Sales team Archives - Air Marketing

We’re Not a “Bodies on Seats” Agency – And Here’s Why That Matters

Posted on 10 November 202510 November 2025 by Hannah Sanders

Too many outsourced sales providers still sell the same thing: bodies on seats. A quick fix. A headcount number. Someone to make the calls and tick the activity box.

If you’ve worked with that kind of partner, you’ll know what it really means – inconsistent conversations, poor brand representation, and a revolving door of SDRs who never truly understand your business. At Air, we’ve built our reputation on doing the opposite.

The “bodies on seats” model: quantity over quality

In traditional outsourced sales, speed and volume take priority. Providers hire fast, onboard faster, and push people into campaigns before they’re ready.

Training is minimal and generic –SDRs are put on the phones with little preparation.
Coaching is rareand often replaced by unrealistic KPIs.
Support structures are thin,leaving SDRs to struggle without guidance.
High turnoverbecomes the norm, causing brand inconsistency and lost momentum.

The result is more than wasted budget – it risks your reputation and drains the energy out of your pipeline.

The Air Approach: placing high-calibre sales talent

We don’t fill seats. We build exceptional salespeople.

Rigorous recruitment focused on mindset – resilience, curiosity, and coachability come before experience.
Sales Academy training with structured onboarding and continuous development across objection handling, outreach strategy, and client communication.
Best-in-class technology powering every campaign – CRM, sequencing, analytics, and AI-driven insight.
Wrap-around support from managers, coaches, data specialists, and performance leads – nobody is left to figure it out alone.

Clients don’t just get people – they get a ready-built sales infrastructure designed for consistent performance.

Why this matters to our clients

Brand-safe conversations with SDRs who understand your proposition and tone of voice.
Faster ramp and higher conversion because capability and coaching are in place from day one.
Predictable, scalable outbound that grows with you – not a revolving door of short-term hires.
Shared accountability for ROI and reputation, not just activity volume.

Bodies don’t build pipelines. People do.

There’s a world of difference between having someone in a seat and having someone who’s equipped to represent your business, connect with your audience, and drive growth.

At Air, we’re proud to be known for the calibre of our people – because that’s what truly powers results. We don’t do “bodies on seats.” We build confident, capable salespeople who deliver impact from day one.

Diving deeper

A side-by-side look at how Air Marketing compares to a typical lead gen agency – from the structure of the team to the strength of the results.

Air Marketing	Typical Lead Gen Agency
Builds revenue engines, not just meetings Measured on pipeline and revenue impact — aligning data, messaging, SDR performance, and conversion strategy for sustainable growth.	Books meetings, not outcomes Measures success on activity volume and meetings set, with limited focus on pipeline quality or revenue progression.
A fully built SDR function, with wrap-around support High-calibre SDRs trained through an expert academy, supported by sales leadership, data specialists, and advanced tech to form a complete outbound engine.	Supplies ‘an SDR’ or appointment setter Provides individual reps with minimal structure, coaching, or leadership support, leading to inconsistent performance.
Deep industry and target market expertise SDRs matched to industries and markets for sharper, senior-level conversations with defined Ideal Customer Profiles (ICPs).	Generic messaging Relies on one-size-fits-all scripts with limited understanding of industry nuances or buyer pain points.
Built by sales leaders who’ve scaled teams Approach shaped by proven experience in building, leading, and scaling high-performing sales teams.	Run by telesales managers Operates with a volume-first mindset — prioritising dial count over process, forecasting, and conversion analysis.
Precision cadences Data-driven, message-tested, multi-channel outreach designed to maximise contact rates and conversion performance.	Spray-and-pray outreach Executes bulk sequences at scale with limited targeting or optimisation, resulting in poor engagement and conversion.
A plug-and-play partner for sustainable growth Seamless to launch and built to scale — SDR teams embed within your existing sales function to deliver consistent, long-term results.	A short-term supplier, not a partner Designed for quick activation but limited scalability — disconnected delivery teams focused on activity rather than sustainable revenue impact.

Ready to see the difference for yourself?

If you want outbound that delivers revenue, not just activity, let’s talk about what a performance-led model could do for your pipeline.

Leading your sales team like a human – why authenticity really matters

Posted on 5 October 20203 June 2025 by Doug Roots

I can honestly say that making the conscious decision to lead my team as a human and aiming to be the most authentic version of myself, has had a huge impact on shaping our culture as we’ve grown. Shortly after founding the business, I decided that in an otherwise complex world, one thing could be straightforward, my role. Yes, I am a boss, a leader, a manager and a salesperson, but first and foremost, I’m me.

The idea of being confined and limited by the narrow parameters associated with a title, a bulleted list of things I should be, seems counterintuitive to connecting with people and aiming to inspire them. Simon Sinek said, ‘a boss has the title, a leader has the people’ and that to me, epitomises the mindset that makes the most sense.

Humans are highly complex and capable. We work best when we’re given
the freedom to be creative and innovate. The average UK worker spends 1,676
hours at work every single year – that figure is perhaps even higher in the
sales industry. The idea that your input, in all that time, can be reduced to a
500 word job description seems absurd; it doesn’t reflect the role we each
play.

