EPISODE #006
The SDR DiscoCall Podcast welcomes another G2 crowd BDR (now Account Executive), Carl Ritchie, to the show. A budding entrepreneur from an early age (with a degree in entrepreneurship from UCL), Carl shares his passion for business (and cocktails), plus his top takeaways for new SDRs, with host Neil Bhuiyan.
Listen on Apple Podcasts
EPISODE #006 TRANSCRIPT
TL;DR
+ Introduction (to Carl and G2) [00:09.060]
Neil Bhuiyan Hello, SDRs, and welcome to Episode six of the SDR DiscoCall Podcast. Today's guest is Carl Ritchie, another BDR from G2 crowd where he's going to be sharing his story of setting up his own businesses at the age of 16, going onto the UCL to get a degree in entrepreneurship and whilst at G2 crowd what he's learned in terms of time management and why it's important to SDRs and how to carve out your own time for personal development.
So how does the SDR DiscoCall Podcast work? Well, it's actually a Discovery Call, hence the name. And every Tuesday at 8am we're going to have a brand new SDR for 30 minutes and an agenda of introductions their SDR story and three key takeaways that they've learned to share with other SDRs. So with that in mind, let's begin.
So, guys, I want to introduce you to a really interesting guest today. This is Carl Ritchie. He's a BDR in G2 crowd. We also met during Lockdown and again, a massive shout out to Tai for introducing us. You're a big help. And rather than me blab on about who Carl is, please introduce yourself to the listeners. Who are you? What are you currently doing for work and kind of what you do in your company?
Carl Ritchie Absolutely. And first of all, thanks for having me, Neil. I'm Carl Ritchie. I'm a BDR here at G2. I've been here just over a year now since we first opened our international office here in London. And G2 is a B2B software reviews marketplace where buyers go to research different business softwares and understand basically what are the best softwares out there, according to user reviews.
Neil Bhuiyan Thank you very much for the introduction, and obviously when I was looking at you, LinkedIn, there was quite a few bits of experience which really popped out to me where I saw that you had your own business for cocktail in a box.
You worked at zinc incubators, CRE cleaning, which again was your own business. And before we jump into kind of how you got into sales, it would be great to hear like your journey of university, these companies and kind of how you got to G2 crowd.
Carl Ritchie Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think I've had a few different things that can seem quite convoluted from a bird's eye level. But hopefully they all are following on from one path like sales and entrepreneurship. And I think for me, it started out around the age of 16. I mean, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do in my life, how I want to spend my time. And I was looking to my parents who are serial entrepreneurs.
They founded a number of different businesses. And that was something that really inspired me. You know, creating things and building out something from nothing was really something that became a passion of mine. And at that time, I was studying business studies at college and wanted to go to a university and was trying to figure out what can I do that will differentiate me and increase my chance of actually getting into the university I want. And the obvious thing for me was to actually start a business.
Right. Let's go out and do this thing and figure out what it means to actually found a business. And so I was looking for different ideas of things that I could do. And one day my dad came to me actually complaining about the pricing that they were paying for a certain type of cleaning in the restaurants, the restaurant chain that he worked for. And so, you know, I suggested, you know, I can go out and buy this bit of equipment, cost a few hundred pounds, and I can set up a company.
And how about, you know, I'll do it in replacement of these other businesses for, say, half the price. Would that be a fair deal? And he effectively said, yeah, they'll be amazing. So what we did is set up a business, incorporated the company and bought equipment I needed and started out with some very early mornings, like three a.m. starts going to clean outside areas at restaurants. Not very glamorous, but I loved it was a lot of fun and I learned a huge amount about how do you actually build a business?
What does incorporating a business mean? All of a sudden? At 16, I had to put together the accounts for my business. I had to create invoices and quotes, and these were things I'd never come across in my studies before. A whole new world, a completely different experience. But yeah, I love that. I grew up for a number of different years to service hotels and restaurants throughout the UK. Eventually I had a few friends come and join me as well, so pay them some money to come work with me.
So yeah, was a lot of fun, a steep learning curve and eventually to get into the university I wanted as well, so it seemed to work out the end.
