Mastering Modern Sales Strategies_ From LinkedIn Outreach to Closing Deals

Priyanka: Okay. I think we are live. There is a 10 second lag. So we'll, we might have to just wait for some responses from the audience. If everybody can hear us. Then please give us a heads up so that we just we don't end up in a situation where we are talking and nobody's listening to us.

I think Tripali has commented and thanks. Thanks for joining in. 

Debdutta: Yeah, I can see that. Yes.

Priyanka: Okay. Can any of you hear us loud and clear, there is no audio issues, video issues, hopefully.

Debdutta: Go for it. 

Priyanka: Cool. Okay. Very nice. Amazing. So thank you guys for joining in and and I'm extremely excited to host this. This is probably the first live where I have not talked to the guest before. So this is probably the same Google Meet talks that me and Dave has, Dave have done.

Several times and we're just going live with the the, our conversations this time. So I'll just introduce him. I think everybody would know Dave. He's quite a celebrity on LinkedIn and he has a YouTube channel. And yeah, I think he does a lot of other things also helps out people. And yeah, in sales, in in breaking out into SaaS companies.

So essentially he's a senior BDR at Sixth Sense. Sixth Sense happens to be one of our technical partners. We have partnered with them to give account discovery and intent data. So yeah. And I have Dave with me today to talk about why he's such a great salesperson. Welcome.

Thank you for having 

Debdutta: me. Thank you. Thank you. 

Priyanka: Thank you so much for these jokes 

Debdutta: as a basic question, I guess I got but yeah, I'm super excited. This is my first live session and I have got opportunity to see a couple of factors live session and those are really great insightful sessions. 

Priyanka: Yeah. Is it like this?

You're saying so 

Debdutta: that I have generally been on live sessions of factors. Cool. 

Priyanka: Anyway nice having you here and yeah, like I always say that LinkedIn, I've never met Dave in my entire life. We just connected over LinkedIn and that was even before we were in talks with 6 and for partnership or anything, no connection at all, except that we were working in a SaaS company. And we were writing on LinkedIn. So that's how we met. And we have had so many conversations. offline, on chat whenever I have to, when I was in sales, when I had to hire some people, I always used to go to Deb.

I knew that you would have somebody who will be there for a higher. So yeah that's enough about us. Then we'll go to the topic. And essentially we'll SaaS. salespeople and how generally sales as sales work, there are some things which are conventional in nature.

There are some things which are not very mainstream, but has to become mainstream given that we are just living in that times where, people are fed up of some very common sales practices and also as people who sell on a daily basis, how they they deal with rejections and even times where, you have so many deals flowing in and then there will be a time where you have no deals flowing in.

All of that we'll speak. So I'll just turn up with the very first basic question. It is list building and research, right? That is the first thing that any salesperson does anything that a sales manager also does. So how do you identify the person that you're going to reach out for a demo call or you have to sell your product?

Debdutta: 

Good question. So I feel list building is like one of the first and most effective and primary thing to do. And I've seen a lot of people, automate this stuff. But personally, if you talk about me, I love to build my list, manually, you can say, still like old school. And the reason because when I'm building that list, no.

I do my, all my research on the prospects on the accounts so that when I am actually selling or cold calling emailing, I don't have to go back to the account because that will break my flow. So I will spend a good amount of time to research, all my prospects, accounts, and how will I build my list.

So I'll just give you an example of how I do it at Sixth Sense. So here again, Sixth Sense helps me to build the list because of the platform that it has to offer. And I build a list based on triggering events. Now, what are triggering events? Let's suppose for 6Sense I go after companies. Who are hiding SDRs and maybe they're using tech stack like salesforce or like sales loft.

So I'll take this triggering events and then build a list of companies who falls under this triggering events. So it kinds of makes my life a lot easy because I know what to say, how to say what to write in emails when I pitch to the prospects. So I move with my triggering events. Then also when I figure out which is the right people to target.

So here's also a way to do that. Let's suppose if I'm reaching out to companies so I reach out to companies, mostly startups, SMBs, and sometimes mid market. So when it goes to like mid markets and enterprise, you will have different teams, right? You will have enterprise teams, you will have teams based on geographies.

So you have to understand, let's suppose I am reaching out to companies because they are hiring SDS in the UK market. So obviously reach out to the SDM manager that is presently the UK, not in the U. S. So you have to be very mindful for these little things also, because if you don't take these things into consideration, what will happen, you might write the best email, you might do the best poll call, but that won't be relevant to your prospects.

So it takes a good amount of time to build those lists, target the right people. Maybe I want to target the managers, not the VPs, because again, their priorities will be very different, even though they may be with the same triggering event. The practice will be very different. Above the line prospect, below the line prospect, all those stuff I'll do.

I'll make sure my list is 100 percent relevant to the prospect I'm reaching out to. And that's how I start my, work when I do outbound prospecting. 

