Sales Development How-Tos

While the contents below are meant to get you up to speed quickly, we also have a wealth of resources for team members that are looking to perfect their craft here.

Where to find your leads and accounts

Inbound leads get automatically imported to SFDC by the Sales Operations team, you can find links to their handbook pages on our main page.

To find and access your leads, please:

1. Navigate to SFDC’s homepage
2. Click on the Leads tab.

You will find the lead views below. These views are split per use-case for your convenience. The KPIs for managing these leads are thoroughly outlined in our SLAs page.

SDR Lead Views

BDR Lead Views

Contact Views

Account Views

How to do Lead Database Management

As part of your SDR responsibilities, you are expected to perform due diligence on each lead you receive. This includes checking the database for duplicate records, as well as referencing against our RoE.

Company Address Based Routing Information

In this video, a member of the Marketing Ops team goes over the Company address fields and how they are used for Accounting Routing and Opp assignment.

If you need to do edits to the database by merging leads together for any of the above steps, please reference the videos below for an explanation.

Merging Leads

Chatter Guide for Troubleshooting

If you’d like the assistance of another person or team, you can use SFDC chatter on the lead record. Please reference the guide below:

Cleaning Poor Leads

Lastly, Every so often you may be assigned a lead that has no value to GitLab and is not worth keeping within our database. Qualities that define these types of leads include:

How to action your leads

1. Determining High-touch or Low-touch sequence usage:

Cold-Calling and Email Checkbox

Before calling any Lead or Contact, BDRs must ensure that the Do Not Call box is unchecked. If you speak to any anyone, including prospects and existing contacts, who ask you not to call them again, you must check this box. However, please do not delete the number as we need to know which number requested not to be called again. For any individuals who are opted-in to email, you may ask them if they wish to be called. If they express a desire to be called, you are then permitted to uncheck the Do Not Call box if it was previously checked. Also, if an individual expresses independently via email a wish to be called, you may uncheck the Do Not Call box. This email must be present in SFDC as proof of your authority to uncheck this box. You cannot send email requests to individuals not opted-in to email asking whether they would like to be called.

Our cold-calling best practices typically consist of 4 elements. A pattern interrupt, an elevator pitch and, if required, objection/trap-setting questions and Up-Front Contracts.

To be effective, these need to be customized to the individuals we call as per the logic below:

• Different Geographical Business Cultures
• Personality Type as per the DISC model
• Individual’s Role and Responsibilities
• Business’ Needs and Objectives

An unsubscribe link must be included on every email sent by a BDR, including responses to a prospect or contact. Please reach out to the Privacy Team via #privacy-team-help for the recommended language that should appear at the bottom of each outbound email.

Do Not Call and Do Not Email Automations

Leads with certain criteria will be automatically labeled as Do Not Call and or Do Not Email shortly after loading into our database. It’s understandable this can be frustrating for certain territories. Please keep in mind, the criteria behind this automation has been set in order to follow local law. Please see the Internal GitLab handbook for more information on the triggers.

How to enroll to outreach

Outreach.io is a tool used to automate emails in the form of sequences. Users can track open rates, click-through rates, response rates for various templates, and update sequences based on these metrics. Outreach.io also helps to track sales activities such as calls. All emails/calls/tasks that are made through Outreach.io are automatically logged in Salesforce with a corresponding disposition. See below for a list of current call dispositions, what they mean, and scenarios on when to use each of them.

Outreach Collections

Ways to organize similar sequences and snippets

• Common Collections
  • FY24 Global Inbound High Touch Collection
  • FY24 Global Inbound Low Touch Collection
  • FY24 Inbound Languages Collection
  • Events Collection
  • Good Outbound Collection
  • Testing Outbound Collection

Outreach Tags

A method of distinguishing sequences and snippets from others. Use tags to help narrow down which sequences you should be using in a particular situation

Common Tag Examples

• Primary- a sequence created by SDR leadership that should be used by all reps to follow up with inbound leads
• High Touch/Low Touch- Distinguish if the sequence is high or low touch
• Region- Can be used to show which region the sequence
• GTM- The message trying to be delivered. Ex. Security, CI/CD ect.
• Inbound/Outbound- Whether the sequence is meant for inbound or outbound prospecting
• Language- What language the sequence is written in

Outreach Snippets

Content created for BDRS and SDRs to use to create hyper-personalized sequences, one-off emails, or to use for reaching out to prospects via LinkedIn.

