Welcome to the EVP Talent blog! This blog series exists to demystify common startup roles, create clearer pathways and tell the stories of exceptional operators within the EVP Portfolio.
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Will Berkman is a Business Development Representative at Zipline, an Australian based startup that provides a platform for aged care and healthcare facilities to manage their visitor experience.
We had the pleasure of (virtually) sitting down with Will to learn more about his experience and what he does as a BDR.
How do you explain what you do?
If you think of sales as finding people to sell to and then actually executing on the sale itself, I sit right at the start of the sales cycle, finding people who might be interested in our product and trying to establish whether there is an overlap of interests. If there is, then I try to create enough interest to get them in a meeting and hopefully progress to a sale down the track.
Broadly speaking, can you give us a sense of what activities you are accountable for?
I'm accountable for generating sales qualified leads. It's not just sufficient for me to get somebody into a meeting for that to be considered success. I have to find people who have a need for our services who are able to make a purchase decision.
What could a day, week or month look like for you as a BDR?
I normally begin my day at 8:30am and spend an hour and a half making calls. I'll then spend some time on follow-up emails to prospects I've already been in contact with. We often find time in the day to catch up as a sales team to do planning and strategy. Because I interface with potential customers, I feed information back to our product and marketing teams around what challenges people are facing to inform their decisions. Towards the back end of the day I do research on people and accounts to set me up for the following few days.
Tell us about your past experience and journey to Zipline
I was a personal trainer for the better part of a decade. I began by coaching clients in the gym. For the next four years I ran a hybrid business adding an online coaching service and educating other coaches. Over the last two years I shifted my entire business online.
I hit the point where although my business was successful, I was really burnt out. Having had that realisation, and with interests outside of the fitness industry, I started asking myself, what do I want to do? I wanted to be in an environment that was progressive and experimental and was drawn to tech startups. Speaking to Fred at EVP, he said that culturally I'd be a very good fit for Zipline, we explored roles in Sales & Customer, spoke about the Business Development Representative role and the rest is history.
What prior experience set you up to succeed at Zipline as a BDR?
A lot of what I do now is exactly like coaching. I spend time understanding people's needs, demonstrating that you understand them, and building trust and buy-in so that they'll work with you to help. Being able to quickly get to the core of what is motivating people to act is crucial.
Was there anything that you needed to upskill in or unlearn from your prior experience that was no longer serving you?
Coming from the fitness industry with experience as a sole trader, I had to learn what all the roles in an enterprise business were, what their responsibilities are, who they report to and what processes they follow.
I had some intuitions about how we ought to sell and how we ought to speak in sales that were a little bit off. In coaching somebody has elected to work collaboratively on a goal and although you can insist on a particular change, at the end of the day a no is a no. It was counter intuitive to me to try and sell somebody something that they didn't immediately want, but in reality sometimes people need to have value demonstrated to them.
Who do you work most closely with?
The closest relationships that I have are all within the sales team. A lot of sales is about collective intelligence. We spend a lot of time sharing the challenges of prospective customers because ultimately that's ammo. Whether that be talking points or methods of outreach.
The outcomes of those conversations often need to be fed back into our design and marketing teams. We have products at Zipline that we’re building while we're trying to sell them. So we're figuring out how to position them. I also work closely with customer success, who shares a lot of similarities with sales and oftentimes are the first people to hear of new challenges and successes.
What do you love about your role as a BDR? What is hard?
The people that I work with are smart, high performing and from a diversity of backgrounds. It's just been a fantastic learning opportunity. I also love that I get to use some of the entrepreneurial and people based skills that I have, reading up on accounts to find opportunities to convey value to people. You use the same consultative and educational techniques I learnt in coaching and dietetics but in a new context. It's very rewarding when you can convince somebody that you can actually help them.
The challenging part of the role is the ambiguity. Unless you're excited by the challenge of making the puzzle fit together, it will be really tricky to progress in your role.
What misconceptions do people have about your role as a BDR?
One of the biggest misconceptions is that my job involves an enormous amount of rejection and you just annoy people. There is a little bit of truth in the fact that occasionally to get things moving you have to be quite persistent in your outreach. But the perception that as a BDR you just beat your head against a wall calling people trying to make them buy stuff that they don't want, isn’t true. In reality it's about finding the overlap of interest between their needs and your offering. And so the role is much more investigative and collaborative than people would think.
What does good look like as a BDR?
If you're a BDR, good looks like maintaining a high volume of outreach. Even with the best laid plans you might still need to make 10 phone calls for every one good one. You need to be consistent and manage your time effectively. Establishing who it is you're gonna reach out to, what you're going to talk about and doing your research such that you never fall behind.
On top of that, the best salespeople are really diligent in ensuring opportunities don't go begging. Keeping good notes, setting reminders of when and why you ought to be reaching out to people, and developing a good sense of how your market looks is critical.
Do you have a moment, day, team or piece of work that you’re immensely proud of since starting your current role as a BDR?
There was a moment around 4 weeks in where I felt a shift from being a net absorber of information to adding value. I hit my stride and was having success, booking meetings and having people actually reaching out to me for advice. The fact that you can try something new and contribute in a way that you haven’t been able to in your professional life. That validated what I believed I could accomplish and was enormously rewarding.
****
Interested in a Sales role? Check out Talent_OS to see opportunities across the EVP Portfolio, or reach out to Fred or Charmaine from EVP's Talent Team!