+ What does entrepreneurship mean to Carl? [00:04:45.850]
Neil Bhuiyan I love it. What an entrepreneurial life. And that's something even for myself, dude, like you hit it on very early an age like you say at 16, setting up your own limited business, going through those motions. I didn't hit that until 2017. So really impressed by that. And I know like reading posts on LinkedIn, people say they want to be entrepreneurs, they want to live an entrepreneurial life. And you also had entrepreneurial parents. What does entrepreneurship mean to you?
Carl Ritchie Yes, a really interesting question, Neil. I think for me it's around solving problems and creating things that actually provide value to people. Like you'll find a lot of businesses that start out like these amazing stories begin with someone just creating something that they wanted and that solved the problem for themselves. Right. And then eventually, it turns out other people have that problem as well. So for me, it's around just creating things that you want that solve your problems.
And I really love the whole mantra of Y Combinator and, you know, make things that people want. So that's what it is about for me. You know, just go out there, make it do it and solve problems.
Neil Bhuiyan I love it. And another interesting piece like where you are saying in our original discussion that you're studying business studies and you actually then went into the practical side of running a business at such a young age. What were the key learnings kind of for you and what was that experience like?
Carl Ritchie Yeah, it was really interesting because at the time I only had the experience of studying business studies and entrepreneurship and what whatever that meant. So I think throughout many years of my life, I sort of had two sides of one studying business studies and then doing a degree in it, and then eventually a masters in entrepreneurship and then at the same time running these businesses and figuring out what it's like in the real world. Right. And how do you actually apply these things?
And I think to some extent you will never learn those lessons until you sort of just jump in and start to figure it out. And at the same time, that's half of the fun. It's what does this. They actually mean and so you hit walls and then you overcome them and, you know, there's different challenges and then you get the highs and the lows. So, I mean, I'd recommend it to anyone who's looking to create something.
It's just go out there and just do it starts out on day one and start small and build it up slowly. Right. I think there's definitely a number of big lessons. But the biggest thing for me is just do it.
Neil Bhuiyan I love that, 100 percent agree, I think this is great sales speaker and kind of a leader guy called Brian Tracy and he says you will never be ready.
+ Working with Dad, the first step to entrepreneurship [00:07:25.820]
Neil Bhuiyan Just start, you know, just do it. And I love where you said just kind of like jump into it. And recently, we also had another guest, a girl called Charley May, and she kind of dropped into the world of sales, working with her dad as well. What was it like for you, like working with your old man and being like a young entrepreneur? How did that feel?
Carl Ritchie Yeah, it's really interesting. My parents, like are super entrepreneurial, and my dad's definitely a go getter. Like he's got a super inspirational story himself where he grew up on a farm in Scotland, really with nothing, and then moved to England at the age of 16 and really worked his way up to the point where he now has a number of different businesses, everything from a platform to service different restaurants to importing retractable roofs from Istanbul and building them the UK.
So a real breadth of knowledge and really inspirational, to be honest. For me, that was really where everything started, was watching my parents, my dad build out these incredible things. And it I think it comes with its challenges as well. But at the same time, you get to have these really honest conversations about, you know, this is what it's like. And you'll never have the opportunity, I guess, to learn lessons like you will from them.
And when you can see it in a Biz-Dev context as well, it's very inspirational and. It's he told me a lot. Certainly.
+ The rise of the subscription economy and launching a Cocktail business [00:08:49.15]
Neil Bhuiyan Thank you for sharing. And also in terms of entrepreneurship, doing your own thing, like talk us through like cocktail in a box, when I first read this on your LinkedIn. Oh, what's that all about? Tell us, how did that come into fruition mate?
Carl Ritchie Yes. So this was a bit more glamorous than cleaning outside. I was at restaurants at two a.m. in the morning, but it basically began when I was at university and I was doing my degree in business today. And again, at the same time, I still had that sort of itch or bug, to start out a new project. And there was always little things going on but start something big. And it was around that time where, like, the subscription economy was coming out, I think, well, Graze had just launched and they were becoming a huge thing.
And there was a number of different companies doing cocktail kits. And my idea was somewhat different in that it would take what a traditional kit would be like a single cocktail or a couple of cocktails. My idea, was a different use case where you could have one kit that would provide everything you need to host a cocktail kit hosted-cocktail party with your friends. And it really began just from that idea and initially just bringing together everything it would need in like one cardboard box.
