138: Own Your Learning with Reward Gateway's Drew Piper

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0:20 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/successstories.

0:32 Scott Ingram: Here's your host, Scott Ingram. Today on the Sales Success Stories podcast, my guest is Drew Piper. Drew is the top SDR at Reward Gateway. Welcome to the show, Drew.

0:43 Drew Piper: How you going, Scott?

0:44 Scott Ingram: I'm doing really, really good. It is late on a Friday evening my time because you're on to a whole different day there in Australia. But so Drew reached out to me as a fan of the show. He's been listening for a couple of years with really a pretty fair criticism and suggested that maybe there's been a little too much emphasis on the enterprise sellers in some of these recent episodes. And like any good sales professional, Drew, you had a solution in mind. So here you are.

1:13 Drew Piper: That's right. Yeah. Yeah. You always got to lead with a solution to a problem.

1:17 Scott Ingram: Yeah. I like it. I like it. Well, let's kick this thing off like we always do. And that's with the top 3 things that you believe have contributed the most to your success in sales. What are those? Yeah.

1:27 Drew Piper: So I think for me, first off is really taking ownership for your own learning or my own learning. I think that, you know, it's not a traditional thing that you can go in and study. So you have to be creative in how to kind of upskill your craft. So that would definitely be my first one. Second, I think in any sales role, regardless of industry, is persistence. I think that's something that even if you're lacking a bit on the craft side, persistence will help you through that. And then thirdly is cautious optimism, because I think If you're hoping for the best to happen, but planning for the worst.

2:06 Scott Ingram: Yeah. It's really kind of a mindset piece, right?

2:08 Drew Piper: That's right. Yeah, exactly.

2:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And I'm sure we'll get into taking ownership of your learning. In fact, I'm just going to leave all of it for later, even though I'm super curious. I know we'll get there. But let's talk a little bit just from a contextual perspective about your role and what it means to be number 1. And you've been pretty consistent in your results.

2:28 Drew Piper: Yeah, so I guess on the results side, I've just hit my financial year target a couple of weeks ago and rerun from June to June or July to July, sorry. So we're kind of halfway through our year and yeah, it's just really great being an SDR. I think being creative with your outreach, you know, whether it's videos or creative emails, you know, calling through, I'm mainly an inbound SDR. I probably do 70% inbound, 30% outbound. I guess you need those outbound accounts to help cover some of the ruts that tends to happen with marketing and between events and things like that. So you always have to have other things up your sleeve.

3:10 Scott Ingram: And part of what you wanted to talk about was, you know, kind of working through a more transactional type of a space. So what does that look like? How are you measured and what kind of meeting volume or whatever?

3:23 Drew Piper: Yeah, so we're measured against the opportunities that we create for the account executives, and we're targeted about 20 a quarter. And probably I figured out you need about 2 demos to get an opportunity through if you're doing the qualification right. And that obviously, yeah, just comes down to always having that prospecting piece, that persistence piece. And I think that's the really important part of being able to continually drive those results through whatever medium that you're getting them from.

3:55 Scott Ingram: And you've had quite a bit of consistency in this too. I mean, it's not just you're already to your full year number halfway through the year, but you're kind of quarter over quarter has been on par.

4:07 Drew Piper: Yeah. Yeah. So I think for the last 3 quarters, I've been over 150% of target. One, I think, you know, it has been a really lucky or a good time to join a company like Reward Gateway. The pandemic, I know, has been tough for a lot of sellers, but we're one of those lucky places, like I imagine, you know, Zoom and a couple of other places where the pandemic has really driven a need for our technology. So that has been helping along, but I think, yeah, it has been a really great couple of quarters for me and the team.

4:42 Scott Ingram: Yeah. And what is that technology, just so we've got the context?

4:45 Drew Piper: Yeah, so we sell employee engagement technology, so how to reward and recognize your employees, employee benefits that employers can offer to help kind of attract and retain talent, which is a huge driver in our market at the moment. Also, you know, employee communications, surveys that can be administered, really any way to help people feel more connected to their organization and the organization's values.

5:12 Scott Ingram: Awesome. And then I guess I should ask, I maybe don't ask this enough given that this show is quite global in nature. I mean, you've obviously been listening for a couple of years and, and we've got folks in, gosh, last time I looked, it's crazy, 90 countries or some crazy thing. So where are…

5:26 Drew Piper: Fantastic.

5:27 Scott Ingram: Yeah. What is your territory?

5:30 Drew Piper: Mainly Australia and New Zealand because of the nature of our software. A lot of the benefits that we offer have to be kind of localized that we organize kind of in country as far as account territories go, I'm working in the SMB space. So we classify that as anywhere from kind of 100 employees up to about that 500 mark. And yeah, we don't really have verticals. So it's kind of free rein in that company size and geography for myself.

6:01 Scott Ingram: Perfect. Perfect. Well, let's get into your origin story. And you gave me a bit of a preview of this. This is pretty interesting stuff. So why don't you kind of walk us through your career and how you got into sales and and what the journey's been like.

6:12 Drew Piper: Yeah, it's a long journey for myself in sales, and I guess we'll come to tech sales in a little bit. But I, after school, I wasn't too high achiever in school. I didn't really gel with the education system, so I knew I didn't really want to go to university after high school. And I had a friend who worked in kind of a door-knocking company, so door-to-door sales, and he got me to come and join him. And I did that for, I want to say, about 7 months or so. And that was really the foundation for that persistence piece. Anyone who can, I think, stick at door knocking for more than 3 months has a really good shot in any other sales industry because that's really, really hard yakka. You know, people, you're getting people just before dinner, trying to take them away from their family time and sell them something that they probably don't really need. And from there, I had this really horrific experience on a door one day, which I'm sure we might talk about a bit later. And I thought, yeah, this is… that's enough for me. And I was trying to think about where my skills could be transferable. And I thought, you know, door knocking, another industry that does that is real estate. So I moved into real estate for a couple of years working, and I was pretty lucky to land a job in kind of a high-end part of Sydney selling waterfront homes. For the first year, it was just kind of an appointment setup, and then I actually moved into sales and I did fairly well there. But I just thought that with real estate, it's so suburb-based and I didn't want to live in that suburb or potentially even in Sydney for the rest of my life. So I thought again, what could I transfer my skillset to, to something that would give me a bit of mobility. And I moved into tech recruitment for a couple of years. I was probably an average recruiter, I'd say. And then I was actually looking for, you know, sales-related podcasts and things like that to help me be a better recruiter and be able to influence people better. And I stumbled on your show. And after a couple of episodes, I was really, really interested by, you know, being a part of some of these really cool technology companies that the guests were talking about. And I thought, You know what? I'm gonna get into tech sales. And that's what kind of landed me in this industry. And it's been a hell of a 2 years since then.

