Sales development
reps (or SDRs) are responsible for the front end of the sales process. They
either set introductory meetings or generate qualified opportunities for sales
partners.
Inbound sales development reps
(often called BDRs, LDRs, or similar) are responsible for inbound lead
qualification in response to marketing programs.
Outbound sales development
reps (often called ADRs, MDRs, or similar) are responsible for outbound
prospecting.
Part 1 / STRATEGY /
The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do. MICHAEL E. PORTER
Successful sales development
means choosing the right goals, plans, and actions for your unique market
dynamics.
Chapter 1 / Two major waves are colliding. The first wave is the exponential growth in the number of ideas, options, and solutions available for (and marketed to) your prospects. The second wave in play concerns the number and diversity of people involved in purchasing decisions. The value of a sales development effort is measured by increased won business per account executive and/or accelerated new customer acquisition.
Chapter 2 / The four steps in AIDA stand for attention, interest, desire, and action. notice just how distinct the first two whys (Listen and Care) are from the last three (Change, You, and Now).
But take another look at the
first two whys (Listen and Care). These two are about opening doors and
sparking interest. At first glance, they might seem similar, but there’s quite
a bit of distance between the two.
we’ve established that why listen and why care are the domain of sales development. your reps’ first hurdle is to arouse curiosity and get prospects to listen. your reps have to evolve curiosity into interest while at the same time qualifying for fit.
Chapter 3 / Introductory Meetings: You should deploy an introductory meeting model when the market for your product is immature and/or when your account executives need more at-bats. If your SDRs are booking meetings with the right types of companies, the right people within them, and the prospects are at least curious about addressing a potential pain point, then the reps have done their jobs well.
1. HYPOTHESIZE: Build a
hypothesis of which companies need your solution. Develop baseline messaging
and identify target prospects. 2. TEST: Schedule as many introductory
meetings as possible. SDRs and account executives test messaging before,
during, and after meetings. 3. ITERATE: Based on learning, iterate on
both the target profile and the message. 4. REPEAT: Rinse and repeat,
learning more and more each time.
Qualified Opportunities: account has reached a qualification threshold. At some level, this means: ● A problem has been identified ● A potential solution was introduced ● And the prospect has committed to a next step
PACT: pain, authority,
consequence, and target profile.
Not every company has a need for
your product or service. Pain matters. You are looking for people who can get
an organization to move. That isn’t always reflected in a title. Their biggest
issue is fear that the cure will hurt worse than the illness. You need to dig
for the implications of not acting. An organization that isn’t in motion is
much harder to move than one that has already realized the consequences of
inaction. Target Profile is all about confirming fit and identifying red flags.
Chapter 4 / Before you rush to build out your team, there are three considerations to take into account. The strategy element of sales development goes beyond just why and how. The factors that support when to build must be in place before launching a team.
1. ALIGNMENT: Shared
goals, objectives, and expectations across the management team are a critical
component of your success. 2. MARKET-MESSAGE FIT: Make sure your
onboarding and training leave reps fluent in your prospects’ language,
thinking, professional goals, etc. 3. SKILL OF CLOSERS: Take a
dispassionate look at your sales team. Are they truly closers, or are they
relationship builders? If you’re going to invest in building an early-stage
team that aggressively focuses on building new pipeline, you need to have
account executives who can effectively launch the sales process.
Stop thinking about sales versus
marketing. Success hinges on who leads the group, not where it sits in the org
chart.
Part 2 / SPECIALIZATION
Chapter 5 / Specialization involves addressing two big questions: 1. How should my team tackle our market? (segmenting the prospect universe) 2. How should my group be structured? (role specialization)
INBOUND: Prospects who
take action in response to marketing activity (filling out a web form,
signing-up for a trial, attending a webinar, etc.) OUTBOUND: Prospects
whom your reps target with proactive outreach. Your philosophy should be
inbound + outbound = allbound.
