The Role of NDRs in Modern Sales with Mac Reddin
Mac Reddin (CEO & Co-Founder, Commsor) shares his insights on the NDR playbook, building networks, and creating long-term relationships in B2B sales.
Thanks for tuning into this exclusive edition of GTM News Desk presented by the
TAC Network.
This show is hosted by me, Nick Bennett, and my co-host, Mark Killins.
Now let's get to the goods on with the show.
All right, it's time to dive into the goodies with Mac, the exclusive goodies.
Like we said in the podcast, if you listen to that, we're going to talk about
the NDR
playbook and the NDR mindset, this new role, this new type of person at a B2B
company.
So, Mac, unpack, what is an NDR?
Who is a good fit for this type of job?
What do they do and how do they do it?
So basically tell us everything you can about NDRs.
So I'll start with, it's a made up bullshit term to get your attention.
It doesn't matter what you call the role.
Making your SDRs, revolve them, whatever.
Once again, terminology is terminology.
Who cares?
It's the meat that matters.
But what is the acronym?
What is the meat?
So it's network development rep.
And the core foundation of it, it's kind of going to finally go back to the
earlier part
of like, you know, B2B studies and the bullshit behind them.
You know, the classic trope of like only five to 10% of your buyers are in
market at any
given time.
I don't know how you actually measure that, but it's true, right?
Like it makes sense.
They're like, not everybody who could buy your thing is in a spot to buy your
thing
at any given moment.
So whether it's 5%, 20%, 30%, some, some set of your market is not going to buy
now, no
matter what you do, no matter how much you call them or how much email them,
unless there's
a circumstance that makes it not to buy.
No, because think about the pandemic.
I think people lose sight of that.
That's true.
I mean, I, it's, it's risky.
You could turn it to hop in 2.0.
Um, but that does happen.
There are moments that is true.
Generally speaking, in a normal ish world, though most of your buyer, potential
buyers
are not buying in any given moment.
So the NDR is effectively, we break it down as like the 10% and then 90%.
So half of their role is looking at the 10%.
And it's basically how do you sell smarter, right?
The SDR role of the last 10 years is here's a lead list.
Here's 10,000 good fit companies, call them, email them, link them, message
them, book
some meetings.
That's essentially what an SDR does.
I know there's smarter versions of it, but that sales part for an NDR is, is
using things
like signals and other things to try to figure out like, is someone in market
right now?
If yes, have a conversation with them or try to have a conversation with them
right now.
If they're not in market, their goal is not, how do I sell to them?
Not how do I book a meeting?
But how do I pull them into the network of the business?
How do I get them involved in the business in some way, shape or form so that
they know
we exist so that we're top of mind?
I love the stat that most BDB buyers, when they start a buying process, they've
already
shortlisted two to three vendors.
So like by the time they're actually talking to your sales team about sales,
they kind
of already made their decision.
You've either loved one of you lost or you've like, you got a chance to win or
you're out
most of the time.
So your goal really is like, how do you get them to be aware that you exist?
Like I can't tell you, I get, we book two to three meetings a week.
A people just going, hey, I've been following you guys for six months, nine
months, 12
months.
I know you guys, I'm either doing a new job or a brand new initiative or I'm
like, I'm
ready to buy.
Let's have a conversation.
But because they know us, we're the first people they come and talk to.
So what do these people do?
What do these people do specifically?
I don't get it.
So on the, on the, the, the 10% side, they're still selling.
It's just selling in a smarter way.
It's trying to figure out like, step one, is someone in the 10% or the 90% if
in 10% go
try to sell them, right?
If Mark says, hey, I'm looking to buy a warm intro tool, I'm going to go, Hey,
Mark, you
should learn about comms.
I'm not going to beat around the bush.
I'm going to try to sell to you.
But if you're just like a cool marketer that I would love to sell to one day,
trying to
sell to you right now is probably not going to start a relationship off on a
great foot.
