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BDRs under marketing: What changed since season 3 · Revenue on the Rocks

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, everyone. Welcome back. We're officially back after a long break. I think we're checking on season six, which feels absolutely insane. But first of all, Ben, so excited to have you back from Pat Leaf.
• 0:11
  I know you've been actually back at Nevada for a few months now, but officially back to the podcast.
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks. Good to be back. Yeah, was out for most of like Q1, little bit of Q2 ish. Can't even remember, it feels like forever ago now, but it's great to be back. And I was so excited a couple of weeks ago when I got the note from you around, hey, let's re kick off Revenue on the Rocks.
• 0:29
  So I have a brand new beer that I'm excited to share. We haven't even got to what we're drinking yet, but I'm hopeful that you have a drink.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. I have some wine. It looks like beer, but it's orange wine because, you
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: know. Wait. What color is it? Can you say that color again?
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Orange. We're back. That is definitely maybe my more Northeastern tendency, but it's bad. Orange. And then Alec used to always make fun of me for...
• 0:54
  Yeah.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You do say that. Yeah.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: I I do. And then it's really hard to stop saying it. But yes, orange wine I am drinking today. I mean, what are you... What is the special new beer?
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: It's this brewery in Grand Haven, is a small town, like fifteen minutes north of me called Oddside Brewing Company. Just went there the other day and just picked up like a six pack to go. So I've never had it before, but it's pretty good.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Nice. We bought some local beers. Well, I'm excited to get it going again. Will say I'm a little nervous for podcasting while drinking again. It's probably been about a year since we've done this.
• 1:21
  And I did... We did a little side quest podcast while you were gone, so I got very used to podcasting while not having a drink. So we'll see. We're coming back into it fresh, but I'm sure it'll be great, fun adventure, especially every every year we do this. I feel like every year it gets a little harder.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Correct. Correct. I would agree. But it's great to be back, and cheers, Natalie, as always.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Cheers. Also, didn't say, like, you know, congrats on having a baby. How does it feel?
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: It's wild. It's kind of hard to describe. It's one of those things where like, you feel like you're entirely prepared, but also you feel like you're entirely not prepared. And then once your kid comes, you realize that both were true. Yeah.
• 1:54
  I think one of the things I would just like tell everybody is that I've learned in my own experience is having children is like way more, it's extremely natural. So like so much of like, how am I gonna do this? What is it gonna be like? Those are all really legitimate things to wonder about and fear and all that kind of stuff. But it's pretty incredible once like the baby comes out and like, that's your child, like how much of it is just natural.
• 2:15
  You're just like, I don't know how I know what to do, but like I kinda know what to do, is the best way to I, that I can explain it. But yeah, shout out to Alec on my team, him and his, wonderful wife, Jenna are due in about a month here. So we have another baby adding to the Novatic family shortly and hoping for all the best for them as well.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: I know we have a good list of especially like SalesDads now.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: That could probably be our team name is SalesDads plus Katiri. And it's great.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: It's really sweet. And that is really nice advice to hear as someone who can't keep a plant alive. That's reassuring that it comes naturally.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: Well, also have another fun announcement that I'd like to kick off with.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: We are celebrating Natalie Marco Tulio's five year work anniversary today, five years ago, she made the leap and joined Nevada. So I wanted to quickly give you the spotlight to talk a little bit or just go down memory lane. What are some of the things that come to your mind when you reflect on five years? Is it everything you hoped that it would be? Put yourself into Natalie's shoes five years ago.
• 3:10
  Did you think you'd be sitting here still today? Let's just take a second to celebrate and remember five years for you.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: That's very sweet. I had a feeling this was coming. Also need to say you hit your five years during the break, so also congrats to you, which is also crazy we've been doing this podcast for, like, four years. I will answer your question, but I just need to call it out first. Like, because we started this, like, a year or two into Nevada.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And now we have, like, 200,000 followers. Like, people are asking me for autograph in the streets. Insane.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I can't can't walk down the streets in New York without people like, repping on the Rocks?
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: No. I know. Spotify is like cold calling me. Like, when are you coming on?
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: One day. One day we'll get there. But thank you. It's been a great five years. I don't know.
• 3:43
  I think the craziest part sometimes is, like, how everything feels different and the same. Like, everything feels different where it's crazy people know Nevada exists. Like, I still go to a conference. We've been hosting a lot of customer events this year. If you see my LinkedIn, you're probably like, please stop talking about it because it's all I post about.
