Elliott Garcia
SUMMARY
How does Elliot Garcia's experience in the hotel industry translate into a career in SaaS?
Elliot Garcia discovered that his experience in the hospitality industry, where he frequently interacted directly with customers and had to find quick fixes for issues, translated well to the SaaS industry, where there are constantly issues and holes that need to be filled. Due to his interest in onboarding and educating individuals on what they had just purchased, he also gave a career in customer success some thought.
In SaaS, how long should it take for a new SDR to start working?
One sentence response: It should take an entirely new SaaS SDR roughly two and a half months to become productive, with the first month being devoted to training, the second month to learning the product, and the third month to mastering the position.
What dialer did Elliot Garcia use and how many cold calls per day did he make while employed by Fortuna.ai and Outplay?
In response, Elliot Garcia employed Dialpad while working at Fortuna.ai and Outplay, making 100 to 150 cold calls every day.
TRANSCRIPT
Ricky Pearl: Today on a Couple of Pointers Podcast, we are lucky enough to have Elliot Garcia. Welcome to the show.
Elliot Garcia: Thank you for having me, Ricky.
How did it start for you?
Ricky Pearl: Now you have a pretty interesting background, not your traditional started your career in SaaS. How did it start for you?
Elliot Garcia: Well I started with in my hospitality background, so it started 12 years ago. I got, I mean came from Chicago, local Midwest kid. And then little bit after that I just traveled along, came to Vegas and hospitality's huge here and started and just grinded all the way down to like conventions, food serving, finally I got tired and Covid hit and that's where, the whole year, the whole shut down and one of my friends invited me to a coffee shop and I asked him, I was like, man this guy's been away and now he's making money still. So I'm like what is SaaS? That was the question that I asked him. I was like, what is SaaS?
Elliot Garcia: Well, what do you guys do?
Ricky Pearl: Nobody really knows, Right? We are still figuring it out. Now so many of those hospitality skills are transferable.
Elliot Garcia: right?
Did you learn everything form scratch?
Ricky Pearl: Did you find like you, your head starts, or you had to learn everything from scratch?
Elliot Garcia: Well, a friend asked me this this question like two days ago. Its like, how did your hospitality background just translate into SaaS? And I said this, you're working like hands on with people like face to face and neck, you know what I mean? They're like shoulder to shoulder. So when there's a problem, you have to fix it.
Elliot Garcia: You cannot leave that room until you fix it. And I noticed that a lot in SaaS, there's always a lot of problems, gaps, solutions to be fixed. And so I was like, oh, you know what? I think I could do this. So I fell in love with the idea of just finding solutions.
Ricky Pearl: It sounds like there's a lot of transferable skills from hospitality to customer success roles too.
Elliot Garcia: You know what, I've thought about customer success because the onboarding experience and also, teaching people about what they just bought. Hey, you just bought this, here you go. So I've thought about that. I don't know in the near future, but I would take a customer success. But maybe later on down the road, maybe I might check into that.
Elliot Garcia: But it's, I like customer success.
Ricky Pearl: I think it was McDonald's that taught all the SaaS sellers about how customer success should be upselling and it's the classic. Would you like fries with that?
Elliot Garcia: Oh, or super-size me. Remember that?
Ricky Pearl: Yeah. Yeah. How could anyone forget? So listen, here's what I wanna do, I've got a whole lot of questions I wanna ask you the kind of questions that we get asked all the times from SDRs, people getting into tech sales and I'd love to get your inputs. You ready to go?
Elliot Garcia: Absolutely, absolutely. Shoot away.
Objection: I'm too busy?
Ricky Pearl: Now I'm sure there's a hundred ways to answer these but I just need one answer from you. Right?
Ricky Pearl: So could you give me one way to answer the I'm too busy objection?
Elliot Garcia: Yeah, sure. Well, what's a good time this Wednesday?
Ricky Pearl: That was so sweet. So I said, well people overcomplicate things and then you're just like, yeah, well you're busy now. So when you're not busy? I love that.
Objection: Not now?
Ricky Pearl: How would you handle the objection not now?
Elliot Garcia: Okay. How about next week Monday?
Ricky Pearl: I'm just loving how simple you make this. If people come up with the most complicated shits on how to deal with these objections and you just deal with it like a normal human being oh, not now. Okay, well maybe later. Right.
Elliot Garcia: Right?
Objection: We don't have budget?
Ricky Pearl: How would you handle the objection we don't have budget?
Elliot Garcia: Okay, so what's your Q1 looking like? So Q4 is over what about Q1?
Ricky Pearl: Yeah, that's great. Just so simple. You don't have budget now it's again, well, are you gonna have budget later?
Objection: We already have a solution for this?
Ricky Pearl: How would you handle the objection we already have a solution for this?
