Field Report / 002Verified"Tom's training made a massive impact on our team. We went from 50% quota attainment in Q2 to 81% in Q3, and by Q4 we pushed into the low 90% range — our highest performance yet. Three of our SDRs earned promotions to Commercial AE roles. The structured training, playbooks and hands-on coaching set the team up for long-term success."
How Kustomer turned SDR enablement into a weekly performance operating cadence
Fourteen weeks across roughly 15 SDRs and their leaders. Not a training series — a repeating loop of leadership alignment, live workshop, breakout implementation, rep execution and manager inspection, with the playbook infrastructure left behind.
50% Q2 → 81% Q3 → low-90s Q4 quota attainment
Proof point 01
Ryan O'Donnell · client testimonial
3 SDRs promoted to Commercial AE
Proof point 02
Client testimonial
14 weeks · ~15 SDRs + leadership
Proof point 03
Engagement record
Report thesisTwo SDR managers, a VP of Sales and a 15-person team moved from one-off training to a 14-week performance system — the defensible claim is the operating behavior installed, not sole causality over attainment.
- SDR Leadership
- Coaching
- Enablement
- Pipeline
- Industry
- B2B SaaS | CX & Support Software
- Engagement
- 14-Week Revenue Accelerator — SDR team + leadership
- Dates
- Aug 9 – Nov 15, 2024
Performance movement is reported by Kustomer leadership and is not attributed to SD Lab alone — Ryan O'Donnell noted that added headcount also contributed to aggregate activity over the same period. Q4 attainment is published as the low-90% range, as corrected in the client publishing record.
Artifacts from the work
A compact view of the engagement record. Open any item to inspect it.
What was actually happening
Kustomer had an active SDR team and existing onboarding. What leadership wanted was consistency: the same prospecting fundamentals, the same messaging standard, the same conversion behavior and the same coaching rhythm across a remote team where several reps were brand new and the experienced reps needed fresh tactical range.
What we found
The gap was not knowledge, it was cadence. Enablement happened in bursts, reps applied it unevenly, and nothing in the weekly rhythm forced application or inspection. The fix had to be a loop the managers could run — not a curriculum that ended when the sessions did.
Onboarding existed, but there was no shared standard the whole team practiced against week to week.
New and tenured reps drifted toward different messaging and different definitions of good.
Most outbound leaned on email. Phone, LinkedIn, video and voice were used inconsistently.
Coverage per account was thin, so reply rates set the ceiling on the entire funnel.
Enablement was delivered, but application was not inspected in the manager's weekly rhythm.
Skills were taught and then decayed. Nothing compounded from one week to the next.
Remote reps rarely worked across tenure lines.
Tacit knowledge from experienced reps never reached the new hires who needed it most.
What we built
- Account and persona prioritization, list building and targeting standards
- HERO-style cold email messaging and a personalization-vs-relevance standard
- Cold calling curriculum, call blitzes and recurring power hours
- LinkedIn, social, video and voice prospecting as first-class channels
- Objection handling, follow-up and reactivation sequences
- Time blocking and daily operating structure for reps
- Qualification and Stage 0 → Stage 1 friction reduction with AE–SDR collaboration
- Spiffs, paired rep contests and manager accountability mechanics
- Q4 urgency and ROI messaging, seasonal nurture, TBR and closed-lost re-engagement
How the work ran
Every week ran the same loop: leadership alignment on the week's focus, a live two-hour workshop, breakout implementation in mixed-tenure groups, rep execution and homework in the field, then manager inspection and reinforcement — then repeat. The workshop was never the deliverable. The loop was.
- 01Leadership alignmentManagers agree on the week's focus before the team sees it.
- 02Live workshopTwo hours, taught in the room, built on Kustomer's real accounts.
- 03Breakout implementationMixed-tenure groups build the thing rather than watch it.
- 04Rep executionThe play runs in the field that week as assigned work.
- 05Manager inspectionApplication gets reviewed and reinforced, not assumed.
Receipts from the engagement
The session that set the operating cadence and what each week would ask of reps and managers.
Account and persona prioritization — the standard behind every list a rep built afterward.
The call framework the team practiced in blitzes and recurring power hours.
The follow-up mechanics reps applied immediately — including a ghosted prospect rebooked the week after this session.
Urgency and ROI messaging, seasonal nurture, TBR and closed-lost re-engagement heading into quarter end.
Roughly 80–85 pages, written for Kustomer, usable by every hire after the engagement ended.
How the playbook is meant to be run — as onboarding infrastructure, not a reference document.