• 3:59
  But it's just every time still I'm at these come... These events and, like, we can get, like, 15 to 20 people from a random... We had an event in Dublin. We can get fifteen, twenty people to come out to a customer event in Dublin. Like, that is crazy to me sometimes when I think about early days when we'd be excited about, like, customer number a 100.
• 4:14
  So I think that's been the different part, and honestly, something I've been just, like, so grateful for reflecting back and seeing the growth. But also sometimes it feels the same where like, yes, we're bigger and we've gotten a lot more things figured out, but there's just like constantly new things coming up. Like, I I don't know. I always imagined this idea that we would, you know, join a startup and once you got product market fit, everything would be so easy. And don't get me wrong, it's very hard to do and it does get easier from, like, I guess, a go to market perspective.
• 4:39
  But sometimes I feel like this stage is harder, there are more things uncertain and more problems and more things to solve than the early days when every... We've talked about this on the podcast before, but the early days, everything's a win. Now it's like we can lose things. We can we can go backwards, which is just sort of crazy. But overall, it's been a lovely five years.
• 4:56
  Been very fun to watch the company evolve. Obviously, great team and just, like, have I to give our company such a shout out for both retaining so much of the core team. That's that's been so fun and incredible. Like, I know we also have Cutiri coming up under five years this week. So getting to kinda go through it together, but then also, like, I'm still so impressed with everyone we bring in.
• 5:13
  That has been so fun kinda growing. I don't like to say, like, the family, but, like, growing the group and still just maintaining such a high bar for everyone who comes.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: Well, it's been such a blast and a pleasure, obviously, to work together with you. And, like, there is no Nevada and there is no Nevada brand without Natalie. Sometimes I like to think about like the different areas of the business that we all individually have our fingerprints all over. And something that I realized that just never would have taken off in the way that it did is just like the general reputation and what you just spoke to around like the brand awareness, the product awareness. I think something that a lot of folks don't really know unless you're pretty plugged into it like the niche demo automation space is when Natalie came on, Natalie's job was to figure out a way to win the market and like produce in a wonderful marketing plan against other vendors in the space that had literally raised like 25X amount of dollars that Nevada had.
• 6:03
  That is like no easy task. And like, I even remember when I first joined, my sister was like, Hey Ben, are you sure? I did a little bit of research and I noticed that there's other three vendors in the space who have combined for like $300,000,000 in funding and you guys have like two, what are you thinking? And it's a little bit easier on the sales side to kind of like shield myself from that, but not for you on the marketing front. Like those were like literal dollars that you had to market against.
• 6:24
  You had to take on some absolute whales in the early days that again raised so much money compared to us. That just comes with way more resources than you had. So I don't think the world or anybody outside of the Nevada niche understands the work in in in the hill that you had in front of you that you just really overcame and crushed over the last five years. And I got a front row seat to that. So that's why I always say like I'm Natalie's number one fan, not just because you're awesome at your job, but because I got to watch what you did and I know exactly what that looked like from the inside and it was extremely impressive and still is.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna try my hardest not to start crying, especially over this wine right now. This is... I was not prepared for this, but that was very sweet. And I do think it's hopefully, like, a nice story for those who are all the smaller companies. When you go and you join this market that has these big competitors, you know, like, am I gonna do it?
• 7:08
  I tell this story all the time, I probably have told it on this podcast, of I won't say exactly who, but the week into joining Novatic, one of our biggest competitors had taxi ads all over New York, and I was like, oh my god, what am I doing? They have taxi ad money? Like, we did not have taxi ad money, especially early days. But I just think, like, kudos again, dang focused to the team, hiring great people. And in a way, was a little bit of an advantage because it really made us be very intentional about every dollar we spent.
• 7:34
  But thank you. That was very kind. I'm having a hard time just, like, responding to the compliment, so I'm just gonna leave it at that.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you. The other kind of like off the cuff topic, completely just taking a one eighty and going in a different direction here. I just feel like we have a lot of things that we just need to update the 77 listeners that we have on is we get to cheers to celebrate that we survived the AI wave. We're still around as We've a figured out a way to work with AI, not against AI. And I think over the last like year in particular, there's been a lot of companies that are trying to figure out what does this mean?
• 8:05
  Is SaaS dead? We've all heard that the huge AI wave. Cheers to you and me from day one when we didn't have product market fit and didn't have any revenue. We we we crossed that bridge, I think the AI bridge was maybe even more scary that we had to encounter about a year ago, and we have successfully maintained our business and figured out a way to work collaboratively with AI.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And cheers to anyone listening. You know, to your point, our whole 77 or maybe five listeners, that's one is probably my mom. Anyone listening in the software industry that also survived this. Like, I remember us doing podcasts at the beginning of this year, last year being like, I don't know what's gonna happen.
