Episode 3: Unveiling the Secrets of a Founding SDR with Lauren Woodcock

In this episode of 'Your Future On meritt', CEO and Co-founder Will Koning welcomes Lauren Woodcock, a seasoned founding SDR. Lauren shares her journey through various tech companies, detailing her experiences and the challenges she faced in establishing successful SDR teams at Daymi, Abacum, DataHawk, and now Glyphic. They discuss the skills necessary for a founding SDR, the importance of being data-driven, and the effectiveness of cold calling. Lauren also offers insights into the evolving sales landscape, her approach to SDR roles, and her future aspirations. Tune in to learn from Lauren's exceptional track record and her tips for succeeding in sales.

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00:00 Introduction to the Podcast

00:21 Meet Lauren Woodcock: Founding SDR Extraordinaire

00:53 Journey into Sales: Why Choose This Career?

01:38 Building SDR Teams: Experiences and Insights

03:56 Challenges and Skills of a Founding SDR

08:48 The Importance of Cold Calling

15:32 Leveraging LinkedIn and Other Channels

18:29 Future Prospects and Advice for Aspiring SDRs

21:59 Closing Remarks and Final Thoughts

[00:00:00] 

Will Koning: Hey everybody, this is Will Koning, the CEO and Co-founder of meritt and you are on the Your Future On meritt podcast, the only podcast that talks to you about your sales careers. So with me today is a founding SDR extraordinaire, Lauren Woodcock. I've known Lauren for a good few years now. Lauren has been the founding SDR over at Daymi, Abacum, and now Glyphic, she's done it three times. There is nothing she doesn't know about being an SDR and getting an SDR team set up. So Lauren, welcome. How are you doing today?

Lauren Woodcock: Hi, thank you for having me. I'm doing well, thank you. How are you doing? 

Will Koning: I'm really well. Thank you very much, Lauren. So Lauren, this is obviously a podcast to talk about how you got into sales and why you love it. So I love to ask this one [00:01:00] question, how come you didn't get a normal job, like being a banker or an accountant or anything else like that? What prompted you to join our wonderful industry?

Lauren Woodcock: Well, that's an interesting one because it isn't the most normal job because it just, it takes a lot of hard work and it takes a lot of resilience. And I think that that's one of the things that excites me about it because you have to just keep on going and obviously there's also chances to earn good money and also advance your career and be able to kind of shape the future that you want to have.

And I think sales is a great platform to do so.

Will Koning: Amazing. Yeah. One of the, some of the companies, you've obviously done this three times with three different technology companies. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about the types of companies you've been working for.

Lauren Woodcock: Yeah, sure. So I started, actually started with SaaSLeads, what you set up with bootcamp. So I got to learn all of the fundamentals as to how to be an SDR. And then I kind of fell into the first founding role because Daymi didn't necessarily have that function set up. So the first role was really starting to build out all of those [00:02:00] processes and the scripts and learn about the different financial personas because it was selling FinTech. And then after that, I moved on to working at Abacum and similar situation kind of fell into the v2 of SDRs there. And the first one hired and again, selling into different kinds of financial personas. So we're selling more into FPNA, whereas Dami was more fund management. Um, and yeah, then again, set up all the different processes and then moved on to DataHawk, which you, you, you missed, but DataHawk is basically selling e commerce data and, uh, selling e commerce data to different personas there again. But again, very much data and, you know, setting up all of the different processes, booking meetings, making sure that their outbound function was functioning and actually created. And that was really. successful and a great learning journey all of those three. And now I am very happy to have joined Glyphic, which is basically an AI powered sales [00:03:00] engagement platform providing data driven insight so that your reps can, you know, close a lot of deals. And that's really exciting because it's been founded by ex Google deep mind research engineers.

Will Koning: Oh, that is really cool. So you've actually done this journey four times now. That's crazy. Why do you keep doing it again?

Lauren Woodcock: Because I like stress. No, I keep doing it because I just, I love it. I think it's really cool. I love being able to mold different processes and understand different kind of buyer journeys, but also understand what kind of different personas really need. And being able to really mold that function is really cool and exciting to me. And you get to talk all the time. And to be honest, I really love talking and speaking to people and helping them with some great tech. And fortunately, I've worked at companies which really provide really, really solid tech. So it's exciting.

Will Koning: Yeah, no, I imagine. Maybe you could just explain to the audience, um, what [00:04:00] a founding SDR is. So, you've obviously got the SDR or the BDR. What's the difference?