And it really started out very scrappy and base level. And initially we did some tests which were a lot more fun than testing out like different cleaning materials anyway. And yeah, really just started building up the branding. I did everything around, basically just on Microsoft Word and Excel reached out to a few different packaging companies. At the time, my dad was doing importing routes from Istanbul as well. So we found out some packaging manufacturers in Turkey that we could actually import to the UK to make these cocktail-kits
And we initially just launched. So it was very grassroots base level starting from nothing and just trying to, you know, grasp how one at a time and reach out to different people and eventually started to sell them all across the UK and run that for a number of years. And then a couple of years ago, I ended up selling that business.
Neil Bhuiyan Wow. Wow. I love this. A couple of points there that I loved is obviously the launch of the subscription economy. And it's Mad to think 10 years ago I was that SDR in London that was actually getting the word out for subscription economy whilst working at Zuora.
+Overcoming challenges in the business world [00:11:21.760]
Neil Bhuiyan And you said you're doing it with mates, it's a grassroots business and you actually sold the business, which is freaking amazing as well. One question I'd love to ask you is like obviously with people that have ideas, they kind of want to grow and do their own businesses. A lot of our friends may sometimes look at us like you're nuts, like get real, get with reality. Come on, you got to, you know, just go get a job to university and just do kind of what we're all doing. Were there any sort of challenges that you found from your friends or how did they kind of support you in these ambitions and aspirations that you had?
Carl Ritchie Yeah, it's a really good question, I think. There are always going to be challenges like whether you start it on when you're 18 years old or whether you started when you're 50 years old and you've got lots of industry experience, there's always going to be challenges. So there's no harm in having those lessons early and just getting started. You know, it also doesn't take a huge amount of investment or money or necessarily time to actually get anything launched. What you just need to do is really put in the effort.
You don't have to put in thousands and thousands of pounds of tools out there and many, many stories of people just starting with Excel and some of the free trials of different software tools that are out there creating mock ups. And there's a huge amount of stories that you can listen to around that as well. And that's always something that's sort of stuck with me. This is a actually the VP of Growth at G2. Jesse Rowe has an incredible story where his whole philosophy is launch first and build second.
And so he will launch these ideas and get huge amounts of subscriptions and attention and then actually go out to build it. And he's got that validation first. And that's a philosophy that really resonates with me, is launch it first and then if it sticks, you can figure out all the pieces and build the plane as you're going down. So there's always going to be challenges from from day one. But, you know, in my mind, that's part of the fun.
Neil Bhuiyan I couldn't agree more with you man. And obviously, if you do have any links to that, I'll be happy to do for the listeners is to put it in the show notes of the Podcast. So, again, if we can help anybody out there that's sitting there thinking, you know what, I want to do what Carl did, I want to try it out, I'd say 100 percent go for it. And you're right, mate. Sometimes you don't need to have thousands or millions of pounds or lots of tools and stuff.
I remember it was only back in 2017. When I sit in on my mother's living room floor, all I had was my MacBook and I literally opened up Microsoft Word and said, this is what I want to do. I want to do sales training. I want to make SDRs happy and I had no idea how the hell I was going to do it. But I just launched my company and said, hey, I'm an SDR Trainer and three years later I'm still doing it and I'm very grateful for that.
+ Mastering entrepreneurship [00:14:09.920]
Neil Bhuiyan So I couldn't agree with you more. And obviously learning from great minds, inspirational leaders, etc.. In your experience, like with the UCL, the degree that you did on entrepreneurship, what was that all about and what was that journey like for you?
Carl Ritchie Yeah, so UCL masters and Entrepreneurship was really something that brought me in after I'd finished my degree in business studies. And the whole spin on this Masters is that it taught much more on the practical side rather than the necessarily just academic side of being an entrepreneur. Right. And all of the teachers have been then they'd built businesses and they created these things. And that was really the inspiration for me. It was to learn a lesson from these amazing people who have actually been there and done the right, rather than necessarily just someone who's studied the practical is someone who's actually sort of got the bruises and the scars.