8:46 Scott Ingram: That's awesome. I love the story. I'm curious, what was the difference between being a, I think you said mediocre recruiter and being a great SDR? Like what changed in that?

8:57 Drew Piper: I think there's a lot of research. I was in a really niche industry that we worked in. So it was tech recruitment, but it was specifically software engineers. And only for high-frequency trading firms. So it was super niche and the skill set was very, very hard to find. But obviously the salaries, so the recruitment fees were very large. So you might spend 2 months trying to get someone on board and then they go through an interview process and they drop out and, you know, you're on a duck egg for a quarter. So I found that very frustrating. And I think the big difference is being an SDR is it's a lot more fast-paced. And I'm sure there are recruitment jobs that are fast-paced and, you know, kind of dynamic like an SDR role. But I found that, yeah, moving into an SDR position where there's a lot more going on has been really, really conducive to my success because I find that a bit more enjoyable and I'm kind of easily distracted as a person anyway. So I think it's perfect for me.

10:04 Scott Ingram: Nice, nice. Well, I'm always a fan of a good story, and you opened a door to one of those stories. I want to hear this bad door knocking story.

10:12 Drew Piper: We used to do these road trips and we'd all get in a van, 6, 7 of us, and drive to country towns in New South Wales and go and knock on doors there. And it was my birthday and I knocked on someone's door and a guy came. It wasn't even his door, it was a neighbor from across the road. Came and screaming at me and he threw his watch at me and told me that I was ruining his life and, you know, fuck you and all this kind of thing. I was actually getting donations for the Cancer Council, so I thought I was doing a kind of good thing and he just went ballistic. And it was my birthday and I was away from my family and friends and I just thought, this is horrific. So after that, I got back to the cabin that we were staying at that night and I told my boss, this is it, I quit, I can't do this anymore.

10:59 Scott Ingram: Well, let's go from there to a good sales story. So what's your favorite sales story?

11:04 Drew Piper: I've got a couple. I think in tech sales, I think there was an account that I was working on for 7 months or so with one contact, and it was always, you know, projects getting pushed back or, you know, priorities being reassessed, you know, inviting her to lots of events and providing her with all of I guess the knowledge base to help build her project internally. And it got shot down twice and then she'd come back around. And then finally, you know, we're sitting down and we were meant to have kind of a big discovery call to figure out what we could do to move it forward. And when I joined the Zoom call, her whole team was on the call and she was like, okay, cool. So can you just do the demo for us? And obviously me being an SDR, that's not strictly my job, but I thought, you know what, I'm not pushing this meeting back. It's been so long and we're finally here. We've got all the decision makers. So ran through the demo and then obviously handed it off. It went really well. I was so nervous though. And yeah, it went really well. And then I handed the account over to the account executive and it closed about 2 weeks later. So I think that's one of my favorite stories because I felt like I did, you know, that was something that I'd worked so hard for that I was convinced wouldn't come through. And then it just all kind of magically came together as it does sometimes.

12:29 Scott Ingram: My first amazing sponsor mention of this episode is Gong. And this story makes me think of yet another way Gong can be used to provide context in an SDR to AE handoff like this. With Gong, an AE can go back and listen to the conversation that an SDR had to really understand what went on to make for a completely seamless transition for the customer. There are so many powerful ways Gong can be used across your entire sales cycle and sales experience. Check them out today at top1.fm/gong. So Drew, I would love to get into, well, you listen to the show, right? I talk a lot about kind of the person and the approach and kind of the mindset and all of these pieces. And we'll certainly do that. But I think especially with somebody like you who is having a lot of success in a higher volume type of environment, let's get into some of the nitty-gritty of what are the tactical things that you're doing that you're seeing the best success from right now?

13:27 Drew Piper: So I think for our team, we had a bit of a strategy because when I first started, we weren't kind of SMB and mid-market and enterprise. It was, you know, everyone worked all kinds of accounts. And then about 3 months into my role, we split the team and we were trying to figure out how we can make the SMB team really successful. And we figured that we just needed to simplify it for our buyers and simplify it for ourselves. Because the nature of the deals being fast-paced, there is traditionally less kind of internal hurdles for buyers to go through as opposed to, you know, a 5,000, 7,000, 10,000-person company. When you're dealing with 100-odd people, there's probably one HR manager that we're selling to. So that really was it, simplifying it for myself. That means keeping emails really concise and short. I'm a big believer in picking up the phone as opposed to emailing. One, because I can talk faster than I can write and be more concise, but also it's just quicker to get in touch with people. You can get your answer back quickly. I'm a big believer in always having a follow-up task for every contact on Salesforce. So you're never kind of falling behind because when you're dealing with a lot of volume, it's easy to forget what the next step for that contact should be. And something I'm fairly sure I heard, it might've been on this show or another podcast, was using what the conversation was as the task name in Salesforce. So you don't have to open it to go in and see what you talked about. The whole name of the activity is my notes from the call. So I can just look on their Salesforce page and kind of remember my conversations. And it's just little things like that, trying to save save, you know, a minute here, a minute there, 5 minutes there that ends up allowing you to deal with that higher volume, but still also keeping it really relevant for each contact that I'm talking to. Does that make sense?