• Common Snippet Examples

  • Objection Snippets
  • Support Snippets

New Outreach Sequence/Workflow creation

In an effort to better iterate, and refresh, our outreach content and workflows, we have a structured process for BDRs to create/measure new Outreach sequences.

Please log an issue here by selecting the template BDR_Sequence_Creation_Request.

The issue description will walk you through all the next steps.

This process aims to:

Implement Measurement Clarity and Decision Velocity

By dogfooding GitLab we have a structured and simplified cadence of quantifying sequence creation in terms of value and results without limiting agency.

Maintain Equal Contributions in a Shared Reality By maintaing a Single Source of Truth (SSoT) we give the best possible forum for cross-functional collaboration with specific guidelines

Follow Up Outreach Sequences

• For SDRS and BDRS that want to sequence leads in their qualifying views we created this video to help you create a workflow around this follow up sequence.

• The same video also showcases the Auto Follow Up to Book a Meeting Sequence SDRs and BDRs can use when a prospect responds to one of their sequences.

White Glove Event Follow Up Sequence (SAEs Included)

For more personal events, such as Executive Roundtables, there many be more detailed Last Event Notes that have an ask to include the people who interacted with the prospect at the event. For these situations we have a specialized white glove sequence.

The goal of this sequence is to reach out to the prospect quickly and to include our SAEs/AEs in the conversation.

• The first step is to put the prospect in the Sequence. From there customize the first email step to include the people mentioned in the Last Event Notes. You can also delay the time that the first email goes out so you have more time to get feedback from the SAE/AE if needed.
• Next send a screenshot of the first email step to the SAE/AE’s that will be CC’d. Explain to them that this strategy creates space for them to engage with more specific messaging if the prospect is unresponsive. NOTE: There is a generic task on Day 12 to reach out to the SAE/SA if there has not been any engagement. The goal is to keep them in the loop and for you to work together to engage the prospect.

Other Outreach Training Resources

• Intro Slide Deck and Training Video
  • password should be in onboarding issue or ask your manager
• GitLab Edcast: Advanced Outreach Training
• Best Practices: Our Outreach Handbook Page

How to follow our FO Outbound Process

BDR outbound lead generation is done by prospecting to companies and individuals who could be a great fit for our product. Prospecting is the process of finding and developing new business through searching for potential customers with the end goal of moving these people through the sales funnel until they eventually convert into customers.

BDRs will work closely with their dedicated SAE or AE to choose which accounts move into “Actively Working”. Together they will build a strategy for those companies. It is crucial that outreach is very intentional and strategic. When reaching out, we want BDRs to offer value and become a trusted advisor, ensuring a positive impression is left whether there is current demand or not.

The FO Outbound process is split in four phases, which should be followed on a weekly basis to ensure a steady outbound pipeline in alignment with our internal KPIs.

Planning Phase (4-5 hours/week)

1A. Create a set of achievable objectives

These goals should be based on what you know you can achieve when focusing on First Order accounts. It is particularly important to know your equation so you can map your activities to specific outcomes and goals in a predictable way.

The main objective you should be focusing at is to measure and plan what activity is required to achieve or increase the amount of First Order meetings.

1B. Map your objectives to your data

Research your territory to identify the true First Order (FO) accounts, ensuring no other subsidiaries have licenses, verifying there hasn’t been a lost renewal in the past 180 days, and confirming there are no open opportunities. The goal here is to vet your TAM (Total Addresable Market) so that you can start matching cohorts of accounts with the objectives that you’ve outlined in the previous step. Indicatively, you can export these accounts to a Google Sheet, or other SSoT of your preference, for tracking since these accounts will be marked as Actively Working at a future step further down the process.

