Building an Outbound Team in 2025 with Alex Choi: Culture, Leadership and Automation

[00:00] - Intro & Origins

[02:00] - Culture as the Cornerstone

[08:30] - The Micromanagement Myth

[11:30] - Roleplays, Reps, and Staying Sharp

[14:00] - Cold Calling Still Wins

[17:30] - Daily Call Reviews: Good, Bad, Real

[20:30] - GTM Ops = Sales Leadership in 2025

[24:00] - Unlocking TAM with AI

[28:00] - Where SDRs Belong

[31:00] - Closing Thoughts & Who Should Apply

[00:00:00] Emir Atli: Hello everyone. Welcome back to a special episode of AI and Go to Market Today. I have someone special on the show, someone that I get to see every single day. Probably I see him more than anyone in my life. Um, Alex Joy, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Do you wanna do a quick intro? Yeah. 

[00:00:17] Alex Choi: Um, coming up on my year mark at Hockey Stack, um, had a couple years at, you know, started my career at at Carta for a few years, made the jump over to a startup.

[00:00:27] Alex Choi: Landed at Hockey Stack last July. Um, yeah, it's been, it's been a wild ride ever since. 

[00:00:35] Emir Atli: Whenever I meet someone new, like sales leader or even like anyone in my life and they ask about our SDR team or our sales team, um, I always say we have a. One of the best SDR teams in the world, the top 1% team, and you architected that.

[00:00:50] Emir Atli: You started as I'm an our head of sales open, but the first couple months you were on the trenches, you were dialing, you were booking meetings. That that is, that was something that I made really clear because it [00:01:00] was, it's a brand new team. So you need to be the SDR before you get into leadership, which you have done successfully.

[00:01:06] Emir Atli: What do you think is gonna be like more of an overview and then we can dig deeper? Well, what do you think? Makes our SDR team really successful from like personalities all the way to structure, all the way to tech. You can take it any way that you want. 

[00:01:17] Alex Choi: Mm-hmm. 

[00:01:19] Emir Atli: I think first 

[00:01:20] Alex Choi: and foremost, um, the, the team culture that we set up, maybe we have the company culture and then we have the SDR team culture.

[00:01:28] Alex Choi: Uh, the way that we came up with that culture from day one, um, I think was by far the most important piece. And you see a lot of teams as they kind of grow and you know, they start, um, you know, as they continue to grow, um, that culture starts to break for whatever reason. Either it be, you know, new leader joins or new reps join certain STRs, move on to the AE team.

[00:01:53] Alex Choi: Uh, things always kind of end up, you know, creating issues with that. But we've made it a, a tremendous effort to [00:02:00] make sure that the, you know, the culture. Remains and because of this culture and for those that want to know what the culture is for the SER team, we had to put into two words. It would be, you know, super pumped intensity, and always moving with an extreme sense of urgency and it's not gonna be the right fit for most people.

[00:02:20] Alex Choi: Um, but it's just, you know, I always say this to reps, you know, you can be a different shade, but it's important that you have reps that are at least the same color as the company. Otherwise, it's just, you're always gonna have, uh, you know, high churn with the reps. It may seem like it's working in the beginning and then that stress is gonna constantly build up.

[00:02:40] Alex Choi: Um, but that extreme sense of urgency that is required to be successful at a startup today, 'cause outbound is so hard, um, is, is the reason why we're able to book the amount of meetings that we're booking today, move at the speed that we're able to move at. There's still a lot of things that we have to, um, you know, smooth out.

[00:02:57] Alex Choi: But yeah, I mean. I can confidently [00:03:00] say that, you know, it's, it's not because it's just my team, but confidently say that, you know, as we come up on our year mark, there's not a lot of teams that are gonna be put pumping out the numbers that we are after just 12 months of the inception of outbound. For sure.

[00:03:13] Emir Atli: So it's 

[00:03:14] Alex Choi: mainly the biggest piece is culture. A hundred percent. 

[00:03:17] Emir Atli: What do you, how do you look for culture and interviews? How do you interview for culture? 

[00:03:20] Alex Choi: I think it's just asking hard questions. You know, like, you know, you see a lot of, uh, you know, hiring managers or even recruiters, they try to sugarcoat the questions, especially if they know that they're in front of a, like a high caliber talent, right?