Priyanka: Again, very basic question. How much time do you actually spend on this? Do you do this weekly or daily or how? 

Debdutta: Mostly at the start of the week, Monday, like it will be my like when I start my work, the first thing I do is sit like good one hour, build a list, for different triggering events.

And as I move down the week like every day put people in that sequence or in that list, you can see that list basically. Monday will be the time when I'll spend more, most of my time on the list building stuff. And then on, on the regular days, I'll just put, find a few companies or no, add more people in my sequence so that it goes on.

Priyanka: You use the term triggering events, right? So what do you mean by that yeah. 

Debdutta: I'll tell you what basically these are events that you get to know out, like sitting outside what is happening in a company and that triggers you to reach out to this company. So when we do outbound, the basic or the first question that a prospect asked, Who are you?

And why are you calling me? So that we answer the why? 

Priyanka: Yeah, he's like that. He's like that meme. Who are 

Debdutta: you? Exactly. They will always think, Hey, who is this one? This person calling me out of the blue. And why is this person calling me right now? So I'll tell you I'm from this company.

This is my name. And this is the reason I'm calling you. So why the reason is basically the triggering events. 

Priyanka: That's a great thing that you can pick the pick up these trigger events inside Sixth Sense and even generally through if you're active in communities or all of that. So being aware mentally is also one, one thing.

Now coming to the part where, how you reach out, right? Okay. Before we go to the question, one thing I wanted to talk to the audience is that we'll take questions towards the end. So we'll talk less. And I think harsh had a lot of questions.

Yeah. I can't see who's there. like YouTube where you can see who's there. So yeah, he has a lot of questions. He has warned us. So we'll take his questions. Now it's Priyanka's turn to ask questions. Yeah. So now coming to how you reach out to this list that you make of course there is email email then there is cold calling.

And these days there is a a new thing I wouldn't say new thing, but yeah it's just not how traditionally sales people work is LinkedIn outreach. And social setting. So how is your process? How does your process look like 

Debdutta: I'll add another channel to this that is community.

Yeah. So I reach out to people through slack communities, sometimes through WhatsApp communities. I am I'm, I love LinkedIn. I have booked. Most of my meetings through LinkedIn, maybe because I'm building a personal brand. That is a plus point for me. But if you talk about like I use all the channels for outbound, I feel it.

You should use all the channels, like even if you can use SMS, do that, because, it's very hard to get hold of your prospects. And if you don't use all the channels that is there at your end, you will be at loss. But again, you should make sure that you're not spamming prospects and those, all those channels should have a meaning to it.

Like your email, the way you're reaching out to prospects on email should be different from LinkedIn DM should be different from cold call. And you don't know that. Okay. My primary challenge can be email or cold call but LinkedIn slack communities are like channels that is helping me to, nudge this prospect and say, Hey, I'm there, prospecting you, or maybe I've sent you an email.

Can you just look at something like that? So there should be two or one or two primary channel and rest of the channels can be there to assist you basically. 

Priyanka: Got it. Got it. So now let's go to the channels itself, right? We'll go one by one. There's email, then there's cold call.

Then there is LinkedIn outreach and other community outreach, right? So first is how do you craft compelling emails? For for your prospect, I am I'm sure that, sure there is personalization, right? Everybody knows that, but what do you add to it as a very successful sales person?

Debdutta: Yeah. So before writing an email I want to think from the point of my prospect that for me, it's like one email for that process, like one of the thousand emails, right? So I want to be, so I want to be very a point short talking about why I'm reaching out. And maybe if I can write the email on like on a basic 50 to 60 words very simple English, no jargon words, even though I know that person may understand the jargon words, but understand they are not reading your email.

Skimming through all this email that you're writing. So that is my first mindset. Now, my framework, it's a pretty famous framework. I guess you have heard about this framework. It is there on LinkedIn. I learned this from from the founder of Lavender that his name is Will Aldred. So the framework looks something like this observation, problem tied to the observation solution that you're offering.

Then interest based CT. Just four steps. That's it. So observation is again, a triggering event, like why am I reaching out to this icon? Then maybe what happens when someone, let's suppose the triggering event is hiding HDRs. So what happens in a company or what? A company faces problem and they start looking for a, his sdr r hiring.

They want to ramp their sdr r they want their SDR to get high intent accounts. So these are problems they're seeking, like they fell into and they want to seek their answers. So that is a problem Tied to the observation and solution is like how six can help there. Maybe provide one or two value pro or maybe one or two social proofs.

to build credibility and then interest based CTM. Now, what is an interest based CTM? It's like not asking for a time. Like asking for a time is like proposing someone for marriage on a first date. So asking for like interest with CTA relatable.

Yeah. So one of my favorite right now working CTA is can I send you a one minute video? It's a very easy yes or no, Send me if you like it, I'll move forward. If I don't like it, I'll say no to you. And for me, it is very easy to figure out who is this prospect giving me replies and all the stuff.