And that was an incredible opportunity to learn from these people who've been there and done that, whether that was in marketing and building up different tests that you can run or whether that was around different financial models and early stage business models and how you can test them. It was a really great opportunity for learn to learn from people who had been there and done that. And that was really what drew me into it, was the practical side of it.
Neil Bhuiyan Cool, with those people that you learn from, are you still in touch with them? Do you have any discussions with them? So how do you keep up to date with them?
Carl Ritchie Yeah, absolutely. And one of the amazing things is that because the course is designed around the practical side of how do you actually build a business that attracts a certain type of people who are looking to build businesses and still made some amazing friends that I'm able to stay in touch with. And now some have gone on to build businesses or building careers and amazing companies. So, yeah, again, similar to, I guess like an MBA type of thing, one of the most valuable things is the network that you build up while you're there and still made some incredible friends and able to keep in touch with them as they go on to build different things and live their lives across every continent on the planet is still still able to keep in touch, thanks to things like LinkedIn and the Messenger.
Neil Bhuiyan I really agree with you, dude. And I think when I was coming up when I was younger as well, making those connections with the different companies you work for people that are doing certain things in the same field as you I'd always add them up on LinkedIn. I'd always be interested in what they do and what the beautiful thing is when you do actually go launch your own business. Some of these people will actually may be the people that you're going to be working with in companies that you found and, you know, help you grow your vision.
I think with Happy Selling in the last year or so, at least 10 different people that I've worked with in different companies are now helping me build up this business as well 100 percent agree. Keep networking, keep connecting. And the thing that I once got told is I'll always be careful with your secrets in your business. Don't share with people. And I found it's the opposite. I think the more you share, people share your vision and ideas with people, the more they can either validate it.
Neil Bhuiyan They can give feedback to help you grow it. And that's also from a personal development point of view as an SDR always wanting to get feedback from people like is my messaging on point? What do you think about this pitch? Or even if I was like working for a company and I spoke to a mate that worked in SaaS and said, look, I just want to give you a demo not to sell to your company. I just want to get your feedback on how you think I'm pitching, you know?
So I love to hear that.
+ Carl and G2 [00:17:42.530]
Neil Bhuiyan And with yourself like you've kind of moved in, you moved into G2 crowd as well. Like, how did you come across G2 crowd and how did you get involved with them?
Carl Ritchie Yeah, great question. And it was around the time that I was finishing up my journey through Zinc, which was a startup incubator in London based around creating social enterprises. I was coming to the end of that cohort and looking for opportunities, and it was around that same time that G2 was launching its first international office. So we just raised funding earlier in the year. Around December time, they were looking to launch and go international and it was around May, June that they were looking to create this office and the team here in Europe.
And I was able to be connected with them through an amazing recruitment company in London called Venatrix, who open up sales opportunities for new graduates. And it was through that that first got us in touch with G2 and Enrique and the team there and really became inspired by what they were building and the journey that they were on and being able to learn from this incredible leader. So that was something that really drew me into the opportunity with him
Neil Bhuiyan Wicked, and that, so obviously with Venatrix, I think i know somebody there, Sophie Allen, she's a great recruiter. I can highly recommend her as well. I've worked with her on a few projects. When you came into G2 crowd like you're sitting there, you're going through your onboarding. And I remember speaking to Corey, went out to the US and he found that really cool. What was your whole onboarding experience like? Could you walk us through? What did you do through onboarding?
Carl Ritchie Yeah, I had a really interesting onboarding and I was probably slightly different than a lot of other peoples because my first day in G2 was in Chicago in their Head office. So I was lucky enough to be able to have flown out to Chicago and have my first weeks onboarding training in the HQ in Chicago, which is incredible, is one of the first times I'd really been in the US and experienced that. So it was an amazing opportunity to learn from the team and sort of experience the culture.
You know, it's tough, especially as a company goes international and you don't really get the face time necessarily with with an international team once you actually get to be there and be in front of them. And, you know, and chat, then it's really incredible. You get, like, fully immersed in it. And I do remember on during my first week, I went out there with some of the team members who had been a G2 for a number of weeks.
And they'd also got a lot more sales experience. They were in account executive roles and they were asking questions around different types of sales cycles and Salesforce reports. And I do remember being sat there thinking I have no idea what's going on right now.