15:35 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah, it totally does. And it's so interesting kind of thematically because I just hired Alex Bruschi, who's been on this show. And that was really the whole theme of our conversation is it was that simplification process. How do you make it easier? How do you make it more understandable? And it's funny that you say it's easier to talk that way than it is to write that way, because there's the joke. I think it was Mark Twain who said it, although I'm sure it was bastardized and misquoted, but it was one of these, if I had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.

16:06 Drew Piper: It's hard, right?

16:07 Scott Ingram: Exactly right.

16:09 Drew Piper: It really is. And I think emails, at least for me personally, tend to take me into kind of a person that I become professional Drew. As opposed to real Drew, I think. And I think picking up the phone and just talking with prospects and clients, you can get across your influence or your point and deliver value without having to spend, you know, 10 minutes thinking about, am I getting my point across correctly? How does this email read? You can just have a genuine conversation with someone, and I think that's really, really impactful.

16:46 Scott Ingram: I want to dig into something you just said, which is this idea of professional Drew versus real Drew. And I think the other way you could probably say that is sales Drew. I think a lot of people kind of put on their sales hat and then they sound like everybody else, or they think, oh, this is what I'm supposed to sound like versus it just works a lot better if you do you.

17:08 Drew Piper: Yeah, absolutely. And I think this is part of what we were talking about when we were trying to simplify it for the team. Is just giving ourselves the authority to be ourselves and be able to interact with clients and just really be genuine. And I think people can sense that when you're genuine with them. And, you know, if there's a hitch in the sales process or you're not delivering something that you said you'd deliver on time, just being genuine. And I think people really, one, appreciate that and it builds a lot of trust. Which especially in my role is super important because you have to build trust so quickly. So if you have that commission breath or that, you know, that sales persona on, it's difficult to create a genuine connection quickly with clients, I think.

17:57 Scott Ingram: Yeah, for sure. Let's talk a little bit also about the ins and outs of the inbound versus outbound, right? Because the inbound motion is definitely a different approach. What is kind of your process? How are those coming in? What is your kind of sequence and strategy look like around that?

18:14 Drew Piper: Yeah, so leads would come in from maybe they've downloaded an ebook or, you know, seen a LinkedIn ad or something like that. And there normally I find the more earlier stage buyers, they're kind of doing research, getting projects together, and them for me is about kind of nurturing and feeding them the right content to help get them to the stage where they realize, you know, Reward Gateway is something that we should create a project around and then kind of launch into a bit of a discovery call with them to figure out exactly which one of our products or, you know, whether it's a real enough opportunity for me to progress it to an account executive. But I think the real goal that we have in our marketing organization is kind of events and webinars and things like that that we put on, kind of workshops around employee engagement. And I find that that if people have come to events like that, they may not have an active project, but their brainpower is already being funneled into how can I, you know, make my employees' lives a bit better. They're already taking those first steps, you know, taking some of our workshops 2 hours in the middle of the workday. If they're spending that in the middle of a workday, they're ready to go. And it's just about making it really simple for them. To book in a demo and I guess create that urgency in that sales process with them. And I guess tactically, we've just launched SalesLoft. So before it was all, I was working all out of Salesforce and, you know, creating short emails. I'm not a big believer in having huge emails in outreaches to prospects. I try and keep it, you know, 1 or 2 sentences a line and maybe 3 lines. Just to make it again simple, quick for them to be able to read because I mean it has to be easily read on an iPhone I think because most people are reading that. But the change to SalesLoft I think has really upped my sequencing game and I've started to understand, I'm still coming to grips with it, we only launched it probably 2 months ago, but that's going to be really exciting. I'm really looking forward to having some more data around, you know, what emails are actually working, what sequences are working, being able to see people opening my email and clicking on links and all that kind of thing, which, you know, I couldn't do previously. And I know people talk a lot on the show about prioritizing your prospecting activity by kind of that activity feed of what people are clicking on and looking. And, you know, that's the time to reach out, which I haven't been able to do before, which I'm really excited for. Nice.

21:00 Scott Ingram: Nice. So just to be clear on where is your handoff? So that discovery meeting, do you run that discovery meeting or do you simply book appointments and you move on? Where's the handoff to the AE happen in this?

21:13 Drew Piper: Yeah, so the SDRs run our discovery here at Reward Gateway. So we might have normally a 15 to 20 minute conversation with the buyer to, you know, figure out about their organization. What one of our products do we think will solve their pain? Also trying to uncover pain. Is this real or are they, you know, is it competitive? All those kinds of things. That's discovery that the SDRs do in our organization. I know In some other ones, kind of the account executive does that. So once we've qualified it where we think, yes, this is worth kind of an account executive's time, we'll book in a demo for the account executive to do. And they'll probably do a bit more discovery on that call, but that's really to show the buyer through some of our clients' platforms and I guess take them through the impact that it's having for other organizations. In real time, but we are running the discovery.

22:10 Scott Ingram: Nice. And then in terms of just kind of the number of contacts or leads that you're managing at a given time, what does that look like that you're trying to kind of move through and get to that opportunity stage?

22:23 Drew Piper: I have, I think under my name in Salesforce, I'm the owner of about 1,200 contacts. But that being said, I'm probably effectively selling to about 300. That, you know, have either… I'd say once a quarter I'm trying to reach out to at least, you know, those 300, 400 people and keeping them going. A lot of the other people under my name are more just kind of getting drip-fed content from marketing, or maybe I'll invite them to our workshops and things like that, but they may not be getting kind of active calls or, you know, personalized emails and things like that.

23:05 Scott Ingram: Nice. And then anything else that you're doing that you feel like, you know, this is really making a difference? Obviously you've got a massive bias towards picking up the phone versus sending an email. What else is kind of in the bag of tricks there?

