How to FIX Outbound Sales Ft. Leslie Venetz | Revenue Reimagined Ep. 016

Leslie Venetz, founder of Sales Team Builder, breaks down why modern outbound sales is fundamentally broken and how revenue leaders can fix it. She challenges the old-school mentality of high-volume, parallel-dialer cold calling, arguing that the 'spray and pray' approach simply burns through a company's Total Addressable Market (TAM) while severely damaging domain reputation. Instead, she advocates for value-based segmentation—building hyper-targeted lists based on specific triggers and criteria to maintain outreach scale without sacrificing relevance. Beyond outbound tactics, Venetz emphasizes the critical need for alignment across the entire revenue engine. She advocates for breaking down the traditional silos between Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success by implementing shared metrics. This means tying marketing compensation to closed-won deals, and holding back a portion of sales compensation until early customer renewals or time-to-value milestones are met. Ultimately, building a durable revenue process requires leaders to shift their mindset from vanity volume metrics to actual target math. If a company only needs 12 customers to hit their annual revenue goal, they don't need to blast 10,000 prospects. By prioritizing active listening, customer-centric execution, and cross-departmental humility, leaders can build sustainable go-to-market strategies that don't alienate their buyers.

Discussed in this episode

• Why breaking down silos between Sales, Marketing, and Customer Success is crucial for durable revenue growth.
• The fundamental difference between PLG-led BDR inbound models and outbound-led SDR enterprise models.
• The strategic case for keeping outbound SDRs reporting directly to Sales rather than Marketing.
• Why cross-functional compensation structures, like tying sales bonuses to renewals, drive better buyer experiences.
• The hidden danger of high-volume outbound sequencing burning through your Total Addressable Market.
• How to execute value-based segmentation to scale relevance without needing 1-to-1 hyper-personalization.
• Why revenue leaders must shift their focus from generating thousands of top-of-funnel leads to acquiring a small number of ideal buyers.
• The impending rise of community-led growth as a central revenue strategy in the coming year.

Episode highlights

1. 0:00 — Blurring the lines of Sales and Marketing
2. 2:15 — Why outbound SDRs belong in Sales
3. 4:30 — The difference between BDRs and SDRs
4. 6:45 — Fixing misalignment across Revenue teams
5. 9:00 — Compensating sales for early renewals
6. 11:30 — Why high-volume outbound burns your TAM
7. 14:15 — Value-based segmentation outbound tactics
8. 16:30 — Shifting from TAM panic to customer math
9. 18:45 — Free cold calling resource from Leslie
10. 20:00 — Rapid fire questions and wrap-up

Key takeaways

• Outbound SDRs in enterprise sales should report directly to sales leadership.
• High-volume outbound burns your TAM and destroys your domain reputation.
• Value-based segmentation enables relevance at scale without 1-to-1 personalization.
• Base your outbound volume on actual closed-won targets, not vanity metrics.
• Active listening is the most important skill for any sales professional.

Transcript

It is our responsibility to acknowledge like if if I was a salesperson, sales director, VP of sales and now I'm a CRO that like I don't know everything about marketing. I don't know everything about CS and then it is my responsibility to make sure that I am not just giving them a seat at the table, but that I am proactively going out and saying, you have domain expertise that I do not have. Sure. What am I missing?

Welcome back to another episode of the Revenue Reimagine Podcast. We are so lucky to have Leslie Vetts with us today, who is the founder of Sales Team Builder, an advisor and evangelist to some of today's hottest tech companies like Attention, who sponsors this show and holds the elusive LinkedIn Top Voice badge. Leslie, welcome. Thanks, Jens.

I'm so happy to be here. One, one Gent, one fool. Which one is which? Uh-oh.

I'm the gent. Come on. I'm the gent. Good one, Leslie, good one.

Good one. Oh. Man, we're gonna we're gonna have some recording issues if we keep going down that path. Awesome.

Thanks so much for joining us. Um, so first question, reimagining revenue, you cannot be a sales leader anymore. What other GTM function would you run and why? Marketing.