• 8:35
  We might all be nonexistent. Is there gonna be in a few months? And obviously, I think, you know, a lot of companies... Like, we've all had to go through a transition phase, it's been sort of rough, but I haven't seen, you know, companies entirely dying left and right. I've seen a lot of adapting and changing and figuring it out, but just been, yeah, that is a good reassuring note of we didn't all die, we made it, we're sort of hopefully on the other side and been cool to see now like what Nevada looks like, what like, you know, obviously we've added in AI stuff too and how how that can actually make it better and not just like, oh, let's throw everything out that we had.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: Adapt or die and we adapted. We overcame it. Another feather in the hat for us.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: Now I'm I'm gonna have like knock on wood. Like we're gonna... You know, at the end of this year it's gonna be the AI apocalypse. No. I feel I feel good about that.
• 9:19
  If anyone was following along with the little side quest podcast that I was doing with Mark Killen, it's go to market news desk. We talked about this topic a lot and, like, how often it was so over hyped in the news, in reality, yes, you had to be smart and to your point adapt, but it wasn't like destroying software overnight.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: Not at all.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Cool. Okay. What else? We've... A lot of changes.
• 9:37
  I'm trying to think when we last recorded, I think March maybe?
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: Probably. But March? Okay. BDRs.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So this is fun because I want to find the exact episode. So if you haven't listened to, it is... It was episode 10, I believe, of season three, all the way back in April of last year. We did this episode where we talked about...
• 9:56
  I think it was actually... You did, like, an ask me anything, and we talked about this concept of should BDRs live under marketing or sales. And, we both were pretty confident that they should live under sales and we gave our reasons. And since then, we have totally not one eighty, but just have made a different decision to Vatic, and we've added some BDRs to the marketing team.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: That we have. I was thinking about how I wanted to address this because you're gonna laugh when I say this and I didn't prep you for this all. I still do think they probably should sit under the sales team. I think the reason I was ultimately very comfortable with them sitting under the marketing team, honestly, Natalie, is because of a lot of what I just preface this entire conversation with, which is you have a track record at Nevada for five years, which is like kicking ass, and you put your foot down and you were like, I want them. I want them on my team.
• 10:41
  I think it'd be very helpful. We can set more aggressive pipeline numbers. It aligns really well with our job with demand gen and pipe, blah, blah. And I was sitting there in that meeting when we were deciding who they were gonna report to. And I was thinking, oh, they should definitely report to me.
• 10:54
  But I was then at the end of that call, Natalie's got like, Natalie's got this. Like, Natalie feels that strongly about it. I know she's gonna have success with this. I trust Natalie. So it was more of a bet on you, which I understand isn't necessarily scalable advice because you're not the director of marketing at every single SaaS company.
• 11:09
  So I think it's gonna be a fun conversation today where in my heart of hearts, I still kind of believe they should sit under sales. But when you really put your foot down, I thought it was an exciting opportunity. It was something we hadn't explored before. We had a BDR team for a while, and then we were without BDRs for a little bit. And so we decided to open up that org again.
• 11:24
  You were like, I want them. And I was like, let's do it.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: It's so funny because I didn't actually fully know that, but then that's funny that that... It's funny how you think you come across in a meeting where I was like, oh, I wanted to talk about this concept and had ideas for it. But now looking back, was like, yeah, I guess I did really kind of put my foot down there. But also I sort of agree with you where for most orgs, I actually probably do think it makes more sense under sales. And I'm gonna preface with the only reason I felt comfortable pitching it was because of the close relationship I knew we and the sales team had and also how helpful I knew your team would be.
• 11:55
  Need to preface with, like, you and the AEs have been so incredibly helpful filling the gaps that I don't know as well with the BDRs. Like, obviously, I can help with structuring their day and organization and who to go after and messaging and positioning, but, like, I haven't done the role. And that's why the main reason I think often it does help to live under sales is it helps to have someone who's done the role. But if I knew I would have you all to help support, and I actually wanna talk a little tactically about some of the ways we've set that up. But like if you're a marketer kinda who's not connected to your sales team, doesn't have their support, doesn't have the AEs that you can ask about and ask them like, hey, I'm actually not sure when the best time to cold call is or I'm not...
