on what I want to be doing in the day. Um, I'm definitely taking the opportunity to kind of converse with my team, kind of go over, uh, the day-to-day offerings and what we're having, but I really, I really try to stay focused on the tasks at hand and on the goals that I have. And then while I am being focused, a big part, as I mentioned, is trying to think differently and strategically and differentiate myself. I think I have quite a few responses from people where they'll often say, wow, this is a great email. I haven't got something like this in the past. I like to think a big part of that is directly from me. A big part of that is also including video in my email strategy. But trying to blend those 2 together and just trying to cut through that clutter through differentiation and specific strategy would be essentially the philosophy that I stick to.

28:40 Scott Ingram: So it sounds like you're gritty, you're kind of keeping your head down in a lot of ways, but doing it in a way that you're kind of really creative and trying to stand above and beyond.

28:49 Reid Oliver: Exactly.

28:51 Scott Ingram: What motivates you or how do you motivate yourself? Because it sounds like you've got a lot of drive, that there's been at least one challenging point. How are you keeping that energy level up? And keeping that activity going?

29:02 Reid Oliver: To be honest, the dashboard motivates me quite a bit. When I go in and I know that I'm kind of having a slow month, I always find myself peering at that. Even in sports, I was one of those guys that was always checking the stats and kind of seeing what was going on. So just from a purely numbers game, quantitative metric, that's a big part of it. It's also just my team. We have a lot of team spiffs, or activities that we call them, where We'll be put into groups and we'll have specific things that we're being measured on for the month. And a huge part of that is trying to be a big part of the team and trying to win it for the group that we're in. And even my manager that I mentioned, he's an awesome guy. I have a ton of respect for him. And I know that he's a happy camper when the numbers are pouring in from my end as well.

29:45 Scott Ingram: Nice. So what is the dashboard? Is that a personal dashboard? Is that the company dashboard? What are we talking about here?

29:50 Reid Oliver: Yeah, I guess I should elaborate on that. That's our team BDR dashboard. So that's something in Salesforce where we can see essentially all of our metrics. We're tracking things like how many ViewedIt seconds our prospects are watching strictly from an activity base, how many emails, how many calls, things like that, how much pipeline is being generated. So it's really awesome because it gives us a holistic view of what's going on from our BDR organization, and it's something that I have bookmarked and open essentially all day.

30:20 Scott Ingram: Nice. So we're gonna turn this into a freaking ViewedIt commercial now, I guess. So you're actually bringing that data into Salesforce. I assume that's not part of the free version. Is that something that's available to the public or just because you guys have the best stuff?

30:33 Reid Oliver: Unfortunately, that's on our enterprise version. So we do have to hide that behind a bit of a paywall in that sense. But yeah, we're able to push an integration, or sorry, we're able to integrate directly with Salesforce and kind of understand when any of our prospects are watching the videos that we're sending out. So it's really advantageous on my end because I can understand, I think we have a stat that about 72% of people are watching some sort of video. Before ever contacting a company. So if I can get a little bit of an idea that somebody may be interested but not ready to chat with me, I know that they're kind of on that point of willing to chat with us and willing to have that conversation. So it's really, it's video intelligence, we call it, and we take kind of full advantage of that within Salesforce.

31:16 Scott Ingram: Sweet. I guess you have to call Reid if you want that.

31:19 Reid Oliver: Absolutely.

31:19 Scott Ingram: I'll take calls.

31:20 Reid Oliver: I'll leave my number at the end. Perfect.

31:23 Scott Ingram: So is there something that you believe that the average BDR it would think is crazy?

31:31 Reid Oliver: Hmm. Not, not crazy because honestly, I've seen so many different styles that end up leading to success at the end that I don't think I could fault anyone on a crazy factor. I think, I think there's a lot of different ways to get success in sales. So I would never be one to ridicule another and try something new because I know myself, I'm trying things that I never would have thought of even, even a month or two ago. And some of them are working and some of them I'm thinking back and that… why am I trying that? That's crazy. So I think there's a lot of different ways to get there and I don't think that there's something specific on that end.

32:07 Scott Ingram: So, so it's actually about applying your own brand of crazy, it sounds like.

32:10 Reid Oliver: I think so. Yeah. I think a lot of it is, is just kind of figuring out what works and trying new things.

32:16 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So where I got derailed, where I wanted to go, I wanted to ask on that dashboard, it sounds like you guys are tracking a lot of different metrics. What are the ones that you find have the biggest impact and drive you or motivate you the most? What do you pay the most attention to?

32:31 Reid Oliver: Well, I pay the most attention to the hard numbers in terms of meetings booked and qualified opportunities, because those are essentially the end goal. But oftentimes, if those numbers aren't there, I'll have to look back and see maybe why is that? Maybe I'm having less activity. Have I been moving in a different direction and not getting my numbers up across the board on the dashboard? And oftentimes, more often than not, it is the people who have high activity that are doing the best. Because at the end of the day, I think a big part of sales is the balance between having a numbers game and having the calls, having the emails, but then also using that differentiation so when you do get into somebody's inbox, they're actually willing to respond to you. So I think it's making sure that your numbers are up and then also applying all the strategies that you're bringing in the back background as well.