[00:03:35] Alex Choi: Because they wanna capture them. Um, but that's, that doesn't never works out because after they are in seat. You can't hold onto them. 'cause they've quickly realized that this is not a, a fit for them. So just asking hard questions, transparent, as transparent as possible from the very first conversation.

[00:03:52] Alex Choi: Like a, an example would be, um, you know, my favorite question would be like, Amir, what would you say is, you know, takes out, you know, what, what kind of [00:04:00] environment takes out the best in you and what kind of environment takes the worst out of you? Just asking that one simple question. I'll be able to know immediately if this person is gonna be a fit or not.

[00:04:07] Alex Choi: And just because if they say like, you know, I hate being micromanaged. We have, you know, just because, uh, you know, if you have a team that has a high sense of intensity, people often associate that with micromanagement. And you sent, it was similar to like that, that post you sent me yesterday. Finding that striking, that balance is super important.

[00:04:28] Alex Choi: That's the, the rule of the leader. Um, so that people do not get burnt down. They don't have the sense of like, this, this, you know, the grim reaper behind their shoulder every single day. But there has to be a certain expectation that if you are not performing or if you're struggling for whatever reason, uh, giving you full autonomy to an STR nine times outta 10 always results in a negative outcome.

[00:04:50] Alex Choi: Right. And so if I am a hundred percent, if, if, if your success is a hundred percent of my responsibility, and then there's gonna [00:05:00] be a certain, there's gonna be a little bit of micromanagement, that's unavoidable. And so I, you know, being extremely transparent with that and the interview is, is gonna weed out the, the individuals that are just simply a different color.

[00:05:13] Alex Choi: Mm-hmm. So are you literally saying, I will micromanage you, or is there like 

[00:05:17] Emir Atli: a different way of saying it? No, 

[00:05:18] Alex Choi: no, it's just, I think it's just like a, you know. I think, uh, always try to like tie it to an example, you know, at a startup, some of the changes that we do would be changes that would be made, you know, every once every two years or so at a, at a later stage company, like for example, Carta.

[00:05:36] Alex Choi: Uh, but for here, we're making two to four of those, the changes once a quarter, right? Yeah. Those changes can be exhausting for the person that that's not. That, that, you know, that's not open to change. And, uh, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but I have yet to see an individual that has an extreme sense of ownership, urgency, [00:06:00] intensity.

[00:06:00] Alex Choi: That's what I consider to be, uh, that I think is the requirements to become a very successful SDR in today's market, uh, for your outbounding and, um, that, that.

[00:06:15] Alex Choi: That can't take that type, that level of pressure. It's just, it's, it's hard. I don't know. But, um, but just giving it to, just understanding like, you know, uh, a good question, for example, would be, what is your understanding of working at a startup? Just, just hearing them out and, you know, the paradigm example that people like to use for, you know, what is a startup is, you know, a lot of hours, a lot of work wearing multiple hats and stuff like that.

[00:06:36] Alex Choi: I mean, that's all true, but 90% of startups do not operate like that. And so just being really transparent, just, you know, be like, Hey, this like the misconception. Um. All startups are like that, but working at Hockey Stack is, you know, it's gonna be intense, it's gonna be demanding, if not one of the most demanding companies that you'll ever work for in your entire career.

[00:06:55] Alex Choi: Um, and just seeing the response from there. Right. Instead of just saying like, oh, expect to [00:07:00] get micromanaged, you know? Yeah. 

[00:07:01] Emir Atli: That, that post I sent was, um, if anyone's curious, it's the, uh, micromanagement, uh, block article by Ben Horowitz on Anderson Horowitz's website that's supposed to, he's referring to, I think micromanagement is a widely misunderstood concept.

[00:07:15] Emir Atli: Mm-hmm. There are lots of fonders that I talk every day basically. They think they can hire SDRs, AEs, whatever that is, is like the initial team, and then they can give them like a hundred target accounts and they can let them do whatever they wanna do and then break into 20, 25%, 30% of those accounts if maybe sometimes they expect them to break into all of those accounts.

[00:07:31] Emir Atli: Mm-hmm. Which is impossible. I think what I, what we mean by micromanagement, correct me if I'm wrong, is essentially we have a clear direction. In our heads as leaders, uh, we have a product vision and we essentially let every single person in the team, especially our SDR team, know that this is the direction, this is why ask us questions.

