Atakan Ozuysal

Topics discussed:

• Fractional C-level marketplaces and their benefits for SME and midsize startups
• Outbound consultancy and its role in helping early stage startups with sales and marketing
• The importance of a strong foundation in sales and marketing
• Using LinkedIn for B2B sales and marketing, including creating successful profiles, making connections, using LinkedIn Groups, and personal branding
• Strategies for creating and sharing engaging content on LinkedIn
• Using LinkedIn automation tools to streamline the sales and marketing process
• Tracking and analyzing data to improve sales and marketing efforts
• Using video in B2B sales and marketing, including creating and using videos effectively
• Using social media to increase brand awareness and find new business opportunities
• Staying up to date with industry trends and staying visible on social media platforms

SUMMARY

What was the motivation behind the founding of Shiny, and what need was the business hoping to fill?

Shiny was founded to offer fractional executive options at a lower cost, which also benefits the executive because they can work for multiple companies at the same time. This solution was created for employers who need highly qualified C-level executives but cannot afford to hire full-time employees.

What stage are the majority of the businesses in when they approach you for assistance, and how should recruiting of sales development people be handled?

The majority of the businesses who contact them are start-ups in the early stages that lack a sales team or a sales development representative. For recruiting, onboarding, managing, training, and coaching SDRs to success, they advise hiring highly qualified SDRs and providing sales management as a service. As an alternative to searching for a unicorn who is already transitioning into account executive responsibilities, they advise finding a partner who can offer competently supervised and trained junior SDRs.

How can new team members become effective social sellers quickly when starting out with a brand new LinkedIn profile?

It's a slow process and requires patience, consistently posting, creating value and building a personal brand, and recycling content.

Given that LinkedIn is no longer as powerful as it once was, how are businesses obtaining engagement and meetings?

Businesses are now emphasizing creativity and writing to make outreach stand out in addition to employing phone conversations and secretive social networks like Slack and Facebook groups.

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TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00]

Ricky Pearl: Today on a Couple of Pointers Podcast, we are lucky enough to have Ata Ozuysal from Shiny. Welcome to the show.

Atakan Ozuysal: Hello, Ricky. Thanks for inviting me. I'm so excited to be a part of this podcast.

What do you do?

Ricky Pearl: We are incredibly excited to learn from you today. So for the sake of the audience, explain it like we're five. What do you do?

Atakan Ozuysal: I'm the part of farming team of Shiny where just fractional C level marketplaces.

We are helping SME midsize startup to find their fraction executives, and I also start my consultancy, I'm doing some part-time gigs to B2B consultant. I'm helping early stage startups to how to create out motion and sales process.

Ricky Pearl: Well obviously, you know how incredibly important that is. So I'm excited to learn from you today. Let's let's dig in.

Atakan Ozuysal: Yep. Sure man.

What was the reason for starting it? What was the gap that you found that you thought you needed to fix?

Ricky Pearl: So let's start off with Shiny. You are doing some fractional professionals. What was the reason for starting it? What was the gap that you found that you thought you needed to [00:01:00] fix?

Atakan Ozuysal: Yeah, sure man. I will give you some basic example. Let's think like you are the employer, okay? You need C level person. But you want to hire a very good qualified C level candidate, but it's so expensive to hire one C level person and I don't think one of most of the startups need full-time employee.

Okay. Then we saw that. I think we did. We think that no one need full-time employee. Then we just create Shiny because as I said, it's a win-win situation. I am finding you fraction executive and it's also win-win situation for you because you don't have a chance to hire full-time. If you're early state startup, it's so expensive, maybe just 15, 20,000 just for C level, but you have a chance to choose how many hours you need C level people, and it's helping a lot for the SME startup because they don't want to spend much money.

And you have a chance to hire very good high qualified candidates with low budget. That was

Ricky Pearl: It makes a lot of sense at, I think it's also it fits in with the tailwinds of the global employment [00:02:00] trends, where in the long run, high level executives will be fractional for two or three organizations as opposed to full time at one, really allowing them to maximize the value that people can get from their expertise.

And I think it's, it's really just the beginning of that. So you got in on the ground floor on something that's only gonna be growing.