Elliot Garcia: Oh, what's working? What do you like about the product?
Ricky Pearl: I actually have to laugh because you make it so simple and it should be like, I'm loving this is a masterclass that, that I've never had. I'm like, waiting for these, well, here's a hypothesis and if you tap into this neurolinguistic programming technique, you could manipulate your pro like, what's working like it's two lines.
Ricky Pearl: I love it. All right, last one.
Objection: Send me an email?
Ricky Pearl: How would you handle the objection send me an email?
Elliot Garcia: What do you like? What would you like in that email? Is there any, anything specific that I said that stood out to you? Is there anything that you're going through that you might wanna read up on? That's it.
Ricky Pearl: That's great. Now I could tell why you're killing it in tech sales. It's, it really is that simple. Like just a normal casual conversation talking to another person about what we can achieve.
LTV: Long Term Value
Elliot Garcia: RIght, Ricky. And you hit it right on the nail. It's, me just being selling from a person to another person. I'm not trying to overcomplicate things. I just wanna help you out. Hey, if this works for you, I hope it does, because I think of the, about LTV, long term value.
Elliot Garcia: I'm not trying to sell you something that in six months you're gonna be calling me and be like, hey man, this is the worst thing I've ever bought. I want you to be satisfied with what you just bought.
Ricky Pearl: That's great. That's the way you align your interests with the company's interest, right? Not just selling someone who's gonna churn super quickly on a hard sell. So it seems simple enough but obviously it isn't that easy and a lot of people can't do it.
How long do you think it should take until an SDR is effective?
Ricky Pearl: How long? How long do you think it should take until an SDR is effective?
Elliot Garcia: As far as going into his role, like starting brand new.
Ricky Pearl: Brand new SDR never been in SaaS. How long until they actually having a positive impact?
Elliot Garcia: I'd say about two and a half months, cause the first month you're going through your training, second month you were learning the product and then after those two months you should be able to go. Go ahead,
Ricky Pearl: So you, you stick with that classic, like it's a good three months, there or thereabouts for an SDR to run.
Elliot Garcia: Yeah, the the first month, everything's so brand new to you. I'm, right now I'm with currently with Data Axle and then I was with Outplay. But you know, during those fir first couple months, you're learning everything, you're getting to know your teammates. You're getting to know, Oh, here you go learn this handbook.
Elliot Garcia: You're like, oh, okay. And then the second month is, this is our process, this is our procedures, this is what, what we do and after that, you should be able to go and start talking like you've been doing it like the back of your hand.
Ricky Pearl: One of the big mistakes I often see as companies, they're so keen to move quickly, but moving too fast is actually unproductive and slow. It's one of those things, do it wrong, do it twice. They try around people, week one is learn the how to SDR, week two is learn the product. Week three is now your full quota, let's go.
Ricky Pearl: And it takes them, four months from that point till they rarely effective cause they didn't learn the foundations correctly.
Elliot Garcia: That's correct, Ricky.
Ricky Pearl: Now you've had a few roles since hospitality. You've been at Outplay, you've been at Data Axle.
How many cold calls a day or a week did you do to get the outcomes you needed?
Ricky Pearl: For each of those roles or in general, how many cold calls a day or a week did you do to get the outcomes you needed?
Elliot Garcia: And I also forgot to mention I was with fortuna.ai, which just recently just got bought out. When I first started with Fortuna, I was doing between a hundred, hundred and twenty to hundred and fifty, depending how much Red Bulls or coffee I drank that day.
Ricky Pearl: Is that? Is that a day? Okay, so that's a day? Hundred and fifty dollars a day.
Elliot Garcia: Yeah,
Ricky Pearl: Wow. Okay.
Elliot Garcia: I was B2C.
Ricky Pearl: And you're not doing that with a parallel dialer. You're just banging that phone hard.
Elliot Garcia: I was using Dialpad.
Ricky Pearl: Okay, listen, I love Dialpad. Don't get me wrong. It's a really good dialer, but it's not, it's it's fantastic for account executives. It's got some built in conversational intelligence, so like super good value for money. Big fan, I recommend it all the time, but it doesn't help promote you doing calls quickly.
Ricky Pearl: It doesn't have that power dial functionality.
Elliot Garcia: It doesn't.
Ricky Pearl: Unless you're really in their call center suite, which is then super expensive and you're not getting good value for money anymore.
Elliot Garcia: Yeah.
Ricky Pearl: All right, so you were burning a phone in your, a hole in your ear, doing a hundred fifty dollars a day by the time you were at Outplay were you still doing those volumes?
Elliot Garcia: Yes. Yep. I got a SDR of the month for, I think I did almost a thousand dials in that month. Not sure I forgot.
