A Reachdesk BDR spends a day in the life of a Field Marketer

Joining a new sales team can be daunting, especially if you'll be selling a product you haven’t sold before. While the general sales method doesn’t change too much, the best way to sell a product is to have a personal understanding of the problem it solves. You should know the pains of the people you’ll be prospecting! 

At Reachdesk, part of our onboarding and training involves spending a day in the life of a B2B marketer, a fun and immersive task that gives a taste of what the person on the other side of your sales calls is going through. In my first week, I was tasked with creating a direct mail campaign manually and learned all the minor and major disasters that my prospects were likely to be dealing with.

Firstly, I had to identify the key contact I would be sending a personalized gift to. Reachdesk is an ABM-focused company, so I selected a target account from our list of ICP accounts. After trawling through our CRM I found a few good contacts we had in that account that I could reach out to.

Next, I had to research the potential contacts I’d found. Reading through past correspondence if there was any, looking them up on LinkedIn, searching for any unique interests they may have, or common ground between us. Anything from university to passion projects - things that I could connect with them over.

Once I’d discovered some of my potential contacts’ key interests, I had to start brainstorming how I could turn those interests into a conversation-starting gift and a talking point. Someone went to the same university as me - had they also had similar nights at the student union? What gift could relate to that? 

It was a creative and engaging exercise but by this point, I was wondering where the struggle was… yes I’d been working on it all morning but it hadn’t felt difficult.

Then, it all snowballed.

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Problem 1: Sourcing gifts is incredibly time-consuming

Once I’d figured out some gift ideas, I left the office to go shopping for them. What I hadn’t factored in was the huge chunks of time I’d lose going round shops, trying to find the specific items I needed. Being in London may seem like it helps but unless you’re right by a shopping street it’s much harder than it seems. I was going back and forth between different areas and still couldn’t get everything I needed. To make things worse, anything I wanted to personalize was a whole extra step taking up more time and money.
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Resolution with Reachdesk‍

A marketplace that has an abundance of options you can choose from, with built-in personalization on an array of options. At Reachdesk we source the gifts, catalog them on our marketplace so that you can simply add the personalization you want on items without having to go through the hassle of sourcing them. We handle the whole process.

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‍Problem 2: Doing things manually can be wasteful

‍Not only was I wasting time, but resources too - money and items bought. Because I hadn’t planned in advance, I had to get multiple items instead of just one thing. When it came to personalization, human error came into play. When writing the handwritten note, I made a spelling error which meant I had to throw the card in the recycling, and of course, purchase/use a new one. Not great for the planet or our finances.
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‍Resolution with Reachdesk‍

Reachdesk enables you to see all the product offerings and their prices in one simple marketplace, without trawling around all your local shops. To top it all off, with our platform, typing in your message means you can proofread and change any mistakes made. Solutions like Reachdesk limit human error and therefore waste.

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‍Problem 3: Tracking delivery and cost is a pain ‍

More unanticipated costs: I hadn’t factored wrapping and packaging or postage into the overall cost. Even sending a simple, relatively inexpensive gift was now a huge faff. Once I’d wrapped and included the handwritten note (free of spelling mistakes this time), I needed to input the information into our CRM system - detailing what I’d sent to who, when I’d sent it, how much it had cost, when I needed to follow up... More time and admin. By this point, I was getting just a little tired of all the hassle. To make things even worse, I had to sort the postage and get tracked delivery - have you ever had to queue in a post office at lunchtime? I don’t recommend it!  I then had to message the recipient that a gift would be arriving in the next few days.
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Resolution with Reachdesk

By using Reachdesk, you can rest assured that all items are tracked in real-time, with an automated email sent to both the receiver and the sender to keep both sides in the know. All items sent are integrated with your CRM tool, for full visibility. This way you know exactly when to follow up.‍

It was a long day, at the end of which I truly understood the pains experienced by people who feel put-off by direct mail. Honestly, I would feel put-off too if I had to do things manually without a good technology partner. 

The end goal of gifting is to build deeper connections with key contacts. Wouldn’t it be beautiful to do it without the hassle, on one platform that tracks and records every step of the way?

No need to reinvent the wheel. Visit reachdesk.com for more information!