🔥 Tom Slocum

Your Future Homie- In- Law | Founder @ The SD Lab | Sales Consultant | 7x Strategic Advisor | 4x Sales Leader | SDR Coach | #empathyactivist

Hey I’m Tom I help B2B leaders, SDR teams and founders fix broken outbound when pipeline is dry and reps are stuck spinning

After 18 years in sales from 400+ daily cold calls in a cubicle to building $3M+ in pipeline from scratch I’ve built a repeatable system that gets outbound back on track

Here’s how I help

Weekly workshops (theory + tactical execution)

Rebuilt call flows, messaging and targeting

Sequencing + workflow installation

Call reviews with live coaching + scorecards

Fast performance gains tied to KPIs

Client Wins

Kustomer → 50%+ lift in meetings → 100% SDR attainment in 3 months
ServiceChannel → 30% SQL lift with sharper messaging + coaching
Rockledge, Distran → 10–20 meetings/month booked after outbound reset

I’ve also worked with brands like ServiceChannel, Kustomer, Apollo, ZoomInfo, Smartlead, Surfe and more to coach teams and represent their tools

Outbound isn’t dead it just needs fixing

👉 Want sharper messaging, predictable pipeline and reps who book meetings?

Book an Outbound Strategy Tour (Featured below)

Or join my newsletter (7K+ readers) for free outbound playbooks (below)

Founder

The SD Lab is a top-of-funnel sales consulting agency. The SD Lab offers customized services to help businesses optimize their sales process and achieve measurable results. The SD Lab offers a 14-week Revenue Acceleration program, Custom Sales Playbooks, and Team Coaching packages that cover all things Top of Funnel. If you're looking to optimize your sales process and achieve sales success, The SD Lab is here to help. Let's work together to transform your sales approach

Bob the Builder of Pipeline | Cold Calling Mercenary | Sales and Humor | Voted “#2 Best Parent” - by my 2 year old 🤷🏻

We can all agree that life is typically too serious and stressful, especially on a “professional platform”, so I enjoy breaking that norm with some laughter in both my content and sales process.

Professionally: I specialize in building and refining sales motions and top of funnel processes, bringing a unique twist that “breaks through the noise” of the modern day dreaded norm of what people believe is good revenue generation.

Before moving to Sales, I had the pleasure of coaching and treating thousands of clients through rehabilitation and personal training for almost 10 years, where I now channel the same energy and passion in leading GTM teams.

You’ve scrolled this far, we might as well get to know one another.

I’m a redneck working a white collar job living in a blue collar state 🥔

“When you turn a passion to a profession and truly love what you do, then you don’t work a day in your life.”

💥I’ve been lucky enough to do that twice💥


↙️“About me”↘️

Mission 1: To push past the “limitations” that your mind sets whether it be physical or mental.


Mission 2: To build my career in Sales and build a bridge between my old world of fitness and apply those principals to the business world.


- Constantly looking to learn. Go spark up a conversation and learn something about them and that little conversation could change your life. 

- “You don’t know till you try” I find to many people (myself included) stay comfortable and are afraid of breaking complacency.

- There is no greater feeling being coached or better yet, coaching someone else, and watching them succeed.

Eric Iannello

I’d rather take dieting lessons from the Liver King 

Than to apply advice from someone who slaps an irrelevant selfie on their posts to “expand its reach”

Voted ‘#2 Best Parent’ - by my 4 year old

Nothing makes me go “wtf did I do with my life”

More than being invited onto a podcast that’s only a glorified zoom call 
By a host who sits there and just nods in agreement 142x straight into the camera 
Because their ear bud cord restricts them from moving their head back far enough 
And hold a tiny mic they with their thumb and pointer finger which makes them look absolutely rediculus

“BuT We’rE oN SpOTifY”

That’s like saying you’re a best selling author on Amazon

So is my 13 year old nephew Susan

Don’t you love when job ads don’t disclose salaries

It’s like a game

Will this job allow me to live above the median income required in my city

Or and I trying to become a LinkedIn influencer and promote tools I’ve never used for a couple bucks per post