It's not going to bring you into our network.
It's not going to give you a positive experience.
So it could be things like community engagement.
So in an old iteration of comms, or we had, we had to think of the community
club, we sold
the community managers, we had the community club.
And we kind of unintentionally, we didn't call it that we had an NDR play,
which was,
Hey, if Mark's not ready to buy now, let's get him into the community.
Let's just say, Hey, join the community.
And I was actually just, who's Ben was saying this on a call earlier, who used
to be an
SDR comms or running this play.
He was like starting a conversation with a community invite was so much easier
than starting
a conversation with a sales pitch, right?
It's like, Hey, let's get you involved.
And we saw things like crazy numbers.
It was like people were two and a half times more likely to get on a call with
us.
If they'd been in the community when they got into a buying motion, then if
they weren't,
how do you get them involved, right?
And community to mean so many things that could be invited them to your
tangible community.
You could be making sure they come to one of your dinners.
It could make sure they're subscribed to your newsletter.
It could be social selling and putting content on LinkedIn so that they're like
they're seeing your stuff.
They're thinking about you.
They're top of mind.
It's it really is more of a marketing role than into the sales role.
But I really think that the like the demand gen SDR, NDR of the future like has
to be this
hybrid sales marketing role.
So if Nick wants to be an NDR, what skills you need to have?
Oh, so all the skills.
Come on.
That's a good question.
I think once again, like an NDR needs more human skills, skills that are a
little bit harder to teach, right?
And a lot of SDRs are like given a script.
Like here's the script, follow the script, do the actions.
They're very often measured on input, not output.
Whereas an NDR, I think is much more measured on like the output and the
actions they're taking.
So there has to be a lot of like, I think an NDR has to be given space, not
necessarily to become an expert.
Like listen, if you're selling to CFOs, you're not going to become a finance
expert.
But you have to at least understand the space to be able to have conversations
with your buyers.
Right?
It's like the classic case of like a buyer doesn't want to have a discovery
call
an SDR who doesn't know shit about their space.
That is the worst experience you can have as a buyer.
So they need space to actually learn and understand things.
And that's once again, a leadership top down problem.
They need to be more creative.
They need to be able to think on their feet.
They are not script following robots.
If they're just a script following robot, they might as well be an AI SDR.
There is really no point in them being in the role.
If that's all they are, a lot of them are soft skills.
I'm struggling to be like, you know, like things like empathy and understanding
and good communication skills and creative thinking and be able to like solve
problems
on your feet.
Like once again, a much harder skill set to test for a much harder skill set to
teach.
You know, I can't just be like, hey, follow these steps and boom, you've got it
But those are the skills I'd be looking for.
If you're looking for someone who's going to be in an NDR style role,
they have to be more on the creative side than the pure scientific side.
I think I could do that.
I think I could be pretty good.
You're hired, Nick.
You are the first NDR of tack will give you a quota.
But it's your point, like before we ask the next question, Nick, I would love
to know.
You don't have to answer this now, but who are using NDRs?
Like what is like at least one example?
So you can think about that, Mac, unless you have one right now.
I know of one company that has someone with the actual like network development
wrap title first one I've ever seen and they're like a really big.
It's like they're doing an experiment.
So it's like one SDR out of 30 that have that title.
So it's an experiment right now.
Well, we don't have anyone with that title.
I would say that's how we operate all of our sales development motions as a
sales team at comms
or is with that sort of NDR mindset.
I think a lot of times you look at like how founders do founder led sales.
That tends to inherently be a bit of like an NDR style play.
Like you're just trying to like have conversations with people and some little
turn to meetings,
some of them won't, but it's like it's more that style of sales than the book
meeting for the sake of booking a meeting.
I have seen companies that have like partner development reps who are focused
on like,
how do I build stronger relationships with partners that those partners can
bring deals to us and things like that.
And that is definitely like a very similar motion, very focused on partner
networks, not like the broader network.
