Get Pitched! Ep.3

Welcome to Episode 3 of Get Pitched! The show where SDRs cold call mystery prospects and try to book a meeting in 1 minute flat!

Get Pitched! Ep.3 👇

Congrats to our three killer SDRs! Make sure to connect with them here ⬇️

Austin Jouett

Liam Walton

Luka Stojicevic

Do you have what it takes to book a prospect in 1 minute? 📞

👉 DM me and we'll bring you on the next episode! 🎥

☎️ Pitched Debrief - Interview with Jack Knight

Who is Jack Knight?

SDR leader by day, start-up founder by night, new boy-dad by... does this guy ever sleep?

Jack is a servant leader, supporting SDRs not only to achieve quota but also to achieve career success. When he's not leading his team at Fourth to new heights, he's either spending time with his 6-month-old or building CallBlitz as a first-time founder.

Were you always a big fan of hitting the phones when you first started or did you have to learn to love the art of cold calling?

"I had to learn to love it. When I first came in I actually came in selling enterprise SaaS to the government. And guess who doesn't like to be cold called? People in the military! They don't want to talk to you. And we didn't even lean into the phones as heavily when I first started but over time I just saw the core of what we are trying to achieve is human-to-human conversation. The fastest way to a human conversation is that person on the other end of the phone. And really more as a coach is when I fell in love with the art of cold calling and being able to help reps navigate that."

Specifically looking at your time as BD Manager at Clearbit - What do you think were the key improvements you made for the team to see that type of success?

"Well, you don't succeed on your own. It takes a village of people willing to believe in you and invest in you."

"I had great mentors all through my career. I had great teams around me, people who pushed me. So you're not going to do it alone. Surround yourself with people better than you. But specifically at Clearbit - what we did a good job of was really getting down to the data. This job is simple - not easy, but it's simple. You're supposed to do four things in this job: reach out to people, get them to reply, book meetings with those who reply, and make sure the meetings you book are qualified. So you can break this job down into four conversions... So what we did at Clearbit is break this funnel down left to right, and come up with every reason why a metric might be affected within each piece of the funnel.

So if you're trying to reach out to people and you're not reaching out to enough people - let's look at your workflow. Let's look at how you structure your day. Let's look at cadence and flow structure - is it too much manual work? If you're not converting qualified meetings - let's recap with your AE what they're looking for. Let's reassess if we are bringing in the right people. So you can build a four-step funnel and come up with every factor that can affect and impact that metric and coach to that."

Could you talk a bit about what goes into being a servant leader and what are some ways other managers can also express this philosophy with their team?

"I'll start from where it comes from - Candedley it comes from my faith. I follow Jesus and he said that he came not to be served but to serve. And so I follow his model. The way that turns into the business world is if you look at an org chart - you can actually flip that. Leadership is up and everyone reports up to them. Well, we actually flip it. We say I'm your leader, I'm here to serve you and empower you. That leads to much better outcomes and success in an SDR organization."

How’s it been being a first-time founder and building a company from the ground up while also coaching a first-time SDR?

"It's a lot and you have to make sacrifices. I'm sure it looks sexy from the outside being an SDR leader and founder. It's not that sexy, I promise. You don't wake up at 4:30 am with a six-month-old baby and life stuff going on without putting in the work. No one is going to do it for you. Another thing I've learned just founding a business is that it's not going to go as well as you think it is. It's going to be really hard and you're going to have a lot of headwinds. And you just have to have that eternal optimist mindset of not seeing it as a failure, instead seeing it as a lesson of what you learned and implementing for the future.

And when it comes to coaching, I give her [CallBlitz's SDR] 45 minutes in the morning before the work day starts because I have a day job and I want to respect that. But 45 minutes a day isn't enough coaching. So we've been working on some solutions there to bring her more coaching when I'm not around."

Any advice or lessons for SDRs looking to make the jump to leadership the same way you did earlier in your career? 

"I said yes to every single opportunity that came my way. I also asked for opportunities to do the job to get the job. Your performance is No. 1 though. You will have no street cred, no respect, no ear from your leadership if you're not performing. So perform, and if your numbers are good go to your manager and say - Hey, that thing you do with us every Monday, are you good if I actually run that session for you so you can go take care of XYZ. And your manager will probably say sure, because they want you to have an opportunity. So just go make those opportunities for yourself while keeping performance your No.1."

Wonderful time having Jack on the show with us this week. Thank you again for joining us and dropping your wisdom on SDR leadership! Make sure to connect and follow Jack Knight ⚔️

If you want to guest star on our next episode of Get Pitched! send me a DM!

- Dom Odoguardi

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