[00:07:48] Emir Atli: Once everyone's on the same page, we'll execute this. It's not like we give you accounts, you can do whatever you want. It's like this is the direction. Mm-hmm. This is what we are selling. This is the language that we use in selling, and these are tools and these are, [00:08:00] this is everything that you have access to.

[00:08:01] Emir Atli: Now go execute and then make money and then make company money as well. Exactly. Um, it's not like, I'm sure a lot of people will think, oh, micromanager is a bad company, bad culture, all stuff. It's, it's not like looking over their shoulders and watching every single step. It's more like, this is the vision.

[00:08:17] Emir Atli: Mm-hmm. This is what we do. Are you okay with it? Are you on the same page? Do you have any questions, concerns? Okay, let's get that out of today and then we'll execute. 

[00:08:24] Alex Choi: Yeah. And to add on to that, I think it's like, you know, if you have an STR. Any sales rep in general, um, you know, you first give 'em the benefit of the doubt, right?

[00:08:31] Alex Choi: You give 'em the autonomy. If they're struggling, I do the, you know, I do everything in my power to get them to where they need to be. Now it's up to the rep to be able to execute, right? Really dig deep and, and, and, and, and work to improve. If there is no improvement, expect that autonomy will no longer exist.

[00:08:53] Alex Choi: Because, you know, it's not 2021 anymore folks. You know what I mean? Like, it's like you throw hundreds of thousands of people into [00:09:00] a sequence, like an SAP like Outreach or SalesLoft has email steps embedded. Like a startup, your domain was created one year ago. You have the credit score of like 500 equivalent to like a credit score of 500 for your domain, and you expect your reps to blast out emails and book meetings through that.

[00:09:14] Alex Choi: It's not gonna happen anymore. Right? And so it requires it, the, the rule has become exponentially more difficult to do outbound in general. And if you're not improving, expecting that magically within time, time that startups typically do not have, uh, for that to happen is. Really low. Right? Really, really, really low.

[00:09:36] Alex Choi: So you have to take over the wheel and again, do it in an empathetic way. I think that's super poor. So again, striking the balance, but it is required, you know, a certain level of micromanagement. 

[00:09:47] Emir Atli: Yeah. Talk about, um, rep improvement, rep development. How do you develop, or how do you improve as a leader when you're on the field all the time and you're not talking to people all the time and you're dialing all the time and you out as a leader, how do you develop as a leader?[00:10:00] 

[00:10:00] Emir Atli: It's, yeah, that's 

[00:10:01] Alex Choi: a good question. It's hard. I think I'm coming up on six months now since I've been off the phone or in the trench like full time. Um, this is, it's not talked about a lot, but this is for sure. I think an internal fear that every sales leader, whether it be STR leaders or AE leaders that are facing at any given time is that when you're outside the TRE for so long, it's feels like a muscle, that muscle will die.

[00:10:28] Alex Choi: Right? And so you. You can only fall back on all the knowledge and the experience that you've acquired thus far. But the only really way to continue to develop is constantly, you know, staying in touch with how the market is developing new tools, um, especially towards GTM engineering, GTM operations.

[00:10:48] Alex Choi: That's super huge for any sales leader today and call recordings, tearing those down. It's helpful, but it would be never the same. You're actually in it, you are running the [00:11:00] deals or you are running the cold calls yourself. Right. Because it's a, it would never be the same. So to answer your question, I don't think there's, uh, something that's ever gonna come close as you being the, the executing rep, as a leader.

[00:11:13] Alex Choi: But you can do everything else and you should, but it's never the same. 

[00:11:16] Emir Atli: Yeah. I mean. One of the things that we really emphasize, you emphasize, which sometimes I push back on, um, sometimes isn't like every day is our role plays. I'm not pushing back on role plays. Mm-hmm. But, um, why do we do a 30 to four to five minute role play every single day to start the day?

[00:11:35] Emir Atli: So 

[00:11:36] Alex Choi: there's two primary reasons for it. So for, for, for those out there every single day, Monday through Friday from eight 30 till nine o'clock, nine 15, we do daily role play. It is required. Um, it is, yeah, by eight 30 sharp. There's two primary reasons that we do that. Number one, first and foremost, you do not practice on the company's money.