33:20 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that's, that's a good point. I think that, you know, it's, it's activity that wins the day, but it's the right activity. So it can't be pure activity. But if you're looking at that, that's the more important metric than the result, right? I, I feel like if you're doing, if you're doing the activity and you're doing it in the right way, the results just kind of come and you, and you benefit from all the, the good karma that you're generating from a sales perspective.

33:43 Reid Oliver: Yeah, exactly. I And one additional point that I wanted to bring up that's not actually on our dashboard, but it's a metric that I look at quite often is within SalesLoft, you're able to understand what your email open to your response rates are, what your open to your click-through rates are. And that's a big thing that we track, especially from an A/B split testing standpoint of whether we are sending video or whether we're just sending text emails or kind of what's working. And I try to make sure that my ratio is really high because I don't want to have wasted opportunities where somebody is clicking on my video or even opening my email and then they're not getting back to me. So it's a big metric that I care about as well that I thought I should point out.

34:21 Scott Ingram: You've been doing this for a little while, you've had your ups and downs. What advice would you give to somebody that's starting out in a new BDR role?

34:29 Reid Oliver: I think I'll push back to the initial point that I said about just not being scared to ask questions. I was lucky enough that I was in an environment that really embraced that, and I think a lot of these new tech companies are similar in that they have… you often have a mentor or a peer who's going to be working with you from the beginning. Definitely leverage them. There's not really any stupid questions. As you get a little bit further down the line, even myself, I had to think, okay, do I really need to ask this or can I figure this out on my own? But there's never going to be these questions where they're saying, don't Leave me alone, don't ask that. It's all about learning at the beginning and picking the right people to learn from. And I think it's pretty obvious early on who's doing well at your company, who you want to model what you're doing after. And it's all about just reaching out to them even early on. I had people at my company that I hadn't met yet and I just said, hey, hey man, I'm new here. I've heard you're doing really well. Do you think we can grab a coffee and just talk about how you've got to where you are? And I think that was a big piece for me to kind of getting where I am and really ramping up my learning. Yeah.

35:31 Scott Ingram: So it sounds like you're doing a lot of what I'm doing really well. So if you were in my shoes and you were talking to other top sellers, what would you want to ask them? What would you want to know?

35:41 Reid Oliver: Yeah, that, that's a really interesting one. I think I would love to hear, much like you've asked me, sort of how they, how they go about choosing the accounts that they're working with and what their specific messaging is. I think it's really powerful to just see what people are sending in emails and understand what's getting wins or what's gaining traction across industries. I know ours specifically, we have a… I'm gonna bring up ViewedIt again, but we have a ViewedIt Wins channel where we actually post the videos that are leading to successes, leading to responses and booked meetings, and being able to say again, oh, okay, Mark had a great video. I'm gonna tailor some of that messaging that he used and kind of put it in my own. So if you were even able to look a little bit further in and understand And if there's a community where people are sharing successful emails and not just the ones that people are bashing on LinkedIn, I think it could go a long way. But that being said, once everyone starts doing the same thing, like you mentioned, in a few months, you're going to have to change it up again.

36:37 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think we finally found our sexy tidbit that I get to put into the, into the community. Reed, would you be willing to share a few of your best-ofs, whether that be ViewedIt videos or just other messaging that we could put into the community?

36:50 Reid Oliver: Absolutely. I would be more than happy to.

36:53 Scott Ingram: Awesome. See, people, I told you there's a reason. So you got to text TOP1 to 444999 if you're in the US, or just go to top1.fm and get on that mailing list. We're trying to load that thing up with a lot of good stuff. And I think that's a great question. It can be challenging for folks because not everybody is open and willing to share that. But I know I've known a lot of people at Vidyard over the years, and you guys have just a super great kind of open culture. So I appreciate your your willingness to contribute that. Reid, who's the very best salesperson you know personally?

37:26 Reid Oliver: The best salesperson that I know personally is a friend of mine who was 2 years ahead of me in school. We both went to Western here in Ontario, and he's actually at Salesforce right now, and he was one of the big reasons that I moved into, that I decided to go into the B2B tech in the SaaS world was because of a lot of the things he was sharing with me. I've modeled a lot of what I do after him, and he's one of those guys that you can just tell when you're having a conversation with him, you know, he's sharp, he's always on the ball, and you think, okay, I enjoy talking with you. I can see why other people do as well and why you're doing well in a sales atmosphere.

38:06 Scott Ingram: So, what else? I mean, what is making him such a great seller in your opinion? What are those things that you try and emulate the most?