• 12:28
  I actually wanna get your second thought on, like, this cadence or this feature. Like, you'd... We've definitely been looping you in guys a bunch of being like, hey, I want your second thoughts on this or how would you approach this situation. I would not feel nearly as comfortable because it is kind of strange. This is the first role that I've had, like, teammates on my team that I haven't done the job directly.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, like, this... The way that we still view, I think, BDRs generally, at least that I do, is, ideally, they're a pipeline for your growing AE or your growing sales team. And I think the other thing that made it a lot of sense for you is it just so happens that both of the BDRs that we've hired who are really excited about, they've been phenomenal so far.
• 13:02
  We were really just talking about a meeting that one of them set before he hopped on here that's very exciting is they're both located in New York. You're located in New York. You get to go in office with them like two or three times a week. That is so impactful, especially during onboarding. I do not live in New York.
• 13:15
  It would be a little bit trickier for me. So again, there was a lot of extenuating circumstances that made it fit and made it right for Novatic that might not necessarily be scalable. But ultimately it does align really well with like what their job is and a lot of the marketing KPIs and goals that you have around demand generation and pipeline. That is literally their job. But I think what I've been most excited about is by no stretch of the imagination have I felt like they've been operating in some marketing silo, which I do think is what my sales brain went to, which was, well, they'll send her to the marketing org and I'll never get to talk to them.
• 13:45
  I won't be able to coach them. I'm not gonna be able to get my hands on them, like trying to like mold them and form them and help them and work closely with them. It has been the complete opposite. I meet with them every single week. They meet with, obviously, their AEs all the time.
• 13:55
  Their mentors at Nevada are both on the sales team. So ultimately, it's just like a month into this thing, and it's it's been fantastic.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: I feel like I can't jinx anything yet, but to your point, it feels like it's been going very well. Anashka Aliyah, if you're listening, shout out to both of you all. It's been so, like, I do... I was definitely a little nervous going into it again, new role I haven't coached or managed before, and just been very happy, to your point, with the workflow and kind of, like, with the structure we put in place. So it doesn't...
• 14:21
  It also does not feel while, like, I'm their official manager, it does not feel like, oh, this is marketing and they're in this corner. Like, it feels like they really get to work with a lot of the team. Before we talk about structure, I wanna talk a little bit back about, like, why, to your point, like, why did it make sense for DemandGen? Because I think a lot of SaaS companies are probably going through this similar feeling right now, and actually I know a lot of them are. So we talked about the SaaS apocalypse.
• 14:40
  While we're still here, we're surviving, a common theme I've been hearing from a lot of companies, especially, like, you know, I'd say more in, like, the I'd say we're closer to like the scale up phase at this point than like early early startup is you relied a lot on like mid market as kind of your base. Like, you know, SMBs weren't big enough to really, maybe you'd have like a self serve motion that helped but it wasn't big enough to really like get you to the revenue numbers you need. You might be not weren't ready for enterprises yet. And every year in Nevada, of course, we've been going more and more enterprise. But especially a few years ago, like, mid market was such our, like, bread and butter wins, and we've just been noticing that the market is shifting.
• 15:12
  Mid market's been a little tougher. I think we've seen that they're the ones getting a little less funding. They don't always have as much disposable income. They might be the ones who are more pressured to build everything with AI for now. So we've been focusing more on going enterprise.
• 15:23
  This is nothing new. This is also just the stage we're at as a company. And part of that was I was realizing we're doing all these events and channels that were focusing more on the enterprise. So doing again a lot of in person conferences, doing a lot of LinkedIn targeting, like, just really trying to focus on those personas, but we just didn't have that final touch. Like, felt like we were doing a good job getting the awareness, getting our name out there, especially when it comes to the enterprise, like, you often just need that final, like, what's gonna get someone over the edge?
• 15:48
  What's going to get them what's gonna get them they might know about Nevada, but know why it works specifically for them? And that felt really hard without a b team... BD team. And that was kind of, like, looking at our numbers, looking at where we wanted to go. That was really why I made the push of like, it feels like we're doing all this work in the marketing end, if we're going enterprise, we're not gonna get that final leg until we get the BDRs.
• 16:06
  And I talked to a lot of marketing leaders about this when we're making this decision and I heard a lot of them saying similar things of why when was it right to really scale up outbound and like why did they bring on BDRs especially under marketing?