…buy Sybill

Best feature while this algo figures itself out

#fixmyfeed

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Every year, about this time consecutively, my son gets my wife and I participate in an extreme diet

Goal is to flush our body of all the junk and toxins we’ve been harboring 

Starts with disposing of any and all thing in your system - no matter what end it comes out

Complete cleanse

Then we discipline ourselves to only consume micro amounts of food for 3-5 days

Just enough to survive, nothing more

Typically only including saltine crackers and soup

Once the cold sweats and shaking start, we embody a mind of matter mentality, not letting the suffering break us


Relax LinkedIn, you have the flu

We’re seeing people exit the industry in droves either forcefully or voluntarily 

I’m watching people I respect walk away from this industry

And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand why

36% of companies cut their SDR teams this year

The highest reduction of any sales function

Only 18% of tech postings will even consider someone with less than a year of experience

The door that used to be wide open for people from non traditional backgrounds like mine, is barely cracked right now

And the ones still in it aren’t exactly thriving either

87% of people won’t pick up your call

Your emails pull a 1-2% reply rate on a good day

84% of reps missed quota last year - while quotas somehow went up 37%…

That’s not a motivation problem

That’s a math problem

A close friend told me recently they want out because sales feels forceful now

And honestly, I felt that and I’ve been there

Being let go reminded me how strong that sense of failure can feel - even when you know it wasn’t entirely your fault

“More power to you, how can I help” was my response

But here’s what I keep coming back to

I was a ranch hand, a scaffolder, a bartender, then a personal trainer with no degree, no connections and no roadmap

And this industry gave me a career that changed everything for my family

Only 9% of workers without a bachelor’s ever hit 6 figures in this country

The average sales comp in SaaS is $126k

I honestly can’t think of another space that opens that door with that level of opportunity 

People who just showed up willing to learn and willing to work, that mattered to me

This industry is harder than it’s ever been

I won’t sugarcoat that and it’s asking more of the people in it 

More creativity
More strategy
More resilience
More willingness to adapt when everything you used to rely on stops working

And not everyone is going to want to stay for that

But for the ones who do

I genuinely believe there’s more opportunity now than ever for people willing to grow with it

I’m too grateful for this career to walk away

And too stubborn to stop trying to get better at it

Is this space dying or evolving

When I was looking, someone actually asked me to relocate for a job

I laughed

Not because it was funny

Because in 2025 that question should come with a disclaimer

Let me tell you what relocating for a job actually means

You uproot your life

You move your family

You pay to break your lease or sell your house at the worst possible time

You leave your network, your community, your routine

For a company that has a median employee tenure of ~3 years

IC roles are skating around 18 months average tenure and Director and VPs just hit the low of the same

The lowest it’s been since 2002

So statistically you’re disrupting everything you’ve built for a job you’ll probably leave, or get laid off from, before your kids finish adjusting to the new school

And here’s the part that really gets me

40% of job relocations fail

Not because the person wasn’t qualified

Because of isolation, culture shock, homesickness or my favorite 

A spouse who couldn’t find work to help supplement the income needed

Real human costs that never show up in the offer letter

But sure...here’s a $5k lump sum, go ahead and move your entire life

76% of workers are actively seeking remote work opportunities right now

Only 16% say their top choice is a fully in-office job

The market has spoken

Loudly

And yet companies are still out here demanding relocation as a condition of employment for roles that require nothing more than a laptop and a decent wifi connection

Sales
Marketing
Operations
Finance

Jobs that got done perfectly fine from a home office

But now suddenly they need you within commute distance of a WeWork in a city you’ve never lived in

Here’s what nobody says out loud in the interview process

The relocation ask is the ultimate litmus test for how much leverage they think they have over you

The answer should always be the same

None

Because the moment you relocate for a company you become entirely dependent on them

