Building a Strong Culture In Remote Sales Teams. Podcast With Ethan Satterfield

Sell Like A Leader – Episode 10

In this episode, we dive into: 

– Building culture in remote sales teams: how a leader’s authenticity impacts the team culture, real examples of how a positive culture directly impacts sales victories, how to foster an environment where team members feel comfortable sharing and learning, strategies to ensure new team members integrate into the existing culture swiftly, the benefits of pairing up reps and doing consistent check-ins, how to create an inclusive workplace, examples of team exercises to build confidence and camaraderie, boosting morale and motivation through events like BDR Appreciation Week and leveraging one of the most underutilized resources at a company.

– Rapid Fire Q&A

About Ethan Satterfield

David Kreiger chats with Ethan Satterfield, who has been in sales for ten years. Ethan has been in SDR Leadership for over four years at companies like SalesLoft, 6Sense, and now DataGrail. He is a people leader who looks to make a positive impact on people’s lives both as a human and a professional. 

Podcast Key Takeaways

• Ethan emphasizes that a positive and inclusive culture begins with the leader. Authenticity and consistency in values set the stage for the entire team to thrive, even in a remote setting.

• Implement activities that allow team members to share personal experiences and goals. Ethan champions the idea of ‘About Me’ presentations to build rapport and comfort quickly among new hires.

• Highlighting SDRs through initiatives like BDR Appreciation Week can be a great motivational tool. Ensuring that every team member feels valued and appreciated is key to a cohesive and high-performing team.

Connects

Connect with Ethan Satterfield: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethan-satterfield-85b19a61/

Connect with David Kreiger:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidkreiger

Subscribe to the podcast and follow the Podcast LinkedIn page so you don’t miss any episodes!

Transcript

David: Welcome back to the Sell Like a Leader podcast, the podcast for revenue leaders who are on a mission to cultivate a high-performing sales team within their organization. I'm your host, David Kreiger, founder of SalesRoads, America's most trusted sales outsourcing and appointment setting firm. 

Today, we are bringing you another great SalesLeader, Ethan Satterfield. Ethan has been in sales for 10 years, six of those in the SDR, BDR world. He has been in SDR leadership for over four years at companies like SalesLoft, 6sense, and now DataGrail. He is a people leader who tries to make a positive impact on people's lives, both as a human and as a professional.

And so let's get into it. Welcome to the show, Ethan.

Ethan Satterfield: Hey, thank you for having me, David. I'm super excited and, uh, thanks for that intro. I appreciate it.

David: Yeah, well, you've built a nice career, and so really excited to get into [00:01:00] some of the lessons learned and things that people can really actualize based upon some of your experience here, Ethan. And so, you know, let's dive into a topic I think that is really important.

Both near and dear to both of our hearts. And that's the remote culture for sales. You know, sales has, and really a lot of industries obviously have changed since 2020. I know that's something you think a lot about, and so I would love to get your sense and your opinion on the role and importance of culture in scaling a winning sales development team.

Ethan Satterfield: Yeah, it's a great question. This is definitely a topic that's near and dear to my heart. Um, you know, I've had the pleasure—I like to think of it as—of, uh, being a sales development leader specifically in a remote environment. As soon as I got into sales dev leadership at the beginning of 2020.

So I've got to learn a lot of lessons, both great and bad. And I think that culture is probably one of the most important pieces in creating [00:02:00] a winning sales culture, especially today. What a really good company culture looks like today is fairly different than what it was five years ago, right?

I mean, it's easy to have a fun office environment with your colleagues. And you're getting to do all these fun things together in person and going to do happy hours and celebrating, you know, your strong end of quarters. But it's tougher to do that in a remote environment.

Um, so you don't get to run those, you know, fun in-office competitions and things like that. So I think that in today's environment, you just have to create a much more inclusive culture that gets your team excited because they not only get to learn and grow in your organization and on your team, but they get to grow and learn with their peers.

They get to succeed with their peers. So I think that to create a strong culture today is more important now than it ever has been, just because of the inability to actually win together in person. It's just different.

David: Yeah, it definitely [00:03:00] has changed the dynamics and the way that we create culture. Some people feel like, "Oh, remote environment, you can't create a culture." Uh, and it means that they really haven't leaned into it and figured out how to do it.

I mean, it's something that we have embedded in SalesRoads. I mean, from day one. Um, you know, I meet with our team. I talk about our core values, things that are important to us. And so trying to really instill that in people and have them understand that not only is culture possible, but it's important, you know, it's a part of what we hire people for.