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: I'm literally, you took the words right out of my mouth. Was my next question to you is when you do chat with other marketers around the fact that we are busy building the business development team under the marketing umbrella. What is their reaction? Do you think it's more common now where they're like, what the hell are you thinking? Like, I'd just be curious to get their perspective on it.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: No. I think a lot of them, especially those who have gone gone enterprise, have tried this at some capacity. I think there are marketers who maybe don't have as good a relation with their sales team who are just like, yeah, marketing should own it. We should own everything. And I don't, again, I don't necessarily agree with that.
• 16:46
  I think it's a very nuanced situation. You wanna make sure you have a good relationship with sales, they can still learn from them. But I think most people get it, like, especially when we talk about, like, going enterprise. And what was actually really interesting is we had the conversation a lot, like, how many? And we felt pretty strongly of, like, we've had just one in the past and we've had great BDRs in the past, but it's a really hard job to do in a silo.
• 17:06
  It's really hard to not have someone else who's kind of... Just like you can bounce ideas off of, you can work with, you can be like, oh, how are you approaching outbound? I'm approaching it like this. So actually a lot of the advice when I was talking to other marketers and got checking them out was like, we're thinking about one or two. We're not at the point we're gonna scale up to 10.
• 17:20
  And everyone was like, get multiple. Like don't just get one person because one, it's like, it's very hard to do just by yourself, but also they're gonna learn a lot from each other. And it's just like, it just makes it more enjoyable. It's a really hard role. You kind of want a counterpart.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: That was one thing that you were really bold about when we were exploring this is you were like, I don't want one, I want two. Like we have to go higher too. And I think for a lot of the reasons that you just described, also I think a lot of BDRs transparently are a little younger in their career. They're fresh out of school or it's their first gig in SaaS and you just don't really know what you don't know. And it's just much more, it's much more helpful.
• 17:52
  And I think you can build a lot more confidence when you're doing a very, very difficult and strenuous job with somebody else by your side, you're kind of learning together. I think being like, I tried to put myself in the shoes of being a first time BDR, maybe my first job ever out of college, really tough gig for a SaaS company. I don't know anything about the SaaS landscape and I'm doing it all remotely. Like that could just make me feel like I was on an island very quickly. So again, going back to the fact that you guys were in person a couple of times a week and Leo and Anoshka came on with about like a week or two apart.
• 18:20
  Basically the same exact time. I only have each other month apart, what are days? I think has been really, really helpful. The other thing that I would say is, and this is maybe a little bit more on the sales side is, I think it's really good to come on at the same time as somebody else from a competitive perspective. Anashka and Leo are awesome.
• 18:36
  They get along really, really well. My hope is Anashka wants to crush Anashka from a leader... From a dashboard perspective and and a wins perspective that bringing out the best in both of them, think, is natural competition that happens when you hire two.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: In a friendly way. Of course, I have to. I sometimes... In
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: a friendly way. Do you see how differently they were wired?
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Well, I think that actually is why it works very well to have both of us where I sometimes I'm like, I don't know. I feel like I'm coming in from more of the very organized. I also... I think this is important to call out. I have worked closely with BDRs before.
• 19:06
  At some point, I was kind of like sales ops. So I understand the more like operational side of outbound. Again, I have never done the role, but I also think if you're a marketer who's going to take on BDRs and has never worked with them closely, it's a lot harder. Like, I learned a lot of lessons that way. I've gotten screamed at for, you know, messing with comp structure in a way that I probably shouldn't have.
• 19:25
  This is pre pre nematic. But, like, I think you really... It's important to understand what's important to BDRs and if you haven't worked with them directly, like, talk to someone who has if you're going to own them.
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: It is such a hard job. Of all the sales jobs that I was my my SAS career, the BDR role was by far and away the hardest one. It... It's such a challenge. It's so tricky.
• 19:42
  I have so much compassion for the folks who are doing that on a day to day basis. It is extremely challenging. And in a lot of ways, the SaaS environment today is set up for BDRs to have a lot of success from like a signals perspective and endless research tools and all that kind of stuff. But at the same time, do think there's probably a little bit of like BDR fatigue, right? Like when I was a BDR a million years ago, it was still like relatively, I think new.
• 20:07
  And so I don't think people were as maybe bothered or used to getting blown up by emails or cold outbound or these sorts of things. But now it's just like everyone is so used to it. There's probably a little bit of fatigue with outbound emails. So I think in some ways the BDR role today is is a lot harder than many moons ago when I did it.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Think especially to your point, emails and everything. Like, it's this weird thing where I feel like we're coaching more and more like just write very casually because you you might wanna come across as professional, but there's so many AI flags out there now where if someone thinks that this email was AI, even if it wasn't, like, feel about my team's doing a great research and sometimes I'm like, no, have to cut back on that research because that research could appear AI generated even though I know you. Yeah. Or like I know you probably used AI to help, like I know you actually wrote that.