So right now I use this CTR call. Can I show you a one minute video? How can we solve X, Y, Z, or can I show you a one minute, one minute video? How six sense can do this for you? Yeah. This is actually a 

Priyanka: relationship. Yeah. 

Debdutta: Starting conversation. Also on your first email it's very important that you're.

Even domain health doesn't go at risk. So getting more replies on your first email, it actually helps your domain health ultimately, which will help your deliverability and all the stuff, 

Priyanka: right? Absolutely. So what we have seen in general is that the personalization is, oh I observed you are an SS d r at Six Sense.

Debdutta: That's such a low effort personalization. Like I observed that you are a like senior sales leader at x Y. I you should put some thoughts on your on yourself like working as a senior leader at this company, I feel you might be facing something that you should provide your point of view. And yeah, I have got this kind of personalization always I see that you're a senior media at six.

I'm also a senior media at x, y,

Priyanka: z. No, so Chanchal has asked one thing just because it's related. I'm taking now. What are your share top five channels that you can share. 

Debdutta: Yeah, good questions. And so my top five would be like I started my career prospecting on LinkedIn when I had no idea how to prospect on LinkedIn, honestly, but I got better on that channel.

So LinkedIn email community, because On communities, you get very high and hot intent prospects. So community and cold call, I would pick the fourth one because one of the reason like I feel like cold calls are great if you can do it in a great way, but not everyone is very, except Tim's of, getting cold calls, like you get rejections and people hang up on your face and all this stuff.

So for that I do cold calls and I obviously do it needed, I allow to do it on first. But if you give me a chance, I'll go in this way, LinkedIn email, community, then we'll call. 

Priyanka: Got it. Got it. Understood. Cool. Now we can move on to the next question that I have now yet from the, on the cold call side only like you said, a lot of people are extremely good at.

But one thing with cold calls is that there is a pre anxiety where you are like, what will I say, right? And then there is a post anxiety if you get rejected, you're totally crestfallen. And again, that cycle repeats, right? You don't want to go for the next one. Thing, you said that, you know what, I'll just text them on LinkedIn

or I'll just email you overcome that? 

Debdutta: So it took me a time a lot of time to overcome this because I just sit and before my cold call sessions, I just literally sit and think, okay, if I do this, like this. And if something like this happens, what that person will think, and then I had my, I spoke with my manager.

I spoke with a lot of people who had who was, who were there in the industry for a long time. And I got one answer that see for you it is important because you are doing this cold calls. You will remember those cold calls, but for that person, it doesn't matter. It's like one of those, a hundred cold calls they get, they won't remember your name, what you have done, if you have done anything, wrong or something like you messed up your pitch. They won't remember. You can cold call them again like two days later and it will be same. So that mindset shift, that no one is thinking about you. No one cares about you. That is, that helped me a lot. So in right now, whenever I do my cold calls I have this one mindset that I'll do my best.

I'll control what I can control from my end that is dialing and whenever someone picks up I'll be at my best, like pitching them or asking them the right questions. If they don't have time, if it's not if they don't have interest, if they hang up on my face, these are all things that I can control.

I, it won't bother me. And also it's, I know it's really easy to say right now. But yeah, I have been through that process. Another thing it's might sound silly, but initially when I started doing cold calls, I should reward myself. Now, how do I just to do that? Let's suppose I, I should tell myself that today I'll do, let's say 30 cold calls, 30 calls, I'll die.

And if I complete those things, I'll reward myself after those cold calls, anything.

That's how it helps me to, go through the session of cold calling. And later, if I complete that, I know some reward is waiting for me. Those are the initial days, how you start, how you control your anxiety, all that stuff. Right now, after doing this for two years, more than two years, I feel I just go and do my cold calls and all

Priyanka: that stuff. That's great, actually. And generally, turning objections into opportunities gracefully. It's a skill which only comes through, practice, yeah, practice and a sense of internalized confidence, right? Like it's okay. If I don't get into this, I don't get this person on the, on a demo.

I'll move on. I'll get someone else. Yeah. And I talked to Sarah from sales robot, right? Like the. The one where they have the basically sales sa sales for in LinkedIn, right? They automate everything right and all of that for LinkedIn. He told me very frankly, that to be good at sales, you need to be shameless.

That is the first requirement to be in sales and to be actually successful in sales. Yeah, that's actually. Yeah. Great advice. One more thing I'd also like to add to your rejections and cold call stuff, right? Some people actually freeze when they call the prospect, right? And by some people, it's me I'm telling my own story.

So I I think it's a part of the problem, right? People don't get that confidence because they have been rejected so many times. There is no way they'll think that today I'll maybe get, the person to speak. But that's not the case, right? Doesn't matter five people rejected you yesterday.