It's part of what we fire people on. And so, you know, to that, I'm curious how you feel that a sales leader can make culture a day one priority. You know, what are some of your strategies to establish a strong winning culture right from their first day?

Ethan Satterfield: I personally believe it starts with them as a person or myself as a person, as a leader, right? It starts with me. If I can bring and be like my true self and let [00:04:00] that shine through in my day-to-day and, um, let my personal values shine through my work, how I approach my team, how I approach conversations.

I think over time with consistency, the team starts to pick up on that. Obviously, that can start with their first experience in an interview, and you're just showing your personality and who you are, what you truly care about, and then just maintaining that same dialogue consistently. They start to really buy in to who you are and what you're trying to establish, and so you get to set that foundation yourself because it's just like the whole, you can never have two first impressions, right?

It's all about that first impression with each person you interact with. So I think that you as a human, as a person, need to establish that early on and just be consistent with it. Um, you don't want your team, your colleagues, your peers to feel like they have to be this fake person from nine to five, right?
They want to truly be themselves and they want to feel comfortable being able to do that, but it starts with you.

David: Yeah. What I loved [00:05:00] about what you just said is it does start with the leader. People are going to mirror what we do. Um, and so the culture means nothing if it's on a slide or a plaque on a virtual wall. So it's really what we do as leaders, because people are going to model us, and it's the subtle things.

There's also a story I'd heard where somebody was doing an interview throughout the ranks of Microsoft trying to do like an exposé. And they started with some of the lower level people and they all would kind of like just rock in their chair slightly.

And then they met with some higher-level people, and they all just rocked in their chair slightly while they were thinking. It's like, this is weird. Like, why is everyone rocking? And then the final day she interviewed Bill Gates and he would rock in his chair slightly.

Ethan Satterfield: Exactly. Yep.

David: Just even the littlest things go through the organization.

And so if we want to have a strong culture, we've got to, like you said, mirror what we expect in our culture, what we want to create in our culture.

Otherwise, it's meaningless and it's not going to…

Ethan Satterfield: Exactly. Now you have me thinking I got to watch my [00:06:00] team on my team calls and make sure that they're not doing weird ticks that I do. I'm going to check, look out for that now. Right.

David: Sometimes people feel that culture is kind of that fluffy. And I even thought in business school, we talked about some of the importance of culture. I'm like, ah, it's kind of fluffy. Right. But I think we've all seen how important it is. Could you share a specific example of where culture directly contributed to a sales victory?

Ethan Satterfield: Sure. Um, so one of the things that I consistently try to implement on my team is that sense of confidence, right? Running an SDR team at your traditional type of SaaS organization, they're typically younger in their sales career, right? They're a bit greener. So a lot of the people that I have the, um, the opportunity to manage, they haven't ever worked in an office environment.

So I think giving them that confidence to be vulnerable around each other and listen to cold calls together and share that feedback is super important. So I say all that because, um, recently we did a team [00:07:00] offsite last month for the quarter. So I had all my team here in Atlanta. And one of the exercises we did was we did a cold call boiler room.

Where I had the entire team queue up a set of, uh, dials and we one by one go around the room and dial in person live on speaker so everyone could hear. That's not something they're used to, right? They're used to making calls in their bedroom by themselves every single day. And it was really exciting for a couple of reasons.

One, because you see that vulnerableness. But you also see each other, like everyone, lifting each other up. We didn't have a ton of connects in that 30 minute window, but we had a couple and there was some good feedback that was given and I think everyone appreciated that, because we've established this culture of we're here to help each other win and we want to instill that confidence in one another.

Um, and so it didn't feel weird or awkward. Maybe the first 10 minutes did, right? And then the second thing that was really exciting after that is we often talk about always pushing through and always trying to do that one more activity if you [00:08:00] can, right? 'Cause you just never know. And we actually wrapped up, but one of our reps was like, "Let me just do one more."

Okay. We can do one more. He got a connect and he booked a meeting on it, which was just awesome. And we all got to celebrate and cheer and we all went crazy. And it was just a unique and fun experience. It was a really cool moment.

David: Yeah. And I think that those stories bring to life our culture and our core value. The story of your rep wanting to do that one more call and it becoming an appointment all of a sudden—that brings it to life for everybody. And when you have a strong culture and people understand what is expected as part of the culture, what makes the culture fun, what makes the culture vibrant, what makes the culture successful—all of a sudden you don't need to be managing every little thing that they do, because it brings those activities to life because they understand how that relates to success and winning as a team. And so that story you just said [00:09:00] crystallizes that so clearly.

Ethan Satterfield: Exactly.

David: So, are there certain things that in a remote environment that you try to facilitate or implement on a regular basis that have helped you to foster a stronger sense of belonging among a remote team of sales?

