Creating a great SDR team
Often founders and sales leaders that I’m advising ask about how to make sure their SDR operation launches successfully. Here are seven key principles to set up your initial SDR team for success.
1 - The work output of the SDR should be carefully defined and agreed upon across the organization. That work output will change over time as you grow. It may consist simply of booking a meeting, or it may include BANT criteria, or it may be something more complex, such as a full MEDDPICC analysis for enterprise deals. As an example, when I began my career as an SDR, I was supporting a team of busy enterprise AEs in a hot market and I had to deliver 15 different data points about each lead in order for it to be considered qualified. However you define the work output, it should be consistent across the organization and you should also have alignment about how it will be captured, recorded, and passed to the sales team.
2 - SDRs should be provided with a defined focus for their work. The focus could be defined geographically, by industry and/or segment, based on a specific company list, or even by prospect job title. In the early days of a company, when the number of SDRs is very small and the number of potential prospects very large, it is even more important to provide this focus. Otherwise SDRs tend to flounder, use too much time for research and/or figuring out their targets, and generally to be less productive. The defined focus can and should be re-visited periodically - perhaps every week, but at least every month.
3 - The work volume of SDRs should be defined and measured. This can be done in terms of total amount of prospecting, number of qualified leads passed to the sales team, or some combination of the two. There is a natural tendency for sales people in an outbound role to get less done than they think they are getting done, so work volume goals should be challenging and aggressive. This provides an objective standard to measure the SDR team.
4 - The SDR team should have defined outbound sequencing that is consistent across the team. Somewhere between 5 and 10 total attempts should be made with a given prospect before moving on, and these should be spread across multiple channels - calling, emailing, texting, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, etc. A balance has to be achieved between not reaching out enough for a given prospect to respond, versus wasting time on a prospect who will never respond. Over time, you can develop your 'ideal formula' and systematize it across the SDR team. One additional note on this point: I have noticed in recent years a much greater reticence to ‘pick up the phone.’ No one can email their way to sales success, so do not let your SDRs neglect cold-calling!
5 - Regardless of the outreach channel (calling, email, LI, etc), the SDR should lead with a clear and succinct value proposition. Chit-chat that seeks to 'build rapport' prematurely will actually annoy and repel the prospect instead. The value proposition with which the SDR leads should be as specific and well-defined as possible, and they should not be left to craft this themselves. It is the responsibility of the founders and/or senior sales leadership to craft the value proposition and ensure that it is consistent cross-functionally.
6 - As you grow the sales team, it is important to cultivate constantly the health of the SDR-AE relationship. This should be an ongoing relationship of mentorship, but if not handled correctly, it can become adversarial. To take one example, there should be a feedback loop every time a lead that is passed proves to be unqualified. The AE needs to explain to the SDR why the lead turned out to be unqualified, not in a blaming/accusatory way, but in a team-oriented way to constantly develop the quality of leads passed, in the interest of the entire organization's success.
7 - As you grow the sales team, it is very important to think about career pathing for the SDR. In the early days, this may be as simple as considering SDRs first for all new AE roles. As you grow, it can become a sequence of inbound SDR, then promotion to outbound SDR, then promotion to a renewals or expansion team, then promotion to AE. In this way, you can achieve two powerful things: the loyalty of the SDR to the company is significantly increased, with a corresponding salutary impact on retention (which of course has a high ROI), and the company gets AEs who are already very seasoned and ready to sell on Day 1.