Callan Howard’s Post

The past few weeks, my main focus has been on... focus. I'm the kind of person who can get distracted by literally anything. Last weekend, I went online to buy some house plant supplies and ended up playing 'Bee Simulator' on Amazon Games for an entire hour before I remembered what I was supposed to be doing. 🤦♂️ Apparently, you can't legally buy Adderall online in the UK, so I've had to rely on other methods to hone my focus. So far, what's been working is: 𝐇𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐬: My menu screen looks like it could have been set up by a child for their grandparent and they've optimised for simplicity. All notifications are off. 𝐈𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐲𝐅𝐨𝐜𝐮𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐞𝐱𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐛𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐬𝐞𝐫: It makes me type a 250-word piece of text perfectly to turn it off and access the sites that I've blocked. 𝐁𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐋𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐞𝐝𝐈𝐧'𝐬 𝐧𝐞𝐰𝐬𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐒𝐢𝐟𝐭: Unfortunately, blocking LinkedIn entirely doesn't work since I need it for my role, but at least this helps avoid instant distractions. These are all quick fixes but at the top of the list has to be working for an organisation that prioritises results over time spent at a desk. If something steals my attention during the day, then I'm safe in the knowledge that I don't have a manager counting the minutes that my Slack status has switched to 'away' and I can catch up in the evening when I typically find I'm most productive. Despite all the methods that I'm utilising above, it didn't stop this chap from infiltrating our team stand-up yesterday and massively derailing the meeting... If anyone has any other suggestions (or Adderall*), then please let me know, as I'd prefer not to have to stay after class! *Chill, I'm kidding.

After 10 posts on LinkedIn the first deal has closed that can be attributed to my ramblings. $9.5K for a recurring quarterly contract, so just under a $1K return per post. Not bad. The prospect was someone I know that was in the market for data. They saw that I now worked at a data company and requested a sample. None of my posts have been overtly about what we do at DataBees, just having a presence and staying top of mind encouraged them to reach out. I still haven't gotten over the fact that sending stuff into the LinkedIn abyss is super cringey, but it's nice to see some fairly fast results! Shout out to Radisa Radisic for doing the hard work and actually closing the deal (+ giving me an opportunity to create some quality sports-based imagery). ⬇

I've accidentally become what I never wanted to be: ... a ghost. 👻 When prospects used to disappear off the face of the earth, I'd always assume that the deal was off, they'd signed with a competitor and they hated me. This was rarely the case, and they'd usually emerge from the darkness after a week or two. In my case I'd gone on a two-week trip to Bulgaria and forgotten to put my out of office on. 😅 While on the trip I: 👶 Gatecrashed the christening of a newborn baby. 🔫 Shot a variety of guns leftover from the communist era in a basement in Sofia. 🧘 Spent four days at a yoga and meditation retreat in the mountains. 💅 Rounded off the trip with a few days at the spa. Not once did I check my emails, Slack or LinkedIn. As we're coming into the end of the quarter, I had a few reps contacting me about licence numbers and getting contracts sent out for signature only to get the (accidental) silent treatment in return. I feel a little bad for causing some unnecessary stress, especially as I can empathise with the situation. However, I couldn't help but find it a little amusing that, when I used to think that prospects were ignoring me and flirting with other vendors, they may have just been chanting mantras and doing headstands in the woods! 🌲