Chapter 6 / A: A-LIST. These are your dream clients, the ones you absolutely want to do business with. They can make your quarter and change the direction of your company. They have a problem, you have the solution, you know it, and they’ll figure it out (sooner or later). Some companies call these named or strategic accounts. B: BREAD & BUTTER. This is your sweet spot. These types of accounts—hopefully there are thousands of them—should all be doing business with you. There are too many to list by name, but you can easily define a few key traits they share (e.g., five hundred to four thousand employees, five remote offices, running Google Apps for Business). C: COMPELLING EVENTS. These are accounts that generally don’t have a pressing need for your solution, but then . . . BAM! An internal or external shock shakes up their priorities. This could be an acquisition, a bad quarter, or a change in leadership. D: DEAD ENDS. These accounts may want to work with you. They may even need to buy from you, but for whatever reason they can’t or won’t. The biggest problems with Dead End accounts are that they look and sound just like Bread & Butters. The key is identifying red flags and preventing your reps from wasting time here.
Chapter 7 / “whys” of SDR specialization. As I see it, there are three main reasons: focus, attitude and aptitude, and human nature. round-robin, is much easier. In this model, leads are distributed to inbound SDRs in turn. Because SDRs won’t consistently work with the same account executives, the round robin approach doesn’t allow for the tight bond—and informal mentoring—between team members. One inbound SDR can typically handle about two hundred to three hundred leads a month when fully ramped. One outbound SDR can typically target one hundred to two hundred accounts per month.
Chapter 8 / The lead researcher role is all about streamlining the pre-calling process. It affects productivity in two ways. One, it enables sales access.Two, it enables context. pre-sales analyst role. These reps’ sole function was to comb through earnings calls and summarize relevant tidbits.
Chapter 9 / -
Part 3 / RECRUITING
Chapter 10 / Benefit of hiring in groups: Onboarding is simplified, your time is protected, new hires bond together
Chapter 11 / There are three characteristics that are universal in the best sales development candidates: passion, competitiveness, and curiosity. When I say passion, I mean perseverance and grit over the long term. Passion plus great leadership equals success. “compassionate competitors—reps who like to win, but not at the expense of their teammates.” “Reps who are genuinely curious have an advantage when prospecting. Questioning is in their DNA; they don’t have to fake it.”
“Hire and promote first on the
basis of integrity; second, motivation; third, capacity; fourth, understanding;
fifth, knowledge; and last and least, experience. Without integrity, motivation
is dangerous; without motivation, capacity is impotent; without capacity,
understanding is limited; without understanding, knowledge is meaningless; without
knowledge, experience is blind. Experience is easy to provide and quickly put
to good use by people with all the other qualities.”
Chapter 12 / A job description should sell the job. If you can’t capture attention and interest, who the hell cares about the fine print. this is the place to advance my career.
Chapter 13 / To recruit and hire the best, you have to both pay a competitive wage and build an attractive compensation package. you also have to pay a market rate.
Chapter 14 / Great sales development compensation plans have three things in common:
1. CLARITY. The core plan
has no more than two moving pieces, and the nuances can be bulleted out on a
cocktail napkin. 2. PAYMENT CLOSELY FOLLOWS ACTION. To be effective, the
reward has to closely follow the desired action. 3. REPS CONTROL THEIR OWN
DESTINIES. This one gets a lot of push-back (I’m looking at you, CFOs!),
but I don’t believe that reps should be rewarded or penalized for the
skills/actions of others.
In terms of a general rule, base
salary should be roughly 60–70 percent of total compensation for sales
development reps. If you’re worried about SDRs setting meetings with the wrong
prospects, realign your right profile, right person, right pain criteria. If
you’re concerned over unqualified appointments, don’t use the introductory
meeting model. Don’t confuse a strategy issue with an SDR issue. No ceiling on
monthly commission.
Chapter 15 / Most important components of “activating” passive candidates are the messenger and the ask. Putting the right messenger in play is often a stand-out strategy. THE ASK: Messaging a passive candidate is about one thing: selling the next step. Stand-out subject, short and sweet, and sell the next step. Remember The Five Whys. Ask refereal - ‘you or somebody you know’. Take action to get the most from your employees’ networks.
Chapter 16 / Glassdoor ratings In terms of a goal, you’ll want to shoot for or above 3.7 out of 5 stars and 80 percent+ in “Recommend to a friend” and “Approval of CEO.” I recommend a three-step process for your company on Glassdoor: encourage, respond, and address. Step one, encourage your current team to post reviews. Let them know you want them to have the best-of-the-best colleagues and that reviews on Glassdoor are one way to show what a great company you’re building together. Step two respond to any negative reviews honestly and non-defensively. Most likely, your HR folks will own the Glassdoor profile, but don’t wait for them to respond. Get in front of any negative reviews and help to shape a reply. Step three, address the complaints. No, seriously. This is a way to build a better team, culture, and company. Reflect on the issues shared on Glassdoor, and try to fix them.