23:16 Drew Piper: We have a real… so I'm blessed that we have a researcher that works at Reward Gateway to research outbound accounts for us, which, you know, I'm really grateful to have. And I know a lot of SDRs spend a lot of time kind of researching accounts. So we get quite creative with our video outreach to our larger accounts. So in that 300 to 500 employee range, we have this really exciting thing, a physical kind of video card that looks a little bit like a Kindle, and we'll record a personalized video. Let's say if it's, I don't know, Hungry Jack's, which is Burger King, we might record a video sitting down and like eating a burger and talking about how You know, a good burger is held together by the bun, and that's the employee benefits of a company, and kind of relate it back to our products and work them through the burger and our products as if it's that sitting in a Burger King. Put that video into kind of a physical mailer and mail it out to a prospect, and when it gets to them, you know, they'll open it and the video will start playing. So kind of highly personalized physical video outreach is, you know, something that I haven't really heard of, and it's so impactful, and prospects just love it.

24:37 Scott Ingram: Nice, nice. Video is so powerful in personalizing your outreach. If you've listened to this show for any amount of time, then you know that I'm a massive fan of Vidyard, and it's not just because they're a sponsor. It's a seriously powerful tool, and you can get started today with free Chrome plugin at the shortest link ever, top1.fm/v. Check it out. Do you eat on all of your prospecting videos?

25:04 Drew Piper: I try not to, but it's creative. We've had one for the Sydney Opera House, let's say, and we went and recorded out the front of the Sydney Opera House and things like that, just to try and grab their attention.

25:17 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah. It's so fun to do those things. I worked with a company years ago That was just absolutely, it was just part of the culture. I mean, we would bring everybody together who had anything to do with that company. Or, you know, like if you had that type of apparel, everybody would come in and we'd record some video or some picture or some crazy thing. It's so much fun to do that stuff. And it just, it resonates because, you know, I kind of like things like that, that in some ways don't scale. There's been so much emphasis on, oh, we've got to be able to scale this and touch a million people. Well, yeah, but that's what everybody's doing. And when you do something that you know immediately that they did this just for me or just for us.

26:00 Drew Piper: That's right. Yeah, it really, it comes back to that part, I think, about being genuine. You know, you're really there resonating with what you're saying. They know it's crafted just for them and it took time and effort out of your day. You know, I'm editing, you know, we edit the videos, we've gone on location, not that we do that for all of them. We've got a little recording studio in the office that we can use with ring lights and stuff like that. But it just goes to show that we think that there's something there. And if we've put all of this effort in, I'd say 80% of the time we get responses from that. And because those are our higher value accounts, and I know the enterprise team use that for all of their accounts and they get really great results from it as well, which is, you know, it's just exciting and fun. And it's part of what makes sales so interesting is that there's all these cool different ways that you can engage people.

26:59 Scott Ingram: Yeah, for sure. Have you seen the Vidyard video with the Buffalo Wild Wings pitch?

27:04 Drew Piper: No, I don't think I have.

27:06 Scott Ingram: Oh, I'm linking this one in the show notes because I'm going to go look at this video again. I laugh every single time. So it's a guy pitching Buffalo Wild Wings. Before he starts his pitch, he takes a bite of their hottest wing, and he's just choking and dying through this entire thing. His colleagues are behind him laughing at him. It is so… it is absolutely…

27:26 Drew Piper: that's amazing.

27:27 Scott Ingram: So I'm gonna, I'm gonna link it in the show notes, top1.fm forward slash this episode number, which I'm not even gonna try with the number, or top1.fm forward slash Drew-Piper. That you can get to. And it is so funny. It's totally worth the 3 minutes or whatever it is. And And here we are back to eating on video is the ultimate. Yeah.

27:47 Drew Piper: That reminds me of that time. I'm not sure if you've seen on YouTube that show Hot Ones and the host, they kind of eat slowly hotter wings until they get to like super hot and he interviews celebrities while they're doing it. It's pretty funny. Yeah.

28:00 Scott Ingram: Somebody was, I can't remember who was doing that. There was somebody that was doing kind of a series like that with sales thought leaders. And they're like, oh, really? Send you this really hot thing and we're going to ask you questions. I'm like, nope, I am not playing that game. I do not need to be snotty and dying on video. Like, I'm all for good fun, but I'll suffer on my Peloton, not in my face.

28:26 Drew Piper: Yeah, I do enjoy spicy things. So I think that's something I'd love to be a part of.

28:31 Scott Ingram: There you go.

28:31 Drew Piper: That's fantastic.

28:33 Scott Ingram: There you go. Well, I'm sure somebody from that company, if they're still doing it, is listening. So hit Drew up, send him some really spicy stuff and ask him some hard prospecting questions. So Drew, what are you most proud of?

28:46 Drew Piper: I think I'm most proud of where I've got to. Anyone who knew me through high school, I was probably headed to be a bit of a dropkick, as we'd say in Australia, a bit of a loser. And I think I've just really managed to persist through and make something of myself. And I think now I'm coming to the stage where you know, I'm mentoring and kind of helping my team and kind of getting to the stage now where I can give back. And I think it's just great to be in a position when I look back on where I've come from and so grateful to be in a position that I am now. And that's probably what I'm most proud of, I think.

29:27 Scott Ingram: My last sponsor shout out today is for QuotaPath, because if you've persisted through and made something of yourself, you probably need a better way to keep track of your commissions And your quota attainment. You can set up QuotaPath for free just for yourself by going to top1.fm/quotapath. But it's even more powerful if it's set up for your whole team. Make sure QuotaPath isn't a secret on your team. Tell a friend. top1.fm/quotapath. Yeah. So cool. And I mean, as you've probably heard on the show here recently, I mean, this wasn't really that intentional. It's wild the way that it's working out. I just have so many folks who have been listening to this show and taking on the lessons and really committing to their success. And then it is this kind of pay it forward thing. It's like, look, I've made it. I've had some really good success. And, you know, it was due in large part to either the show or this community or other learnings that they've had. And this only happens. I mean, you only get this type of insight because somebody has taken the time to pay it forward. So thanks for coming on and taking the time and helping the next generation.