Welcome to the EVP Talent blog! This blog series exists to demystify common startup roles, create clearer pathways and tell the stories of exceptional operators within the EVP Portfolio.
****
Will Berkman is a Business Development Representative at Zipline, an Australian based startup that provides a platform for aged care and healthcare facilities to manage their visitor experience.
We had the pleasure of (virtually) sitting down with Will to learn more about his experience and what he does as a BDR.
How do you explain what you do?
If you think of sales as finding people to sell to and then actually executing on the sale itself, I sit right at the start of the sales cycle, finding people who might be interested in our product and trying to establish whether there is an overlap of interests. If there is, then I try to create enough interest to get them in a meeting and hopefully progress to a sale down the track.
Broadly speaking, can you give us a sense of what activities you are accountable for?
I'm accountable for generating sales qualified leads. It's not just sufficient for me to get somebody into a meeting for that to be considered success. I have to find people who have a need for our services who are able to make a purchase decision.
What could a day, week or month look like for you as a BDR?
I normally begin my day at 8:30am and spend an hour and a half making calls. I'll then spend some time on follow-up emails to prospects I've already been in contact with. We often find time in the day to catch up as a sales team to do planning and strategy. Because I interface with potential customers, I feed information back to our product and marketing teams around what challenges people are facing to inform their decisions. Towards the back end of the day I do research on people and accounts to set me up for the following few days.
Tell us about your past experience and journey to Zipline
I was a personal trainer for the better part of a decade. I began by coaching clients in the gym. For the next four years I ran a hybrid business adding an online coaching service and educating other coaches. Over the last two years I shifted my entire business online.
I hit the point where although my business was successful, I was really burnt out. Having had that realisation, and with interests outside of the fitness industry, I started asking myself, what do I want to do? I wanted to be in an environment that was progressive and experimental and was drawn to tech startups. Speaking to Fred at EVP, he said that culturally I'd be a very good fit for Zipline, we explored roles in Sales & Customer, spoke about the Business Development Representative role and the rest is history.
What prior experience set you up to succeed at Zipline as a BDR?
A lot of what I do now is exactly like coaching. I spend time understanding people's needs, demonstrating that you understand them, and building trust and buy-in so that they'll work with you to help. Being able to quickly get to the core of what is motivating people to act is crucial.
Was there anything that you needed to upskill in or unlearn from your prior experience that was no longer serving you?
Coming from the fitness industry with experience as a sole trader, I had to learn what all the roles in an enterprise business were, what their responsibilities are, who they report to and what processes they follow.
I had some intuitions about how we ought to sell and how we ought to speak in sales that were a little bit off. In coaching somebody has elected to work collaboratively on a goal and although you can insist on a particular change, at the end of the day a no is a no. It was counter intuitive to me to try and sell somebody something that they didn't immediately want, but in reality sometimes people need to have value demonstrated to them.
Who do you work most closely with?
The closest relationships that I have are all within the sales team. A lot of sales is about collective intelligence. We spend a lot of time sharing the challenges of prospective customers because ultimately that's ammo. Whether that be talking points or methods of outreach.
The outcomes of those conversations often need to be fed back into our design and marketing teams. We have products at Zipline that we’re building while we're trying to sell them. So we're figuring out how to position them. I also work closely with customer success, who shares a lot of similarities with sales and oftentimes are the first people to hear of new challenges and successes.
What do you love about your role as a BDR? What is hard?
The people that I work with are smart, high performing and from a diversity of backgrounds. It's just been a fantastic learning opportunity. I also love that I get to use some of the entrepreneurial and people based skills that I have, reading up on accounts to find opportunities to convey value to people. You use the same consultative and educational techniques I learnt in coaching and dietetics but in a new context. It's very rewarding when you can convince somebody that you can actually help them.
The challenging part of the role is the ambiguity. Unless you're excited by the challenge of making the puzzle fit together, it will be really tricky to progress in your role.
What misconceptions do people have about your role as a BDR?
One of the biggest misconceptions is that my job involves an enormous amount of rejection and you just annoy people. There is a little bit of truth in the fact that occasionally to get things moving you have to be quite persistent in your outreach. But the perception that as a BDR you just beat your head against a wall calling people trying to make them buy stuff that they don't want, isn’t true. In reality it's about finding the overlap of interest between their needs and your offering. And so the role is much more investigative and collaborative than people would think.
What does good look like as a BDR?
If you're a BDR, good looks like maintaining a high volume of outreach. Even with the best laid plans you might still need to make 10 phone calls for every one good one. You need to be consistent and manage your time effectively. Establishing who it is you're gonna reach out to, what you're going to talk about and doing your research such that you never fall behind.
On top of that, the best salespeople are really diligent in ensuring opportunities don't go begging. Keeping good notes, setting reminders of when and why you ought to be reaching out to people, and developing a good sense of how your market looks is critical.
Do you have a moment, day, team or piece of work that you’re immensely proud of since starting your current role as a BDR?
There was a moment around 4 weeks in where I felt a shift from being a net absorber of information to adding value. I hit my stride and was having success, booking meetings and having people actually reaching out to me for advice. The fact that you can try something new and contribute in a way that you haven’t been able to in your professional life. That validated what I believed I could accomplish and was enormously rewarding.
****
Interested in a Sales role? Check out Talent_OS to see opportunities across the EVP Portfolio, or reach out to Fred or Charmaine from EVP's Talent Team!