How the team operates now
Reps expanded beyond email into phone, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, video and voice messages. Thailyia booked her first-ever meeting from a cold call and later rebooked a ghosted prospect after the follow-up workshop. Rebecca turned a follow-up bump into a meeting and looped a C-suite stakeholder in with a personalized email. Ryan increased Nooks usage and stood up a recurring weekly power hour. Joe used the time-blocking system to reset his day. Leadership began monitoring reply rates on rep-built follow-up sequences before wider rollout.
One-off sessions with uneven application
A weekly loop: align → workshop → implement → execute → inspect
Email-dominant outreach
Phone, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, video and voice used deliberately per account
Activity discussed, not structured
Power hours, paired contests and spiffs with manager reinforcement
Knowledge held by tenured reps
~180+ pages of playbook infrastructure plus recorded curriculum for future hires
What we can verify
- Quota attainment moved from 50% in Q2 to 81% in Q3, and into the low-90% range in Q4 — Kustomer's highest performance yet (client testimonial)
- Three SDRs earned promotions to Commercial AE roles (Ryan O'Donnell)
- October described by leadership as one of the team's highest consistent activity months (Alana)
- Weekly power hours and call blitzes became a standing part of the week
- Reps ran multichannel sequences and tested follow-up cadences with reply-rate monitoring
- Time blocking gave reps a repeatable daily operating structure
- Mixed-tenure breakout groups pulled experienced-rep tactics into new-hire practice
- Managers can run the align → workshop → implement → execute → inspect loop without SD Lab in the room
- A Kustomer-branded rep playbook exists as onboarding infrastructure for future hires
- Session recordings, decks, worksheets and exercises form a reusable curriculum
- Paired contests and spiff mechanics can be re-pointed at any quarter-end push
Quota attainment figures and promotions are client-reported through published testimonials from Ryan O'Donnell and Jon Dyer. Activity and behavior observations are transcript-backed from engagement sessions. Kustomer's earlier internal headline of 100% Q4 attainment is not published here — the corrected, client-verified framing is the low-90% range. SD Lab is not presented as the sole cause of performance movement; added headcount also contributed to aggregate activity.
“Fourteen weeks of consistent, structured, tailored training transformed our reps' skills and confidence. We went from 50% quota attainment in Q2 to 81% in Q3, and that momentum set us up for a record Q4. The playbooks remain valuable assets for the team.”
“I just love the consistent trainings… just having that refresher or that deep dive into each subject was massive for these new hires.”
“I would say 98% of the stuff that I learned was brand new.”
“Even for the experienced reps… the little tidbits that they did grab, it was cool for them to implement that and see like an immediate impact.”
What stayed behind
- All session recordings
- Workshop decks for every session
- Group activities, worksheets and exercises
- Reusable curriculum for future hires
- ~80–85 page Kustomer-branded rep playbook
- ~100 page B2B sales and operating playbook
- Power hour, spiff and paired-contest mechanics
- Follow-up and reactivation sequence templates
What remained unproven
Every engagement leaves something unresolved. These are the limits of what this report can claim.
- Headcount growth also contributed to aggregate activity over the same period, so quota-attainment movement cannot be attributed solely to this engagement
- Q4 attainment is published as low-90s, not as 100% achieved
Enablement only compounds when a manager's week is built to inspect it. Kustomer's gain came from the loop — align, teach, implement, execute, inspect — and from the playbook infrastructure that let the loop keep running after the engagement ended. Kustomer did not renew immediately: new internal leadership wanted to rotate its own leaders through training, headcount planning was unresolved, and the team chose to finish Q4 before deciding on further external programming. Jon Dyer noted another SD Lab program could be revisited later.
The thinking behind this work
- FrameworksMost SDR Coaching Is ReactiveReactive coaching starts after the miss. This is the inspection cadence: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly. That surfaces the problem while there is still time to change it.Read
- FrameworksYour Pipeline Isn't Dry... It's LeakingWeak pipeline is rarely one problem. The SD Lab Pipeline Leak Map locates where opportunity falls out before anyone prescribes more volume.Read
- FrameworksWhere Deals Actually BreakBooked meetings still stall when discovery, qualification, connection, handoff and follow-up break. A seven-stage way to diagnose the middle of the motion.Read
More in the Resource Library and on Media.
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Published from the engagement record. Testimonial copy from Ryan O'Donnell and Jon Dyer was drafted from what they shared and confirmed by them before publication. Transcript quotes come from recorded engagement sessions. Artifacts are real engagement files; pages containing private identifiers were excluded.