The UK is entering its renewal period with its current supplier. 🇬🇧 We have to choose between a banker or a lawyer. ...at least neither of them have been convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records I suppose. 😬 There are no challengers in the market. The budget is just over 1 trillion pounds. If the British public were trained in MEDDPICC they might be looking into the metrics. How are we measuring success? From my perspective, it looks like all the graphs have been trending in the wrong direction over the past 14 years: - National debt is at the highest levels ever. - NHS wait times are at their peak. - Food banks are at capacity. - Wages have been stagnant since 2008. - Taxes are on track to be higher than ever. Yet we’re expected to trust the incumbent solution when they say that they have “A clear plan of bold action for a secure future” and we should sign another 5 year contract with them. Personally, I have a range of views and agree with different points from both sides, but wouldn’t consider myself on one side. Looking at the situation from the perspective of what I understand, software contracts, I feel like it would take some work to get my CFO to agree to the renewal of this one. There’s definitely a risk in going with a competitor and the onboarding will take a while. Both parties have invested a lot of time bashing one another, so it’s hard to know who to trust. Perhaps we shouldn’t have to commit to such a long term and we can do a pilot? If they don’t deliver on what they say they will, we can switch back at no cost to the taxpayer. That’s exactly why DataBees offers quarterly and semi-annual contracts, so you aren't locked into a lengthy partnership before seeing a return on your investment. If the UK general election is giving you a headache, your contract with your data provider doesn’t need to make it worse. Drop me a message if you’d like us to put together a fully researched sample of 30 contacts for you. #data #unitedkingdom

It must be confusing for SDRs entering the world of sales today. Everyone has an opinion on the best way to generate pipeline and what works and what is 'dead'. Usually, their opinion about what works tends to be something to do with the service that their company offers or the training that they provide. Convenient... A company popped up in my feed earlier, and they are encouraging SDRs to run paid ads that target prospects they are so they can 'put a name to a face'. So now SDRs are supposed to be: Copywriters ✉  - Writing highly targeted emails that break through the noise of decision maker's inboxes; Technical Specialists ⚙  - Mastering automated outbound at high volumes by learning about how to maintain deliverability while getting to grips with new email sequencing tools and AI personalisation; Influencers 💅  - Engaging with prospects in an authentic way on LinkedIn over a period of months to avoid being accused of 'pitch slapping'; Telemarketers 📞  - Keeping up the call metrics and testing out whatever new gimmicky opening line is being thrown around; Postal Workers 🚚  - Making their best guess about where a prospect is based and sending them some form of obscure gift in the post; Actors 🎭  - Creating videos and audio clips to share with prospects and show that they are willing to go the extra mile; And on top of all of this: Marketers 🤡  - Running paid ads on social media to target specific prospects in their sequences when they've logged off and are trying to get some down time. That's a lot of stuff. Do you need to do all of this? Probably not. Should you test these methods out? Probably. I used to hate writing emails and only ever really booked meetings from cold calls. In comparison, one of the best BDRs I've worked with exclusively sent emails. She never missed target. All that matters is finding what works for you and doubling down on it while keeping an open mind about what everyone else is doing. Find your sweet spot. Just like this cat I bumped into in Montenegro. #sales #businessdevelopment #cats

This weekend I will be moonlighting as an unpaid intern at London's hottest B2C peanut butter startup (NuttyBellyGirl) at UPMARKET Bricklane. Despite not being asked to, I've been thinking about what skills I can bring to the business outside of lifting and carrying the jars of peanut butter because I'm a proactive intern. Sales skills certainly came in handy as, at the first food market, Shay Xiao Sicheng was using some questionable reverse psychology on customers. "You don't need to buy it now if you don't want to, you can go on the website and buy it later." "Just take their money" was all the advice she needed to increase her close rates almost instantly. Today I've been thinking about how my RevOps skills can be put to work so I've draw up a lead self-qualification flow chart. So if you're free tomorrow and are nearby you can catch the NuttyBellyGirl in person selling jars of the tastiest peanut butter in town. 🥜