Why? Yeah. Um, I I have long been a fan of blurring the lines between sales and marketing and between what it means to do demand gen versus lead gen and honestly, some of the sequences and strategies that I roll out that work best, very much hearken to like demand gen marketing inspired uh, strategies. So, I think I owned marketing once for like 18 months, but it was, you know, very, very, very early stage bootstrap so I didn't have the fun budget.

So I think it would be so fun if you were like in a series B marketing situation where you had budgets and you could take big risks and try things like evangelism, um, yeah, marketing, it would be a blast. Love it. I probably just got like kicked out of sales after saying that. No.

I'm done. I'm done here. You're you're you're not kicked out, but there there there's a lot to to go into in that. So you said you owned marketing once.

Small company. Talk to me about that because I I have also owned marketing once. Um, Dale, I don't remember if you've owned market, if someone is willing to let you run their marketing. I mean, God, God, I hope not, but I'm kidding.

Um, but it's different, right? It's a totally different mindset. How did that make you a better sales leader? Um, it is a totally different mindset.

And it made me a better sales leader in a few ways. I think the simplest is that it gave me a lot more respect for marketing. And we all know that the silos between marketing and sales can sometimes create tension or maybe a lack of respect for the job the other person does. So one of the most important things it taught me is that marketing's really hard.

And just like we face rejection on calls and we know how hard how how hard it is to constantly be rejected in sales. It's also really hard when you spend a bunch of time making a sequence or creating this marketing project and you think it's amazing and beautiful and then nobody responds. Wait a minute. You you let marketing you let marketing create your sequences?

Oh, this feels like a decade ago. But this this was like a decade ago when that was the yeah that was what was happening. Sure. Like sales was not creating sequences.

So yes, to that question. Um But now you create all your own sequences because you don't trust marketing. No. I create all my own sequences.

And then that's like a whole another question of should sales dev report up to marketing or should they report up to sales? Well, let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

Where do they report? Where do they report? I mean, you opened you opened it. Yeah.

I mean, I'm I'm hard on this line. I think that they need to report to sales, but I also am somebody that very much thinks there should be a chief that marketing, sales and CS all report to. So it's it's a bit of a trick question in that I think there needs to be a better emphasis on revenue alignment across everybody that touches a customer, but in that revenue alignment, I absolutely think that sales development reps are in sales, not in marketing and they really need to have more of those sales chops, um, and would benefit from getting the training, coaching, immersion in a sales environment. And is it because of like their quota?

Is it because like alignment with sales? They're writing content, they're touching the customers. They have to actually report back into marketing. I actually like I'm kind of matrixed, but I guess they have to report somewhere.

I always like to put them in marketing because it's the SDR roll is hard. Like it's hard. And it's hard to manage them as well. It's like not easy.

And you know what'll make it easier? Just a dotted line reporting structure to both sales and marketing. Yeah, because the messaging is coming from both, right? I am that was sarcasm.

Um, I Dale, sarcasm, it's a concept you need to become a little more familiar with. Totally. I hey, I I'm up for it. I think sales because they are face they are talking to the customer.

So I think that's a pretty big distinction is that marketing roles are generating interest. They are generating demand or in the purest form they are, you know, working on things like brand consistency and just like brand, you know, brand awareness. Whereas the pivot to being customer facing requires a significantly different skill set. Like full stop.

And that is the predominant reason I think they need to have a sales reporting structure. I like it. I like it. So, there's a lot of not a lot, but there's a good amount of folks out there who would say the exact opposite, right?

And like one one that comes to mind is and I respect him a ton is Kyle Lacy of Jellyfish. Um, also at Lessonly, um, and Seismic for a while. Um, and we have not had him on the show and maybe he'll listen and come on the show to debate this and we could have a whole another episode. Um, but he would tell you that SDR's function is to generate pipeline.

And pipeline generation lives with marketing. How would you respond to that? Two things. One, there's a distinction between a company that is running a predominant PLG model versus a company that's running a predominantly sales-led model.