But you quickly learn, right? So it was an interesting time during that first week, a steep learning curve, but yeah, definitely an interesting onboarding experience.
Neil Bhuiyan I love it, if I think back when I went out to my first start up, I went to the US, I went to San Fran. I remember as soon as I stepped out of San Francisco International Airport and just seeing the size of the roads, the size of the cars, it was so noisy and I was just like, oh, my God, where the hell am I? This is not Blighty and similar yourself like me in the seasoned veterans in SaaS.
They've been selling. They know their stuff and they're talking about CRM reports and meetings and all that. I did feel really intimidated and I just like I have no idea what the hell I'm doing. How did I get here? Am I winging it? And like you said, you learn very quickly over time.
+ Onboarding tips [00:21:27.150]
Neil Bhuiyan So if there are any other SDRs, that are kind of like listening right now. There are about just you know, they've got their SDR job. They're about to go onboarding and what kind of tips would you give to them, like in those first two weeks?
Carl Ritchie Yeah, it's a really great question. I think in the first two weeks, there's a couple of things that you can do. Number one, one is just being curious and asking questions. There is no value in sitting there confused and just letting time pass, like ask questions and trying uncover answers to get things right in your head, because eventually you're going to have to know these things anyway. So better to ask the questions early and get the understanding than to sit there confused for a number of days, which I think I may have done definitely for my first few days in Chicago.
So definitely ask questions is something I'd recommend. And then number two, one of the best things that. I experienced at my time when I was on boarding in G2 was reach out to other people across the business, whether that's just someone who's in sales executive role in a different section, maybe they sell to a different geography or a different industry, whether that's any of the leadership team. And you just want to grab 10 minutes to maybe pick their brains and ask a few questions or whether it was someone in a completely different department, maybe selling to marketing or you sell into HR teams try and sit down with them and just have a conversation and you'd be surprised how open people will be.
Carl Ritchie Like, it's very easy to think of someone who's coming into the business like, oh, I don't want to bother any of the leadership, they're not going to want to speak to me, but in reality, they're here to help you. That's what their Job is, what they want to do. And so the best thing you can do is actually be proactive and reach out to them. And they're going to love that. You've done that as well.
Neil Bhuiyan I think you said a very, very key point here, like not only just speaking to Sales leadership and obviously the sales team and marketing team, but like you said, if you're selling into HR, if you're selling into marketing, you have those teams internally in your own business. So I think what would be ideal for an SDR to sit in front of their Prospects one day and ask him every question they want to do without the fear of offending them or making them think this is all about sales.
+ Staying connected at G2 [00:23:41.730]
Neil Bhuiyan That's beautiful. I think that's a really good point on there as well. And obviously, a few months more in like how do you keep up to date with these different departments? Like, do you guys, like, have lunch and leans? Do you do catch ups? And how do you stay connected with G2?
Carl Ritchie Yeah. So every month we do sort of all hands meetings where the marketing team would run through everything they have had gone on for the previous month, everything that they've got planned for the next month. We have similar things with the product team and then we'll have whole company ones as well where they will share what's happening with the whole company overall and then also different directions that are being pushed forward as well. So we do have those sorts of overall organized meetings, but then at the same time is good to reach out to these people.
Again, no one's getting like no one's going to say, why did you reach out to me? I don't want to waste my time. If you just reach out and say, hey and looking for a chat and maybe ask a couple of questions, maybe just to pick their brains, nobody's going to turn the offer down. And so I would always encourage you to reach out to these people again, build up your network, build up your experience, ask questions that you're curious about, and it will only be beneficial.
+ Time management: how not to be overwhelmed [00:24:55.120]
Neil Bhuiyan Love it, thank you so much. Another question that I wanted to pick up on is when you're reaching out to people and internally, we may be slammed. I remember in my own boarding when I opened my first Gmail inbox. There were hundreds of emails and then my SDR Manager saying, OK, so we're connected through this communication tool, that was way before slack. But even joining companies that are using Slack things are pinging off all the time and it always feel really overwhelmed. Like there's so many messages in my inbox is going nuts and I haven't responded to this invite. And this person has asked me they want to have a one to one session with me. How do you deal with, like, the constant information flow of stuff coming in day after day? How do you handle that Carl?