Atakan Ozuysal: Thanks Ricky. As I said, you can't imagine the supply site. There are, I think more than 800 tech executive waiting for the just waiting because everyone wants to work in fraction. No one wants to work in just one company. Everyone wants to know more companies because they also want to see that what are the good opportunities for them. Okay. You have a chance to work five company in just one week, and I don't know, it's also very good experience from the candidate side.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah absolutely. A hell of a lot better than having a side hustle that has nothing to do with your expertise is use your expertise and sell your expertise to another organization that needs it. And if they only need it, fractionally and the organization you had only needs it fractionally. [00:03:00] Makes a lot of sense.

Outbound consultancy

Ricky Pearl: Now, tell me about your outbound consultancy.

Atakan Ozuysal: Outbound consultancy, as I said, like I just start couple months ago and I have a two or three clients. It's going well, and I have also two employee working with me. They're helping me to find new clients for them. They're helping me to a couple of things, we also do lead generation but, you know, at one staff it's not easy, actually, you know better than me, to be honest, it's not easy,

Ricky Pearl: Hell it is. It is difficult. That is for sure. But if it were easy, they wouldn't need us.

Atakan Ozuysal: Yep, definitely. And most of the clients looking me like I'm a Superman. I will just come and find the clients to them just in my couple weeks. It's not easy stuff, but we are going as I said, I have a two or three clients now. I'm just helping them, what they should do, how they can create their sales pipeline. Also outbound stuff. And sometimes if they need to do some lead generation, I'm also helping them.

Ricky Pearl: All right. Let's dig into that.

So these companies come to you, they need a little bit of help. What stage are they usually at?

Ricky Pearl: So these companies come to you, they need a little bit of help. [00:04:00] What stage are they usually at?

Atakan Ozuysal: I can say mostly early stage startups. They don't have a sales team. Even they don't have a SDR. They are looking for, some advices to be honest, like how we can create SDR team. Because let me tell you if you want to hire SDR, you just need some very qualified SDR because if you hire SDR like junior SDR, and if you don't know how to do stuff, it's so hard. It's so hard like you cannot expect. Yep.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah we offering this as a service, this sales management as a service, recruiting SDRs for companies and helping onboard them, manage them, train them, coach them, all the way through to success. And it's for that exact reason. If you're not hiring a highly experienced SDR, they're almost guaranteed to fail.

Atakan Ozuysal: Definitely, to be honest, I saw many examples in my life. I saw that there are some companies, they were just hiring SDRs, like 100 SDRs in just five or six months. Of course if you will hire 100, it's [00:05:00] unqualified. And I saw that one or two years later their employee number, just like going down and use services.

For me, it's necessary stuff because it's in the long term, if you're thinking long term, you just have to find like very good, high qualified SDR and you just have to also teach them how to catch fish

Ricky Pearl: Here's, here's the problem. You hire high quality, experienced SDRs, they don't want to be SDR anymore, so it's like trying to find a unicorn because they're already moving on to account executive roles. So instead of trying to find a unicorn, we really believe the best option is find a partner that can help provide you with Junior, but well managed, coached, and well, maintained SDR functions so that you can get the same quality that you would get from, super experienced SDRs, but from a team that is ju more junior.

Atakan Ozuysal: The beauty there is that junior team can then also grow to become your account executives. And we all know that account executives that were promoted from SDRs on average outperform[00:06:00] hiring account executives externally.

Yep.

Ricky Pearl: It's a bit of a win-win.

What are some of your go-tos? What's your process for list building? Do you have a very specific or you're pretty loose?

Ricky Pearl: Now, in terms of your processes, what are some of your, some, what are some of your go-tos? What's your process for list building? Do you have a very specific or you're pretty loose?

Atakan Ozuysal: Yeah, actually it depends on the clients, but what I'm doing first, I'm always checking for their free users, if they have any customers to understand what is their ICP, to just check that. And then I'm checking some specific industries, some similar industries, because if you have anything in your hand, I think you just have to start on that and after that I'm just like making strategy with my team.

Which ICP we should go on, which client we should on which industry. Then you know, the basic stuff, email, LinkedIn, cold call. It's not basic to be honest.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. Yeah.

Which have you found to be the most successful on average?

Ricky Pearl: And of those three channels that you've just mentioned, LinkedIn, email, and cold calling, which have you found to be the most successful on average?

Atakan Ozuysal: For me, of course, LinkedIn because I have a personal [00:07:00] branding and as I said, it's not that much hard to sell some stuff, but it's just for me because, I have many friends when I just text to them, Hey dude, could you have a chance to check this product? Okay. It's just not a big problem. I'm a social seller.