[00:11:57] Alex Choi: Every, you know, we run an end into an automation system [00:12:00] here. Every contact that. It's queued up in a task that you connect with on your dialer is the company's money. Right? It just didn't come out. It, it didn't exist. It didn't appear magically. Right? And if your only form of practice is your dial blocks, it is not enough.

[00:12:20] Alex Choi: The job is not that easy. And so, uh, it's just like an athlete. The only, your only former practice is at the champion game and you're not doing anything else outside of those games. It's. A hundred percent the same. And again, just like for the other 50% being, you know, when you see athletes before they go into their workouts or before they go into trainings or the the real game, we're always gonna be warming up the exact same thing where you gotta warm up your tongue a little bit, warm up your brain a little bit, right?

[00:12:47] Alex Choi: You're groggy in the morning, little jittery with the, the caffeine, right? So those two things, uh, you know. Huge. And it's also huge for the leader too. I see a lot of leaders that [00:13:00] enforce daily role plays, but they don't take part in it. Right. I try my best sometimes it's super busy in the morning, but uh, that's another form of getting as close as you can with you not actually being in the trench.

[00:13:12] Alex Choi: Right. Doing those daily role plays with your reps. Even me, like, like I mentioned that I've been outta the game for about six months now and I can really feel that I'm starting to get rusty. Right. The most common objections, Hey, not interested, right? We're set, or, Hey, can you circle back like in three to four months?

[00:13:26] Alex Choi: Right. Those common objections that the reps at this point are super sharp and smooth with. When we role play with them, I'm starting to fumble. I'm the one that's fumbling now. Mm-hmm. So it's so easy to drop the ball, but it's, it's so important that leaders reps do that every single day, especially if you're, if you're call heavy.

[00:13:43] Alex Choi: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Um, speaking of calls, why are we call heavy. That's a great question you see on LinkedIn guys, like where um, people are always recommending like channels, oh, like this is the email play that I ran. This is like the call play I ran and you [00:14:00] see all these people commenting, oh, send me the playbook.

[00:14:03] Alex Choi: You know, trying to find like this crazy play for LinkedIn or whatever. First and foremost you need to understand, take it a step further with your ICP. Right? We know our I CCP is G-T-M-G-T-M practically lives off of LinkedIn. They are responsive on email, but they're significantly less responsive to email compared to, say, finance folks, legal folks, hr for example, calls just so happen to be much more better than LinkedIn and it just so happens to be the bucket that we fall under and we doubled down on that last July.

[00:14:38] Alex Choi: And to be honest, I only sold into, you know, finance, legal, hr, um, never sold into GTM. I just hit the phones when I first got here because it was the fastest way for me to get, you know, a response, whether it be a positive one or a negative one, um, so that we can quickly iterate and test and, you know, continue with that path.

[00:14:56] Alex Choi: But, uh, it just so happened like, holy shit, like, you know, calls is [00:15:00] the best channel for us. 

[00:15:01] Emir Atli: Yeah. Period. Yeah. I think one mis common misconception, which I. When we first got started. I mean, and even today, I think the same thing too, when you think like, well, I don't pick up the phone when I don't recognize the number, or it's not like, saved contact, so why would anybody pick up?

[00:15:17] Emir Atli: It's not like that. There are a lot of people pick up the phone. Our, one of our largest deals came from a coco, um, which was like the first touch point was a cold call. There was no like marketing touch point or anything like that. Um, so think calls are, yeah. 

[00:15:33] Alex Choi: Yeah. To, to add on to your like, um. There's always gonna be individuals that will never be picking up the phone.

[00:15:40] Alex Choi: No matter how many times you call them, they'll be the people that will never respond or email no matter how many times you send 'em an email, and I'm guilty with that. Number three is no matter how many dms you send 'em on LinkedIn, they'll never respond. So it's important that you have all three channels covered, right?

[00:15:55] Alex Choi: You running plays and campaigns for all three, but understand for your persona. [00:16:00] Which channels are they most receptive, receptive to and doubling down on those channels as the primaries? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

[00:16:06] Emir Atli: Yeah. And then you can always, I mean, if someone has not come to four and seven times, you can always architect this system where you can bring them to email, LinkedIn, whatever you else you wanna do.