Ricky Pearl: Well, I mean, a thousand dials, a thousand dials in a month. What's that 30 days? That's only averaging like 50 a day. You're not impressing anyone here,
Elliot Garcia: I think I forgot, I forgot the number. I think it was like a thousand a day, but I booked like 37 meetings also. So
Ricky Pearl: Yeah, that's,
Elliot Garcia: It was the effectiveness.
Elliot Garcia: Yeah, Yeah,
Ricky Pearl: That's it. Cause volume is one thing, right? It's outcomes that matter.
Ricky Pearl: Now across all of these different companies, slightly different products, have you come to find that one channel is better for you or one channel has consistently been better for the companies you've worked at?
Cold calling isn't dead
Elliot Garcia: Cold calling isn't dead.
Ricky Pearl: So phone first, right?
Elliot Garcia: Yes sir. Phone, phones will guide me here and phones was gonna get me to the next level.
Ricky Pearl: You can get, you can paid a lot of money just to speak into a little microphone.
Elliot Garcia: Yep. Yep. I love the phone. And also I do like LinkedIn as well. You get more of engagement with their post what event they're going they're going to, they're attending. It's many different aspects of it. And I, I like phone first, second LinkedIn, and then I don't know if they're mentioning this or not, but dark social too is a good one.
What is dark social?
Ricky Pearl: Yeah, for sure. Now, for the sake of the audience, what is dark social?
Elliot Garcia: Dark social is outside of LinkedIn. It's communities where all we do is talk about tech. That's it. That's all we do is talk about tech, what's working, what's not working, how you can get better? And I think I've gotten a lot better since I, I've joined dark social is just, real people taking real time to take, mean? That, those things that you're going through that maybe you don't want to talk about. You know what I mean? Not in public and be like, man, you know what? I'm not going, this sequence that I'm, that I got going on isn't working. Hey, try this. Boom. And that's oh, okay, wow. That's working now.
Ricky Pearl: If I was looking to change CRM, I would never Google it, right? All I'm gonna be fed is paid ads here's the top, top 10 CRMs in the world. Kind of blog posts, sponsored ads, affiliate ads. I'm gonna go into a Slack channel or a WhatsApp channel and go, guys, I've got this big problem. These are my particular needs.
Ricky Pearl: What CRM should I be using? And I'm gonna get genuine experts sitting there saying, hey mate, this is what I've done, this is what works, this is what doesn't work. I can trust it a hundred percent of the time.
Elliot Garcia: Awesome. Yep. Just like that.
How did you prevent no shows?
Ricky Pearl: Now when you're at Outplay, for example, you booking 37 meetings in a month, how did you prevent no shows?
Elliot Garcia: So, not preventing no shows, say it's three days out. I quickly either give them a quick ring. That's me. Or give them a, like a nudge email. Hey, looking forward to, talking about so and this and this and just a simple, short, sweet email. Nothing crazy, nothing outside of out of the box.
Elliot Garcia: Don't give them a case study. Don't give them a video. But I just, something sweet and simple.
Ricky Pearl: Yeah. All right. Glad that works. Now on all those 37 meetings, or across all of your companies, how many touches per prospect are you finding It's taking to get hold, to get a meeting on the books?
How many touches to get meetings through cold calling or through anything?
Elliot Garcia: How many touches to get meetings through cold calling or through anything?
Ricky Pearl: Through anything like on average, do you reckon you're getting hold of them on the seventh time you're trying to dial them?
Elliot Garcia: So, man, believe it or not, sometimes on a first ring, I have gotten one booked meeting. Sometimes it takes 20 dials, sometimes it takes 30 dials. It just it just totally depends. Not every day I was like, rookie of the year. Not every day I was like, on fire. Some days you gotta grind it all the way till, till 5:00 PM or sometimes it just, it's not gonna go your way.
Ricky Pearl: Now you mentioned 5:00 PM, what's the earliest you found to be effective for a cold?
Elliot Garcia: The earliest, as soon as you, as soon as I wake up, the first thing I do is get my cup of coffee. 8:00 AM PST and if you're Eastern, do 8:00 AM, 7:00 AM. Just, you just gotta depend what time you know that, you know that people are like either during their time, like they're waking up or whatever.
Elliot Garcia: You don't wanna do that. You wanna make sure that hey, you give them like an hour after that. Like 8:00 AM, 9:00 AM, 10:00 AM tho those are the big times that I just stay on the phone.
Ricky Pearl: That's awesome cause I think a lot of people wouldn't start at 8:00 AM and so that eight till nine, they're waiting until 9:00 AM so you'd say eight till 9:00 AM you've booked a lot of meetings. That's been an effective time for you?
Elliot Garcia: Oh, absolutely. Yep. Absolutely.