Also, email. Cold call is so hard for many SDRs. They're just like afraid to take the phone and calling someone, but I think it's one of the best channels also cold call.

If you are not shy person, if you have a like enough courage to call someone, it's the best channel.

How do you get your new team members to be effective social sellers quickly when they starting out with a brand new LinkedIn profile?

Ricky Pearl: So my, as a social seller, one of the challenges that you might come to is how do you get your new team members to be effective social sellers quickly when they starting out with a brand new LinkedIn profile?

Atakan Ozuysal: To be honest I just started posting one and a half years ago, and it's not that much easy process, if you just hire the SDR and if you're trying to do him social seller, you just have to be patient because what he has to do or what she has to do, she has to create[00:08:00] her own brand and she has to create her own followers.

For example, I have many friends, they're just trying to be social seller. They're starting to do, they're starting to send some post every week, but they're not taking engagement after one month later, they're just stopping posting. It's not working like that, man. You just have to post consistently

Ricky Pearl: It's a real slow burn, which is a challenge when these companies are hiring SDRs because they're looking to get some runs on the board quickly. Like social selling seems like a really good long term strategy or midterm strategy for a company, but it's not something that you can turn on next week or next month to start seeing leads coming through. Yes

Atakan Ozuysal: Definitely. I just remember with you Ricky, like when we met, I think one and a half years, one and a half year ago, and I just check your followers now. It's amazing because you had an amazing role and it was very successful on posting. I was always checking your posting and you are creating value. I think that's one of the most important stuff on LinkedIn.

If you are talking [00:09:00] about experience, if you are providing some value to people, okay, man, you are taking engagement.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. It really is all about that creating value and creating content is so hard. People don't realize how hard it is. Like I started off posting, I think I tried like Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So just three times a week and it was killing me. It was like, it took me three hours to write a post and I was unsure of myself.

It's gotten a bit easier, but not a lot easier. It is still incredibly hard.

Atakan Ozuysal: I know it's so hard for me, but when I'm not posting like that much, I'm just posting once a week because it's taking too much time, man. Everybody thinking it's so easy process. But you know better than me, it's taking couple of hours just to creating one post.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. And here's the thing. This is what I've learned is your audience is always growing and you can recycle your content. There's aren't, there's only so many unique thoughts that you can have around outbound or out [00:10:00] around your topic. And when I last posted it a year or ago, I was at say, 3000 followers.

I'm now at 8,000 followers. So the vast majority of my audience hasn't actually seen that content. So go through to your LinkedIn settings, click on export all of the posts that you've written over however many years the last year and a half, and then try reframe them, rewrite them, maybe shorten them, and repurpose.

Atakan Ozuysal: Yeah. I don't know how you guys are going, you have all lots of posts, like how you are remembering that post? I don't know. For you, I think it's more harder.

What's your favorite sales engagement platform? Or do you always pick one that's very specific to the customer?

Ricky Pearl: Tell me then on cold emailing. What's your favorite sales engagement platform? Or do you always pick one that's very specific to the customer?

Atakan Ozuysal: For me, actually, I'm using some specific tools because, just to personalize, just some, creating some images and if you're asking me what kind of emails working for West, of course personalized, everybody will say to you personalized, but it's so different. I will just give you one basic example.

Just like couple months ago I was trying [00:11:00] to reach out one radio over, but I just list, I just opened his radio channel and listen last three days to get some insights about them. You know why I'm telling this? Because everybody's saying, okay email marketing, it's not easy stuff. They're just thinking you can just write copy in couple seconds.

It's not that much easy, man. I'm receiving 100 email in one day and I'm just checking maybe five or four of that because things like that, if your ICP is see all people, they're receiving maybe more than 100 email every day. You just have to go some specific

Ricky Pearl: Hyper personalized emails the way to go. I agree with that.

Atakan Ozuysal: Mm-hmm.

Are you using does it depend on each client's what you'll send from?

Ricky Pearl: How are you sending them? Are you using Apollo? Are you using does it depend on each client's what you'll send from?

Atakan Ozuysal: I'm using Apollo and also sometimes because Apollo is like one of my favorite tool and I just also share, shared their last features, buying intent, I think. I don't know what you think about that, but I think it's so valuable [00:12:00] for

Ricky Pearl: I think that it's really exciting to see them bring a capability like that to the platform. It is by far the best value for money in any platform as a sales engagement platform because of its data and having the engagement platform combined.