Utilizing these accounts, create an outreach strategy and plan for the upcoming month and quarter. This strategy should include considerations such as the number of accounts to include in sequences per week and per month, the quantity of prospects from these accounts to add into sequences weekly, whether you intend to target specific personas, if you plan to employ targeted messaging, whether sequences will be used for high-priority targets, and the messaging approach you will implement. As previously mentioned, knowing your equation is important for your planning here. Please refer to the sheet linked above to determine your exact metrics.

Account Research Phase (4-5 hours/week)

During your research phase for accounts to include in your sequences, thoroughly investigate and document pertinent information, which may include:

• Identifying new strategic hires.
• Discovering recent job openings in DevOps.
• Monitoring for security breaches or threats.
• Scanning for relevant news articles.
• Gathering intelligence on competitors.
• Examining future plans, such as digital transformation initiatives.
• Noting recent company acquisitions.
• Investigating LinkedIn connections.
• Identifying instances of GitLab usage by employees or as a past customer.
• Exploring 2nd and 3rd-degree connections.
• Seeking mentions of DevOps.
• Reviewing relevant 10K reports or financial disclosures.

This comprehensive research will provide valuable insights for crafting effective outreach strategies further down the funnel. Regarding account research, in addition to our B2B database toolstack, we also use 6Sense to pre-qualify the accounts that should be considered for our pipelines since 6Sense scores accounts based on their market and profile fit.

There are two ways utilize 6Sense:

• Through the SFDC iframe integrated dashboard (mandatory for FY24Q3)
• Through the 6Sense Platform (optional for this Quarter)

2A. Using 6Sense through the SFDC dashboard

The dashboard will now display the top actively working accounts in your name. Do note that these are only accounts that we currently have on our database, while you can find greenfield accounts by visiting the SaaS platform (instructions in section 2B). Section 3 below explains how you can review and utilize this data.

2B. Using 6Sense through the SaaS platform

Navigate to 6Sense through Okta On the left-hand bar, click on the Segments tab You will find all of the relevant resources for BDRs and SDRs on the first 5 folders. These folders can be be used as per the table below. (In each folder you will find a saved template that can be cloned and edited for your individual territories.)

After choosing the type of report you’d like to work, please follow the steps below:

3. Manual Research on Accounts

No matter how efficiently we’re trying to use our toolchain, these tools are still prone to error, and manual research is required to best shortlist the prospecting lists that cross-referencing will provide.Manual research will also provide additional context that can be used to hyper-personalize your outreach to your prospects.

For each account that you want to investigate, start with SFDC to make sure that there are no duplicate accounts. The report templates in 6Sense should exclude existing customers or accounts actively prospected, but we cannot automatically exclude accounts that have a different naming or domain on salesforce (ie. GitLab and GTLB)

The importance of diligent manual research will lead to the below efficiencies:

→ Better use of time in the long-run by making sure accounts are indeed within your segment and territory, or are not duplicates.
→ Avoiding unecessary RoE conflicts by making sure there are no hidden parent accounts that would cause SAO ownership to be re-assigned to other segments in the future.

1. To double-check the account on Salesforce:

2. To hyper-personalize your messaging:

Please follow the steps below to understand how to research the data provided on 6Sense, and to cross-reference this data with our internal knowledge base so that you create your account strategy accordingly.

Execution Phase (5-10 hours/week)

Exporting Accounts and Leads to SFDC, and adding to your Outbound Pipeline.

After having manually shortlisted the accounts that are applicable to your campaign, the next step is to determine the relevant prospects per account and export them to SFDC. It is important to add accounts to your outbound pipeline so that AEs and other SDRs/BDRs know this is an account that is already being touched, and to avoid confusion or multiple people approaching the same prospects. Before moving an account into “Actively Working Status”, make sure there have been no MQLs or opportunities created from that account within the past 30 days, and there are no leads from that account in Qualifying status with activity in the last 30 days or with a future task date set. If you are not sure, double-check with the related AE, SDR or BDR.

To determine which prospects to enroll per account, please follow the steps below:

• Identify the idea value drivers to be used for the account’s pain-points through your manual research, as outlined above.
• Determine which personas would most benefit from the specific value drivers by using our CoM documentation on HighSpot.
• Run queries for the specific titles on ZoomInfo, and export to CRM.