Ricky Pearl: Super interesting. There's a hot take right? Get an extra hour in, eat that frog and win before 9:00 AM. When before most other people are getting to work.
Elliot Garcia: Well I think a lot of people start working a lot earlier to be honest with you. Maybe some people wake up at seven and they get to work probably like nine thirty. So maybe you might catch them on traffic or you might catch theem eating breakfast or something.
Ricky Pearl: Now, on your cold calling, what's been more important for you? What you say or how you say it?
Elliot Garcia: What you say. Oh, no, I'm sorry. How you say it. Tone.
Ricky Pearl: Tone. All right, tone for the win. Right now we've spoken a lot about calls. We've spoken a little bit about dark social.
Super slow, long game kind of social selling motion
Ricky Pearl: Your current LinkedIn strategy, is it a bit of a connect and message or are you also converting to this like super slow, long game kind of social selling motion?
Elliot Garcia: Long game social selling motion. You don't wanna, you do not wanna pitch someone right away. That, that's like something that I don't do because I've noticed that, like, when I first started, I would put in the message right away. I'd be like, Hey, my name's Elliot, I just wanted to know if you were interested in so and and then I'd send them the website. And then after that they're like, looking at me, they're like, no. So I stopped doing that.
Ricky Pearl: No yeah, I get it. It's, I'm always interested to ask, right? Because I only ever see it from my perspective. Like if somebody knocks on my door and they're like, hey, we want to talk about your Lord and Savior. I've got like a Jehovah's Witness there. I'm like, how is this ever effective? Right? How does this work?
Ricky Pearl: But you then look at the movements and there's there's like hundreds of thousands. Or I don't know how many people like, so it does work, it just doesn't work on me, right? So I'm always interested
Elliot Garcia: Right,
Elliot Garcia: right,
Elliot Garcia: right.
Ricky Pearl: People are doing and I'm glad that we are aligned there, right? Long play social self for the win.
Elliot Garcia: Yeah. Ask him to take you out for a cup of coffee or something or send you a Starbucks card Ricky.
Ricky Pearl: Send me a Starbucks card. I'm in Melbourne, mate. We do not drink Starbucks. It's actually not so bad. I don't mind Starbucks, but we are all about our artisanal home roast. I wanna know, was that roasted in your bedroom? That's how artisanal our coffee has to be here for it to meet the standards. Now,
Elliot Garcia: Okay.
How often do you recommend new SDR to practice cold calling?
Ricky Pearl: How often do you recommend new SDR to practice cold calling?
Elliot Garcia: Ooh, it's like lifting weights. You're not gonna get big overnight. You're not gonna get big next week or next month or in a year. You gotta do it like regularly, like I would say every two days, three days. Touch upon it.
Ricky Pearl: Yeah.
Elliot Garcia: And learn it like the back of your hand because it's like a muscle. The brain is a muscle.
Elliot Garcia: And so you gotta keep lifting. And so what I mean is go at it with a teammate, hey, how did this sound? Or read through your tapes. That's a big one too. Does Tom Brady review his tapes? Does LeBron James look at his tapes? You gotta look at your tapes and see where you went, right, where you went wrong.
Elliot Garcia: Even if you're doing good, still listen to it. I always listen to my tapes when I book meetings, when I don't book meetings, when I'm off, when I'm hot, when I'm cold, I have to review my tape.
Ricky Pearl: I love that. It's a fantastic practice and when new SDR start at Pointer, I always tell them the two hardest parts of your job, one is gonna be listening to dial tone. You think it's gonna be actually having cold call conversations, but it's not. What you're gonna hate the most is when people don't answer and you're sitting waiting and the second hardest part of your job is gonna be listening to your own calls.
Elliot Garcia: Yep.
Ricky Pearl: But you gotta do it.
Elliot Garcia: I wanna be an SDR pointer now.
Ricky Pearl: Right, you can you, you can come coach, all of you can come coach all of our reps on the phone. Right? How do you answer these objections simply. Right, right. Moving on to email, we've spoken a lot, we've spoken social, we've spoken calling. On email, what's your perfect, what's your perfect length at the moment?
Ricky Pearl: Like these long-winded, short and sweet, how do you roll?
Elliot Garcia: Man, I had this deliverability of ninety seven percent, right. But the open rate was terrible. So I'm like looking, I'm, using my Slack channels, dark social, and I'm like looking around and I'm like man, I'm stumped. I'm like, man, I got ninety seven percent out of three hundred to four hundred people are looking at my emails, but they're not replying.
Elliot Garcia: So what I did, I started making them shorter and I started making them more relevant instead of just like this whole thing stacked like a big stack sandwich in a picnic on a nice Sunday evening. I said, you know what man? I gotta start making these a little bit more short and sweet and to the point more relevant about the company.