And I end to fair, actually, when we first published the NDR playbook, I had a
lot of sales leaders respond saying,
isn't this just what a good SDR is?
And my response was like, yes, thank you.
No shit.
That's kind of a point.
So I think there's a lot of SDRs out there that are doing this stuff without
the title.
Like this is what an SDR was 20 years ago.
They were someone who was at least a knowledgeable person in their industry who
was going out and building relationships and having conversations,
gained into their buyers, building a Rolodex.
This is what SDRs were.
In the 80s and 90s, they were senior business development people.
They were going out there building relationships, getting to know people,
expanding their network.
And it was very common.
They would like take their network with them from one job to the next, right?
Like physically bring their Rolodex.
Like the SDRs, we know it today, is really only a role in the last 15 years.
Well, so here's the thing.
Before Nick asks the last question, we can go a little bit deeper.
My belief is there's been too much tech tools and best practices that have
killed this profession.
My so favorite example.
Fuck the heck.
My favorite. I saw someone selling you tech to help you with sales.
I fully agree.
My favorite example is, do you know Darren McKee?
He is a social selling genius, like one of the best I've seen.
He has a thing called the three by three by three method.
And he mostly has been selling into like, like he sells to Mercedes.
Like he sells to big corporates.
He shares really good content.
Like here's how I would break into Mercedes.
And it does an example.
He does a daily thing three by three by three, he picks three target accounts.
He finds three personas at the company and he sends each of them a message.
So three companies, three personas, each three messages.
And it's all personalized, well researched.
And he's like, and it's funny.
He says he's pitch slaps, right?
But the problem with the difference is he's done his research.
He's not just like, hey Nick, buy my shit.
Hey Mark, buy my shit.
Hey Matt, buy my shit.
He's like, hey Nick, I just read the, you know, all this documentation on
Mercedes.
It seems like this is a part like, you know, he really does it in depth.
He does that every single day.
And his own words for three years, he's never had pipeline problems as long as
he's done
that.
And he keeps sharing his tips and he had a post yesterday where he's like, here
's how
I would break into this account.
Everyone was like, Hey Darren, like you should, you know, you know, this tool,
this step could
be automated with this tool or, you know, these three steps you could say that
you use
perplexed the AI.
And he was like, his responses were like, it's like, no, he's like, part of the
reason
this works so well is because I actually get to know the account.
I'm not waiting for some AI tools to spit out and be like, Hey, tell Mercedes
that they
are, they care about this thing because this is what is said in their last
public report.
Like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
And it was like, it was just so refreshing to see someone be like, I don't need
the tools.
I just need good fundamentals.
I need to understand my buyer and they need to go have conversations with them.
That's it.
That's, that's sales.
That's all it is.
Also interesting is that he is a big proponent of video.
I know, you know, Morgan Ingram is also someone that, that does that.
But I talked to Darren a lot and he leverages voice notes for sending a lot of
personalized
messages similar to Morgan.
But again, I know he's had tremendous success with that.
And it's simple.
Like, you know, he's voice notes on LinkedIn, like sounds like everyone should
be doing that,
but people just want that like spray and pray mentality.
And then he also just sends, you know, he'll record a quick video on his phone
and just
send that as a DM on LinkedIn.
He has so much success with that.
And he's just like, you know, standing outside their office, for example,
something simple.
And it's not like it's over, you know, productized or anything where it's like,
hit, this is like
a high produced video.
No, it's just him on his phone recording it quick.
You know, 60, 90 seconds.
And I remember him saying like he's had so much success with that and just
getting into
target big accounts to using that method.
Why?
I was at tactics or temporary.
Your network is forever.
Right?
And you can change.
You can chase whatever the hot new cold call tech or script or email tech is or
whatever.
And it's like, and if anything's like they do work for a while, but then
everyone uses
them and they stop working and then it's like, it all it's like tactics have
like a three
month lifespan in sales, but like authentic relationships.