Atakan Ozuysal: Yeah, as I said, Apollo database is very amazing. If you want to do leak generation, you can use Crunch

Base and Phantom Buster, but Apollo have a like all included, and I'm also very excited to see the buying intent feature

Ricky Pearl: Yeah.

Atakan Ozuysal: Because for the most SMBs, they don't know the ICP, but with buying intent, you just have to check.

You just have to see all details and you have a chance to just reach out directly. I dunno what you think about on that, but it'll make many people life easier.

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. Again, it sometimes needs a little bit of advice into how to configure it. I don't think buying intent is something that your average person understands in how that, what that looks like within a data tool like Apollo. So you have to configure it correctly, but intent [00:13:00] data, when done well, is incredibly powerful.

Atakan Ozuysal: But that's the point. When you guys are joining the game, man

Ricky Pearl: Yeah, there's so much intent data is just snake oil. They're just selling. They're just selling hopes and dreams and a little bit of rubbish.

The platform's 20, $30,000 a year just for the intent data. The fact that Apollo's bringing intent data into their platform at, a ridiculously, low price, great value for money is pretty impressive.

Atakan Ozuysal: Yes, definitely.

Now, on average, how many emails would you be sending a day?

Ricky Pearl: Now, on average, how many emails would you be sending a day? If you were a customer, if you were a single SDR? You're listening to a radio show for three days to personalize one email. What kind of volumes do you have to get through?

Atakan Ozuysal: Yeah, to be honest, like if the client is important, I'm spending too many times on one email, but that's not my advice because you just have to know. You just have to find how to scale up and spending too much time. It's not good way to scale up, but on average, I can say something like 70 emails in just for one client.

Of [00:14:00] course I have some employees to inform me, but I can say I'm just like working on 20 email just for the personalize.

I have a like lead generation process and I am checking. That's the high intent for me. So low intent, those are mid, mid intent. And if they're high, I'm just spending too many times to see that how can I create a conversation with them? Because in my first email, I'm not trying to sell my product. I'm just trying to start the conversation and after that second, third, like my process like that, I always have to create, I always have to create my relationship, and after that I'm just trying to sell my product. It'll be three or four touch,

Ricky Pearl: Yeah, that's great. It's, the best way to sell your product is to not try to sell your product and just try start conversations. If there's a good match, like they'll wanna buy your product, right? Particularly if you openly communicated about it without being pushy and getting their guards up.

How do you teach your team members the skills that they need?

Ricky Pearl: So now you said you've got some team members. How do you teach your team members the skills that they need? There's a lot that goes into [00:15:00] being able to run campaigns.

Atakan Ozuysal: Yeah. That's a very good question. Everybody has a not same skills. For example, some of them as a copywriting skills, some of them as like just cold calling skills. But what I'm trying to do, for example, every day we have a one hour like onboarding, I'm just showing how I'm writing copywriting, what I'm doing about copywriting and how

I'm writing emails, and we are talking about some points together. For example, call to action, icebreaker and after that, they're understanding how try the one icebreaker how try to one call to action. But I like said it's so hard, you have a sales team as you said to me like couple months ago. You have one people like where talent for cold call. You have a one people where talent that copywriting

I think if you are like good sales manager, you also have to know how to management your team. Because you cannot pressure some SDRs. They're not talented, but like cold calling. They're just so shy. They shouldn't, to be honest, , but you cannot push to them.

Ricky Pearl: It's always a challenge. We get a lot of different personalities come [00:16:00] through pointer, and often they start off with cold call reluctance or sounding very robotic, or they're very shy, or they're overly zealous and overly salesy. And having to convert them into being good cold callers is a real process and it takes a lot of encouragement to nurture.

But I still find that's an easier skill to teach than all of the nuances around email outreach. Cause it's not just your openers, it's not just your ask breakers, your call to actions. It's also how to exclude spam words. It's also about how to get in the inbox and manage delivery. It's also about how to make things relevant and writing is a difficult skill to teach.

So you currently dedicating 12 and a half percent of your time to training your team?

Ricky Pearl: So you currently dedicating 12 and a half percent of your time to training your team?

Atakan Ozuysal: Mm-hmm.

Ricky Pearl: One hour a day?

Atakan Ozuysal: Yeah. But sometimes I'm just sending your post to my SDRs because you're giving very good knowledge about, as you said, it's not all about just writing email. You just have to know how to escape for the spam. And how to get into inbox, that kind of details, like so important. I will just give you one basic example.

