🔥 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

Ronen R. Pessar

I Help New Leaders Thrive, Not Just Survive | When Emotions Unblock, Performance Will Unlock

We build your in-house outbound systems and recruit top talent for your SDR team to outperform your revenue goals... 1 conversion at a time.

WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY:

💙 “I bet the house on Outbound Operators in ’25. By April, just four months in, we had already surpassed all of ’24’s SQLs. It’s like black magic.”
—Sol Broady, Head of Corp Dev @ MCI
(Hired 4 SDRs instead of 34)

💙 “You smoked them. That’s over. They got the boot. You crushed them. You guys are the winners for SDR.”
—CRO, $300M digital marketing agency
^ after a bake-off against another SDR firm.
(Hired 1 SDR instead of 12)


Outbound Operators delivers a managed outbound system - people, process, and tech - that you fully own (your SDRs, tools, and process). With 40 connects per day, per rep, your AE's calendars will be full quickly, and CAC efficiently. 

🚀 WHAT YOU GET:
ALL done for you:
• Recruit + hire top SDRs
• SDR Stack / RevOps (tech stack build)
• Onboarding + coaching for SDRs and AEs
• All outbound operations done for you (internally owned)

Ramping in 1-3 weeks, your new SDRs will consistently create more qualified pipeline at a lower CAC/TCO than hiring, training, doing tech setup/RevOps, and managing SDRs yourself.

Result: 40 live decision-maker conversations per rep per day.

Our model is simple: You own it all in-house. We design it, run it, and hand you the keys.
• Up to two experienced SDRs placed in your org (to start)
• Powered by our proven system that we build for you
• 1 rep produces pipeline =  8 to 12 SDRs

Why clients choose us:

1. Faster ramp: 1–3 weeks to full SDR output (vs. 9 to 12 months for typical SDRs)
2. Low CAC and TCO: Avoid $450k–$1.2M+ in wasted trial-and-error SDR teams with headcount bloat and bad strategy.
3. More output, 10x quicker, with fewer reps (PE friendly): 40 live decision-maker conversations per rep, per day.
4. We prove it before you commit. In a single 90-minute proof of concept we'll get 20+ live conversations with your buyers right before your eyes. The equivalent to 3–4 weeks of work for 1 SDR done in 90 minutes.

🔥 Stop lighting cash on fire with SDRs. 🔥
Plug in a system that works.

📥 DM me here on LinkedIn
🧑‍💻 visit [www.outboundoperators.com](http://www.outboundoperators.com)
📆 find time to chat: [https://tinyurl.com/4h4vf35p](https://tinyurl.com/4h4vf35p)

PS: Not ready to bring the whole kit and caboodle in-house quite yet? Ask about our network of fractional cold callers for hire!

Chief Executive Officer

1 - I build SDR teams to hit pipeline goals as a fractional leader (bespoke consulting)
2 - Cold Call Training (live and course)
3 - Message-market fit: 100% done-for-you email and cold call campaigns. 

**coming soon: Cold Calling Bootcamp**

Ronen 🧡 Pessar

SDRs AREN’T GOING ANYWHERE.

Every year, some sales clown says:

🚫 “SDRs are dead.”
🚫 “AEs can prospect.”
🚫 “Full-cycle selling is the future!”

Bullsh*t.

SDRs do what AEs can't stomach:

• Cold call
• Break through to new accounts
• Sift through "nos" to find 2-3% ready to buy.

SDRs drive 40-60% of NEW pipeline.
Cut them? Lose 20-30% of deals.

SDRs aren't a "nice-to-have."

They're the backbone of your revenue engine.

Still think your AEs can handle it all?

Keep living in fantasy land.

I'll stay right here in reality. ✌️

PS: Challenge me on this.

