2020 has been full of challenges – especially when it comes to leading a sales prospecting team.
We got fifteen SDR leaders in the B2B SaaS industry to tell the stories behind their recent pivots. In each article in this Strategic Prospecting Tips series, you’ll find real, unfiltered advice from one Sales Development Leader that’s influencing the B2B SaaS industry worldwide.
Today we’re hearing from Kristina Savulescu, Head of SDRs – Nordics and DACH at Mynewsdesk. Let’s jump on in!
I have over 20 years of experience within the SaaS, retail, Real Estate, and management consulting industries.
During Covid-19, our company vision, “A world where no story goes untold or unheard,” felt more relevant than ever. Mynewsdesk saw great potential to help and support companies with their communication, content, and press releases during this crisis.
Our revenue flows were not as steady, but we worked hard to keep in touch with our customers, tailor special prices and packages to meet their needs, and stay agile and flexible both externally and internally. Our focus shifted to customer retention as new business was harder to achieve.
Sales development teams are often the glue between marketing and sales. So, we have great cooperation with both our marketing team which is providing us with numerous inbound requests, as much as we focus on sales prospecting (using our own prospecting efforts or AI tools) to create a healthy pipeline for our sales colleagues.
SDRs can be a great source of market intelligence during a crisis, as they have daily conversations with potential customers.
Kristina Savulescu, Head of SDRs, MyNewsDesk
We didn’t change much in terms of metrics, as we estimated the change to come in incremental steps over spring and summer, so it was hard to forecast the exact impact). The change was more in terms of dialogue with our prospects and supporting, aligning our actions to the market needs.
SDRs can be a great source of market intelligence during a crisis, as they have daily conversations with potential customers. They are the first to be in touch with change.
While the dynamics of the market were changing in real-time, some industries like e-commerce and logistics had sudden growth. Their sales cycle got way shorter and were a gold mine – sometimes with signed contracts in less than 48 hours. Other companies froze their decision-making, so we developed our market knowledge and built out next quarter’s pipeline.
In the past months, direct questions about timelines or budgets felt suddenly irrelevant.
Kristina Savulescu, Head of SDRs, MyNewsDesk
B2B is more than ever human to human. Cold calling is incredibly relevant, as people want to connect and share ideas. This period has been useful for practicing listening and learning, as many people were interested in sharing their business matters as much as curious about how to get help.
In the past months, direct questions about timelines or budgets felt suddenly irrelevant. So we naturally focused the SDR qualifying conversation on challenges and needs. Some companies simply wanted to learn how to break through the noise and get in touch with their audience or create a crisis communication strategy for their brand.
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