• 20:48
  It's kind of... It's an interesting time where really have them be creative and just showing like, no, I am a person doing research. I'm not just like using one of the mass AI tools.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: I totally agree. I was just thinking in my head, don't know why just as an aside, what marketing role could ever live under the sales umbrella?
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Oh, I know sometimes product marketing reports to sales.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: That's what I was thinking. That's kinda where my head went to.
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: I've heard product marketing being owned by everything. I've heard them being owned by product. I've heard them being owned by... I've heard them being owned by the operations and the COO, I've been going to them owned by sales. Yeah, that's one of those ones that can be really flexible.
• 21:23
  I would be so curious whether you'd be like... I mean, same how you're probably observing what am I like managing sales? I'd be very curious to see what you're like managing marketing.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: Again, you read my mind. The next question I wanted to ask you in particular is while you're managing this team, what has your experience been like so far managing a team with a direct quota? Because I know you have targets, KPIs on the marketing side, but I think this is like maybe like the first time you've officially had two folks reporting to you that have literally like a black and white quota. What's that been like for you?
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: In a way, it's both like really refreshing and terrifying.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: It's horrifying.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: So some... Because I I always say to marketers who get annoyed that, sales get so much attention and credit and all that. I'm like, you have to remember the stress that that's part of the reason they get all that attention and love because they also are responsible for a number, which is very stressful. And I've always been responsible for pipeline at Nevada, but what's nice is my team hasn't been that, I'm... When it's me, you know, I get stressed about me, but, like, my team, that's who I'm most worried about.
• 22:19
  This has been the first time having team with numbers. Think on the nice side, like, it's very clear what they should be doing in a day to day. I think sometimes marketing can be so tough because there's so many things you can be doing. You could be getting so many ideas, so many random things, and there's a lot of times you're like, is what I'm doing actually doing anything? Like, if I'm creating a bunch of TikToks, like, is that actually helping the business?
• 22:38
  And that can be really hard as a marketer sometimes. You can feel very like, I I wanna know that I'm valuable and contributing. And a lot of times, especially the top of funnel brand stuff, it's not as easy to measure down the funnel. So, like, in a way, it's really refreshing to just be like, we don't have a converse... We don't have to have an OKR conversation.
• 22:53
  We don't have to talk about what are your goals. We don't have talk what channels should you focus on. I mean, a little bit, I guess, but, like, not in the same way as marketing. It's like, okay. You got to hit this many meetings, and that's the focus.
• 23:04
  That's... Everything heads down on that. But also on the flip side, yeah, that's really terrifying. I am so nervous that, you know, I'm now responsible for their number. I want them to do well.
• 23:11
  But I I think I keep having to... The biggest thing I keep trying to remind myself and, like, be okay with is, like, don't have too much of an ego about it. Like, what I don't know, what I don't know. And that's where, again, like, huge thank you to you and the sales team. Because I know the way I might approach this, but I I don't know.
• 23:26
  I haven't done sales. So, like, when I'm not sure or when there are things I have questions on, being okay to be like, you know, actually, don't know that. I'm gonna ask Ben. I'm gonna ask Katiri. I'm gonna ask...
• 23:34
  Let's get a second opinion on that. Because, you know, as the manager, you wanna know everything. But I think if I did that, I would... Good chance that, like, that would hurt even more towards hitting quota.
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: I couldn't have said it better myself. The way the way you described the target position is exactly how I feel. Like, any salesperson worth their salt if you give them a quota, they're like, oh, it's it's my number. I got it. I'm not worried about it.
• 23:55
  The second you put a team of like four or five reps in front of you and they all have individual numbers, that's what keeps me up at night where it's just like, you know, because everyone else's number to your point is your number as well at the end of the day. And it is hard not to have like a lot of stress about that. I do think it's been kind of fun with Leo and Anoshka in particular, where we make a really, really good partnership, like a team for them. We're like, I do this for onboarding one of the few trainings I lead for all new hires on the sales and the marketing side is kind of like this novatic rah rah speech thing. And it's really all just focused around like hitting your numbers and executing.