So I I think you could probably make an argument for a different structure in PLG and all the companies that Kyle has been at or you know, they were they were PLG heavy companies because they're dealing with a lot of inbound. And that's a distinction in the role, right? Like we I I mean BDR, SDR, we throw all these different phrases around. Nobody truly knows what the difference is between a BDR and an SDR, but often I define it as BDR is inbound, SDR is outbound.

So we'll use we'll use that distinction. Uh and everybody's gonna be like, no, that's not what it is. It doesn't matter. We all get it wrong, we all get it right.

So, if we're thinking about maybe a BDR function who is predominantly handling inbound leads, and even if it's not all hand raisers, maybe a heavier like strong MQL funnel. I could I could see. I could see the hey, it's demand, maybe nest them under marketing. Um, I don't come from a PLG background, so that's not my area of expertise, so I'll leave it to folks like Kyle to make those decisions.

I come from a background of running teams that penetrate enterprise accounts. PLG does not work there. And having an SDR team, an outbound team, report to marketing, would just not create the traction in the market in that ice cold outreach that you that I would I've never seen it work in that type of like sales-led, outbound heavy enterprise cycle. It totally makes sense and and since we're talking about alignment between sales, marketing, and and let's get into CS a little bit, but why is it so difficult to keep that alignment?

So we have the SDRs reporting up in sales, but there seems to always be this drop, this gap in between sales and marketing, and now between sales, marketing and CS where we're getting churn. How do we get the information back to marketing and the sales? Why the misalignment? Mmm.

I mean, I feel like that's a question for the ages. I I think part of it is that most chief, like, you know, if you call him Chief Customer Officer, Commercial Officer, whatever it is. Most of them grew up in sales. Okay.

Yeah, like CRO growing up in but now was a VPA sales and now was a CRO. Correct. Yeah. And so I think a lot of it is that the folks that most often get promoted into that chief role have never owned marketing and they've never owned CS.

So some of it might simply be a lack of understanding of the role. I think some of it's still ties back to like, sales is the one carrying the load. Like we're the ones that get fired if we don't hit quota, not you marketing and Austin, not CS either. So I think there're there's some natural tension that gets built into those dynamics and then I think there are some blinders that are not intentional, but I think there are some blinders, um, that get built in because often the person that is the CRO, CCO, whatever, hasn't uh, ever been integrated into the marketing or the CS teams.

Sure. Sounds like an excuse to me, but. Yeah. I don't think it's malicious.

I got like I don't think it's malicious. But then on the other side, it is our responsibility to acknowledge like if if I was a salesperson, sales director, VP of sales and now I'm a CRO that like I don't know everything about marketing. I don't know everything about CS. And then it is my responsibility to make sure that I am not just giving them a seat at the table, but that I am proactively going out and saying, you have domain expertise that I do not have.

Sure. What am I missing? And I'm not sure if the egos of all CROs are allowing that to happen at the volume it should. I love all of that, but when it comes to pipeline and who owns pipeline, my answer is actually very simple.

Everyone owns pipeline, right? And when we talk about, you know, and and I wrote down and I circled it three times, the word silos on my notepad here, um, that Dale makes fun of me that I have a notepad cuz I'm old. Well, he's got circled three times. That's the challenge.

Because otherwise I'm gonna forget to talk about it. But that's the problem, right? Is a lot of revenue orgs, it is these silos and it's oh, marketing owns pipeline and sales owns signing and customer success owns expansion. Everyone owns revenue.

I am a huge believer that part of marketing's compensation should be tied to sales and closed deals that makes sure that we get the good leads. Part of sales compensation should be tied to time to value time to activation, expansion, renewal, etcetera. Same with success. Like it it you if you go this one level deeper, you're getting everyone surrounded on the one goal, which at the end of the day is two things, right?

It's new revenue and it's NRR. And if you aren't collectively working on both of those, then you're living in this silo and you have this pissing contest of who owns what. And I think we've all probably been in organizations where that's exactly what it is. And like that one-on-one weekly that I have with Dale the marketer, I want to blow my brains out because it's going to be a horrible conversation.