You should explore the specific personas you intend to target, such as: VPs, Directors, Developers, Security, Architecture, DevOps, DevSecOps, Procurement Officers, and IT Buyers.

Determine the number of prospects you plan to add to sequences, with a minimum of 25 per day. Utilize LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ZoomInfo or Cognism to identify these personas within your target companies.

In Step 7, compile the selected prospects and create LinkedIn Sales Navigator lists for each persona. Save these lists for future use.

To export to CRM, please follow the guidelines below:

• Click the Export to CRM button on ZoomInfo
• That’s it
• No, really.

To fill in the BDR fields, please follow the guidelines below:

Use the format found on this template Copy-Paste the Structure to the BDR Account Research field and populate accordingly. Populate the BDR Next Step Date to be at the end of the account’s sequence length (typically one month out)

6. Maintaining a clean pipeline, and using BDR fields for cross-functional collaboration

To review your current pipeline, along with any leads with next steps, please refer to your segments dashboards by going to SFDC > Dashboards and searching for Watch and Help.

Team specific variants of these dashboard components will also be found on your team’s dashboard. These dashboards will give you a bird’s eye view of what actions are required from to maintain a clean pipeline, in terms of: i. Accounts with BDR fields past due ii. Prospects with sequence steps past due iii. Prospects that have been moved to Qualifying status but have not had any outreach since.

How to Get SAO Credit and Create Opportunities

Qualification criteria is a minimum set of characteristics that a lead must have in order to be passed to sales and become a Sales Accepted Opportunity (SAO), these are split into Inbound and Outbound Criteria.

As an SDR or BDR, you will work to connect with inbound/outbound leads that you get a response from to obtain the applicable information required. This information is tracked on the qualification criteria on the LEAD, CONTACT, and OPPORTUNITY objects in Salesforce. In order to obtain an SAO, you will need to have the required information filled out on the opportunity including documented 2-way communication on the Contacts in the Opportunity. Professional Services opportunities are not credited to sales development, these need to be passed straight to the account AEs for them to qualify.

When do I create an Opportunity?

1. You have scheduled time with AE/SAE to speak with the prospect: If you are scheduling time with an AE/SAE to speak to the prospect based on a qualifying conversation you have had with the prospect, an opportunity needs to be created and placed in stage 0. On the opportunity, all “required qualification” fields need to be filled in.

2. You have obtained a commitment/willigness from a prospect to discuss further. If you have a meaningful two-way communication with a prospect, but have not had the required qualification criteria to move to the Sales team, you can create an opportunity under your name so that you better track your warm conversations. These opportunities may also be used for better collaboration with your team, as they can be reviewed and brain-stormed upon during team meetings.

Who owns the opportunity at this point?

1. You have scheduled time with AE/SAE to speak with the prospect. When you have entered the qualification criteria onto the opportunity, and have received calendar confirmation from all parties for the intro call with sales, you will change ownership to the AE/SAE. After you have saved opp owner, you will add yourself to the BDR/SDR field. The opportunity will remain in stage 0.

2.You have obtained a commitment/willigness from a prospect to discuss further. At this point, the opportunity will be in your ownership but you can not have yourself listed in the Business Development Representative or Sales Development Representative field. There is a validation rule that will not allow the opp owner and the SDR/BDR representative field to be the same member.

When will it be credited as an SAO?

After the AE/SAL meets with the prospect to verify and supplement qualification criteria, they will move the opportunity into Stage 1 Discovery. The AE/SAL is expected to move the opportunity into the correct stage within 48 hours of the meeting reflected in the “Next Step” date field.

If an opportunity has incorrect data after it has moved into Stage 1 - Discovery, please Chatter your manager about the required changes, they will then Chatter someone from Sales Dev Operations (Ramona, Panos, Ed) once final changes are agreed upon. No one else from Sales Dev can edit opportunities once they are in Stage 1, so please try and ensure you have all the information on the opportunity before you ask the AE/SAL to accept it.

If the opportunity is for a new group of users in a Large account where sales is working on a large “central” opportunity, then your opportunity should be merged to that opportunity for you to get credit for the users you have brought to the deal. See under Stage 8 in the Sales Go To Market Handbook.