Yesterday I [00:17:00] had a complaint and many cofounders just come and ask me like how we can decrease the spam number. They didn't ask how we can write email. As I said, spam number, bounce rate and I'm just sending sometimes to my, my SDR like, if you're sending post lately about bounce rate like spam rate, I'm just like, Hey guys, just check Ricky's post.

Ricky Pearl: I appreciate that, but get them to call me. I'll help them out. Now you've obviously done incredible work in the US. I think Shiny is primarily based in the US is that correct?

Atakan Ozuysal: Yep.

Have you noticed a big difference in the cultures in outreach?

Ricky Pearl: But now you've also done work in Europe, in Eastern Europe. Have you noticed a and the Middle East? Have you noticed a big difference in the cultures in outreach?

Atakan Ozuysal: Yep. I, yeah, I just want to be honest and I can say yes, it's more easy to sell something in US. Because in US startup culture is so important, it's more easy to contact with people because as I said, I have too many [00:18:00] friends in the US. In Middle East, it's also not that much hard, startups getting to be popular last couple years, not like US.

US has a very good startup culture. And, but on the other hand, most of the Middle East people, they are not so close to outreach, you know, you can just do some, you can just use Lemlist and you can just use some images and one, they will see that they're not aware that you are using one tool. But in U in US, veteran in US, most of the people, they are aware that, okay, you used some tool for the do that kind of stuff. That kinda label images.

Ricky Pearl: That's very interesting. So you've got, you can use the 2020 techniques cuz obviously things like merged images, with someone standing there with a coffee cup with the prospect's name written on it. Like that was built, that was amazing in 2018, maybe even 2019. But now if I see that I'm like, just oh, whatever.

So you're saying things like that can still work in Dubai or other places in the middle east?

Ricky Pearl: He's using Lemlist or he is using Harper Eyes, or he is using Nifty images' using one of the hundred tools that can do that. It's not impressive. In fact, it's lazy. So you're saying things like [00:19:00] that can still work in Dubai or other places in the middle east?

Atakan Ozuysal: Yeah. Actually before that I just wanted to ask you one question because we are going in very excited points. You said like it's so hard to use, it's so hard to use some tools. It's not that much hard, but it's so hard to get engagement, because that kind of tools was popular in 2018, 2019, 2020. Now what's I just need some advice for me. What you guys are doing now? It's competition. It's always going up. It's always getting more harder because everybody is hiring more SDR.

Ricky Pearl: It really is. And I think things are going a little bit full circle at the moment. Now I think it's a little bit less about the tool. And a lot more about the creativity and the writing to make things stand out. LinkedIn is a hell of a lot less effective than it used to be in 2018. Do you remember?

Or 2020 before the pandemic or even early stages of the pandemic. You could just send out connection requests and you were getting over 50% accept rates. You could just [00:20:00] use Expandi or Poseidon or one of the tools, and you could easily just connect, send a message, connect, send a message, connect, send a message, and one in 10 would result in a meeting.

It was like manna from heaven.

Atakan Ozuysal: Yes, definitely, man. That's the reason as I said, now it's going so harder. Like I'm taking 10 messages every day from LinkedIn, just for the SDR. Hey Ata, I will be happy to connect you, but after that I know that he will try to sell something to me. And I think that's one of the most important questions like, how we will find new ways to get some engagement?

Ricky Pearl: So I'll tell you what the vast majority of our meetings are now coming from the phone again.

Everyone's moving, to automated emails to LinkedIn and it's opened up the phone channel again for us. So phone is now back to being our primary tool. If you have an incredibly large total addressable market, nothing beats email.

If I can send, a thousand, 2000, 3000 emails a day for a company. Then you can't do that kind of volume on [00:21:00] the phone, so email's still incredibly important. You also just can't get everyone's mobile numbers. But where you can have someone's mobile number, nothing beats the phone.

Atakan Ozuysal: Yeah, definitely. I think cold call will be popular again soon, as soon as possible, because as you said, of course, if you have a so much market, email marketing, it's so important. But LinkedIn is always going down. I'm just aware on that, except right. It's starting to be getting down because people are taking many requests in day.

As I said, every day I'm receiving like ten messages from the SDRs. I don't know, but that's a, that was very good question.

Ricky Pearl: So I think another thing where we are getting a lot of success is in dark social channels.