30:33 Drew Piper: Yeah, no, I think this community and I guess this show in general has really helped me, especially through the last kind of 2 years. It's introduced me to, you know, so many things, so many other kind of podcasts that I listen to now are guests from, you know, this show. And I was introduced to Revenue Collective, what's now Pavilion, through, you know, this show. And I think that the community that has been created. And I guess that whole attitude, I think, in tech sales now is so gracious and everyone's so willing to help each other. And it's just really good to see that.

31:08 Scott Ingram: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, so now we've been talking about all these good, wonderful things. What's the hardest part? What do you struggle with?

31:16 Drew Piper: I think the hardest part for me is, as I mentioned a bit earlier, I'm quite easily distracted. So I think focusing and being able to I guess nurture accounts over long periods of time. As I was alluding to with kind of recruitment, I think that's the most difficult thing for me is that long-term sustained effort. I'm really, really great in having, you know, 110% put into things for short periods of time, but I can kind of get distracted or not disheartened, but want to kind of move on to the next thing. So I think for me, it's really grounding myself and trying to stick things out, I guess, is a good way of putting it.

32:01 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. You remind me of a story. I was actually catching up with my all-time favorite sales leader just this week, and I remember him coaching a younger sales professional through kind of his career journey, and he knew that they had both played football. And he was trying to help him understand because this guy he was talking to, he thought that he wanted to go into enterprise sales. And the analogy that he gave was this idea of, you know, would you be comfortable? Think of it as football, right? Do you need that reward every week to be able to go on the field and prove and show what you've done and have that result that quickly? Or do you think that you can train for an entire season And not get an opportunity to compete once and show your stuff. I mean, it's just kind of understanding yourself and those type where you fit best, because to your point, and I really appreciate you reaching out about this, the enterprise cycle is a completely different animal. And it's, if you're wired in that more like, I need quick hits type of way, it'll kill you.

33:10 Drew Piper: Yeah. And that was, I guess, something which came into play when we were splitting the SDR team, as I was saying before. And I was a bit nervous about getting, you know, told that I was on the enterprise team because I was thinking, oh, you know, you might work on an enterprise account for a year and get the meeting after a year of working with, you know, multiple contacts in the organization. Whereas now I'm having, you know, 20-odd kind of impactful conversations a day, and there's always new and interesting problems that these businesses are facing, especially now with COVID And I think that that has contributed massively to my success, the move to the SMB team and away from kind of working all accounts, because as my personality is, it just gels well and it brings out kind of the best in me, I think.

34:07 Scott Ingram: Yeah. So how else are you managing kind of that distraction piece? I mean, it sounds like part of it is just acknowledging, okay, this is who I am. This is my style. I'm gonna fit better and work better in this SMB space just because of the nature of the business. Are there other things that you're doing just in terms of the way that you set up your process and things like that to just kind of help you through that?

34:28 Drew Piper: Time blocking is really big for me, Scott. I think, as I was saying, let's say after an event, we might have a workshop. That next day, I don't open Slack, I don't open my emails, I'm just calling. I try and remove distractions, and that's a big part of it as well. So it's time blocking and removing distractions. Slack is great in a lot of ways but can be really, really detrimental to productivity. And, you know, scrolling on Instagram and things like that, or LinkedIn is a bad one as well. So I try and keep my LinkedIn tab as closed as I can unless I'm actually working on it. Because when you're trying to work, as I said, in short productive bursts, it's really important to be focused while you're trying to be productive. And when you get in kind of the rhythm of things and, you know, you have one good call, I find it's best just to make another one straight away. Don't send that email. You know, don't mess around on the Salesforce tasks. If you've got the rhythm, keep it going. That's a huge part for me. I guess another thing for me is I try and set up the day for a win with a win. So I know a lot of people talking about kind of eating the frog and doing the hardest bit of your day first. For me personally, that's, you know, quite disheartening if I start with the day off wrong. So if I've got my hottest calls, whether it's, you know, maybe someone who I've been nurturing and I think they're coming close, or, you know, hopefully maybe a demo request or something like that. That's my first call of the day. Cause I want to start off the day on a really positive, strong note, and then try and get that kind of uplifting euphoria almost that you get when you're playing this game of sales and try and run that throughout the day.

36:23 Scott Ingram: That's really interesting. And I love this, right? It's just kind of understanding your own psychology because you're right. How many times have we heard on this show? You know, I got, I do got to do the hardest thing first. I got to eat the frog. I got to do these other things. Whereas you've recognized, yeah, that's a great way to set me down on a horrible day. And instead I need this early win so that I can build some momentum.

36:45 Drew Piper: That's right, exactly. And it works really well. And I know it doesn't work for everybody and I do understand doing the hard things first, but I think for me that comes, and I'm sure we'll get to it when we go through the kind of blow-by-blow of the day. But it's so important for me to set the day up for success because when you have that euphoria, when good things are happening, it seems like they just will continue to happen, you know?

37:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, I love that. All right, well, you set me up perfectly. So the blow-by-blow… if anybody hasn't heard the show, my setup is always, Drew, I want to know what time your alarm clock goes off, and I want that blow-by-blow till your head hits the pillow. Let's do Yeah.