Chapter 17 / Six-step hiring process: I’m a huge advocate for attaching a brief web survey to your application. The purpose of the survey is to determine “fit” for your position and to quickly sort candidates into yes, no, and maybe buckets.
The third step is a more
traditional interview, but briefer and still phone based. It should take no
longer than twenty minutes and, hopefully, end by scheduling an in-person
interview. These are the first two questions you should ask: 1.
What do you know about our company? 2. What do you know about me
personally? If the candidate doesn’t do an outstanding job in
responding, you should proceed no further. Great candidates will come prepared.
On-site interviews require real
time commitments of yourself and your team. It is much better to disqualify
aggressively in steps one through three and save cycles for all involved. During
the phone interview, they were asked what they know about your company. Now,
take it one level deeper. Probe them on what they know about your product and
your market. Ask them what they’ve gleaned about your prospects and your target
market. They don’t have to be flawlessly prepared, but you should feel that
they have made an investment. The candidate should understand what you are
looking for. You want candidates who answer concisely, stay on point, and
deliver a beginning, middle, and end. Finally, make sure to focus on the
candidate’s ability to ask you for something, more commonly referred to as “the
close.” At the risk of stating the obvious, closing is a critical sales
development skill. If a candidate doesn’t close at the end of the interview,
you have a problem.
Because you have the candidate
onsite, I highly recommend you give him or her an opportunity to sit with a
current rep to see the job firsthand and ask candid questions. When selecting
which rep to be shadowed, pick someone who operates by the book. The candidates
who make the most of this opportunity are the ones you want to hire. After
thirty or forty-five minutes of shadowing, your candidate will have seen the
role firsthand and have a much better idea of what it means to be an SDR. After
the shadow session, meet your candidate again. What other questions do you have
for me? That final question is the big one. If the candidates don’t have
questions after this immersion process, you should be concerned.
Part 4 / RETENTION
Chapter 18 / “The key to sales management is sincerely caring about each rep. It is getting harder and harder to over-achieve goals by “managing” processes and tools alone. Sales development leaders need to spend less time managing things and more time leading people. three areas for engaging and retaining your people: coaching, professional development, and career path.
Chapter 19 / Coaching is not a component within the sales manager role; managing is now a component of the new coaching role. enthusiasm is good, but productivity is great.
Chapter 20 / DEFINE THE COMMITMENT: What is your coaching goal and what are you willing to re-prioritize to make it happen? CREATE A SCHEDULE: Add the dates and times you’ll be spending with each rep to your calendar. MEASURE REULTS: Track how well you’re doing against your commitment. KEEP IT FUN: Keep your session fresh by mixing up the coaching methods. Recorded Calls, Side-by-Side Coaching, Group Sessions, Self-Assessments, Hot Seat
Chapter 21 / The CFO asks the CEO, “What happens if we invest in developing our people and they leave us?” The CEO responds, “What happens if we don’t, and they stay?” To my mind, there are three avenues for professional development. I think of them as meet, learn, and teach. Meeting is about getting exposure to other parts of your company. Learning involves your reps studying to become more well-rounded professionals. Teaching requires reps to understand ideas so deeply that they are able to present them to others.
Chapter 22 / -
Part 5 / EXECUTION
Chapter 23 / Vision without execution is hallucination. new reps learn most effectively when the approach involves chunking, sequencing, and connecting. CHUNKING: It’s easier to learn a new subject in bite-sized chunks. SEQUENCING: Determining what comes first, in order of importance, is key to learning CONNECTING: This ties it all together. You’ve created a learning sequence built with bite-sized chunks of information. Now you need to connect the dots. Keep onboarding sessions short. Make the order purposeful. Let them sleep on it. Learn, then do. Revisit. And revisit again. This is how people learn.