Ethan Satterfield: For sure. Something I do regularly is I'll pair up reps together at the beginning of the week in like a team stand-up, and I'll have them go into a breakout room, and they'll establish one personal goal and one professional goal that they want to achieve for the week, and together, right?

So oftentimes, we want to get an hour's worth of exercise every single day as a personal goal, and our professional goal is we want to execute X amount of dials by the end of the week together. And so it both helps from a competition standpoint, because they're going up against their peers who set goals.

It helps from an accountability, right, standpoint, and it's not just myself as a manager making sure you're staying on top [00:10:00] of your KPIs and doing what you need to do. It's them again, working together to achieve a goal they both established.

And then in 3, it just makes it fun because again, you're incorporating a personal goal.

Other things is like trying to find opportunities for reps to do something different outside of their routine, especially in an SDR role, where it's a very mundane job and you're doing the same thing every single day.

You're facing more rejection than you're not. So I think finding opportunities to do something different. So we'll try to rotate if we have some type of work event, like a trade show—rotate reps going to that. So it gives them an opportunity to talk to people in person and just learn new skills again that they've probably never had before, because they've never been to do that given how early they are in their career. It really just helps facilitate a stronger sense of belonging like you had asked, because they are able to do different things both together, but also individually.

David: What I like about what you're doing is it becomes both [00:11:00] collaborative, so that they're talking with their peers. There's maybe a little bit of peer pressure there as far as, you know, creating those goals and things like that.

It's almost like tandem goals because they're doing it with a peer. Is there anything that you've seen that has negatively impacted your culture when we're working remotely?

Ethan Satterfield: Yeah. I understand the motto of like, "Give 110 percent every single day," right? I like the motivation behind that, but I've been in working environments and worked with leaders who like, that is literally the attitude that they have every single day, and at some point it's no longer motivational.

Right? I feel like it sets an unrealistic expectation. It's just a simple saying of like, "Bring 100 percent every day, 110 percent every day." I'm a big believer in treating every person I work with as a human being first, because that's exactly what they are.

And I think if you're putting an unrealistic expectation—again, even if it's just a motto—but if you're belaboring it too much, it no [00:12:00] longer feels that way. So I'm a big proponent on just not doing that and focusing more on just bring your best every day. Today, you might only be able to bring me 85%. That's okay. Give me 85%. And we can figure out how to get you to 90 or 95 tomorrow.

Now obviously, you have to make sure that there's not some consistencies, and like, oh, well, you're bringing 70 percent every single day, right? There might be a bigger issue there. But it's more about in those moments of understanding that, as humans, we have things going on in life—that we're not always going to be 100 percent every single day—and I'm not going to set that unrealistic expectation. 

But I do expect you to bring your best in whatever that is every single day, and you're going to try to achieve what you can for that day to help you and set you up for tomorrow, right?

When I was listening to your episode with Victoria, she talks a lot about empathy, and I think that has to go along. Like, you need to have a level of empathy knowing that we're all just humans who are just trying to do our best every single day, I hope—and that's the expectation we set. [00:13:00]
It's just do your best every day.

David: So I think that is so critical. And I think a lot of sales leaders either miss that or sometimes don't feel like they have the time to go to that level, because that's a harder way to manage. But I agree with you that it's the right way to manage, because if you just look at them based upon their number metrics and not focused on what is the reason behind maybe them having a dip? Right?

When you peel back that onion, first of all, you sometimes uncover things that are going to really unlock the potential of that person. But as you said, there's something powerful about a manager really caring, and taking an interest in you and trying to help you reach your potential.

And that's how you really, at the end of the day, have a winning sales culture and a winning sales team.

Ethan Satterfield: Yeah, definitely. It's worth putting in the work early on, even if it does take a lot of time, because it will pay off in the long run.

David: And to that end, [00:14:00] I love that you just recently ran a BDR Appreciation Week. Could you tell the listeners a little bit about that? What were the activities you put into place? Um, and any takeaways you have from running that?

Ethan Satterfield: Yeah. Uh, so BDR Appreciation Week is an amazing event that 6sense actually came up with—it's probably trademarked, I'm sure. And so it's something that they do every year for a full week and it's really just an opportunity for every sales organization to highlight their BDRs. Understanding that the BDR role is not a fun job.

Most of the time, it's oftentimes that step in or that foot into an organization as an entry-level job. And it feels like a lot of grunt work at times. So you want to find ways to be unique in how we highlight those that are doing that job. And so since leaving, I didn’t know much about it before I worked at 6sense. I'll definitely carry it out in my career because I'm all about highlighting them.