[00:16:14] Emir Atli: But I think another, um, really cool aspect of cold calling is I did a webinar yesterday with Adam, Adam Robinson, RBB, about like our

[00:16:22] Emir Atli: on system. All, all of that stuff of the questions was like, if we launch a new product or if we do something new, what is the easiest way? Or like, how can I get. Feedback from the market.

[00:16:30] Emir Atli: I think that is the biggest use case for phone phones. Yep. Like especially, I mean, we have done this multiple times where we launch a new script or new way of talk about the product or even like brand new product that we launched recently. Um, when you send emails and nobody responds, you don't really know if it's like the real issues.

[00:16:47] Emir Atli: It's my email and spam, spam box or whatever else. Or is it just not interesting or did they look at it and forget to respond? Which happens to all executives. Um, we don't know if you need to follow up seven times, eight times, 10 times, [00:17:00] whatever the number is right now. But with the forms, if someone picks up, you say it.

[00:17:04] Emir Atli: They can say, I'm not interested, I'm interested, but, and it's changed it way, something that's interesting, especially we see with sales data is sometimes people want to correct the script. Yeah. They literally tell us like the script is. Not great because it X, Y, Z reasons. It takes like, it's like a 15 minute phone call from a sales leader telling us what resonated, what didn't resonate, which is really cool to see For sure.

[00:17:23] Emir Atli: And I think another really cool, um. Thing that we do is SDR sending us good calls and bad calls every single day. Yep. So essentially our SDR send, Alex and I, uh, calls that they have made that day with like context notes. This is, there's something went well in this call, or like, yeah, I can answer this question.

[00:17:40] Emir Atli: I think that also helps me. I'm like, I'm two steps removed from the team. Yep. That's like, basically I can see what's going on in the market every single day, which is really cool. 

[00:17:48] Alex Choi: Yeah. Every day, uh, just like the daily role play, it is required for every SDR. Just like the a's are required to send Gong calls over to, uh, to, to you, Amir.

[00:17:59] Alex Choi: Uh, this year is required [00:18:00] to send over cold call recordings, and this is not to just add on another task on top of the already full plate. It's just that, you know, the, the, the common go-to is like, have like a once per week call, tear down session. How is that enough? You know what I mean? Like, um, and that's like, you know, the team getting together, listening to calls and talking about it.

[00:18:22] Alex Choi: That's great. And you should still do that once a week. And we, we do. But being infor, you know, making that requirement to provide one good call, one bad call, why you think it's good, why you think it's bad, and what you could have done to improve better for the, for the next call, um, that gives the chance for the STR to kind of like sit down, review their calls for that day and analyze.

[00:18:43] Alex Choi: Which most reps unfortunately are not doing. Yeah. And yeah, it just goes back to like, if cold calling is our best channel, we gotta do everything we can to to, to, uh, to empower the team to become the best 1% cold callers. Um, but speaking of the best channels, [00:19:00] I think we booked the most amount of meetings with email today in the longest time.

[00:19:05] Alex Choi: It's h it's hilarious. It just all happens at the one time. Everybody just wants to respond. Um, we had meeting booked with. I'll LinkedIn today, and then three or four, three or four meetings booked through email just now. It's, it's weird. Yeah. 

[00:19:24] Emir Atli: Um, and then the other aspect of that is also when you do like call tear downs, it's usually the good calls.

[00:19:29] Emir Atli: Like no one wants to open up a good call. Mean it's the same for Ace. No one wants to open up like a Yeah. Horrible demo in front of everyone. Oh yeah. It's usually like, what went good on this call or like this demo and then what can we learn? I always say same thing to our ace too. If it's a bad call that you want me to review, send in the private channel.

[00:19:43] Emir Atli: If it's a good call, send a new, like new business Slack channel so that everyone can see. And if it's a back call, I can review it and then we can improve it. Mm-hmm. And we can all learn from it. What you said too, like if you do a weekly tear down, it's like, yep, everything is great. Well, you don't really get to see the bad calls, so like Exactly.

[00:19:59] Emir Atli: Bad [00:20:00] call calls and no one has time to roll the call recordings. 