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SDR Consulting Plug

📌 not sure where to start with SDRs, grab some time to get clear on the SDR team cost and value (on the house). Or DM me with questions if you're not ready to book a free advisory call.


https://calendly.com/rpadvisory/leadership-coaching-intro-call-30m 

TED Talk - RC

📌 the number 1 proven way to lead is a collaborative way-- check out the TED talk: 

https://www.ted.com/talks/jim_tamm_first_step_to_collaboration_don_t_be_so_defensive?hasSummary=true

Value Vomit VS Probe-Provoke

📌 if you're ready for a modern way, a collaborative way, check out this TED talk: 

https://www.ted.com/talks/jim_tamm_first_step_to_collaboration_don_t_be_so_defensive?hasSummary=true

Zig Quote

"You can have everything in life you want if you will just help other people get what they want." 
- Zig

Founder OS plug

ronen-pessar-advisory

sweet-karma-ice-cream

Outbound Infrastructure for Founders + CRO/CMO | Install an in-house SDR engine (people + process + tools) | 30–90 days to predictable pipeline

"Cold-calling is HARD AF right now!"

Here's what is harder:

- Serving fast food at $11/hr
- Shoveling driveways in 5°F weather
- Standing at a factory line for 12 hrs
- Working 24 hrs straight as a firefighter
- Cleaning dirty bathrooms as your 3rd job
- Giving CPR on a child in a moving ambulance

Picking up a phone isn't hard AF.

Perspective changes everything.

Stop paying SDRs for meetings, meetings don’t matter | Cofounder @ Outbound Operators

I'm SO TIRED of seeing SDRs disrespected.

Treated like cheap labor, not talent.

Micromanaged to death.

Given garbage data, no training, no strategy,
and a fake “culture” built on pressure.

Then told they're the problem?

That’s why your team churns.
That’s why your pipeline is tiny 🤏.

Keep disrespecting the frontline.

Let's see how far you get in 1 year.

PS: Ever felt disrespected as an SDR?

Want to humble a founder fast?

Hand them a phone,

a cold list, and say:

“Set one meeting. Go.”

Suddenly, just book MORE meetings.

Turns into, “Sh*t, this is really hard.”

Respect the SDR. Respect the cold call. 

PS: Should founders do an SDR’s job for a bit?

I'm about to p*ss off my entire industry.

But someone has to say it.

Parallel dialers ruined cold calling.

Sales engagement platforms ruined cold email. 
And LI automation tools are getting shut down…

We've scaled spam, but not conversations.

The outbound "trends" we see?

→ 1 random convo every 30–65 dials
→ Numbers spam-flagged before lunch
→ Prospects annoyed before they even say “hello”
→ Multichannel “do more” (aka spam-the-TAM) as a strategy

It feels productive because the dial count is high.

But honestly, it's just expensive noise.

We ditched parallel dialing, mass emailing, and “social selling." 

Our quality convos jumped from 0–2 → 30/day (per rep). With fewer reps. Same hours.

8–12 conversations per hour.

Cold calling isn’t dead. 

But the way most teams are doing it is.

If you care about pipeline, stop scaling waste.

Build for convos with your market, not 'more dials'


PS: Can someone make this make sense? Plz.

BY FAR the biggest hoax in sales is "unlimited PTO"

Honestly, it's such a joke. 

It's like saying: "yes, this is an all you can eat sushi buffet, but every piece you eat costs $3.00

If a company tells you they have unlimited PTO, but 50% of reps are hitting quota....

That's not unlimited PTO. 

And I can guarantee you most of those reps are working on Christmas morning and New Years day to try and hit their number. 

"Unlimited PTO" is just a way for companies to shift the guilt onto YOU. 

(It also gives them a legal way to avoid paying out unused PTO when you leave.)

Instead of giving you a set number of days and respecting that boundary, they remove the structure entirely - so when you don't take time off, it feels like your choice.

Sadly, it's not your choice. It's the culture.

So next time a recruiter leads with "unlimited PTO" like it's the crown jewel of the comp package, ask the real questions:

What does OTE actually look like? 
What percent of reps hit quota last year?
What does work-life balance actually look like on this team?