37:25 Drew Piper: So I don't have an alarm. My dog normally wakes me up 5, 10 past 5 in the morning to take her outside of my apartment for a little walk and things. So I kind of have that natural alarm clock. And then I like to read the Bible a little bit, maybe for, you know, 10 minutes or so in the morning. And then I'm straight to the gym because I think that that is a pretty hard thing to do in the morning. And I know you're religiously on your Peloton. I go to the gym and I get that over and done with, but then that also feels like you've knocked something over and you've already accomplished something great for the day. So I think that's really important. You know, coffee, breakfast. I normally start work… I'm a morning person, so I probably start work before I I'm meant to. 7:30, 8 o'clock, I'm starting work, maybe sending some emails and things like that, checking meetings. Also recently I've been kind of doing the Sales School from Pavilion for the account executive just to kind of upskill myself. So I normally watch a lecture that they've put up in the morning. And then, yeah, as I said, at 9 o'clock, as soon as the phones are acceptable to start ringing, maybe 8:30, I'll start with my hottest calls of the day. At lunch, I probably go for another bit of exercise, whether it's a bit of a run or maybe a ride on the Peloton. In the afternoons, I prefer to have kind of low brain task in the afternoon. So meetings, writing emails and things like that, internal meetings preferably, all in the afternoon. Yeah. And then I cook dinner. I'm a big cooker. I love, I find it so kind of therapeutic. And I probably… everyone tells me I eat dinner like a granddad. I'm probably cooking dinner by about 5 PM in the afternoon, which is a bit early, but I love it. And then, yeah, whatever's going on that night, whether it's, you know, maybe going out to the pub with some friends or going for a walk with my girlfriend and the dog. And I'm not a huge person of setting up my day before the night of. I know I was listening to one of the episodes a couple of weeks ago on this show, and the lady that was talking had a really structured process around that. I just like to do some reading at night, kind of when I'm getting ready for bed. Non-business reading, sort of, you know, fantasy fiction that kind of, you know, lets me escape the chaos of the day. And then probably in bed around, you know, 9 PM, ready for it all again.

40:08 Scott Ingram: Very nice. Very nice. So first I need to know your Peloton username.

40:12 Drew Piper: It's a kind of a knockoff Peloton.

40:14 Scott Ingram: Oh, all right.

40:15 Drew Piper: So there will be no fun. I don't think you'll find me on there. Yeah, no, unfortunately not.

40:20 Scott Ingram: All good. All good. Well, I guess the class times would be really tough. Is Peloton in Australia at this point?

40:26 Drew Piper: I think they are. My dad has one and he does some of the classes, so they must be. Yeah.

40:31 Scott Ingram: There you go. There you go. Yeah. I certainly resemble the senior citizen eating time. I like to go and all the retirees are having their dinner at 5:00 PM.

40:40 Drew Piper: I'm just hungry by that point, you know? Exactly. It's dinner time. Yeah, that's right. Long day of, you know, I've exercised. I'm hungry.

40:48 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I kind of feel like, I mean, you're an early morning guy too. You just live sort of a time-shifted style, right? It's kind of like being in a different time zone. I'm just a couple hours ahead.

40:59 Drew Piper: Yeah, that's right. Exactly.

41:00 Scott Ingram: So let's get into, I mean, the first thing you called out as your kind of key success factor was owning your development and the learning What is the learning? Let's talk about kind of the, what your information diet is, what you're listening to, reading, watching, and feel free to get very specific and make Kevin work to build the show notes.

41:21 Drew Piper: Yeah. So obviously Sales Success Stories with Scott Ingram. That's a big one for me. I'm a big podcast listener. One of my favorite ones at the moment is How I Built This with Guy Raz. I got that off one of your guests actually. They were saying that it was a good show and I thought, oh, you know, I'll go check that out. That's been really great. Millennial Sales with Tom Alaimo. He has another kind of really nice podcast. 30 Minutes to President's Club with Nick and Armand. I like theirs because it's short and you can kind of digest it easily. But yeah, that's good. I'm not a huge reader of business or kind of sales books. I find them… you could probably Instead of 100 pages, you could have 30 pages and not lose any of the content, if you know what I mean. And so recently, as I said, I've been big into Pavilion. I love kind of looking over their resources and I've just finished my first course with them, which was fantastically put together. I'm a big watcher on YouTube of, I guess, kind of finance shows. I find personal finance pretty interesting. How Money Works is a really, really good one. That's probably all that's, I guess, kind of learning and personal development related for me. It's mainly listening or watching, just the way I learn it. It kind of sticks better and I can do other things. I find reading being distractible. It can be quite difficult for me.

42:51 Scott Ingram: Perfect. Perfect. Well, I would imagine that, I don't know, maybe everybody listening to this maybe resembles that. I guess we're in the right medium for all of that. So it certainly resonates with me. Drew, are there other kind of habits or routines throughout your day that are key to the way that you function and operate?

43:10 Drew Piper: For me, the biggest one is probably exercise. So that was a huge part of me, I guess, kind of turning my life around when I started in sales was going to the gym. And I just find that that puts your mind in a really clear space. And it's just so great for the way you feel for the rest of the day. I find the days that I don't read my Bible in the morning, my days are normally worse. And maybe that's because it's, you know, a bit of a break from my routine. But it also is… I feel like it's imparting a bit of wisdom into me as the day is starting, which is probably good. But mainly I'd say it's exercise. That's probably the most important thing for me.

43:57 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Good call out. What is your kind of typical exercise? You said you're going to the gym. What are you doing in there?

44:01 Drew Piper: Like strength training. So, you know, barbells, dumbbells on the machines. I'm trying to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger. That's my goal. I'm far from the goal, but that is the goal.

44:14 Scott Ingram: Very nice. Move heavy stuff around, right?

44:17 Drew Piper: Yeah, that's right.

44:19 Scott Ingram: Very nice. So what about your personal tech stack? What are the tools and apps that you rely on?

44:27 Drew Piper: Personally, I'm not huge into apps on my phone and things like that. Obviously Coinbase, that's a big one. I love a bit of cryptocurrency gambling is probably the right word. Just having some fun with that. Strava. So my friend introduced me to that probably a lot later than I needed it, which was only a month or 2 ago, but that's been good to kind of track my runs and things like that. And then yeah, most of it is kind of personal finance related. So a couple of budgeting apps. Let me see what we've got here. I always forget exactly what they're called, you know. MyFitnessPal, that's a good one to, you know, help you stay on top of kind of your eating and things like that. Lumosity, I'm not sure if you guys have that in the States. It's like little brain games that test your memory and your cognition and things like that. That's a fantastic one, I think, to just play on the train to work and it helps get your brain kind of flowing. That one's a really good one.

