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By Jeff Garon, Senior Researcher, Tenbound
Erin serves as the Senior Director of Revenue Operations for Lean Data (LeanData provides the Revenue Ops platform to manage all go-to-market motions to increase speed-to-revenue, improve the buyer experience, and better align sales and marketing ROI), and shared her insights to the growing field of Revenue Operations, crafted by her vast experience spanning sales development, management, operations and beyond. Interesting takeaways from our conversation:
For more information on Erin & Lean Data, please visit her LinkedIn profile or visit leandatainc.com. Podcast epidsode https://www.spreaker.com/user/9196584/episode-106-special-done And here https://tenbound.com/resources/ by Jeff Garon & Melanie Sovann
Want to get the best candidate pool possible to build your Sales Development team? Of course you do… unfortunately, so does every other company out there, meaning you’ll have to compete for their time, attention and interest just as you would in a bake-off against competing products and services with a potential buyer. You could get lucky finding great talent through a basic job listing, recruiters, referrals and other methods, but it’s a safe bet to assume you’ll need a compelling job description to capture interest from the best potential talent out there. This leaves you with essentially two options: 1. Put out a basic, boring job description to save yourself some time and effort, and filter through whatever resumes come your way. 2. Treat this as your sales pitch to your future team, getting them excited about your company and their potential career trajectory. So, ask yourself who do you really want on your team… whoever you can get, or the best you can get. Assuming you want the best, read on for some tips and tricks to craft your job description like a shiny lure to catch the best fish (talent): What to include:
A bio of what your ideal candidate looks like What are the values you want in a new SDR? Energy, optimism, desire to learn, desire to succeed, desire to advance? Lay out a high level profile of the person you are looking for, and to save yourself time (as well as that of the wrong candidates), make it clear who you aren’t looking for. A quick hype-up about your company and it’s product/service Is your company destined for success? Do you have amazing clients? Be concise (you want them to demonstrate some research on their part too), but make it exciting and let them know you are a team they should want to fight to get on. What success looks like Combine your expectations on how they will be assessed and rewarded. Don’t be misleading (they won’t be closing deals initially), but describe what their role is, who they support, who supports them, and the value they will be driving for your company. Don’t scare them off saying you expect 250 calls per day… that may be something they do, but you want quality touches and results, not quantity. The best candidates probably won’t be compelled to dial and email mindlessly… they will want to find their own ways of generating interest efficiently, and you’ll want to support their creativity and initiative. Where that success can take them Make it clear that this can be a career in of itself, and a stepping point to other roles if desired. You want to create career opportunities, and let them achieve their goals. How much do they want to make? The world is their oyster in the realm of sales… find the candidates who have the drive and desire to achieve their goals, and give them the platform to make it happen! Truly essential qualifications Having a long list of required qualifications is old school. You may have a few must-haves, but keep that list short. What you really want, is curiosity, energy, capability and drive. Do you really, truly care what their GPA was? Does 2+ years of CRM experience matter for this type of position? Think hard about what can be learned on the job or through easy training options. Don’t miss out on a fantastic candidate because they aren’t an excel wizard… you can teach them what’s needed, and they can improve their skills as desired. How to grab your interest Now that you’ve built some excitement about the role and your company, give them a shot to showcase their interest. Don’t make it too easy on them though. Ask a question of them in relation to the role or your company/product/service, and see who addresses that in their cover letter. Do you have a trial or newsletter? Give them a friendly nudge to check it out or sign up. When the resumes come in, see who’s taken that extra step in engagement as a factor in your decision process. Do you want the SDR who uses the same generic template for all of their prospecting for your company, or the SDR who uses research and personalization to increase their success. Demonstrated effort and initiative up front is a great predictor of their work style and aptitude once hired. You are already setting the tone with your awesome new job posting, now it’s time to see who’s up to the challenge given your amazing job description. Just be prepared to recognize and reward these incoming allstars accordingly for supporting your growth goals once they are on board, producing results and exceeding quotas! Melanie Sovann is an educator, blogger and senior writer based in LA, she is a content editor and senior writer at BestEssay Education and Grab My Essay. Jeff Garon is Senior Researcher at Tenbound Research Labs. The Sales Development Conference 2019 August 23rd in San Francisco. TEAM PACKS available. Bring the whole team: Leadership, RevOps and SDRs. https://tenbound.com/conference/  Whiteboard Wednesdays with Becc Holland of G2! Watch as we dive in to Postbound Leads, The Qualification Process and 5 Ways to Become an AE  Join your hosts Richard Harris and David Dulany as we unpack your most tangled up Sales Development issues, right on the air!   Click on image for high res PDF
The ecosystem of tools and services aimed at helping your Sales Development efforts continues to expand. After releasing the Tenbound Market Map V2 a few months ago, we were inundated with inbound responses of new vendors asking to be identified on the map. Several new developments have taken place since V2: DiscoverOrg is eating the world. DiscoverOrg has identified a clear need in the marketplace. Data is the oxygen of Sales Development and programs live or die based on the quality of the data available. It’s table stakes. DiscoverOrg has figured how to supply clean data through their homegrown processes and to augment through the acquisitions of Datanyze, Zoominfo and Neverbounce. They also have the ability to execute and whip-smart marketing. We see this domination trend continuing with more acquisitions and increased investment in 2020 and beyond. Outsourced services continue to expand. They can really be bucketed into three main categories, maybe more, and probably will be grouped on upcoming versions of the Market Map. Basically, you have your “Dial-only” boiler rooms, appointment setting companies using mainly phone and email, and now a new generation of full-stack outsourced SDR programs using all the latest tools and tactics. Some of these firms, in a different category, augment human beings with robots. You’d need to select which works best for you based on your requirements. G2 Crowd has a several listed, however, they conflate them with Digital Marketing agencies, making selection difficult. Bookmark Tenbound Research page for upcoming Buyer Guides in several Market Map categories. Conversational Marketing. Clearly, buyer behavior has forever changed and will continue to change in the digital age. Drift has been successful in creating a category to capture this, and is now reflected on the map. Heck, they even wrote the book on it. Just like Marc Benioff did 20 years ago with his ‘No Software’ marketing, so does David Cancel and crew with Drift’s ‘No Forms’ pledge. Think about it; if you walked in to a retail store and there was no one there to help you, it would be very weird. Yet many companies do that every day with their website. How many customers walk away never having that critical first conversation? Conversation Marketing attempts to make everything happen now. Watch this space as we see continued emphasis on this in 2020. Prehire Assessments. Your strength as a Sales Development leader is based on the strength of your team. Yet so many leaders put ‘butts in seats’ as quickly as possible without a thorough screening process, and are left with a group of people scared to pick up the phone and seeking to blame others (and you) for their lack of success. A new crop of pre-hiring assessment companies have begun to address this. Check these out and be careful who you let on the bus! These are just a few of the changes on this version of the map. What did we miss, or what would you like more information on? Leave in comments. |
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September 2019
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