38:15 Reid Oliver: I think that he's a really knowledgeable guy. He has a really strong business acumen, and he takes that knowledge that he's grasped, whether it's from education at school or just kind of what he's learning at Salesforce, and he applies it every day to those conversations that he's having. And he's also one of those guys who he's gonna do anything that it takes to win as well. He's really competitive in nature. It's why he's one of a great friend of mine. It's why he's also, I think, rising to the top pretty quickly over there, um, just because of that, that ambition that he has.

38:48 Scott Ingram: Very cool. All right. That brings us to the very hardest question I think I will ask. And that is, we've talked about a lot of different things today. Uh, and I try and just like you, right? You want… learning is great, but learning for the sake of learning doesn't convert into sales results. So how can… how would you recommend the person listening to this take action on what we've talked about if they were to take on a challenge over the course of say the next week or the next 2 weeks to improve their own results, what would you suggest they do?

39:17 Reid Oliver: I think that they should definitely start with having a set goal and a time horizon for that goal. So whether that means, as you mentioned, a 7-day time period, whatever sort of role they're in, I think you need to have something to push towards. So whether that's you wanna book 5 meetings, you wanna have this many email responses, whatever you wanna do, Have that in the horizon and then pick how you're going to get there and try to choose what steps you're going to take. So whether that's in the BDR role specifically, whether that's having the right combination of social touches, emails, phone calls, whether that's doing something completely different and maybe looking at job boards, understanding when companies are hiring, going in from a different angle, but trying something and kind of having a plan that you can execute with an end goal. Is kind of the best way to stay, stay on task and stay focused, I think.

40:08 Scott Ingram: Yeah, good stuff. Hey, so I really appreciate everybody who's listened through to this point. I want to read… I'm going to put this all on your shoulders. I want to create sort of a great nugget for those who've made it through to the end with us. What's, what's the, the most fun, the most creative, the just the most interesting thing that you've done that helped you get a meeting that you thought was really cool?

40:30 Reid Oliver: Hmm, let me think that out. Give me 10 seconds here and I'll think that over. Yeah.

40:36 Scott Ingram: No pressure.

40:37 Reid Oliver: So I have it, it came up to my mind here. So one company that I was working with, they had a big event coming up. I learned about it on their website. I often browse through different event pages because a big thing that we do for events and account-based marketing is personalized video. So I knew that they had this event coming up, they had a few different videos promoting it, and what I did is I actually took some of the video content that we have and I went in and I personalized it all specifically for that person, for their company, and then I even built out, we call them calls to action, from within the video that said, hey, hey, hey Reid, would you like to sign up? And if you clicked it, you actually went to their website signup page. I have to admit I got a little bit of help from our, from our, one of my dev friends here at Vidyard, but it is pretty intuitive in terms of how you're able to do that, and I actually set up a full video invitation for their events team and they ended up really liking the concept behind it.

41:36 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. You know, I did one, one of the ones I'm most proud of, and I'm so bummed I don't think I still have a picture from this, and I'm now I'm struggling to come up with the name of the company I know, I know I've got a lot of ladies that listen to this show, so you guys will have to bail me out. There is a famous shoe company out of New York. Madden is the guy's name, but I can't come up with his… Steve Madden. So Steve Madden Shoes was one of the accounts that we were trying to get in front of, and I was working for Bazaarvoice. So Bazaarvoice sold… they had a kind of a ratings and reviews type solution that we could put on people's websites. Well, I found out that Steve Madden was coming to the Nordstrom here in Austin. So my SDR and I, I made a sign. So I took this poster board and it was, it was big. See where my hands, like, they're not even on the screen right now. And I, I made stars. So I had 5 big stars. We painted them blue. I put it on this thing. We stood in line for God knows how long. So we would probably stand there for an hour. The funny part is like the CEO of Bazaarvoice happens to walk through and is like, what are you guys doing? I'm like, actually, I'm trying to sell something right now. And, you know, it's like on a Saturday, right? So here we are in Nordstrom. So we wait in this line. And then we get up to the table and, um, so both, both Alvy, my, my SDR at the time, and I go in for the picture and we're like, hey, will you hold this sign? And he's looking at us like, what are you going to do with this? I'm like, look, I promise it's all good. So yeah, we got that. We got that picture. And then we used that to open the door with the, uh, with their head of marketing. So that was a, that was a fun little project. That stuff doesn't always come around, but every now and then you find a way to be super, super creative and And it gets noticed.

43:18 Reid Oliver: That's a fantastic story and kind of a great example of differentiating yourself, right? Like I was talking a little bit about before, not many people are taking that step. So that's awesome.

43:28 Scott Ingram: Yeah, exactly. Now, if only I had the picture, we'd put that on the website, but oh well, c'est la vie. So again, thanks everybody for listening. Don't forget, text TOP1 to 444999 or go to top1.fm. Get in, get into that community. We're really trying to create a lot of value there. Reid, thanks again for your time.

43:48 Reid Oliver: This has been a blast. Thanks for listening to the Sales Success Stories podcast. To be sure you never miss an episode and for an invitation to our Sales Success Community powered by Influitive, subscribe to our newsletter at top1.fm.