😎 The dangers of hiring an SDR, biggest job post red flag, a simple trick to stop rambling on sales calls

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SELLER’S SECRETS

Who is John Karsant, and what is Level Up Leads?

John is the CEO of Level Up Leads, a B2B appointment setting agency with ~30 SDRs and ~70 active clients. With over a decade in B2B prospecting experience, you can say John may know a thing or two about opening up new business (for businesses)

Check out John’s full interview on Youtube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

John’s come up (in 10 bullet points)

• Tennis coach who knew he couldn't teach at 60

• Moved to Argentina, needed remote work, no “desk job” experience

• Solar lead generation startup took a chance on him remotely

• Learned B2B2C sales in solar (different from tech)

• Worked at multiple startups running full sales cycle

• Joined Ukrainian lead generation agency as CEO's right hand

• Two years experience during pre-COVID and COVID transition

• Spun off Level Up Leads in 2021 during pandemic

• Started with his wife offering list building services

• Eventually built out the business to scale SDR teams

John’s sales alpha and best practices

The "free sample list" client acquisition strategy

John's contrarian approach to winning new business involves offering the core service completely free upfront. Instead of pitching capabilities or showing case studies, he simply says "I'm willing to give you a free sample list, no charge. All I need is your parameters."

This goes against conventional wisdom of never giving away your work for free, but John found it converted about 50% of prospects into paying clients. This strategy works by removing risk and demonstrating actual value rather than making promises.

The fractional SDR model that challenges industry norms

While most agencies either provide dedicated full-time SDRs or charge per meeting, John created a hybrid "fractional SDR" model where SDRs will work on multiple accounts as needed but clients know this upfront.

He specifically targets SDRs with side businesses who only want to work 4 hours per day, creating a win-win where the SDR gets stable income while building their business, and clients get experienced talent at a lower cost. This challenges the industry assumption that dedicated resources always perform better.

SDR’s dial. That’s it.

John deliberately designed his sales systems so SDRs focus exclusively on dialing, with separate team members handling list building, email responses, and other tasks. This goes against the typical full-cycle SDR model where one person handles everything.

His reasoning: when SDRs get pulled into multiple tasks, their core activity (dialing) suffers. By keeping them laser-focused on conversations, he maintains higher activity levels and better results, even though it may require more team coordination.

4 things to steal, 4 tips to implement ‘em

1. Design fractional opportunities with people's goals in mind

• Recruit talent who want part-time work for specific reasons

• Match workload capacity to their personal objectives (side business, family, etc.)

• Be transparent about shared resources/expectations

• Structure pricing to make fractional model profitable for everyone

2. Focus SDRs on single activity for maximum results

• Automate or delegate list building, email management, and admin

• Keep SDRs exclusively focused on phone conversations and dialing

• Design operations around activity specialization, not full-cycle roles

• Accept higher systems complexity for better sales performance

#3: Never hire SDRs without doing it yourself first

• Spend 3-6 months personally executing your outbound process before hiring

• Document exactly what works, what doesn't, and realistic expectations

• Create specific guardrails and KPIs based on your actual experience

• Give new SDRs 8-12 months to figure it out if they're starting fresh

#4 Data is king. Analyze across accounts to build better.

• Track what messaging works across your accounts or sales reps

• Apply successful approaches from one to the others

• Use aggregate data to spot trends clients/team can't see individually

• Position this as an advantage over competitors with less insight

Connect with John

Work with John: levelupleads.io, levelupdeals.ai

John’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnkarsant/

John’s Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@levelupleads1726

John’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/levelup.leads/

John’s Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LevelUpLeadsGenerator

John’s X: https://x.com/Jkarsant