The Daily Sales Show

Building an SDR process is the easy part. Getting reps to follow it after onboarding ends and the manager stops watching is where most programs fall apart.
Will Aitken sat down with David Wilkins, founder of SDR Leaders Global, and Ahmed Abdel-Raouf, head of sales development at Quantcast, to work through the outbound side specifically. Most teams have a methodology for discovery and demos. Almost nobody has documented what happens before a prospect enters the funnel.
Map the process before you buy another tool
David asks the same question at SDR Leaders meetups worldwide: has anyone mapped lead to closed revenue end to end? Very few hands go up. Meanwhile teams keep bolting tech onto processes that were never mapped. Map it first and you may need fewer tools, not more.
Where to start when there is no process at all
Ahmed built the Quantcast function from nothing 18 months ago. His first 30 days were observation: shadowing AE calls, auditing which tools actually had adoption, logging the objections that kept recurring. Then ICP clarity, messaging architecture, operational infrastructure with ops, the playbook, and measurement. In that order.
How prescriptive a playbook should be
Ahmed's runs about 70 slides and is deliberately mixed. Prescriptive where it helps, with a worked email broken into personalization, value, and CTA. It also teaches reps where to find personalization worth using: what someone follows or engages with, not tenure or a new role, which he says have been done to death since COVID. David's caveat is that playbooks go stale. Treat it as a living document with real versions.
Give reps the lane, not the script
David's framing is bowling bumpers. Reps get the lane, leaders are the rails. He pointed to a team running an "F-up page" where reps document what went wrong so everyone can learn from it. Ahmed's split is 20 percent learning, 80 percent falling on your face. His first cohort worked a conference booth on day three.
Coach the behavior, not the outcome
Ninety minutes every Thursday, with the content set by the numbers instead of a curriculum. Reply rate dips and it becomes a messaging workshop. Talk time drops and it becomes an objection gauntlet. Ahmed watches talk time over connect rate and reply rate over open rate, because high open with low reply means the subject lines work and the message does not. He enforces a call minimum for a statistical reason: ten calls and ten connects is an outlier, not a 100 percent connect rate.
He also makes the case for reading what a dashboard cannot show. A top performer's numbers slid for weeks and formal check-ins got nowhere, so he took her for a walk instead. Her grandmother had been in hospital for a month. He gave her the rest of the week off and she finished the quarter around 110 percent.
On hiring
Ahmed screens for curiosity over experience and treats three years as an SDR as a flag worth asking about. His best hires have come out of retail and hospitality. His current top performer came from the Apple Store with no sales background and moves into an AE seat in July. David's rule from his Snowflake days: if there's doubt, there's no doubt.
Resources mentioned
Gong's cheat sheet on 5 reasons deals slip
SDR Leaders Global, communities across EMEA, North America, and APAC

The Speakers:
Will Aitken, Host, Sell Better
David Wilkins, Founder, SDR Leaders Global
Ahmed Abdel-Raouf, Head of Sales Development, Quantcast

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Sequences fail when every touch feels like a copy-paste template with no connecting thread.
Buyers don't respond to volume, they respond to relevance and a message that feels like it was written for them.
This session teaches a repeatable system for building cadences that match how buyers actually decide today. AI handles the research, variation, and follow-up drafts, you stay in control of the narrative.
You'll walk through the cadence blueprint live, from touch count and channel roles to the frameworks that keep each step distinct. Every touch gets a job: add new value, new proof, or a new angle.
You'll Learn:
A cadence blueprint built for today's buyer, including touch count and channel role
3 to 5 email frameworks you can plug into any sequence and use AI to generate variations
How to keep follow-ups from sounding automated and what to do when prospects go quiet

The Speakers:
Jed Mahrle and Megan Huston
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Reps don't get stuck at the gatekeeper because of what they say, they get stuck because of how they sound. In the first five seconds, gatekeepers run an automatic screen, and most sales openers trigger it immediately.
Jack Frimston and Zac Thompson built an outsourced sales agency on a phone-first, psychology-led approach, and their whole method is designed to make reps sound nothing like a typical cold caller. They treat the gatekeeper not as an obstacle, but as a puzzle to solve.
In this session, they broke down the exact language, tone shifts, and pattern interrupts that flip the gatekeeper dynamic, including what to say when you're asked "what's this about?" and how to turn a "they're not available" into useful org intel.
Learn how to navigate past the gatekeeper into the wrong person, and how to use calls, email, and LinkedIn together to eventually reach the right DM.
You'll Learn:
The psychology behind gatekeeper screening and why standard openers get reps shut down immediately
Pattern interrupt scripts and tone tactics that create space for a real conversation
How to map the org through the gatekeeper call and navigate to the actual decision-maker

The Speakers:
Sara Uy, Jack Frimston and Zac Thompson
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A stalled deal isn't a dead deal. But it does require a different kind of selling to get it moving again.
Yael Morris (buyer psychology expert, Founder of Decode Insights) and Tania Doub (20+ years in enterprise SaaS, CEO of Mindful Quadrant) bring two lenses to the same problem: what reps think is happening in a stalled deal, and what's actually going on with the buyer.
Together, they broke down how to diagnose the real reason a deal went quiet, re-engage without being ignored, and prevent the next stall before it starts.
Walk away with a clear playbook for turning silent deals into active ones.
You'll Learn:
How to tell the difference between a paused deal and a dead one, and what to do with each
A re-engagement approach that leads with value so you restart momentum
The discovery habits that keep deals from stalling in the first place

The Speakers:
James Buckley, Tania Arakelian Doub and Yael Morris
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C-suite executives don't ignore cold emails because of bad timing. They ignore them because the email was never written for them in the first place.
Pranam Lipinski and Junior Lartey broke how executives actually read cold outreach and what separates emails that get deleted from ones that get forwarded internally.
Learn how to structure a C-suite email from subject line to CTA, and how to follow up in a way that adds value instead of just checking in.
This session is about writing emails that sound like they came from someone who understands the business, not someone trying to sell into it.
You'll Learn:
The mindset shift executives need to see in your email before they read past the first line
A structural framework for C-suite cold emails, from subject line through CTA
A follow-up strategy that keeps doors open instead of burning them

The Speakers:
Will Aitken, Junior Lartey and Pranam Lipinski
If you want to catch The Daily Sales Show live, join here
Follow Sell Better to get the latest actionable tactics from sales pros at the top of their game
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Thank you to our sponsors: ZoomInfo, HighLevel, Parakeet