Elliot Garcia: What are they going through? What's their news? What's what they might need this, know, how can I, just put it in there? So my thing is short and sweet to the point and be more relevant about what the company's going through right now currently.
Ricky Pearl: That's brilliant.
Do you err towards personalization or relevance?
Ricky Pearl: So if you had to pick, do you err towards personalization or relevance?
Elliot Garcia: Relevance. I tried personalization and it's not me against hey, I know they're probably gonna get some. Hey man, I really work hard on my personal life. No, I get it. Hey, me too, but you know, when you can be more relevant with what the company is doing right now and what they're going through, I think you'll get more replies.
Elliot Garcia: I've gotten a lot more replies with short and sweet and just be more relevant about what they might be.
Ricky Pearl: The obvious answer is you want both. You want it to be personalized and relevant. But to me there's nothing more personalized than if you can make an email to me so relevant to what I'm currently going through, that it seems as if it's perfectly for me. That is personalizing by getting that perfectly relevant. Now,
Elliot Garcia: Boom.
Ricky Pearl: Give me three tools that every SDR should have.
Elliot Garcia: Oh, Lead Enrichment tool. Man, there's so many out there, and I don't wanna be like, branding them, but, Zoom info, Lead IQ Seamless.
Ricky Pearl: Right. You gotta get data. You gotta have a good data tool.
Elliot Garcia: Oh, okay.
Ricky Pearl: Yeah.
Elliot Garcia: Yeah, so those are just for lead enrichment. Second one, outreach, outplay, if whichever one you like.
Ricky Pearl: Sales engagement platform, Apollo. The older, the,
Elliot Garcia: Apollo. Yeah. Third one, I would have to say video prospecting. If you're not into video prospecting, get into it. Vidyard, Bombbomb. What's the other one? Loom. So those three I think. Yeah. There's so many. Yeah. And regie.ai.
Ricky Pearl: Regie.ai, I bloody love it. I really do.
Video in your first email?
Ricky Pearl: Now, on that video, were you using video in your first email because most of the people recommended slightly further down. Where were you using video?
Elliot Garcia: I did this this last year I did this Halloween video prospecting, and I did it in the middle. And I'll tell you why, because. I was, I was seeing which, cause I did two different kind of like sequences. One with like a spooky kind of video prospecting, like, tips and tricks, like trunk or treat, no tips and tricks.
Elliot Garcia: And then I just kinda did, hey, when they opened it up, Hey, you're looking at me, I'm looking at you. And I just did something like comical but like funny, And it was working, I got a lot of opens And I was able to just guide through there. We were able to get one, one company, so that, that's good.
Elliot Garcia: But I did it in the middle and because I was just seeing which one I could take it with, it was more funnier or more stern. And it works out. So I do it in the middle just to see where I could pinpoint it.
Ricky Pearl: Yeah, that makes sense.
The funnier one or the more straightforward stern?
Ricky Pearl: And what land ended up being better? The funnier one or the more straightforward stern?
Elliot Garcia: I think the funnier one, a lot of people really enjoyed that one. It's you know, work can sometimes be, the mundane, same thing over and over. So why not just switch it up sometimes and just be, have fun with your job and what you doing
Ricky Pearl: Isn't it
Elliot Garcia: a little
Ricky Pearl: Halloween coming up soon?
Elliot Garcia: I know it's almost, geez, can you believe a year flies by so fast
Ricky Pearl: All right, so we're gonna do a Halloween video prospecting series, and we're gonna do it the, I'm making this video from inside the house.
Elliot Garcia: Starring Ricky.
Ricky Pearl: I also really like video on LinkedIn because you know it's gonna be delivered. Obviously there is delivery issues if you're leading with it. If your email isn't warmed up, you've got a lot of challenges with video prospecting. I particularly love video further down the pipeline, like for account executives like, use video to summarize a meeting in your proposal, just to capture notes, just a quick update. Video is absolutely incredible for an account executive because you're also genuinely trying to build a relationship and potentially a long term relationship. Whereas SDR, whilst you are trying to build a relationship, let's be honest, it's pretty transactional, right?
Ricky Pearl: Like, linkedIn middle to the end of a sequence, and further down funnel videos are superpower.
Ricky Pearl: Now
Elliot Garcia: Love it.
What are some of the traits that you think every SDR has to have to be successful?
Ricky Pearl: Onto SDRs, what are some of the traits that you think every SDR has to have to be successful?
Elliot Garcia: Strong work ethic, be driven and be passionate.
Ricky Pearl: All right. That's pretty simple.
Elliot Garcia: Yeah, pretty simple because that's all it's a mental, it's a mental game. We're not gardening, we're not in the construction field. It takes a good work ethic to, to have these things aligned and then be passionate about what you're doing, because passion can easily just like zip out like that and then you're like, ah, I'm just the latest quiet quitting has been, I've been reading about that. A lot of people have been posting out by quitting and you wanna make sure that this is what you wanna do.