I don't care what you're selling, who your target buyer is, what the state of
the economy
is.
There is one thing that will always open doors relationships.
People you know, people you trust.
Hmm.
People first.
Cool.
Let's dive into the last question here.
Wrap things up for everyone listening.
If you had to give one piece of advice to leadership, you'll founders
executives that
are looking to scale using their networks as a primary tool, we kind of talked
about
it a little bit.
But like if you had to be like, what's that one piece of advice say, go do this
and you
will succeed or at least you should succeed in theory.
Can I put like the giant asterisk of like, caveat, like I don't know your
industry.
Or your ICP and take this with a great assault because it's always different.
You know, no one, no one likes nuance anymore.
Apparently, I'll say as much as I dislike LinkedIn a lot of the times, if your
buyers
are on LinkedIn and you're a CEO, start engaging on LinkedIn.
Like it's, it is wild how much pipeline that can drive for relatively low cost
and effort.
I mean, you got to have a perspective.
You got to like be interesting.
There's a lot of like prerequisites for that working.
But I see a lot of people be like, well, the CEO can't spend two hours a week
doing that.
And you're like, well, okay, they totally can because their job is to grow the
business
outside of LinkedIn.
I would say this thing I need to do too is like kind of hard given where I live
now, but
more more FaceTime, more not with us like team members, but like go and
actually talk
to your customers.
Actually, I'm going to bring Darren up again.
He always says like, Hey, I just started a new job.
What would you recommend?
He's always like, stop talking to other salespeople about what you should do.
Go talk to your customers.
That's it.
Like the best way to build a network as a founder, if you're early stage.
Okay.
Here's the actual hack.
Just reach out to people and say, Hey, Nick, I'm starting a new company.
You're the kind of person that would be for.
Can I just talk to get your thoughts?
Like people are really, really, really, really willing to help you when you're
early stage
and you're figuring it out and not enough founders lean into that while they
can.
Once you're a hundred person company doing $10 million a year and I are, they
're like,
what?
No, like I'm not going to like that.
Let's guess you were getting a sales call, right?
But just go on and have conversations.
Like however much you think you're talking to customers, however much you think
you should
double it and then probably double it again.
And that's how much you should be talking to customers.
And if you do that right and you're just like a, you know, you'll build a
network organically
just by doing that.
Build relationships intentionally.
I'll pull it down to three words.
Oh, like that's it.
Also Mark, Mark hates LinkedIn.
So we got to come up with better strategies.
I don't hate LinkedIn.
I don't hate LinkedIn.
I dislike many aspects of LinkedIn.
Hate's a very strong word.
LinkedIn is a, LinkedIn is a abusive relationship.
We're on some weeks.
It was great.
And some of you should why am I still here?
It's evolving.
And I don't like how it's evolving.
I'll leave you with one other tip.
I've said it before.
Associate yourself with the right people.
Be deliberate with who you build relationships with.
Yeah.
I mean, that's just like, that should just be advice about everything in life.
Be intentional and deliver about what you do, who you do it with and why you do
it.
And like other shit will figure yourself out.
Absolutely agree.
This, here's the problem though.
In most schools, they don't teach any of that.
And social media has confused the living F out of so many people when it comes
to what
that actually means.
Oh, yeah.
That's a, we should, that's a whole separate recording on that topic.
As someone who did really terribly in school.
Yeah.
All right, Mac, thank you so much.
Really appreciate it.
Hope you enjoy the exclusive content today, everyone.
Catch us in the tech network.
Hope to see you on the inside with tech insider.
It's a great community.
You should join.
Ah, thanks, Mac.
Appreciate it.
Thanks for joining us on this episode of GTM News Desk presented by the tech
network.
To hear our full conversation with our guests today, head to the link in the
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Until next time, I'm Mark Killins and I'm Nick Bennett.
Keep it people first, everybody.