Lauren Woodcock: So I would say the most fundamental differences is that you're the first one through the door. So really, you've got to mould it, like look at it, like a piece of clay. You have to mould it into what you want. To create and to make like pottery, for example. Right. And when you're coming in as an SDR in a function, which has already been established and scripts already written and pain points and different value props has already been figured out, then it's more like your tools are already sorted out for you. But as a founding SDR, it's your job to really mould those tools and create a great process and function, which is solid for, A scaling team. So you create a scalable function, which can continue to succeed. Even once you've stepped out of that company,

Will Koning: So you make it sound easy. I imagine this isn't that easy. You must have seen some challenges.[00:05:00] 

Lauren Woodcock: I think there's challenges anywhere you go, but yeah, and of course there are challenges and you have to be really resourceful and you have to know what you're doing. You have to upskill yourself as well all the time, because obviously all of the processes in the industry changes. So you need to be able to evolve with it, but it's definitely not easy. But that's what makes it exciting, I think. And that's what makes me keep going back into the same kind of roles because it is a challenge and you have to challenge yourself as well. I love that.

Will Koning: Yeah, amazing. So, um, coming on to some of the skills that you need to have as a founding SDR, what would you say they are?

Lauren Woodcock: you need to be resourceful. You need to have grit. You don't want to over complicate what you're doing. Start with a foundation and build from it, but keep on going and also use data to then enhance what you're doing. So if you're not making any decisions, which aren't backed by data, so for example, if you're creating a different campaign or you're using different [00:06:00] kind of scripts with different kind of messaging, go on data. So if you see that something's working, continue to do so and tweak it in the right direction. But equally as well, if you see that something's not working and it's not resonating, then be able to quickly identify that and fail fast. So that way that you can continue to move on quicker. I think one of the worst things that you can do is continuing to try to, you know, convey the same kind of messaging, which just isn't resonating.

Because then you're wasting time. So fail fast and learn quickly.

Will Koning: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it's such an important trait in startups and especially in sales, the ability to fail fast and then quickly. And I imagine as a founding SDR, that's even more true because it's only you, right? It's not, you're not usually working with other SDRs.

Lauren Woodcock: No, no, it's you. You're the one that sets up the process. So you have to be able to work alone. Um, but also equally, you know, there is a team, you're not the one that's founded the company, right? So it's not just you. And I think that if you silo yourself to only you, then [00:07:00] that can become really lonely. And one thing that I always make sure to do is really build great relationships with people that I'm working with, because you don't want to be siloed and you want to continuously speak to the people that you're working with. Also ask for feedback and then also use that feedback, but work together as a team, but at the end of the day, you're the one that's picking up the phone and you're the one that's, you know, trying to book in those qualified meetings and trying to really generate some great qualified pipe for the company that you're working at. And you do that alone, but just because you're setting up the function on your own doesn't mean that you necessarily are. And I think that's key to, to building a successful outbound function. 

Will Koning: Yeah. no, absolutely. One of the things that I imagine must be really interesting is getting to work with some of these founders. You mentioned right now you're working with some Google DeepMind founders. Is that right?

Lauren Woodcock: Yeah, Yeah. So that's really, really cool. Cause they're basically they've created cutting edge AI because of their background, [00:08:00] and they've now been able to create this tool, which is really, really, really cool. And it's really exciting. So being able to work with AI and work with sales professionals and, you know, cold call salespeople is different than a cold calling financial people. Cause well, they love to talk as well. So you get a lot of insights from there as well, but specifically with those founders, it is really cool and we've got a great VP of sales. Um, so no, it's a really exciting and cool company to join. So I'm very excited.

Will Koning: Yeah. No, it sounds absolutely awesome. So being a founding SDR, you talked about some of the skills like being data driven, um, being resourceful. What about some of the more sort of standard ones? Like, you know, what do you, what does a day to day look like for a founding SDR? What are you doing in a day?

Lauren Woodcock: Oh, I'm calling a lot of people. So that's my go to because at the minute what I'm seeing is that email is really, really saturated. And because of Google's new policies, which they put into play, you can't also necessarily really track [00:09:00] your opening click rates. So you can't really base any data on the messages that you're sending because otherwise it might look like spam, but to not get too technical. Uh, yeah, I'm just calling and following up on LinkedIn, building my LinkedIn strategy, and just making sure that I hit those phones and get good conversations.

Will Koning: Yeah. So what, why is the phone most important to you?