That'll give you more insight than some BS platitude like unlimited pto.

5 incredibly easy ways to piss me off:

1) Show up late to a meeting you booked with me
2) Say you're going to follow up but never do
3) Interrupt me when I'm spitting fire
4) Ask me questions you very easily could've googled
5) Use the words "bet" or "facts" while on a call

What'd I miss?

Commission-only sales?

Make it make sense.

No base.
No benefits.
But bills are still due.

Let’s be clear:

If you’re not paying your reps,
You’re not building a team.

You're gambling with people's lives.

Respect is earned. Comp is owed.

Reps deserve better.

Period.

✌️

“Don’t cold call on President’s day”

4 meetings, 6 activations, 15 completions on 23 connects from 60 dials (38% connect rate)

Oh, and it’s Monday. 

Who else was dialing today?

🤙

Not sure what's worse here...

The pure violence I felt getting AI spammed on LinkedIn from a company that claims to help "engage smarter and win more with AI"

Or that he started the DM by saying "Hey Ronen R."

You decide ⬇️

Anyways, stop DMing on Linkie and get back on the phones ☎️

Dear Sales Leaders,

STOP tracking how many calls your reps are making.  

There are so many vanity metrics and BS that the conventional sales leader is tracking nowadays 

Call volume is not the problem.

Call reach is. 

60-85% of the numbers you’re loading into those dialers will never pick up.
So you create dashboards full of 100% guaranteed wasted activity.
And reps that confuse “hitting 100 dials” with doing their job.

Here’s the sad truth:
If your reps are dialing ghosts, it doesn’t matter if they make 50 calls or 500.
More activity doesn't matter if the data isn't validated. 

What happens when you validate the data, is that reps start:

➡️ having 30+ conversations per day with decision makers
➡️ reaching leaders directly at a 20–50% connect rate

And you?

Stop paying for data that is a complete waste of everyones time and money. 

Meetings don’t mean sh*t, qualified pipeline does. 

before buying another tool, ask yourself: are your reps even talking to the right people?

Would you rather have:

The ability to cold call ANYONE in the world and guarantee that they pick up the phone?
or
$300,000 right now?

You taking a bet on yourself and picking up the phone? If so, who you calling?

Digital sales rooms are so dumb

You all might dunk on me for this, but here's why:

People are sick and tired of more tools. 
ESPECIALLY in the sales world. 
Most tools end up doing more harm than good.

But digital sales rooms in specific, end up adding a layer of complexity that I've found is highly unnecessary.

What ends up happening is that you end up having to:
- teach your champion what a digital sales room is
- then rely on them to teach the rest of the org how to use the damn thing

The last thing you want to do in the sales process is add layers of complexity for your buyers

Complexity kills deals, if that's your goal, digital sales rooms are a phenomenal way to do that. 

Strong business case written in customer’s language > DSR

Someone prove me wrong in the comments ⬇️

fail
fail
fail
fail
fail
fail
fail
fail
WIN
fail
fail
fail
fail
WIN
fail
fail

👆 what outbound sales actually looks like...

Don't get it twisted, you're going to fail 97% of the time because you don't control your prospect's timing.

And that's just fine. 

Good outbound systems turn 30% of those "fails" into future wins.

Follow up
Win more

Cold calling isn’t hard.

Doing it for a year at a 3% connect rate is.

At three percent, 100 dials becomes:
• 3-5 answers
• 1-2 pitches
• maybe one real next step

Run that 20 days a month and you do not get tougher, you get numb.

The problem is rarely effort.
It’s the system.

Our client's reps connect every 3 to 5 dials because:

1. Lists are built for them
2. We call numbers that actually answer
3. No parallel dialing that triggers spam labels
4. Follow-ups never get missed (most wins live there)
5. Calling blocks are protected, 5 to 6 hours a day

You do not need more dials.
You need a better outbound strategy.