45:30 Scott Ingram: Beautiful. Beautiful. So Coinbase, let's talk about your… because crypto is just fun. To some degree, I think you're right. It probably is gambling. So what's your favorite bet right now?

45:39 Drew Piper: My bet right now is on Ethereum just because all of these NFTs that everyone's starting to talk about in the industry are all built on the Ethereum blockchain. And they're probably a bit too close to gambling for my money. But I think that in the long term, Ethereum will be returning on my investment. I did jump into Dogecoin when Elon Musk was having his tweets about it, and I rode that train for a little while. Yeah. So that was, I guess, probably the funnest one I've rode so far was the Dogecoin. And that turned out quite well for me.

46:19 Scott Ingram: Very nice. Very nice. All right. Let's see what else we should talk about your sales philosophy. So is there a particular sales philosophy that you've adopted at this stage?

46:29 Drew Piper: I think there's parts of everything, you know, so I don't really, I love Sandler upfront contracts, you know, to open calls and things like that. I think you need a good mix of everything. I don't think any one kind of traditional sales philosophy will work for everybody. I think you have to take bits and pieces from all of them that work for you. You know, there's always a time to be a challenger, but I think, yeah, having aspects of everything really works well for me. So the answer is no, I don't probably subscribe to just one.

47:06 Scott Ingram: Well, and you said earlier, right, there's professional Drew who's not really that effective, and then there's real Drew who is. Who is real Drew? Like, what is the style that gets applied there?

47:15 Drew Piper: In Australia, we'd call it knockabout, but I'm not sure how to describe. I'm just, I think being friendly is really, I'm a friendly kind of guy. And I think that comes across to clients and to colleagues as well. I love to have a bit of a laugh. I really don't take most things too seriously. And I think that helps create kind of connections very well for me.

47:41 Scott Ingram: Nice. And then I'm curious about kind of what motivates you, what drives you?

47:45 Drew Piper: Well, I think as everything in sales, money is a little bit of it, but I think I'm pushing in the earlier parts of your career when, you know, you're not earning commission regularly or, you know, maybe you're not in a high-paid position, that is a lot of it. But I think once you start to earn more money, that becomes less important. For me, it's, I'm kind of in a, I guess, a bit of a dilemma at the moment. I'm not sure whether my next step that I want to move into is management because I do love, I guess, kind of helping my team and even my friends and helping them grow. And I think that could be quite rewarding, but I also love helping customers solve their business problems. And so that's something I'm tossing up where my motivations lie at the moment. Do I want to move into a management path or do I want to continue kind of down the individual contributor route because both of those are really rewarding, you know?

48:45 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, keep me posted. I'd be interested to know how that plays out. So Drew, let's think about this. I think from the SDR perspective, I mean, you've obviously had a range of experiences in sales, but is there something you believe that the typical SDR would think is crazy?

49:04 Drew Piper: I think it's coming more into fashion now, but I spoke about it before, shorten your emails. Because I know I delete or open an email and if it's too long, I don't read it.

49:14 Scott Ingram: There's…

49:15 Drew Piper: people don't have the time to do that kind of thing anymore. So shorten your emails. I love a catchy subject line. I'm big into trying to relate it back to their company name or maybe something I've seen on their website or something I've seen on the person's LinkedIn profile. Really nothing to do with the content of my email, just something that will get it opened and then try and have relevance, kind of why I'm reaching out, first sentence or 2, problem. Maybe it's a problem I'm seeing in the industry, other people are talking about it, and then a short, maybe, yeah, 1 or 2 sentences about how we help with that. I'm not big on asking for a call on email. I just want to get a reply. And if they reply, I'll call them myself.

50:08 Scott Ingram: Nice. You know, you just gave me an idea and maybe this is what you're doing, but you made me think about like personal keywords. If you read through somebody's profile or you've listened to them on a podcast, like what are the things that they talk about a lot? I bet if you just put that into a subject line, like if you sent me an email and said Peloton and podcasts.

50:29 Drew Piper: That'd get open straight away. Yeah, exactly. And that's exactly the mindset… the subject line, you're not trying to sell them, you're just trying to get them to open the email. And I know it is difficult to do that, but I think if you can get creative around that… but yeah, I think the main message is shorten your emails.

50:48 Scott Ingram: Yeah, excellent, excellent. What about the flip side?

50:50 Drew Piper: Is there something that the average or typical SDR believes that you think is I think this is not, I guess, super tactical, but I think a lot of SDRs especially forget that prospects are human beings just the same as them. There's nothing to be scared of from talking to another person. And this might be, you know, more junior SDRs. And as you get more experienced, you get used to these things. But they're just people, you know, they've got their own family lives going on. You know, if they're ghosting you or rude to you, it's probably because they're busy or maybe they're going through a divorce or something like that. And just remembering that your prospect is not just the CHRO at that company, they're a human being as well. And I think that I'm sure most SDRs believe that, but it might not be reflected in how they go about their job, if that makes sense.

51:51 Scott Ingram: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, like anything, you get all kinds. I've got a couple of like very senior executive CEO friends who you would think, oh my gosh, like completely unreachable, but they're also some of the most effective people I know and the most responsive people I know. It's completely crazy. And again, you get all kinds in all roles. There's almost no correlation between the role. I mean, you know, we're all humans, we're all wired different.

52:18 Drew Piper: That's right, exactly. And I think that what you said there, there's no rhyme or reason between people and the job they're doing. That's something that always interests me is, and I guess is why I love sales so much, is even if you're just selling to one vertical and one kind of like we obviously only sell to or mainly sell to kind of HR departments, there's all kinds of interesting people you get to talk to with their own lives. And it's so interesting. Being in a profession where you get to touch and talk to so many people, I think.