• 24:31
  But then they go like, they get like all of the amazing like processes that you've set up and like they get to hang out with you in person and like a lot of that kind of stuff. So I do think it's a really, really, really good balance where like for you they know that they can go to you for like, I need help with this tool or this automation or teach me about this process. And then we come to me, it's kind of like, all let me gas you up around how you need to get to your number and like that needs to be the most important thing. I do think it creates a really healthy balance for them.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: And again, that's where, like, I don't think I could do this if it wasn't for you all and such an important lesson if you're a marketer who wants to take this on. It's like, no one did not have an ego about it and talk to sales. And huge thank you to Eric and Alec. We've implemented this, like, buddy system, which I think has been so helpful because there's always the question of, like, what gets routed where? What AE should I go to?
• 25:13
  And so we just decide to pair, and I've seen this at other companies. I didn't invent this, but, like, pair the BDRs with an AE. They always pass leads to that AE, and they know they can go to them with questions. If the AE also wants, like... It's nice.
• 25:25
  It's kind of a two way street. It's like, oh, you wanna chase someone down? Oh, I have this closed lost off that, like, I don't have time to do outbound to. It's sort nice to have someone that you can just go ask and, know, like, you're my person rather than I think when it's like a group of BDRs you don't know or like everyone, especially if it's big group of BDRs everyone just tries to pull the best one and maybe it distracts them.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. And those relationships can be really beneficial too because like you get out of it what you put into it. And I think it gives the AEs like a big sense of ownership when it's like, okay, this is the BDR, this is my partner, this is who I'm working with. Like it creates, I think a little bit more of a partnership and there's a little bit more of a focus on the AE to make sure they're empowering the BDRs well knowing that like this is my outlet for outbound.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Okay. Have a fun question unless you had one.
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: Hit me.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: I think part of also I was pretty strict about when we were hiring and finding VDRs. It was like, have a certain type of VDR I'm very excited to work with and one that I would not be as excited to work with. And again, feel lucky. I've worked closely with VDRs before. I have an idea of the different personality types.
• 26:18
  Or I'm... I think I know the answer, but if you were to look back before we hired versus who we did hire, any surprises or, like, what were your thoughts on what you expected marketing would hire versus who we did hire?
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that Anoshka and Leo from like a resume perspective were far more impressive maybe than anybody that I would have hired for a BDR role. They're like wicked smart, like incredible background, incredible university experience, had an awesome internship. Like they were qualified in ways that folks just fresh out of college shouldn't be. And like Anoshka was pre med and Leo was just like, he was like engineering and like Summa Cum Laude, like he just so smart, incredible.
• 27:01
  Whereas for me, I would have been like, I would have just, I always hyper focused on athletes because that is my bias when I'm hiring. And because I do think that from a sales perspective, so much of the athletic mindset translates really well to sales because it is competitive. You are trying to win, you're trying to score the most points. Those sorts of mindsets typically translate very, very, very well. But I think the new approach in how to have success in the BDR role is definitely still that grit and that competitiveness.
• 27:28
  But I think watching how Anoshka and Leo can work extremely hard, but also work extremely efficiently is a skill that I don't know I do a good enough job of on the BDR hiring side focusing on.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: I was so impressed with both their resumes And my team, do I remember when they were when they were... When they were interviewing them? They're like, what? Like, they're gonna be So
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: impressive.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: And just to your point, like, I was just could not believe the level... How much experience. Like, both of them had done BD work as internships before. Like, I don't know if for any reason someone who's looking for a job is listening to this. Like, the the amount they had known already coming in was so impressive for the fact that they're right out of college.
• 28:06
  And, like, they... By week two and three, both of them have been sending outbound emails. Like, the Yeah. The the level which they learned our tooling was insane. It it felt like they were like, yeah.
• 28:17
  Got this. Of course, I can do it. Like, I felt like I was, like, showing something. Was like, okay. Like, they have some specific questions, but I just have been so impressed, and I feel like a lot of people, like, be like, oh, Gen Z doesn't work hard, they're all...
• 28:27
  Whatever. They all can't work. Like, I have been so impressed by both of them and their background and just, like, how quickly they picked up on things. And I feel like that's maybe a tip also if anyone's thinking about hiring BDRs. Like, there are some really impressive people right out of college who have had background in tech.