This year was a little bit different than last year. I didn't put as much into the actual week. [00:15:00] Last year was a bit more fun—my first year doing it, I got the whole SDR team matching sweatshirts that said “DataGrail’s SDRs.”

We did spotlights on LinkedIn of each rep and highlighted a lot of their strengths, and just gave them shout-outs and praise for everyone to see and join in on.

So having an opportunity to highlight them as often as possible, especially in a week that's dedicated to them, is super important, and it definitely is more motivating.

David: Yeah, I could see that being super motivational, because big wins go to the AEs and yeah, they celebrate the deals and whatnot, but it's all those mini-wins of setting them up and finding those opportunities.
I could see people being jazzed and just coming out of that super pumped to crush it on the phones.

You have a, you know, sales leader toolkit, which I think is awesome. Can you break that down a little bit for how you create coaching plans for your team?

Ethan Satterfield: Absolutely, David. Yeah. Coaching is by far my, personally, my favorite part of being a leader, because [00:16:00] that is one of the motivating factors behind getting into leadership for myself—being able to take the experiences that I've had and the things that I consistently learned
from my leaders and others, and passing that along to help reps improve.

So for me, it starts with onboarding. And I let them know what I think is an area we have to focus on early on
that's going to help them succeed in their ramp and early on in their career—or it could hinder them if we don’t, right? And so that is where we focus our primary area.

Oftentimes, it is like time management, which is an area like every SDR could probably improve. Or, sometimes it's more of an intangible thing like confidence or, you know, executive presence, something like that.

Every week, we have a coaching session. I do two one-on-ones a week with my reps. I do a strategy session early in the week, and then I do a coaching session that's specific around, you know, whatever type of activity that we need to improve and work on. And I'll incorporate that first bit of feedback into that coaching session of how do we improve in [00:17:00] this area.

And then over time, obviously we'll annotate and track that and see how we're making improvements. But, starts with onboarding, in my opinion.

David: That's interesting that it starts even before they're really doing activities. And I think a lot of times, we as coaches think about coaching the activities very specifically, how to handle objections or how to have a better intro. Um, and you think bigger picture than that and, and look at them during that first four weeks and start seeing things that might impact their ability to be as effective as they can and highlighting that.

So it's not, uh, just about a specific thing that they're doing, um, in their SDR role. I'm curious, during that time, what are ways that you try to assimilate your folks into your team and into the team's culture?

Ethan Satterfield: Again, going back to the initial question, it starts with me. So every new set of new hires, every new hire I [00:18:00] get, by the end of the first week, I have this "About Me" presentation that I've carried with me over the years. It's literally just a presentation about me and my life.

And it's a combination of embarrassing photos as a child or as a teenager. It talks about what I was into as a kid and what I'm into today. Um, and it's just specifically about my personal life. And I share—you can be as vulnerable as you want, right? So I'll share the biggest accomplishment in my life so far. I share the moment in my life that was life-changing, right? And again, it starts with me.

So then, after I share that, I say, now you get to create yours. And it can be, again, whatever you want it to be. You don't have to be as vulnerable and transparent as I am. But just create what you want your team to know about you as a person. And then I have them share that on our team stand-up.

And it kind of sets the tone of, I know this person better than I probably would have if they didn’t do this, because again, we don’t get to see each other and [00:19:00] just go grab a coffee or a beer and talk and get to know one another like we used to.

So now when they're meeting with one another, they already have topics of conversation to talk about and they already know interests and they already know similarities between their personalities and things like that. And so that really sets the tone within the first few weeks of a new hire starting—they get to share that with the whole team.

They just feel more part of a team quicker than they might if they’re not seeing each other until, you know, the company offsite or the sales kickoff or something like that.

David: Yeah, and like you said at the beginning, that's showing how to lead by example, showing them that vulnerability is okay. And I think your team probably knows you better by day two than a lot of people who've worked with somebody for ten years might know them by doing that.

And that can pay such dividends because they are more open to opening up with you, with other folks—not necessarily just even about personal things, which [00:20:00] can be important—but just about things that are happening in business, um, and struggles they have, and knowing it’s okay to be able to open up.

So, are there any long-term strategies you use for sustaining and evolving the culture of your remote sales team? And, um, how does feedback play a role in that?

Ethan Satterfield: Yeah. Like I mentioned kind of throughout this—bringing my true self every single day. I try not to have this rollercoaster of emotions, again, especially as a leader.

Obviously, you don’t want to show that to your team. You want them to have that level of confidence consistently. And so I think you just need to be consistent in how you approach every single day, and that sets the expectation for the team so that when you do have new hires come in, or if a rep is having an off day, they just feel more comfortable coming to you and sharing things with you.