52:52 Scott Ingram: Yeah. Well, think about this show. I've had basically this conversation 130-some-odd times, and this is still wildly interesting. If it were true that all salespeople were the same, we wouldn't need to keep doing this. This would not be interesting.

53:07 Drew Piper: That's right. Yeah.

53:08 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

53:08 Drew Piper: It's been there and it's, we've done that.

53:10 Scott Ingram: Yeah.

53:11 Drew Piper: Yeah.

53:11 Scott Ingram: Like, no, I know how all salespeople work, right? Like, I'm good. I heard 10 episodes. That's enough of that.

53:16 Drew Piper: Yeah, exactly.

53:18 Scott Ingram: So Drew, what advice would you give to somebody who is just starting out in their sales career today? Or maybe, you know, the advice that you would give to yourself if you were starting out right now?

53:29 Drew Piper: I know it's been said a lot on this podcast, go and sit next to the top performer and watch what they're doing. That's key. What are they saying on the phone? What do their emails look like? Try and learn from everybody on your team. And that's not just to say the top performers. Try and learn from everybody because everyone has a different way of doing things, and maybe that will resonate with you. And I think that sometimes, especially when you're new in a role, you can be so focused on just doing your job and trying to you know book meetings that you can forget to try and learn to. Do things differently. And I guess that comes back to owning your own kind of learning. I think that is a huge impact and it would've made a big difference for me a lot earlier on if I probably spent more time with top performers in my organizations.

54:26 Scott Ingram: Yeah, man, that makes a ton of sense. What about the advice that you would give to somebody that's a little bit further into their career? And again, maybe this is the advice that you give to yourself when you're in this recruiting gig. And you're like, eh, not quite it, to really help them find their groove and really find the success that they're looking for in sales?

54:45 Drew Piper: Yeah, I think for me it definitely needed to be that introspection piece, which I eventually came to. But, you know, that was 2 years after being in the role, and I probably knew after about 3 months. So it's a bit of reflecting on what do you actually enjoy doing Whether that's, you know, what industry do I enjoy talking to? Am I really finding fulfillment in working, selling to, I don't know, maybe financial departments, or would I find it more interesting selling to, you know, IT departments and talking about software if that's what interests you? So find things that make your job more interesting and align with what you do and who you are outside of work, because that will make work more interesting, which will then reflect in your results. Does that make sense?

55:40 Scott Ingram: Yeah. You know, I think that's such an important thing, right? It's recognizing that it matters so much finding the right spot. And there's a lot of dynamics to that. It can be the role, right? I mean, there's a lot of different things you can do in sales. You know, you can be an SDR, you can be an AE, you could be a solution consultant, you can be on the customer success side, you can be an account manager, you can be on the enterprise side. There's so many things you can do just inside of sales. And then what industry, what are you selling, who are you selling it to? Each of those dynamics I think can be important.

56:16 Drew Piper: Absolutely. And I think that was… I really like talking with HR kind of departments and HR leaders, and because they're kind of naturally tend to be a bit more people-focused around what they're talking about and their whole projects and their whole work tends to be more people-focused. And I am a people person, so why would I not help people, people with their people? I love it.

56:45 Scott Ingram: I love it, man. I would hope that if you're in HR, you're people-focused, otherwise we've got a problem.

56:52 Drew Piper: Well, as we were saying, there's no rhyme or reason, and I've definitely spoken with a couple of that didn't seem so.

57:00 Scott Ingram: Well, maybe they're just not salespeople people.

57:02 Drew Piper: Yeah, that's right.

57:04 Scott Ingram: Oh, that was fun.

57:06 Drew Piper: It kind of rolled off the tongue nicely there.

57:07 Scott Ingram: Yeah, that was too fun. So Drew, we covered a lot of ground. Again, I know you've listened to this podcast a lot. Part of your goal here was to pay it forward. Was there something else that you were hoping to share or another question you were hoping I'd ask that we just somehow didn't get to?

57:22 Drew Piper: Not particularly, I would say. I think the one thing I really wanted to share whether it's for sales leaders or kind of anyone listening, was how much having a researcher on my team helps the whole SDR team perform at really high levels because you are just spending your time in your craft, not necessarily in LinkedIn data or company 10-Ks. All of that is kind of researched for us. Which just makes our lives so much more effective for the company. And I really wanted to share the kind of sending out physical video cards to companies because I think that's a missed opportunity for salespeople. And maybe I shouldn't have shared that because now everyone's going to do it and it won't be as impactful.

58:13 Scott Ingram: So I actually, I looked into this for a couple of different use cases a while back. I believe that Sendoso can actually do that in an automated way. So Sendoso does a whole lot. I mean, they do some amazing stuff. They send all kinds of different things to all kinds of different people, but you can literally digitally send them the video, never touch the box, and they do the whole thing and the entire box can be branded. It's really, really cool.

58:40 Drew Piper: That sounds fantastic. Yeah. If we had Sendoso here in Australia, that would save us a lot of work.

58:46 Scott Ingram: Well, there you go. I'll tell Chris he needs to expand to Australia now.

58:50 Drew Piper: That's right. Yeah, we're waiting for him.

58:52 Scott Ingram: There we go. There we go, Drew. This has been fantastic. And you know the way that I always end these is again talked about lots of stuff. But what would you challenge the listener to do over the course of the next week or two to improve themselves and improve their results?

59:06 Drew Piper: I think learn, especially for you know SDRs traditionally who are more junior in their careers. There's so much content out there to learn from. Like this podcast and many others, books, things like that, and upskill your craft. And yeah, I think that's pretty much it. Try and upskill your learning game.

59:30 Scott Ingram: Nice. Nice. And what I will do, and this probably needs an update, so I'll have my team as they listen to this remind me to do this update. But if you go to top1.fm/sdr, all of the SDR-focused episodes are linked there, and I'm going to add this one to the list. Drew, thanks for your time, man.

59:48 Drew Piper: Thanks, Scott. 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.