That doesn't mean you'll not get another five people to actually talk to you today. So how do you, again, another I'm saying that, how do you keep yourself sane while all of these happen? 

Debdutta: Yeah. So I feel what do you do after your work? What habits you have after work is very important. If you're in sales for me I would say my fitness routine my meditation and spending time with my family after work has helped me because it's usually rejections are bound to happen in sales.

Like you can be the greatest salesperson in the world and get rejected and it is bound to happen and it is not in your control. So keep yourself sane. I think I understand like we get anxiety when we don't hit our targets. We get anxiety when, we see that we lose one of our biggest deals maybe, and, but these things sometimes we can't control, right?

So I feel it's very important that you have a set of habits that you can that you implement outside your work. And it is very important to have one being good sleep. I'm telling this to myself. One being good sleep and apart from that, during, like in, in your work, what you can do, one of the best things practice, if you see good athletes I'm taking, I'm talking about like top athletes Virat Kohli, let's say I see Ronaldo, they practice insanely.

Like I've heard about Ronaldo, he goes to the ground first and leaves at the last. So the amount of practice he does at that age right now. And he's the best, we all know he's the best athlete, best football. So if you want to be the best salesperson, like you need to do a lot of practice, you need to do a lot of mock poll calls, more need to do a lot of mock DMs if you need to, have those skills at your end, because if you do those stuff, you will, when you actually go onto the pitch or, actually go do those calls in real life, you'll think, okay, I've done this a hundred times with my manager or with my colleagues.

I can pull this confidence out of those practice and I feel practice and coaching is very important. Like even right now I take, I actually take my weekends to learn new stuff, like all these AIs in sales coming up, I learn all this stuff. Because even though I have got some kind of experience, I know I need to implement new stuff because in sales something or the other changes every day, right now, what is a new cold call opener?

It will become, like it wouldn't be new. Let's say next quarter or next three, four months next or next year. Also, it'll be something that everyone is using. And that opener is now, it's now it's not something that is unique now. You have to implement something new opener or something new framework about emails.

So you have to implement and you have to, take yourself to the next level every time as a salesperson. 

Priyanka: Absolutely. I think one, one more thing to add to your thing is that. Even though sales is a very taxing job and nobody can teach you sales apart from yourself.

And then again, it comes to experience. It's an ever changing field. It's very dynamic. Yeah. And that's why people stick to it. If you are passionate about it it's a very interesting field to be rewarding. Yeah. Yeah. And very rewarding. That's true. Yeah. So we have got a lot of questions already, so I'll just ask one question and then I'll wrap it up from my side.

Again so one, one last question is that how have you generated a considerable and significant amount of deals from your social activity that you do and not outreach just inbound, right? So organic social as we call it in practice, have you done that for yourself 

Debdutta: significantly? I won't say it is significantly, but it is something that I am seeing in the recent past.

Like I've been creating content for now 1. 5 years now with consistent efforts. Right now, what I see people come to my DM and say, Hey, I want a six sense D a six sense demo. And that's an outbound for me because even though they are coming to me, but in my CRM, it's outbound, right? I, because of my visibility on LinkedIn of the content I put, and if you go on my LinkedIn, you will not see that.

I have put anything about six cents. Like I'm not selling six cents. I'm talking about my experience, my journey telling what is helping me in my sales career, any advice that is helping me and I'm actually trying to help people and through those efforts, people are coming to my profile, which is like landing page and they're seeing, okay, like he works at six cents, six cents does X, Y, Z.

And they think, okay, this is something we need. And that's how I am like. In past three months, I think in every month I've got at least two to three people prospects coming to my DM and saying, we need a, six sense demo. And that helps me, to overachieve these little, things actually helps me to overachieve every day.

my deals. These, I feel this is like right now a stepping stone, like having a personal brand, but also again, aligning your personal brand with your prospect or like your product audience. If it's matching, then it's like great combination. 

Priyanka: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it took you a lot of time to get that result, right?

Even though if you say it's not significant, two to three bonus points. It's still a lot. Yeah that's one. So we had factors located as inbound because direct traffic is and within that we have a drop down in our landing page saying that, where did they hear about us? We treat LinkedIn as an inbound channel, right?

And our SDRs do their other stuff. Because at one moment we were, we inbound. So we thought that this can be a channel to do that. It took a lot of time actually. And one more thing. Yeah. I understand with Sixth Sense is that this was your own initiative, right?

And it's very hard to coordinate amongst bigger companies. So if there is a startup who actually wants to start social selling and do that, I think the Refine Labs does it really well. It 

Debdutta: does, yeah. I follow a lot of people from Refine Labs. 

Priyanka: Yeah, refine labs. Then there is Lavender. 

Debdutta: How can you forget Lavender?