Carl Ritchie Yeah, again, really interesting question, Neil, because I think that time management is one of the most important things that you will learn very early on in your career, and particularly in the world of sales, where your time is everything and you can decide really how you spend that time, whether it's on trying to build up your network, social selling or, reaching out to Prospects or trying to build up your knowledge base. There's so much that you can do that it's very, very easy to be busy without necessarily moving forward, necessarily making progress.
And so it's really important to focus on your time management. I know my first manager here at G2, Mike Conte, really focused on that and trying to help us understand how we actually spend our time and how can we best spend our time. And so the way I run it at the minute Is, I handle inbounds' and Outbounds' here at G2. So I'll separate my days based on Inbound and Outbound, do three outbound days a week, Two inbound days a week. That really helps just me stay in that mentality of whether this is someone is approaching G2 or I'm trying to reach out to them.
And then within those days I'll segment it, whether it's sections specifically for calls whether that's cold calling or organized calls, I have whether that certain times for meetings and then also time for personal development. You know, particularly over the past six months, we've seen everyone's there's so many Podcasts out there. There's so many webinars, there's so much information. And companies really are churning out a huge amount of knowledge that's incredibly valuable, that it's really important to stay on top of that as best as you can.
So carving out that time for personal development, whether it's just your knowledge base or like you mentioned, sit down with a colleague and say, hey, I'd love to run through just a demo with you, have you got half an hour, you know, we'll spend twenty minutes, can you ten minutes worth of feedback. Everyone's going to say yes to that and that's always going to be valuable. So focus on your time management, I think is something that's a really important lessons learned.
+ Don’t forget to focus on personal development [00:27:38.720]
Neil Bhuiyan I'd be really interested to know Carl, what kind of things do you guys up to in terms of personal development?
Carl Ritchie Yeah, there's a number of different things. And just speaking to that point, Neil, I totally agree. And finding out what works best for you in terms of carving out that time, whether it's that first half an hour of a day where, you know, you're going to be super switched on and you can ingest that or, for me, I find that 6pm is the best time. I've got everything I need to do all the way. I can really focus on that person's development.
So find that time is individual and find out what works for you is really an important step. And then within that, it can be a number of different things, whether it's focusing on my sales skills, that could be just a theory and reading around different books or one of the best things is role plays. It's really scary role plays, particularly if you're doing it with a colleague or a manager. It can be really scary to take that jump but for me, that's what I found to be the most impactful in terms of my learning.
You know, you only going to learn as well as when you're doing the real thing. And so when you're doing it with a manager, you really do you really do absorb a lot of information. So I would recommend role plays. And then outside of that, of course, is a number of different books that I can recommend, things like "Let's get real or Let's Not Play at all" is a fantastic book around consultive sales process. or "Gap Selling" and then any Podcast around your ICP, your ideal customer profile.
Carl Ritchie So for me it's marketing. There's a number of different Locked-in leadership Podcasts that I would recommend. But for your world, if that's a CFO and there's Podcasts, CFOs listen to, I'd recommend that as well.
Neil Bhuiyan Solid advice, my man, I really love it. And with those great books that you've mentioned, I'll definitely make sure that I put that in the footnotes of the show as well. And obviously, to be honest with you, I can honestly see you on this entrepreneurial journey even after G2, like in the future.
I definitely know I'm going to be seeing you running some big company one day. A lot of us go into sales because we want to learn sales skills like closing negotiation, the art of Prospecting and stuff. But for you what non-sales skills, would you like to learn from your experience of working at G2 and doing a sales role?
Carl Ritchie Yeah, it's a really interesting question for me, you know, the longer vision, like you mentioned, is around entrepreneurship and building up a business.
And so there's so much that feeds into that. I think sales is a really central part to it. And so that is a key part of my focus. But then outside of that, there's almost everything, whether it's management and leadership and working in teams or whether it's around product development and launching products or go to market strategies with marketing. So there's a huge amount around it. I think the number one thing outside of sales would be product development and learning how, you know, something is actually created and then launched.
So focusing on, well, one thing that happens at G2 is they have a labs where they will test out these new ideas and then run these tests and then launch them. And the learning that experience and being involved with that is something that's really impactful. And it's taught me a huge amount.