That's if our customers selling to seed or bootstrap founders, I could try and find them on LinkedIn. I can find them in Apollo on the database using their revenue intelligence, the firmographics.

I could also just go to a Slack group or a Facebook group for bootstrap founders and there'll be 5,000 of them in there. And I've access to message every single one of them. And they asking questions, Hey, [00:22:00] how do you do this? How do you do that? And I can engage with them, build relationships, build trust, but really an incredible we've had incredible growth in helping our customers manage their dark social engagements and probably one of the quickest growing lead generation avenues.

Atakan Ozuysal: Yeah definitely, real genius and I think he was the ambassador, right?

Ricky Pearl: Yeah.

Atakan Ozuysal: I think it's an amazing channel. It's an amazing

Ricky Pearl: 30, there's 30,000 sales professionals in there, and there's other ones Wizard of Ops Rev Co the Rev Ops co-op, there's so many around sales. There's the marketing channels, there's all of them. And if I wanted to, for example, decide, Hey, should I be using HubSpot or Salesforce or which conversational intelligence tool is best. I'm not gonna Google it anymore because all I'm gonna get is paid adverts blogs. You should, 10 best conversational intelligence tools and all of that are rubbish. And sponsored reviews. I'm gonna go to a Slack channel and I'm gonna say, Hey, what con conversational intelligence tool are you using?

And I'm [00:23:00] gonna get 20, 30 people answer me about what they're using in their organization. And give me very honest feedback.

No better way to find out.

Atakan Ozuysal: Definitely. I'm just appreciated that Slack. I just talked with the co-founder of Rev Genius yesterday because

Ricky Pearl: I saw that he gave you a bit of a slap on the wrists

Atakan Ozuysal: Yep. Sales, sometimes I had I dunno, three years to experience, but sometimes I'm just like excited,

Ricky Pearl: Yeah, it makes sense. But also, there's cultural differences and everyone needs to appreciate, like we do prospecting all across APAC, for example, and it's very different cultures in Japan or in Singapore or in Thailand or Malaysia and Australia or New Zealand. I'm trying to remove some of my biases particularly when dealing with people across cultures and just consuming the best intent.

Mm-hmm.

Broadly, I have no problem with people trying to sell me something. If I didn't buy solutions, I'd have a lot of problems.

What if somebody's listening to this and they wanna get hold of you, what's the best way to do it?

Ricky Pearl: Yeah. And tell me what if somebody's listening to this and they wanna get hold of you, what's the best way to do it?

Atakan Ozuysal: Just a second. Could you like, I have some problem with my headphones. It's so hard to use that kinda

Ricky Pearl: Yeah, fair enough. [00:24:00] Saying if somebody listening to this wants to get hold of you, how could they do it?

Atakan Ozuysal: For the SDR you know, I just have some quick tips and I just want to motivate to them for the most important stuff. The, it's so hard to just like being an SDR and if you guys are listening to me, just go on the process.

Don't stop you know. like baseball, you have a chance to hit the ball, but 90 percentage, you will miss the ball.

But you know that you have to try this tomorrow again, and you just have to go on. As I said, it's not easy job, but if you are going, if you are trusting the process, of course you will get some good results. And I just want to give one more advice. Guys, just working with people just for good people who has a good experience.

Who is like good coach, and that's the point, Ricky, you guys are going in the game because it's so hard to find good coaches, if you're asking me what does that meaning, what is the good coach for SDR? The good coach means, guys, you have to work with some guy who will responsible for you, who will teach you how to catch a fish.

And as I said, it's very hard to [00:25:00] find good, like high qualified SDR coach because they have a high quota and if the quota is not hit, they're always blaming the SDR. I don't like in the start in the industry.

Ricky Pearl: It's a big problem that, that player coach mindset, that player coach conundrum normally doesn't work because the SDR that also has to manage the team has their own targets. And it's hard to balance that relationship between a genuine mentor, helping assist them, but also then performance managing them when they're not doing well.

And that's exactly why Pointer came up with this SDR management as a service where we know exactly what makes an SDR successful. We'll listen to their calls on a daily basis. We'll check their activity on a daily basis. We'll look at their email responses, we'll look at the emails they've sent. We'll look at their LinkedIn activity, and we'll help coach them on all of that to make them better.