Your mortgage is now tied to their quarterly earnings

Your kids school is now tied to their headcount decisions

Your entire life is now collateral for their business model

Median job tenure is 3.9 years

Layoffs don’t come with moving trucks

Before you pack a single box, make sure the juice is worth the squeeze

Because for most roles in 2026

It isn’t

I say what we’re all thinking | Voted ‘#2 Best Parent’ - by my 4 year old 🤷🏻

Saw everyone at Gong changed their title to Revenue Architect

…that’s cute

Do you remember when you created a profile on here

Felt like you unlocked a free source of information 

But then the more you scrolled 

The more you expanded your network

And the more you developed a community

The more you realized that if you don’t post selfies and exaggerated points of success with ChatGPT

The more you’re at risk for being blocked for creating content that may be considered a contrarian view to the “this is gold” standard 

Blocked by the same community of people posting AI-generated photos above life lessons they made up while cold plunging the one time

These are the “thought leaders”

Who preach authenticity above all but can’t create a thought without the help of the latest LLM and an irrelevant photo of themselves that’s been filtered by AI so much they’re hardly recognizable 

…but “hacks the algo” so they feed their fried dopamine receptors with false validation from people they’ve never met

The truth is like poetry, and everyone hates poetry

Couldn’t write it better myself

Actually, they couldn’t either

That’s kind of the point…

Companies are fighting to get their entire team to be social on here

Post wins, share insights, build your personal brand

But then act shocked when those same people use those audiences to explain exactly why they left

I’ve worked at companies like this and the playbook is identical every time

Step 1: Build employee advocacy program because you read that social selling drives 7x higher conversion rates

Step 2: Celebrate every post, every share, every “proud to announce”

Step 3: Watch your VP of Customer Success, Head of Marketing, and half your AE team walk out the door in the same month

Step 4: Panic when they tell 10,000+ people exactly what it’s like to work there

Aligned is currently stuck on Step 4

Their former VP of CS didn’t quietly update her LinkedIn title

“When your best people leave quietly, it’s not grace. It’s a verdict”

Then proceeded to detail how mediocrity gets protected while top performers get burned out

How politics wins over performance

How feedback gets acknowledged then buried

Their Head of Marketing left at the same time and 2 more AEs are gone, 3rd one walking

But here’s the part that should terrify every CEO reading this

The social brand they spent years building just became their biggest sales objection


Watching the now ex-Head of Sales of Pylon post her calendar before she left with the sad note of the “unexpected departure”

7am to 6pm - back to back meetings - every day

Not as inspiration, as a warning

“This is what hustle culture gives you”

Leadership called her ungrateful and she deleted it

But the internet doesn’t forget

Now when people look up Pylon - a company selling customer support software - the story they find is about leadership that can’t support their own people

You genuinely can’t write better irony than that

Here’s what I learned working at companies exactly like this

You can weaponize employee voices for pipeline all you want

But you cannot control what they say when you’ve made their lives miserable enough to leave

Companies give their team the megaphone, the audience, the training

Made social selling part of the culture

Even tie goals to it

Then the people who got good at it decided to be authentic about the wrong things

And now that brand equity they built, is actively sinking them

Most companies think they can policy their way out of this

Write guidelines about “appropriate social media use”

As if you can tell someone “only say nice things about us, especially after we drove you out”

You gave away editorial control the second you made everyone a publisher

Here’s your wake-up call

If you’ve spent years building employee advocacy programs, you better make absolutely certain your best people don’t want to burn everything down on their way out

You gave them the audience, the credibility and the training

And that 7x conversion rate you celebrate in board meetings?

It works in both directions…

It was Oracle 15 years ago

Salesforce 10 years ago

And now ___


Joining a company that leads the industry has got to be an incredible feeling

Conquering the market

Everyone knows your name

Each deal you’re in feels like David vs Goliath and you’re David and Goliath and the rock and the slingshot

As your watch the massive team scale the company to amazing heights, you’re seeing the stories unfold that you’ll tell your grandchildren one day

…and LinkedIn 

“After years of scaling {Company} from $99M to $100M in ARR, I’m now offering coaching so you can use the same tricks I did to ensure being apart of the top 42% who hit quota!”

Which company’s reps do you think will be the loudest after they make their “big exit”?

The author can see how you vote. Learn more

What’s the difference between using a PBO in your cold calls 

And picking up a chocolate bar in the pool?

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The Battle

🔥 Tom Slocum

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The Battle

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