Lavender does 

Priyanka: great social sales. I totally forgot about Lavender. Yeah, Lavender. And then there is one person called Neil, who's building page. io Page Neil Gandhi, yeah. Yeah, Neil Gandhi, yeah. He's also great. He doesn't sell the product. He only sells you know, values yeah, I think

It's really easy to start if you're a very small team and rather than, doing that from a marketing perspective also, it works crazy. And from a personal perspective also, it's good from a salesperson perspective, you get some bonus points here and there. So nothing to lose just, we have to get out of that inertia.

Yeah, 

Debdutta: you

just have to be like, because it will take time. It will not come up like. first day or second day or even first month, it will take time, but it's worth the time, I think. 

Priyanka: Yeah, I think for us, it took more than six, seven months to actually get that going. It's like SEO. It'll,

it'll take questions now. So Kripali has asked how to find relatable communities. 

Debdutta: Yeah. Good question. It's not that tough to be honest let's say today I'm going to selling cybersecurity product. Now I want to find prospects who are part of the cybersecurity community and have no idea how to do that.

Firstly, I'll go to my company SDS and say, Hey, are you part of any communities that that are related to cybersecurity prospect will be there. Asking my like my my company colleagues going to any sales team who is selling, maybe selling in the same space, cybersecurity connected with them on LinkedIn and talking to them and asking them that, can you refer me some communities?

Of this like you just have to go out and ask people, or you can go on Google also and

do a basic, for me, this, I have, this is something I've done when I wanted to learn about, D2C industry likes like selling a SAS tool to D2C industry. And I wanted to know how to, so how to get into D2C communities. And this is the process I, I did I spoke to a lot of people selling to D2C SAS people, SAS companies selling to D2C and told them that, are you part of any communities?

Can you send me the link? I want to join. Going on Google, finding D2C companies and right now I'm part of D2C communities like that. So it's you go and ask people because if you don't ask. The answer is no. 

Priyanka: Yeah. Yeah. Better to ask and get a no rather than ask at all. Cool.

So Ananthu has asked, how can we improve the sales of a cyber security startup, especially cyber security services? 

Debdutta: I have never said to cyber security in this space, but I have coached people is this in this space was said to said to cyber security. One thing I've seen that it's not a very easy space to sell to because.

Again, they are not very open to cold calls. They're not, maybe they're open to cold emails. I'm not sure, but how to sell basic stuff for anyone, anyone in this whole planet, when you're selling, talk about them, think talk about their pain points, lead up, lead with an observation or triggering events.

Don't talk much about your product, your services. No one cares about it. Try to genuinely build a relationship or start a conversation and go with the mindset to help, the people who are into cybersecurity, how can you help their problems? And that's how you can start a conversation and through those conversation, like sales will happen.

Priyanka: Absolutely. Next going to the other question, which tools do you use? I think he's asking from. From identification to closing a deal. 

Debdutta: Just to clear it, I don't close, I don't actively close deals. My my, my job is from taking discovery and demos and then passing those opportunities to the account executives.

So I'll tell you what tools I used on a day to day basis. CRM Salesforce must. For me since engagement platform sales loft every day, I use I use my platform six cents sales, which is platform to build is finding high account, high priority accounts, high intent accounts. These three tools are like I use every day, like without any fear, like I can work without these three tools apart from that.

I use a tool, obviously everyone knows Lavender for writing emails, helping me to write emails in a better way. I used to use it a lot in initial days when I was writing emails. Now I after writing so many emails, I have those frameworks and know how to, what to write. So yeah, right now I use Lavender, but not every day.

Then apart from that LinkedIn Sales Navigator, yes, LinkedIn is a great, LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a great tool. I feel it's a very underrated tool as well. Okay. Apart from that. There's a new tool and it's mostly helps me to send, a recap of my emails post demo that the tool is called Align.

And it basically a buyer engagement engagement or enablement tool that I actually use post demo to send them all the related stuff that we spoke in the demo. So that I can see who are these people that are interacting in my deal rooms. And I can prospect them after that after the demo happened.

Yeah, that's a new tool, very interesting space also deal rooms and deal digital sales rooms. Okay. Any other tools I use? I don't think so. For calling maybe, yeah Oram it's a new tool that I've been using prior to that. I used to use Salesforce.

Priyanka: Cool. Yeah, that's all. Yeah. So the next question is from Pranoy. How many cold emails do you send to each prospect 

Debdutta: to each prospect? Now this depends like there's no fixed number to that. Let's suppose I'm sending three emails and I don't see any response, zero open rate, zero reply rate, no clicks.

I'll move to another prospect, maybe from the same company to someone else. Because I know this person is not seeing my email, not worth spending time on this prospect. I'll send, I'll go to another prospect, but again, let's suppose another example, I see a prospect looking at my email five times, but not responding, sending four emails.

Yes. He's seen my couple of times, but not responding. Then I'll try to understand why he's not, why he or she is not responding. And my next email will be based on that. Maybe go to the LinkedIn or maybe see something I can personalize at a very deeper level. Go to their about me section, see what is their interest.