So I think that, that will then almost like word of mouth be translated to the new people coming in or other people within the organization, which kind of establishes more of a long- [00:21:00] term strategy of like, this person’s consistent and so I can be consistent and I'm not afraid to come and talk and open up about certain things or to share my thoughts and feedback.

Having those frequent check-ins also helps with the long-term strategy of maintaining a culture, because, again, you care about me as a person because you’re talking about my personal goals, and you’re trying to find ways as a professional to help me achieve those, right?

When it comes to feedback, it definitely plays a role, right? I have to be as much of a student as a teacher. But I think one of the most underutilized resources at a company, at least where I've been before here, are those company pulse surveys where they kind of get a sense of where everyone's at, and like, you know, would you recommend this company to your friends and colleagues?

I think too often companies deploy those and they share the results, but then they don’t do anything about it after. And so for me, I’m a huge proponent of those, and I always encourage my team to fully participate because I then take that [00:22:00] feedback and I want to find areas I can help improve that are in my control.

And then obviously I’ll go talk to the powers that be and the other leadership team on how we improve these other areas that I might have less control over. But I'm at least going to do my part in helping create an environment that obviously helps make people feel like they can succeed and they want to be there long-term, but they also would recommend that, right?

If you’re an amazing rep, I want more of you, right? So I want you to bring in the people that you think would be successful here. So I’m going to do whatever I can to try to make the work environment as inclusive and improve it in a way that you're proud of—to where you're going to stay here, but you're also going to try to help us continue to bring in great people.

David: Yes. The worst thing is to do those pulse surveys and then not take action. You know, feedback without action is demotivating. It’s not even positive. It actually can hurt because people are giving feedback and then they don’t see anything [00:23:00] happening.

And so, um, it’s great to get feedback, but if you're not going to actualize it, then just don't even ask.

So, um, moving to the end here, though. So what we like to do with our guests is to do some rapid-fire questions just to get some quick answers from you so the audience can learn on a few different subjects—things that you're thinking about, working on, etc.

So are you ready for that?

Ethan Satterfield: Let's do it.

David: Alright, so what is one thing people don’t give enough value or attention to in leadership?

Ethan Satterfield: I think specifically in sales, not that I’m biased at all, it’s the SDR team. But I say that just because, uh, you might be in an organization where they do a sales club, right? And it’s like, there’s one spot for the top-performing SDRs. Like, well, you're in an organization of 50 SDRs and there’s only one spot for them.

Don’t let the SDR team feel undervalued in the sense of they are part of the success of the organization consistently.

David: What is [00:24:00] one skill you advise everyone in sales to master?

Ethan Satterfield: It's a tough one. Uh, emotional intelligence. There's EQ, like Goleman's EQ theory. There are five specific core components to that: empathy, effective communication or social skills, self-awareness, self-regulation, and motivation. So there’s a lot that goes under that. I think it’s important as a seller.

David: What’s your favorite business, leadership, or sales book?

Ethan Satterfield: Oh, I'm reading now for the second time, How to Win Friends and Influence People.

David: A classic. Favorite quote, mantra, or saying that inspires you as a sales leader?

Ethan Satterfield: I'm a huge basketball fan, so Michael Jordan obviously was my idol growing up. "I can accept failure; everyone fails at something, but I can’t accept not trying." Or, "I’ve never lost a game, I just ran out of time."

David: What is the most important goal or project you're working on right now?

Ethan Satterfield: Uh, definitely career pathing. It just looks different today than it used to, with how the environment has been over the past year-plus. So, working on the pathing from SDR [00:25:00] to mid-market account executive, but also what it looks like from going from a team lead into a manager role.

David: Well, that is great stuff. And, Ethan, I just want to thank you again for coming on the podcast, sharing your experience, your knowledge about remote work, your insights on culture, and really getting to know your team, being vulnerable with your team.

You know, if people want to connect with you online to learn more about your work, about your company, where can they find you?

Ethan Satterfield: Definitely on LinkedIn. I'm checking that regularly, and I love interacting and connecting, and networking with individuals.

David: Well, thank you everyone for tuning in here to another episode. If you liked what you heard, make sure to subscribe to Sell Like a Leader on your podcast platform of choice. And I'd love to know what you thought about this episode and any other feedback you have. Please DM me on LinkedIn.

And if you want to learn what we do at SalesRoads, just go to SalesRoads.com. We'll have the episode notes and other resources for you on [00:26:00] that website. 

So thank you again, Ethan, for joining us. Loved the conversation. Thanks, everyone.