Lauren Woodcock: Because you get through to someone quickly and you can get direct feedback, right? You can, you can immediately see what a response is and you can immediately see how to, you know, pick up on that. And you can also test out your messaging quicker and you catch someone on the phone, that just cuts through the noise a little bit more and if you're able to reiterate your pitch the way that actually works and resonates and you do your research on someone, they actually genuinely appreciate that I find, because a lot of the time, right, there's a difference between cold calling, well, I think and cold calling with just a script and just, oh, I've got this list to call and let's just get through as quick as possible. If you cold. 

Will Koning: What's the difference? So, so a lot of people when they think cold call, they [00:10:00] think, oh, I've got to pick up the phone and call. Like, it sounds like it's a little bit different. Unpack that for us. What does that look like?

Lauren Woodcock: So, cold calling with a script, obviously, you know, having a script is good because you have a baseline, but if you take a script and you make it your own and you put your own spin on it and you really focus on your tonality as well, so mirroring how someone's speaking, if someone's speaking a little bit slow, you slow it down, if someone's speaking more boisterous, you pick it up a bit more, and that, you know, that establishes credibility Right off the bat, because like, if you know, if you're in a deep conversation with someone and someone touches their hair and the other person also touches their hair, that means that they're listening to you and it works the same way. So I think that's one fundamental thing, which is different between just cold calling and cold calling well. Also doing your research, really taking the time to understand if your product can actually help this company, so I'm not going to call a company that I don't think that we can actually be a benefit to, because for one, it's a waste of their [00:11:00] time. but equally also mine. So really making sure that you're reaching out and tailoring your script to the persona that you're speaking to and the company so that you know that it's going to resonate and that you can also portray the value in a good way.

Will Koning: So give us an example. You do your research. Why is that? How does that make the cold call different?

Lauren Woodcock: because it shows that. You know for one that you're talking about because you want to look like you're credible as well. And it also shows that you're not going to waste their time and it shows that you're a company which is bothering to actually stand out from the crowd and make sure that you're going to be able to help. So, for example, the other day, it didn't turn into a meeting, but it was a great conversation. I was on the 20 minutes with, with this VP of sales at this cool company as well. Um, and he was really open to me and I reached out to him off the back of LinkedIn because I saw that he'd done a post about how people don't really stick out from the crowd. And so I was like, wow, okay, let me call you and I'll try and stick out from the crowd. And that turned into a really good [00:12:00] conversation. So choosing those kind of snippets of where you're like, Oh, this is now a really great moment to call this person that's going to help you too. 

Will Koning: You're reaching out to a prospect based on something they've done on LinkedIn or something you've researched. So instead of them answering the phone and saying, Hey, do you want to buy Glyphic in this case? It's, Hey, I've done some homework on you. Is that, is that right?

Lauren Woodcock: Yeah.

Will Koning: Yeah. And, and like, just how does that impact your numbers?

Lauren Woodcock: Well, well, I mean, I'm, I'm booking meetings already. I'm, I'm, I'm only in my third week now and I've got quite good pipe and booked some meetings. Some have already been held, so it's good, you know, and then

Will Koning: right. Wait, wait, wait. You've, you've been, you've only been in this company three weeks and how many meetings have you booked?

Lauren Woodcock: well, I've booked four meetings, um, and then I've got about 10 good opportunities lined up, but I just need the date solidified.

Will Koning: In three weeks.

Lauren Woodcock: Well, less than, but yeah, I mean, I still need to get on my phones after this and call US.

Will Koning: Fair enough. [00:13:00] So I think that just goes to show to the audience listening, you know, if you can research these leads and you have a great tonality and a great calling out there, you can really, really book amazing meetings really, really fast. Is that fair to say, Lauren?

Lauren Woodcock: Yeah, I think that's fair to say.

Will Koning: A little birdie actually told me, um, that [00:14:00] in your previous, in your previous, uh, role, every time you connected on a call, you would book, uh, 30 percent of them would turn into meetings books, is that right?

Lauren Woodcock: No, it was a little bit higher. It was like 46. 3%.

Will Koning: It's very, very accurate. So it sounds like you do know your numbers. That is incredible. So what, nearly one in two meetings that you booked, you, you converted into a meeting.

Lauren Woodcock: Yeah. That, I mean, that wasn't in my first three weeks. Right. Because you have to establish a baseline as well. And that takes a little bit of time because you're figuring out your personas, you're figuring out your script, you're figuring out the kind of messaging and value that you want to, deliver and portray. And then I think once you get that to, well not a T, it's always a learning process, right? You always reiterate. But once you get that done, you can book a lot of meetings. And the way that I did that was cold calling.

Will Koning: And what would you say to those that say that cold calling is dead?

Lauren Woodcock: I would say you're probably not actively reaching out to people and that you're probably more in a managerial role and expecting a lot from reps but not really necessarily giving [00:15:00] them the key to do so.