Or maybe go to their account and see what's happening new in their account or in their company, basically. So it will depend on how these prospects are interacting with my emails, and that will decide how many emails I'll send to them. 

Priyanka: Got it. I hope it was very clear, Pranoy. Next is how we can reduce the sales cycle.

For high ticket B two B deals. I think they, this is an account executive question. Yeah. , but maybe they can take, 

Debdutta: take it. I, one thing I can tell you what my account executive does really good is they actually are always on top of their deals. I have, I worked with my account executive on a lot of accounts, on a lot of top accounts.

And I see them working on high priority accounts multi threading all their stakeholders, all the stakeholders on those accounts being top of their deals. So that, so that they focus in the right way. But yeah, I also don't have the right question. I'll have that after a few quarters.

Priyanka: Yeah. Okay. So the next one is what could be a good opener on a cold one? I think he said that. It changes, but maybe an example 

Debdutta: of, I'll give you the right answer here. So the good opener is an opener that you can nail it in a great way. It can be, how are you? How are you doing XYZ? Hey, this is a cold call.

Do you want, do you have 30 seconds for me? Any cold call opener that you are confident. You can nail it. You think that is the good opener. 

Priyanka: Yeah, got it. Got it. Cool. I think

this is Dave gave. What have you used, Dave? 

Debdutta: I use a lot of opener. So when I was in Sixth Sense US Shiv. So Sixth Sense US. Market has a brand recognition and brand name right at that time, what I used to use Hey Prospect, this is Dave from Six Sense, does six and Sounds does six and sounds familiar, or does the six sense ring a bell?

If they say, yes, thumbs up. My life is easy. They know Six Sense. If they say no, I'll say, okay, that this is the reason I called you and the reason I called you is because I see X, Y, Z happening in your accounts. And then I start my call. So it's like win-win for that opener. Now here at apac, So like six cents, they are developing their brand here, right?

So my opener changes like when I call people and I tried with this, Hey, this is the the six cents ring a bell and it doesn't resonate with the Indian prospect because we don't speak something like, does it ring a bell? All of the stuff, right? Like we are very like straightforward. So I started Hey, the six cents sounds familiar to you with very basic stuff.

Or maybe, Hey this is Dave from six cents. I know I called you in the middle of something can I tell you like why I called you? I promise to be brief to you. So it's like basic, like I am using what is helping me to speak easily, speak clearly and let that person understand what I'm saying. That is my opener.

Priyanka: So the next question is for us dialing, how to bypass getting 

Debdutta: spam? I feel it's a kind of technical question. So this is taken care of by my DevOps team. Like they take care of all those, tools and like to understand, our numbers doesn't get to spam.

I did this one time that to see if my number is in spam or not, that I call someone from my US number. I called to my US friend. I told him, is this number looking at a spam? So this is what I did to see, to check from my end, because I remember when I was cold calling the the conversion rate or the pickup rate is so low.

I was thinking, is it like going is it my numbers looking at spam or going out spam or something? But it was not like that, like it was genuinely the pickup rate was very less, but yeah, I did this thing for you I don't have a definite answer, Aman, but again, when you the use a dialer that you're using, maybe have the right setups and all those stuff to make sure that your number doesn't go to spam.

Priyanka: Yeah, absolutely. So the next question is from Tejas. Could you tell me the percentage of time you allocate to different channels? Is it time or it is based on prospect, right? Yeah, 

Debdutta: it's prospect. If my prospect is in LinkedIn, I'll spend my time on LinkedIn. If my prospect, is replying me on email, I'll go on email.

Unfortunately, it's not in my hand where I can spend more time, mostly the prospect where he or she is, is more active. 

Priyanka: Understood. Understood. Next is from Kripali, how to stay updated with all modern day cold emailing techniques. Yeah, read up on good yeah take classes from them.

That is the thing. No, I think he she's asked me once. 

Debdutta: Yeah. Yeah. I'll tell you on a serious note. You can ping me. I'll, I can share a lot of resources with you. I gather a lot of resources on cold calling, cold emails, LinkedIn to keep myself updated. If you want happy to share with you, just ping me 

Priyanka: on LinkedIn.

Yeah. Feel free to DM him right now. 

Debdutta: So 

Priyanka: next, we'll move to the next question. Any specific day of the week to send LinkedIn connections or DM? No, 

Debdutta: I don't even look at time also. Whenever I feel the right time, I just send it because these are things, yeah, for me, these things

like time doesn't matter a lot when you're sending DMS. Because LinkedIn, again, it's a social media platform. It's not like email or cold call, right? Anyone can open their LinkedIn at the middle of the night also. So don't look LinkedIn okay, at 7 p. m. or this time I'll send all the DMs.

No, just when you feel the right time, just go and hit those DMs. 