Chapter 24 / 1. Why before What Simon Sinek argues that we must start with why. 2. Leverage Internal “Prospects” Do you sell into a functional area that actually exists within your company? 3. Exit the Bubble If your reps never exit the sales development bubble, they won’t have the full picture of what it is that your company does. 4. There Will Be a Test In theory, onboarding covers all the materials that reps will need to do their jobs. But when do you know if a new rep is ready to execute? Try a certification process. Make the certification as objective as possible. You might break certification into four models: a. Prospect-Raedy (verbal evaluation of a rep’s understanding of key prospects, pains, and with us/without us vision) b. Process-Ready (dry run of tool usage: CRM, content, other technologies) c. Message-Ready (provide a rep with several dummy leads; ask them to do pre-call planning and leave you customized emails/voicemails) d. Phone-Ready (a phone-based role play simulating a live connect) 5. Be Prepared to Break Some Eggs
Chapter 25 / Suspend your ego to get people to like you. buyer-based messaging.
Chapter 26 / effective outreach means mastering two things: a multi-touch cadence and a multimedia approach. Cadence is the number and rhythm of attempts your reps use to reach out. Media are the methods they use (e.g., phone, email, voicemail, and LinkedIn). The absolute bare minimum number of attempts to contact at least 50 percent of your leads is 6. The average rep’s performance? Between 1.7 and 2.1 attempts before they give up. sometimes it is easy for reps to get hyper-focused on responses at the expense of results
Chapter 27 / Implementing a formal and consistent cadence is a must for your group. For your reps, the routine helps them master the game—taking away uncertainty around the process.
Chapter 28 / Rule 1: Be Different and Be Relevant- What one thing about this prospect can I include that will get them to tune in? Rule 2: Be Specific with the Ask - Your reps have to ask for something very specific if they have any hope of receiving a reply. Rule 3: Don’t Reference Previous Attempts - Referencing previous attempts wastes precious airtime and often comes off as hostile. Rule 4: Don’t Trick Prospects - For the teams I coach, the rule is don’t lie, don’t BS, not even a little bit.
Chapter 29 / 1. THE OPEN: The subject and initial sentence are the first and only shot at keeping the prospect’s finger off delete. 2. THEWIIFM: This is the meat, where we pitch what’s in it for them. What value are we offering? Why should they respond (let alone care)? 3. THE ASK: This is your call to action. If the ask is clear and simple, the likelihood of responses increases exponentially. If confusing or requiring too much work, they won’t.
Paragraph 1: The Open: The
best emails have subject lines that capture attention and flow beautifully into
the first sentence. They also look like a real person wrote them and were sent
one to one. Paragraph 2: What’s In It for Me (WIIFM): It’s the value
proposition, the thing that makes them realize you’re worth their time. To get
across WIIFM, emails need to tell prospects what you can do for them (not what
you do). email is an attempt to arouse curiosity and lead down the path to the
ask. Email is about generating interest, not educating on what you do. Paragraph
3: The Ask: a great ask can dramatically increase the number and quality of
conversations your reps can have. Don’t waste it on something silly.
Part 6 / LEADERSHIP
Chapter 30 / We’ll cover six key considerations: 1. Choosing the right captain 2. Equipping with a toolkit 3. Setting appropriate quotas 4. Architecting core processes 5. Using metrics to drive what matters 6. Implementing enablement technologies These are the pillars of day-to-day leadership.
A director is someone who can interpret
results and make course corrections—someone with experience who can take the
overall goals delivered by the executive team and drive results. Directors have
been here before. They’ve taken their lumps and are armed with the knowledge
and experience that lets them hit the ground running.
Once you’ve locked in on the
strategy, built solid processes, and have metrics down, you’re ready for a manager. 1.
SKILL FOR SPOTTING TALENT: Hiring reps in this competitive environment will
be one of this person’s greatest challenges. Hiring for potential is no easy
task, but finding a person who has the skill to identify potential is a huge
win. 2. HIGH MOTIVATIONAL ENERGY: I don’t know any other way to say
this. Motivating a sales development team on a day-to-day basis is exhausting.