[00:20:02] Alex Choi: Mm-hmm. 

[00:20:03] Emir Atli: Yeah. 

[00:20:03] Alex Choi: And then that bad call that they send over with their small concise analysis, that's something that you can start working on immediately. On the daily role play the next day, yeah. With the team. Yeah. And so it just, it just works like this machine of constant training.

[00:20:20] Alex Choi: Cool calling in the market and it's like this loop. Hmm. Right. So it's just, it just, there's only, you can only improve at this point. Yeah. 

[00:20:29] Emir Atli: Yeah. Um. Speaking of creating a really good call culture, one of the essentials of that is GTM operations, and you also recently changed your title to head of Sales. So, and go-to market operations in the, um, picture of Aon and feature of sales, how do you see go-to market operations, the role?

[00:20:47] Emir Atli: Mm-hmm. Um, how do you, what is next in that? What do we do with it? 

[00:20:52] Alex Choi: Mm-hmm. Well, my personal belief is if you wanna become an extremely effective sales leader, you [00:21:00] have to become somewhat technical. I'm not gonna be delusional and call myself a GTM engineer, like, you know, a lot of people after learning a little bit of clay.

[00:21:08] Alex Choi: But a lot of the stuff that you didn't have to learn about or know about, you know, before. As a sales leader, I believe it's become more important, you know, six months, 12 plus months, um, down the road. Um. Being, because if you're, you know, if as teams bring on AI even more and you have GTM engineers, um, GTM engineers rarely will rare, maybe 1% you'll find a GTM engineer that had a very successful sales background made the shift over to, you know, learning about Salesforce, architecting, you know, building email infrastructure.

[00:21:45] Alex Choi: Um. To code sql. Shout out Victor, our G two engineer. Um, rare, right? And so they're very capable of building the systems, but they need guidance on what's ICP, what's not. [00:22:00] Especially if you're looking to build out end-to-end automation, that guidance can only come from either the reps in the trench, which is not the best use of their time, then it's gonna have to at least come from the sales leaders, right?

[00:22:12] Alex Choi: And so. You can't really work in perfect unison if you at least don't know a little bit about their world. And so, uh, yeah, you have to get uncomfortable. I remember, um, we were making the migration from hotpot to Salesforce last Q4. I had. That's the problem with working at a big company or starting at a big company.

[00:22:34] Alex Choi: You're spoiled, right? Shout, shout out Edwin Lau from Carta. Uh, if you, if you, if you ever see this, you know, um, but. He, he was, he was probably very annoyed at me, right? Every time I needed something Slack, Edwin, Hey man, like, I need this report, I need this dashboard. Didn't know how to touch anything. Um, but coming here, I joined at a time where we didn't have anybody from rev ops, um, or you know, any, any anybody to kind of handle the CRM side of things.

[00:22:59] Alex Choi: And so [00:23:00] you're forced to learn. And then I very quickly realized as we start to build, uh, project Nova that holy crap, this is only as good as the people that are architecting it. The people that are primarily tasked to architect it, don't know anything about our ICP sales. Yeah. Sales. So it doesn't make sense.

[00:23:20] Alex Choi: So you have to work as a team, you have to learn. 

[00:23:22] Emir Atli: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Do you see a lot more companies adopting like a go-to-market operations team or like real engineers working in go to market side? 

[00:23:32] Alex Choi: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. It's like, uh, at this point I think it's still true early. Um, but as. More and more companies adopt augmenting their sales reps, whether it be with internal workflow automations or the full adoption of ai.

[00:23:48] Alex Choi: Uh, how, how are you gonna compete, like for not just with product, like for the engineering team, like, like you cannot compete. [00:24:00] And so, like, for example, if our competitors, for example, if they're running the traditional SDR model. And their SDRs are banging out, for example, 50 on the high end, eighty, a hundred twenty five dials a day.

[00:24:14] Alex Choi: And our reps are banging out, for example, 400, 500 dials a day, and they're booking two meetings per day, at least bare minimum with a 50 K ACV. How are you gonna compete? 

[00:24:25] Emir Atli: Yeah, 

[00:24:27] Alex Choi: we're always gonna be two, three steps ahead. And so I think as more teams adopt this, people will start to realize that it's gonna become a given.