Priyanka: People who check their LinkedIn at in the middle of the night should find more hobbies. , I think. I think the, it's both of us, right? Like I think I also do that , but yeah.

The next question is from Anjul, how do you keep your lead pipeline flowing with fresh leads? What is the conversion percentage that you have personally seen on an average across your career? Good question. 

Debdutta: First question is keep prospecting, even though like you don't want your pipeline to go zero, right?

So keep prospecting, make sure you prospect every day. And as an SDR or BDR, like what else will you do? If you don't prospect, right? So prospect every day. The second question, very interesting. What is the conversion rate? It depends on industry. It depends on the people you sell to to give you an example, I've sold to HR sales and marketing.

When I was in HR, selling to HR, it was, that was my first job. I was very terrible. I was terrible with my cold call emails, anything you name it. My conversion was. I would say I should not say that also, but as I, moved moved up and, learned all the skills for sales marketing, my conversions have been improved.

Over these years I don't have definite number to this question, but what I can say here is that if you see 50 percent conversion rate in sales industry or selling to sales personnel, don't think that will, it will be same in all the personas for all the personas. It can be different for marketing.

It can be very different for data or it or cybersecurity. I don't have a definite answer right now with a different number, but again what, how you can improve it, I can tell it, it will it will depend what you're doing, how you're doing and how you're improving day by day. Only then you can improve this conversion if it's less right now.

Priyanka: Yeah. Yeah. I think very precise. We have the last question from Chirag. We can take two more questions maybe after that, right? If there is nothing else, then this will be the last question. How do you hold conversations on LinkedIn for the Indian market, any framework that you share, no framework, everything should be spontaneous.

Debdutta: Exactly. No, let's see LinkedIn. So understand LinkedIn is very different from emails. People go on LinkedIn for number of things. I have here, I'm here right now on LinkedIn for this slide session, right? Someone is on LinkedIn to post something. Someone is on LinkedIn to engage with their favorite creators.

Someone is there on LinkedIn to go and reply to the DMs. Now to answer your questions here, there's no definite framework because you can ask the interesting question to that prospect. But the prospect might be deviated to so other things like he or she is right now replying to any other DM or going to their favorite creator sending a like commenting on their posts.

So it is, I would say it is skater I would say it's, it's very difficult to hold conversations on LinkedIn. And this is the reason your personal brand comes in. Because right now, if you see, I have made myself someone who is very resourceful for SDS and BDS. So people will go to my DM and talk to me.

They know if I talk to them for at least five, six, 10 minutes, I'll pick something from this conversation. And that's how I try to hold that hold them on those DMs. It was their attention is all over the place on the DM, right? So make sure that you're talking to someone, you have something to offer apart from you gain something like meeting book or a meeting schedule, all that stuff.

You can give something to that person right now. If I'm speaking to Priyanka, I make sure that Priyanka learn something from me. That is how it is. It will be valuable for each of us, right? So that's how I do it. Like building a personal brand, making myself resourceful for people for SDS and BDS or SDS managers has helped me to hold those conversation.

for any market, not only India market for any market. 

Priyanka: Got it. Got it. That's it. Yeah, I think he's extremely right. Like when I first started talking to Dev had he not been in had he we would not have been partners with Sixth Sense. I would have bought Sixth Sense for me. Yeah, but glad that we are partners.

I think we can take 2 3 more questions quickly. What sales conversation are consultative sales? I 

Debdutta: feel this is the only way I sell because I like this way of approaching sales, like being consultative, not imposing my thoughts on the prospect. Just, having a conversation. I feel like I'm a consultant.

Yeah, I feel, yeah, 200%. I feel like I'm a consultant. Whatever the problem they have, I give a solution to them. And in those solution, I also add my tool and if they're interested to look at it, I am happy to show them the tool. So I feel as Priyanka said 200%. 

Priyanka: Daily, how many emails would be automated versus personalized slash hyper personalized by 

Debdutta: Sion?

Good question. A lot of people might disagree with me, might think that what is this guy doing, but I like personalized emails. It's very few emails that I automate at my end again, this is because I know how many emails I want to say this comes with like experience. But mostly I automate my follow ups, but let's suppose if I'm writing my first cold email, I'll make sure that is a hype, even not hyper personalized, but personalized on the account level.

And if I'm sending, yeah, sorry. 

Priyanka: Yeah. Level is 

Debdutta: the key. Yeah. Yeah. And I go to prospect level once I see a lot of engagement on the on the emails. Like I see a lot of opens, maybe they've clicked in my video, all the stuff they'll see. Okay. What is their interest in all this stuff? So that next email I can personalize on those things.

Priyanka: Yeah. And one more thing to add on the account. Sorry, I'm interrupting. No. Please. Get the account based master out of my brain. But yeah, another thing with prospecting and personalizing account based is that your load becomes less, like your cognitive load becomes less because you can use the same thing for different prospects from the same account.