I think that's not the way to go no, definitely cold call. Um, and I think that people who are just relying on emails, uh, should stop doing that and should pick up the phones

Will Koning: and what about 

Lauren Woodcock: if you 

Will Koning: sorry, go on.

Lauren Woodcock: Well, just only if you want to make commission

Will Koning: Yeah, well, I hope every salesperson does want to make commissions. So it seems like the phone is alive and well. What other channels are working for you?

Lauren Woodcock: Uh, so linkedin is doing well, so I send Uh, voice notes and I create different kind of memes and gifs. They don't always work, but I think that's trying it out, right? Like it's not that everything that I, you know, you fail, you learn and you move on. But LinkedIn, I've been trying different kinds of outreach.

So with voice notes and sending memes and gifs, I've also done some kind of AI pictures where they're enjoying the tool and then [00:16:00] I've created them enjoying the tools, which sometimes lands. Sometimes doesn't I think it's your sense of humor, right? I find it amusing. So that's working But cold calling is really the way to go.

I mean i've had some email responses, but that's then just off a follow up but am not necessarily really focusing on Emails because we can't really track them and they're not working. It's so saturated at the minute so I just want to cut through the noise

Will Koning: What do you mean by it's so saturated?

Lauren Woodcock: There are a lot of companies at the minute which are just blasting out campaigns and using different kind of domains for their domain to protect their domain, but in that there's spam blasting. I'd call it a lot of different prospects sending out the same kind of generic messages and that's just filling up these people's inboxes and they've already got a really filled inbox. And so just sending another sales email on top of that, even if it is well researched and you do your best to, you know, under a hundred words, super personalized and well thought out. It just, it doesn't have as much [00:17:00] of a chance of sticking out. And now with Gmail's rules, which have been put into place, if you do track your open and click rates, and there's like this big yellow banner on the top, which says it's likely spam. Now I'm no genius, but that's not

Will Koning: it's not helping you, right?

Lauren Woodcock: No.

Will Koning: Yeah, yeah, and I guess these AI SDRs are just making the problem worse, right? And inboxes are all clogged up.

Lauren Woodcock: Yeah, I was gonna, I was gonna move on to that as well. And I think AI is great, and I love what Glyphic is doing with the AI because so I was in the conversation with a great friend of mine who's a sales leader the other day and he's like, so it's really cool. It's like Iron Man. You're not taking away the person, but you're giving it that tech to really become this superhero. And that is what it's doing, right? It's about enhancing your reps to be more efficient, to close more deals, to do all of that. It's not about replacing them. Because people do buy from people. And I think that's key. And I think that's something which I might have missed out on the cold calling is people buy from people. And if [00:18:00] you can really show that you're a person that you care, that you've done your research, that you're matching their tone, that's wildly different than being called out by AI or being spam blasted by those emails,

Will Koning: totally right. And look, you've got the data and the numbers to prove it right. Four meetings in under three weeks from getting started at Glyphic. It says a lot about the excitement of Glyphic, but it certainly doesn't want to take it away from how amazing you are doing. I imagine you're only going to be more and more successful with Glyphic.

That is amazing. So let's go back to Lauren. Imagine Lauren, when she first started out in her sales career, what is that advice that you would give to you? One of those three point pointers that you would say, Hey, Lauren, this is what you need to do. What's that advice you're going to give yourself? Yeah,

Lauren Woodcock: I would say step one, learn really, you know, really learn, speak to your peers, speak to your colleagues and learn about the role which you're going into, but also other kinds of roles in the industry, which you're selling into and continuously [00:19:00] upskill yourself. Then I would say, Really, really be receptive to feedback and listen to it because when you're asking for help and people give you help, then they're only trying to, you know, help you out. So by listening to that and then taking on that feedback and that advice, that's going to be something which is going to mould you into a much greater person. And then lastly, when you make mistakes, because I make mistakes all the time, right? Everyone does, people are only human except for the AI bots. But when you make a mistake, accept that you've made the mistake, don't beat yourself up about it, but just stand up again, learn from it, and move on, and try not to make that same mistake again.

Will Koning: yeah, totally. Do you know what I, I always say the best SDRs, they have four key traits for me, and that is, you're expert communicator. I think you've just demonstrated that in the last 20 minutes or so, but you have that curiosity. So you wanna learn about your customers, you wanna learn about the industry that we are in. You have that [00:20:00] coachability. Ability to, uh, you know, take on that feedback, get feedback and improve from it. And then there's that grit thing. And I think being kind to yourself in times of failure, accepting that failure, moving on is that grittiness to help you achieve your long term goals. So I think you really do it, what it means to be an exceptional SDR. Um, and yeah, of course we all love the cold calls over at meritt. So, uh, yeah, where's the future for Lauren? Where does she, where's she going? 

