If sales teams are rap group, pre-sales are the Flavor Flav
To all my SDRs, BDRs, BDMs, or LGRs, you are the Flavor Flav’s of the sales team. You are the sales hype men/women. Your job is to get the customer excited & pumped for the when your AE hits the (micro)phone! You’re asking questions like crazy, you’re showing enthusiasm about their company & interest in their goals. You’re a ball of curious optimistic energy espousing the virtues of how other customers have benefited from your product/service.

You’re all very much unsung heroes of the sales process. You’re doing gods work. You’re out there hustling everyday, grinding away to set meetings, open doors, & connect the right people to your AE at the right time to get a deal done.
Now that you understand I have an enormous amount of respect for what you do I can say this, get your shit together & stop being lazy. There is nothing more powerful & persuasive than being prospected by an SDR who has done their research and knows your business & how they can add value to you/your business. I have had too many, frankly…shitty, template emails every 3 days for 5 weeks, culminating with the breakup email. I can smell a prospecting email a mile away, if you want my time & attention…earn it by being good!
Recently, I had a SDR call me after opening 1 email. Here is a brief summary of our interaction:
Him: “Hi alex, this is John from HipTech Company.”
Me: “ummm…ok. hi.”
Him: “I saw you opened my email about how HipTech can help your company”
(at this point I finally realizing the stupid email I clicked on that looked like a response i was waiting for from my VP)
Me: “John, can you tell me what my company does?”
Him: “Umm…excuse me?”
Me: “Tell me what my company does. what do we do that you can add value to it?”
Him: “Im sorry ive got to admit i dont know. I’ve got your website up…”
(i cut him off)
Me: “John, im sorry but you havent earned a minute of my time. just because i opened an email does not mean you can call me and expect a proper discovery conversation. how can you have a conversation about my business if you dont know what we do”
(you can guess where it went from there)
long story short, he apologized a bunch & told him he needs to be better prepared for his next call. I know i could have probably used kid gloves with him to coach him a little nicer, but im sick of lazy or bad SDRs. they’re making a bad name for a very valuable role and for people who can be great at their jobs.
- Rule #1. Sales is not about selling, its about buying. learn how to enable their buying process. even if they arent looking, if they are your ICP they’ll need what you’re providing…whether its today or a 6mo from today.
- Rule #2. ADD VALUE! do your own research, add value, demonstrate you care about their business, add value again and again AND AGAIN. You’d be surprised how many doors this opens.
- Rule #3. Stop asking for 10min of their time before you’ve clearly established how you can help them. you’ve got to earn it. It’s a grind, but if you do it right, you’ll have amazing conversations with people who are ready & want to talk to you.
- Rule #4. Remember the ABCs of pre-sales discovery — Always Be Curious. Ask so many (intelligent) questions, based on what you’ve learned about their business & what they’ve told you. People love to talk about their business (good or bad) and you have the opportunity to ask.
- Rule #5. Just as much as your job is to qualify leads, its also to disqualify them….and quickly. You only get so many hours in a day, the more time you spend talking to a crap lead who just wants to suck up your time talking about their genius idea for a website that can stream the polar ice caps melting, the less time you’ll have to talk to the next big deal for the company. Now dont be too shrude & disqualify too quickly, sometimes it can take a while to get in touch with people or get enough info to know for sure, but always keep in mind, your time is valuable too...protect it.
Now go forth & hustle. Add value & enable your lead’s buying journey by getting them excited by all the questions you’re asking & giving examples of how you’ve helped customers like them. That is the way Flavor Flav would do it boyyyyyyeeeeee.

Alex Kaye is a veteran revenue operations expert with more than a decade of experience. Alex has helped a dozen companies, and counting, achieve sustainable growth by crafting winning go-to-market strategies, design scalable business processes, and provide data insights to guide strategic decision making at each step along the way. After helping companies raise more than $40M in venture funding, navigating 2 acquisitions, and an IPO, Alex is now sharing his expertise by coaching founders and sales leaders through the unique challenges of success at scale.