Elliot Garcia: And this is what I want to do. I'm grateful for, the chance, and the, and just really being involved and being a voice. And so it, it's great. I like it, although some days, I'm not gonna lie, I'm not waking up like, Oh my gosh, I love my job. Let's go. Some days it does, it takes a little bit of courage to get up and two shots of espresso and let's go.
How many Red Bulls or shots of coffee have you had for the sole purpose of picking yourself up for a cold block?
Ricky Pearl: Since you've started cold calling for SaaS, how many Red Bulls or shots of coffee have you had for the sole purpose of picking yourself up for a cold block?
Elliot Garcia: Oh man, I don't even know. You know what? I went to Starbucks so much I had to stop going. I was spending like forty dollars a week, and I had to start getting my own, local roasters, yeah. I love local roasters. If you guys, go support your local roasters.
Ricky Pearl: I'm, I'm in Melbourne. This is the coffee capital of the world. People don't know that. And if they argue with it we'll kill them.
Elliot Garcia: Oh man, I gotta try some now, man.
Ricky Pearl: Yeah, seriously, it's good. Obviously we don't, I dunno if the coffee's grown here, but definitely roasted and like you'll find a barista here, a good man bun, more tattoos than they have skin, stretched ear lobes. You know that coffee's gonna be exceptional.
Elliot Garcia: Come on. Make me wanna pour a coffee right now. I probably drink a lot.
Ricky Pearl: I was joking with all those questions, of course, and any form of gender discrimination describing a barista as a, as someone with a man bun or anything else. Now should SDRs be joining discovery calls?
Elliot Garcia: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. And the reason I say yes is because you want them to learn about what you're saying, what they're saying. And how we're figuring these things out and how we're moving forward. It's important to have them in discovery calls after you, after the SDR has qualified them. Cause you wanna know when, I remember when I was, in my previous companies, I was like, I was wondering, I was like, Man, I wonder what they're talking about now.
Elliot Garcia: I wonder what's going on with John. I'm just making an open name. I wonder what's going on with Peter. I wonder what's going on with Rick. I'm like, did they sign? Did they like it? Is the discovery call going good? You got all these things going on in your brain, you're like thinking, you're like, you got all these thoughts.
Elliot Garcia: So I think it's important to just, fill them Hey, the call went great, the discovery all went good, but also, hey, why don't you become a part of it that way you have you give them like this kind of like ownership, now they're looking forward to more calls with the AE or the seller or whatever you wanna call them.
Things that really help the SDR AE handover for this prospect?
Ricky Pearl: So let's dig into that SDR AE relationship. What have you found to be some of the things that really help the SDR AE handover for this prospect?
Elliot Garcia: So given the synopsis, after you BDR qualify them, let them know hey I gave them the band. This is their budget. Most of the times they don't give you a budget, but you know, authority. Yeah. They're the champion. Or they're gonna have their supervisor on there. Give them the need, go.
Elliot Garcia: Real quick. Hey, they asked about this, they asked about this, their company does this. Time, what, when do they need this by? And so once the AE, knows a little bit about more of that and you give them a quick synopsis, I think that, after that the AE should do what AE did. Where AE usually does close it out.
Ricky Pearl: For, for everyone listening, BANT is an absolutely useless qualification method. However, it is very good for an SDR to bear those things in mind when having a conversation because it is relevance. You absolutely do not, go through that shit way of qualification. Like specifically asking BANT questions, right?
Ricky Pearl: Now do, did you as an SDR or as an AE, did your SDRS help you multi thread within an organization once you already have an opportunity?
Elliot Garcia: No,
Ricky Pearl: So that's all on the AE.
Elliot Garcia: Yep.
Ricky Pearl: Interesting. Do you think that's something an SDR could do?
Elliot Garcia: Mm. Depends what's the base? No, I'm just kidding.
Ricky Pearl: Ha.
Elliot Garcia: I mean, yeah, I would say, as an SDR you want, you wanna learn as much as you can. You don't wanna be an SDR forever, right. And learning from your AE, how he got there and being involved in as many threads as you can be.
Elliot Garcia: I think it's good. As far as me where I'm at right now I'm involved in, different, channels. Not just, lead gen, but also nonprofit and I'm in other divisions and it's good that you know that I could be in different, you know, divisions in different places. That way I'm like learning.
Elliot Garcia: So whenever somebody below me is just wants to learn as well, I'll take them all along with me. There's no such thing as knowledge being kept to yourself.