Neil Bhuiyan I love it, and I think to your point, sitting in those internal meetings, even if it isn't related to your actual role, I think it's really nice to sit on them because those are literally the blueprints of how to do it.
Like the reason I've jumped from company to company to company over the years was at Zuora; I wanted to learn about the subscription economy. We had to sell to the five guys in the room or five ladies in the room. So be the CEO, the CMO, the CTO, the CIO and the CFO. If we knew how to sell to these people, you've got a killer business, especially if you're running subscriptions. I remember when I went to work for Intuo, it was a HR platform.
Neil Bhuiyan So I'm understanding how to do change management, how to understand working with employees, how to do a proper one to one with you or your team members as well. And I think when I worked for a company called Zerista, it was in the event tech space. So understanding how marketeers command the message, how they draw crowds in and how they collect all those lovely leads at trade shows, etc.. I wanted to go for them not just because I wanted to make a paycheck, but I wanted to learn how to do it.
And I think you're in a fantastic company because, I know of Goddard, like when I was in SDR and he first accepted my LinkedIn request. Oh my God, he's a SaaS God. He's a veteran. Definitely going to be learning a lot from him. And when I saw G2 like launching, I was so happy. And to kind of meet you through here as well, like, I think you're definitely in the right place, mate. And as mentioned, I'm calling it now that one day I'm going to see your face something on a huge product and you're going to be running this entrepreneurial journey as well.
Neil Bhuiyan And if you ever need any help, dude, and you want some advice, or you want to soundboard with somebody, you can do that with me as well. But for the listeners out there that are going to be following you on your journey after this Podcast, what's the best way to get in touch with Carl Ritchie?
Carl Ritchie Yeah, the best way will be to reach out and LinkedIn Carl Ritchie.
+ Carl’s key takeaways [00:32:59.760]
Neil Bhuiyan Yeah, I'll put that in the show notes if you want to connect with him. So as we're coming to the end of a great discussion and one hundred percent believe you, you're going to be a guest on this show in the future, what three bits of advice would you give to the Carl Ritchie who is just about to start his SDR journey to help him out.
Carl Ritchie Sure, so the number one thing for me is experiment, try different things at different times, different points in the different people, different things will resonate, whether that's your messaging, whether that's your subject line, whether that's just your approach in the different channels that you try out different things.
I think one of the things that I learned at G2, which is I guess somewhat controversial in the world of BDR, is that the way I've seen my most successes is maybe reducing the amount of touch points I have with each contact, but then increasing the number of contacts. So I'm able to reach out to more people and I have less touch points with each that way I actually see more meetings coming through and so I see more success that way.
So it is somewhat controversial. But it is the lesson that I learned just through trying out different things? Right. And there is also a low end to that scale. You don't go too few, but you try different things and see what works is number one thing I'd recommend number two is that Sales is really consulting like at the end of the day, I initially going into it had the whole perception of sales is just trying to push things on people and it's very traditional.
But in reality it's been consultative. Right. Finding out what problems people have and how you can actually help them. And if your product can really solve and help the business drive forward, then that's the most important thing. So really go in with a consultative mindset and then finally just be human. You know, it's just another person sat the other end of that laptop, on that phone. There's no need to try and be over robotic or over-automate everything.Just be a human being and try and help people out with their business.
Neil Bhuiyan You got, I think, all those three things I 100 percent agree with, and I was speaking to somebody on a LinkedIn post where we were talking about what is sales, and we came to the conclusion that sales is the byproduct of great human interaction between two people. And it's something that I say to SDRs like you may get on that phone, you may get that email response, and you get really nervous there, just like you and me, that just the person they either a brother or sister or a mom or a dad or a friend of somebody.
And they all go home at the end of the day and watch TV and have dinner together, et cetera.
So don't ever put somebody up on a pedestal and don't ever put yourself below somebody as well. We're all trying to do the same thing and make our mark in this world so solid bits of advice.
Well, look, I wanted to say thank you so much for joining and imparting your knowledge. I'm definitely going to be watching you with a close eye, my friend, with great things to come. And thank you for being a guest on on The SDR DiscoCall Podcast, Carl.
Carl Ritchie Thank you, Neil. I really enjoyed it.
Neil Bhuiyan Happy Selling.