Many reps are young and fairly inexperienced, and they suffer massive rejection
daily. 3. ABILITY TO SIT AT THE TABLE: You should look for a candidate’s
ability to take a seat at the executive table (either now or in the future).
team lead is a blended position—part
day-to-day manager and part individual contributor with a personal quota. I’m
not a fan of the team lead role (both in idea and in execution). GO SLOWLY:
We all know that there are no guarantees in hiring. SET REALISTIC
TIMEFRAMES: Be direct about the realities of the role. What has to happen
before the team lead can be promoted to full manager? ASSIGN A FAIR QUOTA:
Let’s say you expect your team leads to manage three reps at about 30 percent
of their time. How much quota relief should that give them? As an individual
contributor, he or she was measured on one thing—achievement of quota. Now as a
leader, he or she will be measured on ability to fill open slots, attrition
rate, ability to motivate, and ability to effectively communicate both up and
down. This is a very different landscape.
Chapter 31 / In this highly competitive market, wouldn’t it be great to show a candidate your SDR toolkit and say, “Here is the roadmap for how the team executes. I look forward to you joining us and helping us to evolve this tool for future reps”? Section 1: Understand/Target include pieces such as a visual representation of your ideal customer profile, your “with us/without us” vision, and a cheat sheet for value propositions aligned to prospect personas. It is the foundation for how your SDR team will communicate with your buyers in their conversations as well as in voicemail and email. Section 2: Strategize/Plan define and document the entire process of scheduling, passing, and executing the meeting and/or the passing of a qualified opportunity to an account executive. Section 3: Contact detail your multi-touch cadence and multimedia approach. Section 4: Message give the team a framework for how to take all those things and create messaging that resonates. include customer stories. Teach the team to create and present them in a phone-ready format vs. a case study format (think actionable sound bites). Section 5: Overcome identify your most common objections and develop the responses you want your team to use. Section 6: Execute Here is where all the detail goes regarding how to leverage the technologies at the reps’ disposal, what a perfect day looks like, how to effectively use the toolkit, you name it.
Chapter 32 / Quota Considerations: Activity focus, Model, Size of accounts, market maturity
Chapter 33 / Speed-to-Contact. A great deal of research has been published on the need for an extremely short timeframe between a prospect hitting “submit” on a web form and your rep placing the first outbound call. In InsideSales.com’s Lead Response Management Study, the researchers found the following: Reps are ten times more likely to “contact” a lead if they call within the first hour of its creation. Reps are six times more likely to “qualify” a lead if they call within the first hour of its creation. Rule 1: Not all leads are created equally. Rule 2: Speed-to-lead requires pre-set plays.
Chapter 34 / -
Chapter 35 / ● RESULTS: the outcomes that are incredibly important to the business but outside the control of sales management ● OBJECTIVES: areas that can be influenced by sales managers but still are outside their direct control ● ACTIVITIES: things that are under the direct control of the managers and as a result can be proactively managed by them
Chapter 36 / The Activity metrics you’ll want to measure include the following: ● Total activities per day ● Inbound lead response time ● Attempts per lead ● # of prospects per account
Informing your reps that x
activities will lead to y outcomes and drive z results is real leadership.
The Objective metrics you’ll want
to measure include the following: ● # of connects/connect rate ● # of
quality conversations/rate ● Email response rate ● “Bad data” rate
The Result metrics you’ll want to
measure include the following: ● # of discovery calls ● # of discovery
calls accepted as opportunities/acceptance rate ● Show/no-show rate (relevant
for introductory meeting model) ● $ SDR-sourced pipeline ● $ SDR-sourced wins ●
% of total pipeline sourced by SDRs ● $ won per account executive (relevant for
new groups—e.g., pre-/post-SDR team)
When building sales development
dashboards, I keep three things in mind: ● Which metrics ● What
timeframe ● For which audience
Chapter 37 / There’s a term for applications that accelerate effectiveness and are popular with reps: tools. There’s also a term for highly popular applications that don’t move the productivity needle one millimeter: toys. ELIMINATE THE MUTINY-MAKERS: If it isn’t helping reps be more productive and they hate using it, rip it out. ALLEVIATE THE BURDENs: A single system of record for commissions might give them the visibility they want without the wasted hours and effort. THIN THE TOYS: Whether or not these technologies increase effectiveness, reps love them. You have to keep some of them around for morale. DOUBLE DOWN ON TOOLS: This is true sales acceleration. These applications actually increase productivity, and you don’t have to bribe (or threaten) reps to adopt them.
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