[00:24:33] Alex Choi: It's like people can't fathom not having an SEP today. Imagine going back to pen and paper or like Google sheets. Um, yeah, I think it's just gonna take some time, but for sure. 

[00:24:44] Emir Atli: What are some use cases of ai that we use day to day? 

[00:24:48] Alex Choi: Well, full on account research is the biggest part. Um, I know our entire AE team utilizes that.

[00:24:54] Alex Choi: Um, but for us it's a little bit different. I think, you know, with end-to-end automation, there's always been six [00:25:00] steps. You know, traditionally there's been six steps that have always taken up so much time, whether it be for a full cycle rep or for an SDR. That's, you know, step one, finding the ICP account and then finding the ICP contact.

[00:25:09] Alex Choi: Now you gotta find their contact data and then you're gonna make sure that it's, you know, the data has been enriched properly in the CRM that, you know, assuming if everything's not plugged in correctly, having to have like the, uh. The concern that it's not getting correctly synced over to outreach, stuff like that.

[00:25:27] Alex Choi: Right. And then ultimately getting into a sequence, right. And then getting into a sequence. Then you can start engaging. And that typically takes like what, 70% of a rep's day? Yeah. Before you can actually spend what, like 20, 30% minus lunch and all that kind of stuff. Bathroom breaks, 20%. You know, make, you know, revenue generating activities.

[00:25:48] Alex Choi: That's crazy. Right? But again, like, you know, it's gonna take some time, but it kinda just go back to like when our team's gonna fully adopt this, our team is now spending about 70, 80% of their time revenue generating activities. [00:26:00] Um, people I think we're gonna, are gonna catch on. But going back to, uh, your question full on account research generating the list right.

[00:26:11] Alex Choi: So finding, identifying the account, um, definitely take a step further to be able to refine those lists. Let's just like, we're like, you know, we're bringing a new product to market, um, based off the learnings that we're, we're getting, how we can be able to refine the list. Don't just sit there and try to like, you know, try to figure out yourself.

[00:26:25] Alex Choi: Definitely leveraging AI has been huge for that for me And Vic.

[00:26:28] Emir Atli: Yeah. Also, I think one of the biggest applications of AI was expanding the title list. Anyone selling to marketing or sales organizations can would know, like there are 10, 15 different ways of calling yourself. Like there are lots of weird titles.

[00:26:41] Emir Atli: And when you want to actually build a list, it's really hard to differentiate between go to market operations to sales operations and market operations. Mm-hmm. And just like, yeah, simple dropdowns is not really enough. Yeah. So we built a prompt, which basically brings all of the titles that we need. Yep.

[00:26:54] Emir Atli: And then differentiates between them based on our ICP. Yeah. And we were able to expand a list by 70, 80%. That was like [00:27:00] the biggest unlock before that, we thought RICP wasn't big enough. Yeah. And that was like the major improvements in our process. 

[00:27:06] Alex Choi: Unlock the TAM was huge. 

[00:27:08] Emir Atli: Yeah. 

[00:27:08] Alex Choi: Right. And there's account tam and there's also contact tam.

[00:27:10] Alex Choi: Contact TAM being super important if you wanna run, if you want to run to end-to-end automation. But anybody that works into, uh, anybody that sells into, uh, sales personas. Um, yeah. Generating a list for sales is by far, I think. The hardest. Yeah. You have STR leaders and then you have BDR leaders that call themselves, you know, for example, business development managers.

[00:27:35] Alex Choi: For a lot of companies, they're ics. Um, strategic account executives, you have a combination of them that are, you know, 50% customer facing, 50% that are new business. You don't know. And so you, you cannot sit there and try to generate like a, a list of like 4,000 contacts, for example, and try to read their LinkedIn.

[00:27:53] Alex Choi: And so running that through AI has been huge. Again, shout out Vic, I know that 

[00:27:58] Emir Atli: both of us have, [00:28:00] um, a strong opinion about where sales should sit in. Yeah. Is it marking or is it sales? What do you think about that? 

[00:28:09] Alex Choi: My personal belief, a hundred percent sales, a hundred percent sales. Um. Reason I say that is because the job is getting exponentially more difficult

[00:28:27] Alex Choi: to be able to maintain a high caliber team. It only makes sense to have the person that's leading the team to have been there done that, for example. Right. Um, again, this is nothing against, uh, the marketing org, anybody in marketing, but it's just. You know, cold calling itself, whether it be 10 years ago or 20 years into the future, that's always gonna be a hard job.

