At a global SaaS business this year, the goal rested on a few superstars. They carried quota from outbound that was distributed across well-trained SDRs.

On paper, that was a resourcing question. Hire SDRs, take them through onboarding content and set targets.

It wasn’t.

The newly hired reps had the right attitude. They understood the company’s brand promise, and they could learn an elevator pitch.

What none of them had was the muscle to run a light discovery call in two minutes and turn it into a booked meeting.

That’s a different skill from anything they had done before, and it was the one skill, and tool, the whole number rested on.

Twenty leadership interviews told me where the workflow was actually breaking, and it was almost never the tooling. So we built what sat underneath.

A pitch certification that 330 reps went through, so everyone had the same on-brand intro. SDR onboarding rooted in MEDDPICC and Challenger methods. A ninety-day coaching program tied to real training, role playing and more practice.

I practice this work myself, which I think matters. On October 14th, I’m hosting ten agency leaders around one table here in Portland. Every one of them came from cold outreach I ran personally.

I would not teach a motion I don’t run myself.

So when you read next year’s plan, ask what it assumes your reps can already do. If outbound is in the number, the plan must account for the time it takes to do the reps and learn the stack to support them.

That’s what I build now for agencies and service providers. A predictable revenue machine your team runs, so new business stops running through the founder.

Want the write-up from the October 14th table? Email me at nk@noahkoff.com.

Noah Koff is founder of Redwood Partners and creator/host of the Revenue Enablement Society in Portland, Oregon. He builds predictable revenue by working on both the system and the people in it, including how they talk, decide and repair.