But from a company's perspective, we can also help that company by saying, this SDR, we've been coaching now for x amount of time and compared to all the other [00:26:00] SDRs we've managed, we don't think that this person is adapting or is coachable and we don't think this person is gonna be a successful SDR.

But we can tell that with experience or we could coach the SDR up to be successful with experience and the company benefits from that. But more importantly, the SDR will stay longer cuz they're successful, learns quicker, and will ultimately generate more revenue for a company because of it. So yeah, I love what you're saying about find a good coach.

Obviously it doesn't have to be Pointer. There's plenty out there, there's plenty SDRs out there. But without coaching, honestly, I haven't seen an SDR without a good SDR leader ever succeed. And if they are succeeding, they're so irritated with the company for the lack of enablement that they jump ship the first opportunity they can.

Atakan Ozuysal: Mm-hmm. . Actually, what you guys are doing is about win-win situation, SDR and also the company. SDR will learn many stuff from you or from your team. Okay. And also company will have a change to get feedback about this SDR, as you [00:27:00] mentioned, you have a change to say two or three months later to company like, okay, that guy is not like talented.

Maybe you can just ask that guy. But also on the other hand, it's more effective from the STR side. Because as I said, I start my career two, three and a half years ago. No one teach me how to catch fish. I just learn from myself. I just check some tools.

Ricky Pearl: You figured it all out.

Atakan Ozuysal: What? Yes,

Ricky Pearl: You figured it all out.

Atakan Ozuysal: Yes, definitely man.

And I wish I had a chance at that time. Someone will comment like, Hey, that's Apollo, that's Lemlist. Or if you didn't reach out to anyone, don't be upset. You have to try tomorrow again. It's so important. I think that's one of the most important stuff in SDR, if you have a good coach or if you're working with good agency from the company side.

Ricky Pearl: And I'll tell you a challenge that the company has is when things aren't working, When things aren't going perfectly, and let's be honest, in outbound it's never really perfect, but when it's not perfect, what do they do? So if you have an inexperienced sales leader they might be [00:28:00] saying, oh no, it's marketing.

Nobody's listening to this message. The messaging is rubbish. Or you may have an SDR saying, no, they're all asking if it needs this integration, and we don't have this integration, so they don't want it. Everyone's gonna make different excuses because it's never them. So they'll blame the product, they'll blame marketing, they'll blame the salesperson and the poor leadership is sitting there saying what's wrong?

Must we change the product? Do we need to change the marketing messaging? Do we need to change the person? Maybe they just really should at cold calling and they don't know where to go. So having an expert there as well, being able to say, we've listened to the call and we, the call is being delivered perfectly.

So if the messaging isn't resonating, let's work with marketing to come up with a better value proposition. Or let's work with product, to change this one obstacle that we're currently running into. But you need an intelligent eye to spot that. And very often they don't have that. And then everyone just blames someone else and the poor leader sitting there going, what do I do?

It's just not working. I just want more bloody leads. Why can't this work?

Atakan Ozuysal: Yeah, definitely man. But as I said, [00:29:00] it's so hard to find that kind of like brave leaders. I'm calling them brave leaders.

They're not like saying any excuses, as you mentioned. They're just like checking, okay, what we have to change. What we will do next month, because most of the leaders, they're just like, when they're getting pressured, they're just like starting to say excuses. Okay marketing teams not work. My SDRs don't showing like good performance. But as I said, that's why I joined your podcast. Like that's, you are like one of the leaders. I just saw that you have a, that capability, that leadership

Ricky Pearl: You're making me blush, Ata.

If they wanted to connect with you, what's the best place?

Ricky Pearl: But listen mate, I've I've really enjoyed this conversation and I'm sure everyone listening has really learned a hell of a lot from you. If they wanted to connect with you, what's the best place? LinkedIn?

Atakan Ozuysal: Yeah, of course man. Just send me guys LinkedIn message. But I'm preferring to send me with small notes, not like basic. I would be happy to add your connection. You can just say to me, Hey Ata, I listen your podcast with Ricky. It was amazing. That will be awesome for me.

Ricky Pearl: Fair enough mate. I'm gonna re-listen to this because I wanna [00:30:00] really absorb everything that you've said. I feel like I've learned so much and it's been fantastic chatting to you and I hope to chat to you again soon.

Atakan Ozuysal: Yeah. Thanks Ricky. It was so amazing podcast. Thanks for inviting me again. Have a nice day. Bye-bye.

Ricky Pearl: Chat soon.

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