When you try to neatly box the notion of what sales leadership should
be, you close yourself off to possibilities and true connection. Every day you
can choose to be human in your approach, when sales leaders neglect to make a
conscious decision about it, they leave their leadership style down to luck and
forget to be mindful. When you let your team see the real you, you’re showing
them someone who cares about them and you lay the foundations for trust to grow.
If they can see you have their best interests at heart, they will appreciate
and accept your honesty when delivering tough messages and taking difficult
decisions.

Self-awareness is critical for any good leader. Leaders who claim to
be infallible are not relatable and sometimes unlikeable. Nobody is perfect and
those who can show vulnerability, and strength and resiliency in the face of
challenges, without hiding their emotions and compartmentalising their feelings,
will be far more inspiring to the team around them than somebody who chooses to
hide behind a façade.

It’s important to put your team’s development first, even before your own. Investing in people goes far beyond caring about their success and professional development. True leaders care for their team’s mental wellbeing too, and know they will only truly thrive in a trusting and honest environment where people are comfortable with expectations and feel supported to speak their minds.

Whilst you can and actively should show emotions as a leader, you
can’t let them dictate how you behave and the decisions that you make. The
ability to step away and create space is critical. Be somebody who explains
their motivations and thinking because context really does matter. Give your
team transparency around data and decisions and explain the thought processes that
led you there.

Don’t be a control freak. Let people exceed all of your expectations, with your full support. True leaders give people ownership and encourage their team to fail fast and learn from the experience. Most importantly, try to create that culture where you talk openly about failure. If you can have honest and normal conversations about it, everyone can learn and move on, it’s all you need to motivate and educate your team.

Our new platform, Wellity, is designed specifically for the sales industry and focuses on the mental health and wellbeing of professionals within it. We recently interviewed a gentleman called Chris Brindley MBE, who was formerly on the board at Metrobank and is now the Chair of the Rugby League World Cup 2021. He talked about two principles that always resonate with me. One is mirrors and windows. Imagine a scenario where a CEO pulls you, the sales leader, into his office at the end of the quarter and chastises you for a poor quarterly performance. He asks you, ‘what’s happening?’. A great leader will reflect that back on themselves, like a mirror and assume accountability. Equally, when a quarter goes well, that same leader will open the ‘window’ motion towards their sales team and congratulate them for the success. The second principle I really admire is that all great leaders are like umbrellas, because they protect their team from the storm.

I’ll leave you with one final point relating to that word,
authenticity. Being authentic means coming from a real place inside ourselves;
it’s when our actions and our words are congruent with our beliefs and our
values. It’s about being fully ourselves, not an imitation of ourselves or what
we think we should be.

For me, great leadership doesn’t exist without ‘extreme normality’. All
you need to do as a sales leader is bring the best version of your normal self
and the results will follow.

For more insight, check out my talk on the same subject at SaaSGrowth 2020.

Opinion piece by Owen Richards
CEO, Air Marketing Group

Build A Team So Strong, You Don’t Know Who The Leader Is

Posted on 4 February 202027 January 2023 by Doug Roots

We’re all in this together. We are all colleagues, regardless of job title. We all work together to achieve the same goal, to make a difference for our clients, make the company a profit and ultimately get paid. When people start feeling undervalued for doing the role they do, we have a problem. Have you ever heard a colleague say, ‘what does it matter what I think’ or ‘my opinion doesn’t count’? Your opinion does count and yes, I would like to hear what you think.

We want to know how our colleagues feel and what they believe would work better. Having this feedback means we can make a difference and help.

Loyalty and commitment come from feeling valued. Feeling valued comes from respect and inclusion. Yes, roles within an organisation vary and so does workload, but every single person is here for one common goal. We win together and sometimes we lose together, but we are a team.

Some of the best results I have seen have come from people who have felt empowered to make a change. Some of the best ideas have come from people who have felt their opinion counts. When we feel we are able to have an input and suggest improvements, we work with a different vigour and we push ourselves. Not doing this is a sure-fire way to lose your best talent.

Encourage feedback. What’s working and what isn’t? What will make the process better? From my perspective things might look right – but that’s just my perspective. Tell me how it looks from yours. None of us are perfect and we can all make mistakes or miss things, but as a team we can get it right.

In my opinion, Air has got this balance right. We have regular catch-up sessions with all of our team members to review performance and processes. Not just as individuals, but as a team. Everyone has the chance to input and everyone has the chance to challenge. Feedback is essential to ensuring we get things right. It’s not a dictatorship, it’s a company which nurtures and nourishes its staff to ensure we all give our best and strive to achieve. Every role is valued and every person within each role understands the impact they have. With this comes an immense sense of comradery – a team so strong that you wouldn’t know who the leader is.

Opinion piece by Account Manager, Michael Hepburn.

AIR’S CORE VALUES

Learn more about Air’s values in this post.

Tag: Sales team