Now, that's my one-on-one with Dale. Even though he's not a marketer. He can't close business. It's a problem.

I give him all the leads. They don't close any business. I don't know what happens. Oh wait.

But you know, I'd I'd say Adam I I have very much particularly in the last five years, seen a big change in marketing having a number. Yes. Like like there is marketing is being measured and is accountable for pipeline generated, pipeline closed in a way that I had not really seen prior to five years ago and I am seeing some exciting, I think exciting changes in sales comp plans where comp is like like that time to value example, like some comp is held back in terms of making sure that if the ideal handover is, you know, 30 days, if you are facilitating a handover in a way that allows that time to value to to be that 30 days or less, you maybe get a little bonus. Um, one of my favorite things that I've been seen, uh, in recurring revenue models is a bonus if they renew after year one or renew after their original contract.

I love that. And it makes sense because sales people are often accused of just, you know, pushing garbage over the line just to get their revenue and frankly, that's not what I've seen in the sales orgs I've worked in or even like the clients that I serve now, I don't think that that's. Yeah. I I I I I've never seen that.

I don't want to say that. 90% of the time, I've never seen that. That's same. Same.

But like why not counteract that narrative that is a that's fabricated with an incentive for sales folks to not only bring good deals across the line, but then bring them across the line and continue to partner with their, you know, CS team to like to keep the value that they promised in the sales cycle going throughout the year. Ever feel like keeping your CRM updated with call notes is a nightmare? You're not alone. Most sales leaders would rate their CRM hygiene a four out of 10.

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attention.tech Yeah. I I I agree. So, let me shift gears a little bit.

You are the outbound expert. Right? I am. Self-proclaimed, probably a fact.

Yeah. It's not self-proclaimed, she's a LinkedIn top voice. Like there's a lot of people talking about it, not self-proclaimed. And I I I I said a fact and we could edit that out if you'd like.

Um but I did say it's a fact. Outbound is fucking broken. Like let let's just call a spade a spade, right? There is so much shit out there of it's it's make a thousand calls a day and just drop everyone in a sequence and, you know, use this tool to scrape LinkedIn for personalization.

I I I want to speak to especially, you know, a lot of our listeners are founders and they're building outbound engines for the first time. Yeah. How do we fix this mindset of like, just quantity, quantity, quantity, quantity. Just throw people in fucking sequences and, boy, they're going to come.

That's what Dale tries to do to grow our business. He's like, build a sequence, email every VC firm in San Francisco and they will come. Um, okay. And then he says call Leslie.

And then call Leslie. Right. And I said I said I I know a consultant we could hire who could help with this. Except for I do not serve early stage companies.

Sorry, suckers. Gotta get a little bit bigger before I'm your gal. Um, okay, but two things, two very serious things. One is that there is some confusion about what works and that happens and you have all seen these emails hit your LinkedIn inbox where people are promising you 10, 30, 50 meetings a month.

And here's what folks don't understand because they will get those 10 meetings and they will say it worked. To get those 10 meetings, you burn 10,000 leads. So it it say it again, please. Like they're they're not wrong, they got their 10 meetings, but they are burning through their TAM at a rate that means that it is not possible to build a sustainable durable outbound process.

So I think that is something that people get wrong and you don't see it right away. Right. Slow burn, slow burn. You're it's slow burn.

Yes, it's a slow burn and then you've screwed your entire TAM and everybody hates you and you decimated your domain reputation probably more than once. And now all of a sudden you're at year one, year two of the business and you've realized that you've dug a hole that might be impossible to get out of. So I think that is one very important point. The other point I think is that there's this trend that I just love, that sarcasm Dale, there's this trend that I just love on LinkedIn where people talk about, um, like rebranding cold calling.

This is how I make I this is how I do warm calling and warm outreach and then they literally just describe how to do cold outbound strategically. And it no end. And call it warm. Because it's like, no, you're you're literally just describing cold calling.