Field sales or enterprise sales motions in Pointers
Ricky Pearl: Yeah, it's something that, that pointer is working on developing. You see the classic two step SDR AE model, tandem model was just that the prospect went through an SDR and then through to the AE for closing. However, we, we pushing this model in a more sophisticated way towards, field sales or enterprise sales motions, where the actual SDR can strategically help an account executive who's trying to focus on quality. Bring in some of the additional stakeholders to meetings, potentially prospect into different regions for the same accounts, and try pull, like a magnets all of those people towards the account executive.
Ricky Pearl: So that they can have a stronger opportunity and help them grow from, if it's a PLG motion and they've managed to get, say, one person who's using it within an organization. For example, Regie somebody registers, they use it, they sign up, but you look at their domain and they're at LinkedIn.com.
Ricky Pearl: Now we need to go from this user up to the enterprise level and another place where the SDR can really help support that motion.
How often do you think SDR should have one-on-ones with their leadership?
Ricky Pearl: So bringing in a question here, how often do you think SDR should have one-on-ones with their leadership?
Elliot Garcia: Well, I think it should be a open relationship as far, and what I mean by that, don't ever hesitate to ask your leader, hey, I feel like this ain't working can you help me out? But every week they should have a one on one, at least for 15 to 20 minutes every week just to see what's up because it's important.
Elliot Garcia: Yeah. Leadership leaks to the body.
Ricky Pearl: Absolutely. I completely agree with that. So for us, it should be at least weekly, but the ad hoc lands up being a lot more. Now have you ever tried or done live cold call coaching? Do you think that's something that's effective?
Elliot Garcia: What? What is that?
Ricky Pearl: Live, live coaching, in SDRs on the phone and you're talking to them in their ear?
Elliot Garcia: We do the cold call redemption with Rev Genius while using nooks. And it's like that, but not really cause you have five bubbles and if somebody picks up, then you're, then the coach goes in there with you, I think it's cool depending on, see, this is depending on the relationship you have with your leader.
Elliot Garcia: Are you learning from it? Is he giving you your space? Are there's so much to it, but I say yes and I say no. It depends. It's a balance. You don't want to do it every week. Hey, guess what? It's cold call me in your ear time, know, and its kind the be like, have to have a balance, I would say.
Elliot Garcia: So I'm 50-50 on that one. What do you say, Ricky? I don't know. I want your take on this one, cause this is tough.
Ricky Pearl: Right for me live coaching might be suitable for account executives that are in 30 minute meetings, and you can be in there in the back of the call and you could say, hey, ask them about this, or dig into this pain. No problem. On a cold call where you've got seven seconds, you've got one minutes, Israeli short and sharp.
Ricky Pearl: I find I'd rather the SDR be completely present and focusing on that and coach them post, post call in training or even directly after the call. But for me live coaching real time with prospects never seen it work well.
Elliot Garcia: It's just it doesn't, because think about it, you have your headset, right? And then you have, I'm just saying I know you don't do this, but I'm just gonna use you as an example. Ricky's no, don't say that. Come on, faster, hurry, come on, point. The SDR gonna be like whoa.
Elliot Garcia: Next thing you know, you're gonna be like, You know what Ricky, I'm putting in my two weeks. I'm just kidding.
What's one tip that an SDR or any sales rep you could use for managing their mindset?
Ricky Pearl: Okay. On giving in the two weeks what's one tip that an SDR or any sales rep you could use for managing their mindset?
Elliot Garcia: Man, you know what? That's a, I've been reading a lot of posts on LinkedIn. Yes, I do read everyone's posts. Fyi, I don't just scroll and give you guys likes. It's important to keep your mindset if you need an extra day. I, and this, I have taken it, know, if you really need an extra day, like a Monday Hey, you know what I need to take Friday to Monday to get my mind right back in.
Elliot Garcia: Because like I said, be, like we were talking in the middle of the podcast, we're saying that how, important it is for your mental health, for your stability, for your mindset, things sometimes you just need to, hey, I need to go hiking for five hours or, hey, I need to go visit my dad, or I need to go visit my mom, or I need to go take my wife out, or take the kids to Disneyland, whatever the case may be.
Elliot Garcia: Sometimes you just need a different scene, a different time to just reflect and say hey, you know what? I need to do this, and this, and when you come back refreshed. I took a two week, week and a half to go see my dad in Dallas. I feel great. Benching two twenty five still. And I'm like, man, I'm like, I'm ready to jump on my toes.
Ricky Pearl: I saw some
Elliot Garcia: What's that?
Ricky Pearl: I saw some videos of you in the gym. It always inspires me.
Elliot Garcia: And so it, it gives you that refresher, to go and do something different, to keep that stability. Like you're asking you, you need some time off. Don't ever try to do pedal to the metal, hustle culture. It's cool and all. It's great to bring revenue, but like you said, man, we're here to help people.