Opportunity Creation Workflow

Scheduling IQMs

Trial Extensions and Ultimate to Premium Downgrades

To submit a trial extension ticket for a prospect you will navigate to this internal request form and fill it out the form using the “GitLab L&R internal request for global customers” option and then select extend a gitlab.com trial. Keep in mind it only works for SaaS and not self-managed.

You are also able to downgrade a Trial from Ultimate to Premium through the internal request form. You just have to choose “Change existing GitLab.com Trial plan”

Monthly Audit Process

In an effort to increase transparency as well as consistency in terms of credit attribution for opportunities sourced by the Sales Development organization, we will conduct on a monthly basis a full audit of all opportunities giving credit to either a Sales Development or a Business Development Representative. Please do note that SDRs/BDRs that are on their ramping quarter are exempt from being auditors.

Participating and completing the audit on time is mandatory.

Guiding principles:

1. All activities must be logged and documented in Salesforce.
   
2. Timestamps for such activities will be audited and cannot be modified after the fact Sourcing cases must be clearly documented.
   
3. All opportunities associated with a Sales Development team member must have meaningful engagement for Web Directs and full qualifications criteria for Direct Deals.

Mandatory SLA: Audit and XDR response must be completed by the first day of the following month. Rulings will be completed by the management team by the end of the second day. Invitations and pairing will be sent to the entire Sales Dev team the first week of the month. It is the responsibility of the team member to find a backfill to do their audit if they are unable to complete the audit within set timelines.

XDR’S RESPONSIBILITY

1. All activities must be logged in Salesforce. Pro-actively flag opportunities with questions or created outside the standard process in the monthly Audit Doc.. Please note that there’s a separate audit worksheet specific to the PubSec team that is shared separately for compliance reasons.

Examples: web directs. AE-created. Partner generated (for now), Opp w/no value, duplicate opp

AUDITOR’S RESPONSIBILITY

1. Auditor needs to review all notes and time stamps related to the opportunity
2. Auditor needs to log an activity #Audited on the activity record of the opportunity as mentioned below, this way we can track completion of monthly audit.
3. Ensure that relevant activity & products are attached.
4. Ensure that Products match up to Qualification info in Call Connect and/or Meeting
5. For BDRs, ensure account was in AWA status ensuring that the RoE was followed
6. Flag in the monthly Audit Doc, any questions related to the audited opportunities.

AUDIT PROCESS

Each month you will be assigned one of your peers to Audit. We will share a report with all the S1 opportunities created that month. SDRs will audit SDRs and BDRs will audit BDRs. We will do our best to pair people from the same segment however it is possible that you end up auditing someone from another segment.

Once you’ve audited an opp, you will create a task by logging a call, choose “other” as type, and write “#Audited” in the subject line. If an opp needs more research, write “#Audited - Pending Review” and add this opp into the Audit Review spreadsheet.

Audit Process Video Walkthrough

AUDIT REVIEW (what to look for):

Typical Red Flags

1. Opportunity Source: Sales Qualified Source should be SDR generated if not validate that there is a sourcing case documented.
2. Created by: The XDR should create the opportunity, if not, there should be a written explanation
3. Did the XDR set and complete a meeting on the same day without previous activity?
4. Are there duplicate opportunities?
5. Is NetARR missing?

Directors, Ops and JB will select random opps each month to audit and ensure audit process is being followed

Best practices to ensure credit for SAO

1. Sequence all leads if you’re reaching out
2. Make sure your activity is logged that shows how you drove the meaningful engagement that led to the opportunity.
3. Populate all qualification fields
4. If activity was a phone call or a zoom call, log notes at the time of call
5. If a meeting was set, make sure you create a stage 0 opportunity prior to the meeting, populate fields during/afterwards. If person will likely web direct, keep opp in your name and update next steps
6. If engagement is in LinkedIn or Whatsapp, take a picture and attach to chatter/opp
7. If activity happened at an event, make sure that immediately following the event, you create a stage 0 opportunity and send follow up email that recaps the conversation that took place

Reports

1. SAO Report for SDRs

2. SAO Report BDRs

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