You're just describing cold calling outreach, whatever, cold outbound done properly instead of spending all this time trying to rebrand it into something it doesn't need to be. Like why don't we just create repeatable processes that center our customers and then, I don't know, train our reps to execute against them? There's the fault. And then like one of your current posts is like coach your reps.

Like coach them. Like help them. Like make sure that they have the foundational elements. But the but part of the challenges like some of the old school leaders are like volume, volume, volume.

And and this isn't a volume game. We're talking even okay if you're gonna do a PLG motion. Let's keep that away for a second. But if you're gonna do like enterprise type sales, it's not 100 calls, 200 calls, parallel dialers.

So how do they do it in a bit more like let's give the let's give the audience like a couple of tactics that they can run today to help them out. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And for context, I grew up in a volume environment.

Like the first teams I managed, the first calls I did were like 200, 250 calls a day. Like I was pounding. We didn't even have computers at our desks. We would print out.

You you were you were rotating you were rotary dialing, right? Um no, I'm still a millennial. God. We're we're all around I think we're all around the same age.

go talk. Jesus. We're we're probably older than you. No, I'm I'm a millennial.

Uh but like I am saying I like to be in that environment. I was able to have success in that environment and I think a lot of the people that are sales leaders now grew up in that same environment and they're like, well, that's what I did. Dale's a boomer. Right.

It's like cool, Trent. Like that's so awesome that worked for you 15 years ago. That is simply not the environment that we're in right now. Our buyers are smarter.

Our buyers have higher expectations. Our buyers have a lot more access to information. And it is now our responsibility to make sure that we are earning the right to ask for their attention, their time, their consideration. So one tactic, pretty easy to execute, too is value-based segmentation.

Meaning take your ICP and then build in some additional layers. Your ICP is financial executives in, you know, one of three industries. Pick one industry. Don't pick financial executives.

Pick a specific title. So now you're outbound to CFOs at CPG companies. Keep going. Only CFOs that have been in seat for a year or less.

Only CFOs at organizations that have 10 billion plus in revenue. Only CFOs that are in the New York metro area. And now you've created a list that's maybe 38 people, 52 people, but it's still an opportunity to create a message that is highly relevant and valuable to them without having to hyperpersonalize. So that is still scalable.

And it still centers the customer. Yeah. I I think that's I think that's great. I I wonder how many leaders that may potentially listen to this and be like, yeah, but I gotta do 100 dials a day.

And it's like but you then you if if first off, if you're the leader who's saying you need to do 100 dials a day, you're a manager, not a leader. Number two, if you're being told that you need to do 100 dials a day by a founder, you need to be the leader and push back as to why that is not the right thing to do. I love it. I love it.

Say it again, Dale, because you don't you don't agree with me often. Yeah, it it it it's it's very very little but I do agree. Like you're a manager. You're not you're not coaching.

You're not leading. You're not you don't have any strategy. It's just and it's not going to work. As Leslie said, you're going to burn your whole TAM.

You're going to burn your whole your whole market. Um I I think about it like a bullseye. Like if you think about the bullseye, like that round, that red piece is small and when you get really get at that that red piece, now you can go on the outside. You can start building the rings around where you can be like, okay, now we can expand it because we actually did this really well.

Yeah. You know, it's it's interesting because I do I I joke that I for sales team builder, I don't work with early stage companies, but I do have an engagement where I serve early stage companies. Um, and one of the questions that I always ask because they'll be like, well, we have to all these people and we have to contact everybody. And I'm like, okay, to hit your goals for this year, how many customers do you need?

And the answer is usually like 12. Right. 17. Right.

The answer isn't, we need 700 customers. And I think what happens is that so many of these companies are are preparing for or chasing VC funding. So they are in the mindset of TAM, TAM, TAM. Here's, you know, these huge numbers that it can be difficult to reset to a quality mindset when it comes to outbound and to remember, we actually only need to close 12 people this year.

So even if we have atrocious win rates, like we really only need to talk to a 100 super qualified prospects. To hit our revenue goal. But it's it it often is one of those things that the moment I say it out loud to them, a light bulb goes off. And they they get it and they're able to then readjust their focus and their mindset, but we as founders, as revenue leaders, get so bogged down and like just keeping the plates spinning that it can be hard to take that breath and pivot to a more strategic, more intentional focus.