Ricky Pearl: All right. Just a few more questions here. Now, this one, I dunno if you're ready to talk about, but a little birdie told me that that you've got an exciting change in the horizon.
Elliot Garcia: Maybe
Ricky Pearl: Maybe
Elliot Garcia: What bird is this? No, I'm kidding.
Ricky Pearl: This is a pretty reliable bird.
Elliot Garcia: Yeah. Yep. I am some exciting news that are, that is gonna come up ahead. I am going back to SaaS recently. I just, I'm involved in SaaS all the time, and so I am going to go to a platform that starts with the letter R, and the most helpful aspect of it is that you could be very new to writing and compelling emails to your target demographic, and after entering even a general idea of your audience can fairly be compelling to your content in minutes. So stay tuned.
Ricky Pearl: I know, I know what it is. It's a phenomenal tool, genuinely impressive. And the team there at the moment, it seems I don't know, it's like a, the rock stars, I don't use that term likely. But it's like a band. Like you look at all these people wow, they've really collected it's like the Marvel DC world.
Ricky Pearl: I don't know. I'm talking outta turn. I don't know. I don't know anything about that. But like The Avengers, which is the one that has all the super people in it.
Elliot Garcia: Adventures. Hands down.
Ricky Pearl: The one, right? That's the one.
Ricky Pearl: Right. So you're about to start there. You're about a week away. What's your game plan? There's about 10,000 people out there current, that are gonna be starting a new SaaS sales role in a couple of weeks or next month. How are you planning to go in there and have an immediate impact?
Elliot Garcia: Well, first thing is I, what I always do is read everything you can about the company on the website. What is the content they're putting out there? Learn it, read it like the what? Back of your hand, because this is what you're gonna be helping people with. So you wanna know what your solution is to people's problems.
Elliot Garcia: So understand that. And once I'm in the door and I meet my SDR leader, my growth leader, my CEO, everyone that I'm gonna be working around, pick their brain and humble myself and understand how they got there, what they're about, what they wanna do, and my agenda that they're gonna give me. And from there, just learn, ask questions later.
Elliot Garcia: But learn as much as you can as soon as you get in there and be teachable. Because what that got them there is when is gonna get you where you wanna be next. And so learn as much as you can. Be teachable and encourage people need encouragement. Don't ever, hesitate. Hey, you did a great job today.
Elliot Garcia: Yeah. Hey, thank you for, taking thirty minutes to train me. Encourage them and be organized. Any prospects that may have come your way, organize it. Be like this date and then once you start getting your sequences and everything in order, boom, you start being uniformed, tailored and everything just like it'll start getting to the book meetings.
Ricky Pearl: Man, it sounds like you're super excited and you should be. It's a good team and they're lucky to have you.
Why tech sales? Why SaaS?
Ricky Pearl: My final question Elliot, why tech sales? You could be doing anything in the world, you're a highly skilled individual. Why SaaS
Elliot Garcia: It's a great question. Almost going on a year and nine months, I fell in love with it. I don't know, I have passion. Friend of mine just, introduced me to RevLeague, you know, at RevGenius, and I was watching, Tom Slocum and Amelia, and all these just booking meetings, and I was like, what is booking meetings and throwing gifts and clapping for each other and getting hyped off meetings. And I'm like, man, this is crazy. This, what are they doing? And I love with it. I'm like, man, I want this. And quickly, just two months after that I got my first gig and I took off one hundred eighty six meetings booked in six weeks.
Elliot Garcia: I just fell in love with it. I like it. It if I could do it all over again, I'd do it all over again. If I can go ten years ago, I'd, Id start where wherever we're at with probably like big monitors and huge typing keyboards and big mouses that click and you can hear it all the way to the end of the hallway.
Elliot Garcia: So I love
Ricky Pearl: I love it. Well, that passion has certainly helped you thrive in this industry. And I hope that some people listening can, absorb some of that passion and hopefully let it fuel them and their success. Elliot, it's been an absolute pleasure chatting with you.
How do they get hold of you?
Ricky Pearl: If somebody wanted to learn more, they wanted to I don't know, get some more advice from you, or they wanted to follow your journey to see what what amazing plans you have cooking at your next gig, how do they get hold of you?
Elliot Garcia: Yeah. Just hit me up on LinkedIn. I'm friends with Ricky and so if you can find me there, just feel free to send me a connection request. I'll accept it and just let me know what questions you may have, how to break into SAS what's the secret sauce cold calling and anything.
Elliot Garcia: I'm just I'm here on one click away.
Ricky Pearl: Amazing. Well, that's extremely generous of you and I'm sure that generosity will be repaid. Thanks for being on Elliot. It's been amazing and I'd love to chat to you again soon.
Elliot Garcia: Thank you Ricky. I appreciate too.