There seems to be a lot of questionable applications of AI popping up recently: 🤖 Yesterday, I listened to the audio of a first stage interview and the 'recruiter' on the other side of the phone was an AI bot. 💔 The CEO of Bumble announced this week that the future of dating is going to be 'AI concierges' that date other concierges and vet matches for users. 📱 Earlier this month it was reported that teens are turning to AI chatbots as a replacement for friends and logging up to 12-hours a day speaking with them. What a dull world it would be if we only ever interacted with bots in the office. We go home to our partner that was pre-selected by our AI concierge, and we hang out with our artificial friends over the weekend! My understanding was that AI is supposed to free up our time so that we have the capacity to build human relationships with others, not the other way around... I'm not anti-AI at all, but I'm certainly not at the forefront of how to deploy it effectively. So, in an attempt to stay relevant, I went to Hubspot's AI-Powered Sales Growth event last month to learn more. There were some fantastic use cases for GTM teams that were discussed, including how: 📈 One company created revenue forecasts that were consistently more accurate than the sales teams' predictions. 🔎 Another was using AI to prepare for meetings to a depth that just wasn't feasible if it had to be done manually.  📄 An organisation was using a custom GPT trained on a gold standard case study template to generate further case studies, so the sales team weren't waiting for collateral. It wasn't particularly surprising that none of the advice given or the use cases included replacing your AEs or CSMs with bots. At DataBees, we're looking to start small and implement a single application for AI into our customer journey with the aim of giving our GTM team more capacity to work directly with clients. Assuming it works, we'll be sharing the knowledge with our customers, so they and their customers alike can benefit. 🙌 

When making the move from sales to sales operations, the biggest worry I had was whether I had enough transferable skills. This got me thinking about my first role at a 'startup', which was about as far from working in tech as could be. It helped me land my first job at a tech company. Punting. 🛶 A punt is a flat-bottomed boat with a square-cut bow, designed for use in small rivers and shallow water. When living in Cambridge, I heard that there was money to be made by taking tourists out on a punt and giving them a tour of the colleges. To land myself a role, I visited the companies along the river and simply asked for a job. There weren't any available, but I was given a referral for a lead in the 'illegal world of punting' with unlicensed boats taking tourists along the river. I got the job and, with basically no training, was taking people out on boats the next day! To me, it felt like a few young entrepreneurs trying to make an honest living from the tourism industry in the town that we lived in. 🌱 To others, we were a few opportunists providing a low quality service whilst saving money on essentials like insurance. 😅 Either interpretation could be true and there were some truly shocking tour guides out there. A lot of us, however, took immense pride in the tours that we gave. There were challenges:  🌊 One day I arrived at work and the boat I was supposed to be taking out had been stolen and sunk overnight by a rival company. 🥊 One or two of the tour guides with fragile egos at the 'legit companies' took it upon themselves to disrupt our tours by crashing into us every now and again. 🛁 Falling in the river was an occupational hazard and happened to all of us. Already, a seemingly irrelevant role has provided relevant, transferable experience: 📞 Cold outbound experience 🏃♂️ Fast learner  🌊 Experience under pressure 🥊 Dealing with competitors 🛁 Crisis management Once the council finally shut us down, I moved over to a legit company that had a bonus scheme: £5 for each 5* review that mentions your name on Tripadvisor. I received 52 in the space of a few months and shared these in my interview in the same way a company would use G2 reviews to sell their product. If you're getting positive feedback from others in one role, this is a good sign that you'll get positive feedback from customers in any position. Everyone will have examples of transferable skills from weird and wonderful jobs that they have had over the years, but it just goes to show that you don't need 3 years in investment banking and an MBA to get into the world of tech. I've shared my favourite review below and 7 years later I'm still annoyed that they described me as 'nice on the eye, 4/5'. 😂 #startups

I absolutely hate social media. In fact, the only social media account I have is with LinkedIn and that’s only because I need it for work. The majority of the posts on here make me cringe beyond belief and the cult of work is something that I'll never understand. I work to live and not the other way around. So why am I posting on here more lately? Well, mainly because we have a company-wide initiative to expand DataBees' presence on LinkedIn and part of that plan involves the leadership team posting regularly, and I’m a team player. When I was told this was the plan, I had that horrible feeling that I was going to have to do something that I don't particularly want to do... publicly. Why would anyone want to listen to me? My opinion of myself is that I'm a fairly chaotic, slightly anxious 30-year-old with what feels like minimal experience or qualifications. Although, when I started to think about it this isn't how others have described me in the past. Others have described me as detailed, curious, determined and even the word workaholic has been thrown around in the past (which isn't something I aspire to be). Maybe this does mean that I have one or two things that would be useful to share. BUT... ...if all my posts are cringey, cult of work style nonsense, then you can blame the marketing team because they made me do it. 👍