• 28:41
  I was not
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: expecting Can I tell you the story about how when I was like particularly sold on Anoshka during the interview process? So my whole goal for my interview with Anoshka was to try to evaluate like grit, hard work, competitive nature, blah, blah, blah. And so like, I forget exactly what question I asked, but it was related to like, how do you respond to like having a number attached to your name and like the competitiveness in sales and like delivering month over month, blah, blah, the stress, the pressure, blah, blah, And her response, like she sat there and thought for a second, she was like, I was pre med for four years, which comes with a lot of pressure. I think I'll be okay. And I was like, I think you're right.
• 29:13
  Think you're Pre med for four years is probably way more intense and way harder than a lot of the BDR work you're gonna do. You're gonna be just fine.
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Have to give them both credit too. Like, the energy they've come out of it has been also so fun for me. Like, we've talked about being here for five years. I love Nevada, but sometimes I feel like an old grandma where I'm, like, moving a little slower, you know?
• 29:33
  I've been doing things for a while and just... Especially, like, we've been going in three days a week in person, the energy they bring, like, that's been very fun, or just, like, the little chitchats or things like that. It's definitely, like, I feel a little bit like I'm adjusting back into society after working remote for so long. Like, oh, I forgot about, like, you know, picking out an outfit every day or, like, commuting. But overall, it's been really fun in person.
• 29:54
  And I do think especially for new hires and BDRs, that's also an important part to it.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: The new hires spring, like, a a sense of energy that it's sometimes easy to forget, especially for folks like you and me who have been at Nevada for five plus years where it's like, obviously we still have the passion and that's why we're still here. But hearing like Leo and the team get so excited about just, it's so new for them and it is so exciting for them. I remember having that kind of like honeymoon phase obviously with Nevada like way back in the beginning days. And it is just energizing to see that kind of like spoil out of them a little bit. And it's been a lot of fun for me working closely with them.
• 30:26
  Also just like BDRs are the best. Like if you pour into BDRs again, typically they're younger folks, they're kind of newer in their career and they're just so hungry to learn. Like AEs in particular, they usually can come in with a little bit of like a swagger of like, I've been there, done that, like you hired me because you think I'm really good and like I'm gonna come in and close, I'm gonna do my thing. And it's a little bit of like, I don't need you to teach me anything. BDRs are like I wanna know everything that you know.
• 30:47
  Teach me everything. Like I am your sponge and it's just kind of fun.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. No. It has been fun. And it makes you like rethink everything from the ground up again.
• 30:55
  It's not just like how I've been doing this process. This is the way it goes. It really is making me rethink. And like think about it's been fun to almost marketing challenge of, like, yeah, how do we stand out and still maintain the brand and still, you know, don't bother our prospects, but make sure that, like, we are known and we're in front of them. And I've also been just so impressed by both the pride that they have in their work.
• 31:16
  Like, they really want the messages to be good, and I think that's also what you need in a BD team right now. Like, again, you can't just be spamming. And that level of pride so early on in their work is also just so impressive and motivating. Cool. Well, we've been talking about this for a little bit.
• 31:30
  Any other surprise questions?
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: It's all I got. It's good to see you.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: My god. How is it going back?
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: I'm glad I didn't see you 10 times already today, but it's good to
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: see It's lot of meetings. We had so many meetings today. Yeah. What what was it like being back to podcasting?
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: Feels good. I don't know. When I listen back to it, think I'll be maybe a little more critical than I feel right now. Could just be the beer, a little more loose, feel great.
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: I will say, yeah, it does help. The the... Not that you need
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: Imagine that.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: That you need the drink to podcast, but it does... Sometimes I look up from these conversations like, we've been talking already for half an hour. How'd that happen?
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm gonna go crack another one, but this is really fun. I really enjoyed it. And, yeah, I'm really stoked about the BD team. And I think having them report to you has been a lot of fun so far. And again, the decision that we made, I think had some peripheral decision like criteria around it that made it the right decision for nebatics.
• 32:19
  So I'm not saying it's the right decision always. My number one advice across this podcast for five years is you should do what's best for your business and you shouldn't listen to a whole lot of people that tell you to do things one way. That's what I would tell you about this BDR situation for us. It made sense for us and it's going well and I'm happy with the decision, but it's not to say it's always the case.
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: And I think too, just like the reason I brought up our conversation last year is like things change, businesses change. Like it's okay to have a firm opinion at some point and then things and situations change and have that change. I feel like, I don't know, sometimes we lose that where we have to be like, outbound is dead, and I will never do it. It's like, no. It's okay.
• 32:50
  That maybe doesn't make sense at this point of business, but might make sense later, and we can always reevaluate. Cool. Well, good episode one back, and cheers. My final cheers.
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: Cheers, Natalie.