[00:28:48] Alex Choi: Right? It's always a, it's a feeling that is always gonna suck. Um, but when you have leaders that have done their, that's done that and understands like how it feels to get [00:29:00] smacked on the phone, um, it's just a different type of leadership is what I feel. Right. Um, but I understand why a lot of people, um, perf, you know.

[00:29:11] Alex Choi: Have strong opinions on why marketing makes sense, um, because they're both in the game of, you know, generating demand. But, you know, it's just a, yeah, it's just. That's my strong opinion. 

[00:29:22] Emir Atli: Yeah. I a hundred percent agree that SDS should just sit under, um, under sales. I agree with you. I think the other aspect is too, is SDRs naturally, especially the top SDRs, wanna become a A.

[00:29:33] Emir Atli: Mm-hmm. And if you wanna become a ce, you need to be. Talking to talk to a leaders, talk to AE managers, talk to people who became like, who went from SEO O to E, which are all in the sales work, right? So you need to join the forecast meetings. You need to join the role plays with them. You need to do all of that stuff.

[00:29:47] Emir Atli: Yeah. So you can learn on the job. I think marketing the main, um. Main point for marketing, like SDR sitting on the marketing is marketing is a pipeline generation function and marketing should own the entire pipeline. 

[00:29:57] Alex Choi: Yeah. 

[00:29:58] Emir Atli: I think it's becoming more and more like a team [00:30:00] sport. A lot of different teams, a lot of AE teams actually wanna like self source their deals, wanna become like a pipeline generation team as well.

[00:30:07] Emir Atli: Yeah. Um, I think just like if you're an SDR and sitting on the marketing, it's all also like. I think it's extremely hard to see like the progression in your career. Mm-hmm. At that specific company. It might be find like a, like a company where you work and you learn, and I know you bring a lot of pipeline and you move into a new company and then decide as, as a SC again.

[00:30:26] Emir Atli: But I think the, um, transition from SCIA is extremely easier and also you get to learn a little bit lot more if you're sitting on the sales. A 

[00:30:35] Alex Choi: hundred percent. Yep. Yeah, you just rub your shoulder with the people that you wanna become more frequently. Yeah. It's just a, a different dynamic that, yeah. 

[00:30:43] Emir Atli: I think one case where like you can sit on the marketing but still learn sales is if you like.

[00:30:49] Emir Atli: In a larger company where you can afford like a managers, like VP of sales, sales leaders to spend a lot of time, even if you're on, on the marketing mm-hmm. They still get to spend a lot of time with you because they have the [00:31:00] time at like larger org maybe. Sure. That might, that might make sense. But if you're like super high intensity, if, especially if you're a startup, I think it should definitely be sales.

[00:31:07] Emir Atli: Yeah. A hundred percent. Awesome. Um, any, any closing thoughts? Anything that you wanna, anyone, anything you wanna add to the conversation? That's the camera right there, right? Yeah. We are hiring. We 

[00:31:20] Alex Choi: are hiring. Um, how many SDRs where any details right now? Um, so right now we have five STRs. We're looking to run out the team at nine.

[00:31:29] Alex Choi: So we need four more SDRs, um, pipeline's getting full, but if you watch this video from start to, from start to finish, you know exactly, you know, the type of individuals that we're looking for. Uh, and, and the color of the, the color of a company that we are. There's no right or wrong answer. I want to, you know, I wanna make that very, very clear.

[00:31:48] Alex Choi: Um, just because you're the a different color does not mean that you're more capable or you're incapable. It's just you're a different color, right? And so if you find yourselves gravitating towards a [00:32:00] company like Hockey Stack and you find yourself, um, that you can perform very well here and you can be able to learn and digest at the speed that we move, yeah, definitely reach out 2 1 3 5 0 5 7 5 8 6.

[00:32:12] Emir Atli: Yeah, we are hiring in San Francisco. We have five times in, in office. Mm-hmm. In the day, top of the market. You can see all in our career space as well. Um, no, Alex, thank you so much. Thank you. 

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