Are you still measuring a 3% connect rate?

Go on, disagree all you want… these are facts

1) trying to "build rapport" won't win you more deals. Rapport doesn't matter, people buy from people they trust, not people they like.

2) Top SDRs will earn over $200k, fractional callers over $250k. They will do so b/c they have the right system + tech (even at their own expense).

3) Sellers who are no different than a "buy" button will be replaced by a buy button (stay above the API, or be replaced by it)

4) On Feb 12th: "LeBron James becomes oldest player with triple-double in Lakers' 124-104 win over Mavericks" 🐐🐐🐐🐐GOAT🐐🐐 🐐

6) Cold calling is the ONLY channel that is still scaleable and works for outbound. Events work, but don't scale. Email and social... wrecked. 

7) Sled Dog Racing belongs in the winter Olympics since Equestrian is in the summer Olympics.


Facts or fiction?

PS: Read this back, did you notice anything that was... off? 
😏

$25M hits your account tomorrow. Are you:

1) Throwing the laptop out the window
2) Retire your parents
3) Buy a house 
4) Starting a foundation
5) Getting into VC
6) Going YOLO on the Bitcoin dip 

Let's hear it ⬇️

Sales leaders, stop taking the easy way out. 

It's laughable to me that people try and hire salespeople first, then immediately expect pipeline.

Rather than doing the work to build pipeline, then hiring salespeople.  

Not sure who needs to hear this PSA... but YOU'RE PIPELINE SHOULD BE FULL when you're hiring reps. 

Reps aren't the demand engine. That's the leaders job. 

Reps should be there to help you deal with the demand, not create the demand themselves. 

Further, there's NO amount of money you can pay agency or a sales rep to come into an empty organization, and build pipeline from scratch. 

That's because you need:

- Repeatable systems built by sales leaders
- A founder who realizes that pipeline starts from the top
- Sales leaders who take responsibility for the lack of pipeline, and don't blame the reps

Creating demand, then hiring reps is the hard way. 

But it's the only way that works.

I made $68k for 30 hours in 1mo. Cold call training in ‘24. Then I quit.

I quit because it was all wrong.

Some reps saw benefits:
• more confidence
• avoiding mistakes
• a few more meetings set

But it only led to marginal gains.

10 years in the outbound game and I thought this was as good as it gets. 

I ready to move on from outbound sales when Ryan came along. 

This dude proved that outbound sales works… better than anything I’d seen before. 

• a system for 40 convos/ day
• follow up where 1.5x to 3x convert 
• every detail from list to SQO tested, proven, and built over and over again

The man built a machine!
(And he is one too)

No wonder why he has 6 exits (3 his own, 3 as sales leader) when most 40yr olds are lucky to see 1.

Ryan is the number 1 authority on outbound sales, systems, and cold calling…

So I pursued him hard, we partnered up (11mo ago), and built Outbound Operators. 

Since then our clients have seen:
- 2 exits (acquisition)
- $73m seed round
- PMF in 90 days 
- A year’s worth of meetings in 3 weeks

We’re giving away Ryan’s best seller “Outbound Sales, No Fluff” where he shares the keys to our clients success. 

You don’t have to comment for it, just scroll down 👉 outboundoperators.com

Most people ask: "how do I become a great SDR?"

When you should be asking "how can I be the worst SDR in the world?"

Here's what I'd do to be the worst SDR in the world: 

1) Talk more than the prospect
2) Don't match my prospects energy
3) Spend 2hrs doing "admin work" before dialing
4) Make 20 dials, get discouraged and stop for the day 
5) Last but certainly not least: don't follow up

Charlie Munger had a line that went: invert, always invert. 

Life becomes a lot more clear when you figure out what you don't want, or how to be really bad at something. 

Because then all you have to do is just not do that thing 🤷‍♂️

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🔥 Tom Slocum

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The Battle

🔥 Tom Slocum

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Likes

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