And if you start doing personalization on an individual level, you'll get bored. Account level personalization is up to you. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, you were saying 

Debdutta: something. No, that's it. I even forgot what I was saying. No worries, 

Priyanka: no worries. I think the last question is what tools and approach would you suggest for effective pre sales discovery?

Debdutta: Pre sales discovery is basically understanding if the prospect is a good fit for us, right? Yeah. I won't say tools, like I've already mentioned the tools approach maybe whenever I book a demo for any account, I try to, we have certain criteria, like since we provide data, we need to see that the data is right or not.

We need to see if they have, is there an immediate need or there's something that exploding all those like a band qualification, but I don't do exactly like a band qualification because in a pre discovery talking about budget is nothing doesn't make sense for me. So I don't talk about budget, but yeah.

Talking about if the I c p, the people they're selling, we have the right kind of data for them. We we have, if they, this is something that the timeline is set or not and the person I'm booking is he or she, decision maker champion in whatever it is. So this kind of thing will help mine for me and my account executive to, curate that demo for that person in that account and help to close their deals in further.

And also that also, I would like to take that la last question of, yeah, from. 

Priyanka: Yeah. Yeah. Does using chat GPT for cold email messaging affect the response rate? Does it? Yeah, it does 

Debdutta: affect. It does affect a lot. If you just use chat GPT and copy paste emails, I feel I have a strong opinion in this use AI, please use it.

Absolutely. It's a need of the hour. People who will not use AI will be, fallen back but use AI when you know that you can judge the email, like suppose if I've not written any cold email in my whole life, so I don't know at what bar I can judge the cold email of chatGPT, for me, that cold email from chatGPT will be the best.

So I would say, go and write some cold emails, and do that work, then only you know what a good cold email looks like. Then when you use Chats GPT, you can judge those emails. If you go to Chats GPT right now maybe even if you're giving with all the right prompts and all the stuff.

The output that you will get from ChatsGPT is still not at par with, with all the people with all the tools that are there, they're helping us to write good cold emails. So for me, I don't write, I use, don't use ChatsGPT to write cold emails. And if you want to use ChatsGPT, I would suggest first you go and write those cold emails, send some cold emails, get some replies, and then go to ChatsGPT for.

more ideas, different ways to write right, 

Priyanka: right. Absolutely. I think with charity, I think there's a great thing to solidify and refine your idea, right? An original thought ever, because at the end of the day it's programmed, right? But what creativity you will get as a human, I think that is very different, but for refinement at all, you can use, right?

But one more thing I've observed everywhere is that if you see a word, unleash, uncover, or something like that it's definitely written by Chad 

Debdutta: GPT 100%. These are also spam words. There's a which can help you to find what are spam words like tools like uncovered unless these words have been multiple times and not chargeable use this was because it is taking data from the outside world.

And from the outside world, we know that these words have been used a lot of times. So it gives those words 

Priyanka: into the system. So yeah, that's one thing. It's good to refine and it's good to get pointers like all of that. But no, don't rely on charging people. Yeah, it doesn't work that way.

Yeah, U. S. based best tool for lead gen. You're asking 

Debdutta: a 

Priyanka: lead gen software salesperson. 

Debdutta: How can I not promote Sixth Sense here? 

Priyanka: How many can 

Debdutta: hear me for Sixth Sense? I'm kidding, no. I'll tell you for U. S. market based lead generation tool, you should see, there are a lot of lead generation tools for your knowledge.

And everyone will say that we'll have great accurate data, we'll have this, that, but what will set apart is basically their customer stories, what customers that they've worked with, what kind of, their result they've got. And apart from that, you go and see the tool, you maybe try it.

You maybe, have a live data test. These are the things that will help you to actually judge the tool better. You can DM me. 

Priyanka: Yeah. Yeah. After this, you can like text Dave but no, I didn't want to see is not is one of the best things lead generation tools. 

Debdutta: Yeah. So it was lintel earlier, which has been renamed to six months revenue.

So the lintel tool has been modified. 

Priyanka: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. That's correct. Actually. Like we were not joking. The best tool is six months. So cool. I think we have no more questions. Our question and the session was bigger than our talking session. So thanks Dev for joining in and thank you everyone who tuned in today.

It was great. A lot of participation. And thankfully LinkedIn did not show any tantrums this time. I couldn't see the comments and a lot of things happened to do that. Yeah. Cool. We'll wrap up then. We'll make part two of this. It was a great session. Dave, thanks for bringing me.

So many engagement. 

Debdutta: Thank you. Thank you so much. 

Priyanka: Divya was asking one thing Mr. Tool, you mentioned to check spam words. 

Debdutta: I don't remember right now. I'll DM you. You DM me. I'll send you the. 

Priyanka: Cool. Cool. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks, Dave. Thank you, everyone. Bye.

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