Lauren Woodcock: Well, I am really excited about Glyphic and the future them, so I want to see what happens there, but in the end I think I'm gonna, well I have actually set up my own consultancy company, so the future is wide open, but right now I just want to focus on getting all of the foundations set up for Glyphic and making sure that that is successful too in my function there.

Will Koning: Amazing. That's so exciting. I'm sure in a few years time, we're going to look and we're going to see you. I [00:21:00] don't know how many more SDR teams you're going to found.

Lauren Woodcock: I don't know. I don't have a glass ball in front of me as it currently stands, but you know

what, at the minute I'm just focusing on the role which I've just joined and I'm really excited about that.

Will Koning: Do you ever see yourself going into like a full sales role, for example?

Lauren Woodcock: Possibly. Definitely. I mean, the future's wide open, right? It's just where it takes you,

Will Koning: Mm hmm. 

Lauren Woodcock: where you take yourself. 

Will Koning: I mean, when you think about all those opportunities that you created for yourself in the last, what, three years or so, would you, would you ever seen yourself doing this three years ago?

Lauren Woodcock: No, I was a diving instructor back then. It's changed quite a bit.

Will Koning: It has changed quite a bit, and I think that just shows to anyone that's listening what opportunity sales can bring you, right? Here you are now working for a cutting edge AI company. That would never have happened if you hadn't have joined the amazing world of tech sales and being in SDR.

Lauren Woodcock: Very true.

Will Koning: Awesome stuff. We're going to move on to a [00:22:00] quote corner now. So, uh, this is where we get to ask you a quote. What is that quote that you tell yourself all the time that you live and swear by and then tell us why?

Lauren Woodcock: Well, I think it's going to sound a bit cheesy, but, um, "the best way to predict the future is to create it". And that's a quote by Peter Drucker. And I think that that really fits into what we've also been speaking about, about like how three years ago I was a dive instructor and now suddenly I'm, you know, working at Glyphic with a cutting AI technology company. Yeah. You create it yourself. Right. And I think that that's something to live by. 

Will Koning: 100% right, when people talk about luck, you make your own luck, right? There's no, you know, and I think that that rings so true and you totally exemplify that with everything that you've achieved, uh, so far. So that's really, really amazing.

Lauren, this is now your opportunity to sell yourself. You are of course, um, a sales person. This [00:23:00] is your opportunity to tell us about yourself or what you want to sell, sell to us though and go for it.

Lauren Woodcock: Put me on the spot! Well, if you are in rev ups or if you are a sales leader who needs to increase closed deals rates, if you need to have more visibility into your CRM, if you want to learn how to really utilize the best kind of AI out there, then please do reach out to me because Glyphic is definitely a game changer for your team. It helps with auto populating your CRM. So you've got actual healthy data in your CRM rather than having to chase any of your reps to fill it out. You've got a good oversight and you've also got cutting AI to help you out. So do reach out. It is a great, great product. And again, it has been founded by Google DeepMind Research Engineers. So they are the creme de la creme.

Will Koning: And I can actually attest to that. I've been using Glyphic for a good few weeks now myself. One of my favorite things is the ability that when you make a cold call, it's all recorded. You [00:24:00] can then use that to send a follow up email in seconds and the copy is fantastic. Not only that, we can send some of our data back to our teams around the product stuff that we're doing for meritt and the customers are giving us feedback.

And that is like one or two of hundreds of use cases that this AI technology can do for us. So Glyphic is clearly going to go a very, very long way. So that's really, really cool. Yeah, amazing. So, um, the other thing I'd say is if you want to sound like, uh, an amazing sdr like Lauren, I really recommend you go and check out meritt.

We've got loads of free courses on there. We know that we've got really amazing opportunities like working at Glyphic. Uh, well, hopefully they are just about to hire again. Um, and yeah, do, do join our jobs board to find more opportunities like that. Um, with that, everyone, thank you so much, Lauren, for joining us on the meritt Podcast.

We will see you very, very soon for our next episode. Uh, yeah, thanks for having us. Uh, thanks for coming on, Lauren. Nice to say. It's been really good 

Lauren Woodcock: Thank you for having me. It's been great. Thank you.[00:25:00] 

Will Koning: Amazing. Thank you everybody. And remember your future. It's on merittt. Bye. 

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