I love that. Yeah, it's it's it's the plate spinning. And I think it's a little bit of fear. Like it's the mindset like changing the mindset from fear to execution.

Like if you execute and you start getting some some quick wins on that. We have we have a client right now. We're just kind of ramping them up. They sent out 12 messages, got a meeting, one meeting right away.

Like so it's like it doesn't have to be 3,000 emails. Hyper-personalized. We we were on that call before here. Leslie, I sh-I shit you not.

I said it. I said if we could get one meeting for every 12 emails we send out, we're golden. I'm just I'll do backflips through your damn New York City office. Now and and Adam can't even do a front flip or walk straight so I don't know what's going to happen.

This this is a fact. You're going to have to really do some calisthetics to warm up some. I'm gonna have to figure something out because I can't do any of that. But we'll see.

So Leslie, at revenue Reimagined, we love to give back to the community. Give back to the audience. You were so gracious. What are you going to give to the audience?

Ooh, you know that giving back, open fists, or open palm versus closed fist. Close fists. Um, the thing that I would be, uh, delighted to share with people. I have a cold call objection book.

Uh, it is 13 of the most common objections, 40 different sample scripts to help folks find a response that pairs with their personality style as well as an approach to continuing the conversation when you hear an objection and not going straight into selling mode and getting that commission breath. So I it's a great asset. I would love for folks to have that. Love that.

Nice. Thank you. That's awesome. awesome.

And it's an it's an amazing asset. Am I am I eligible? Yeah. Ah, look at that.

There we go. All right. As we, um, as we wrap it up, we'd love to throw some rapid fire at you. And we're going to we're going to put some rules on the rapid fire today.

So rapid fire rules, every answer must be 10 words or less. Ten words or less. And that doesn't count, so it's okay. I don't know how to count but I rely on Dale for that.

All right. First question, what song would best describe your revenue strategy? I'll go with my walk up song. Sister Nancy, bam, bam.

Nice. Nice. I like that. Your walk up song.

Yeah. We're just going to start playing some music in these uh in these videos. Dale, have you have you never done like a big sales kickoff where like you walk up to the stage and you have a walk up song? Yeah.

I I I know they usually play taps when you walk up to the stage, but I don't I don't remember any of these. Yeah. You got to like go like a like an MLB. You go to a game and they you know, it's I know.

No, I know what you're talking about. If you had a crystal ball, what's one revenue trend or strategy that you predict will take center stage in the next 12 to 18 months? Community. Community-led growth.

Yeah. We're it's gonna keep it's gonna keep growing and be more mainstream. Love that. Leslie, what's uh what's one lesser known tip or tactic that's made a surprising difference in revenue outcomes for teams that you've led?

Give give us a secret. Oh, a lesser. Ooh. Uh, a Lesley-ism.

Oh, I'm just not sure. Um, active listening is the most important skill for any sales professional in any role. Yeah. That I agree with.

100%. So why you have two years in one mouth, right? 100%. Awesome.

Last question. Earlier in the show, you said you would be a marketing leader. It's tomorrow morning. You grab your big cup of coffee.

You could be in Tampa, you might be in Chicago. Who knows where you are? What's the first thing you do as that marketing leader? Have fun with it.

Have fun. What a good answer. So many people are like, I I would come in and I would look at this and I would do that like the basic simplicity of that answer and all that it means is probably the best answer we've got to that question. I love that.

With that said, Leslie, thank you so much for joining us. Where can people find you? What's the best way to engage with you? Yes, I live on LinkedIn.

So everybody can find me there. And then I'm also on Tik Tok at Sales Tips Talk. Sales Tips Talk. I love it.

Yeah. Super cool. I just made sure that that was very hard to say out loud. Leslie, thanks so much for being here.

It was awesome. My pleasure. Thank you both. Thank you, Leslie.

Appreciate it. Thank you.