David Dulany's Blog

​Last week Tenbound held our first publicly available training seminar focused exclusively on Sales Development Management strategy and tactics. The seminar was attended by 6 super bright Sales Development Team Leaders, Managers and Directors from some of the fastest growing SaaS companies in Silicon Valley.

The target audience for this seminar was current Sales Development Team Leads, Managers and Directors who wanted to up their game, as well as SDRs (BDRs, ADRs, etc) who wanted to step-up to Sales Development Management in the future.

Overall, the seminar went great and it was awesome to be able to close the door with these leaders and laser focus on what makes a world-class Sales Development program tick, along with the many, many pitfalls to avoid in putting one together. This was for hard-core students of the Sales Development craft, who wanted to bring this practice to the next level and in turn, elevate their own value in the marketplace.

​Episode 17 Brian Walton
Summary:
In this episode, David shares the mic with Brian Walton, Sales Development Director at LinkedIn. Listen as Brian walks us through his journey from starting off on the talent solutions team of LinkedIn to becoming the Sales Development Director. He has managed and reorganized the sales development teams of Latin America into segments so that each team can focus on their target people and maximize their efficiency. Tune in as Brian discusses the importance of training your sales reps and what he’s fired up about, today, in his work at LinkedIn.

3 Key Points:
1. Managers and directors: spend time with your sales reps, educating them on the fundamentals of how business leaders think.
2. Sales reps: if your point of contact is a VP of sales, go to your own company’s VP of sales—study and learn from them so that you can be better equipped for that meeting or call.
3. At the end of the day, you are just two people connecting and and that point of connection is what people appreciate and respect.

TOPO’s research has shown that 100% of high-growth organizations have Sales Development organizations. We know for most businesses it's critical have a team consistently prospecting and following up on leads to make sure nothing falls through the cracks. Sales Development can drive quality pipeline for your Sales team, and provide a Talent pipeline to build the future of your company. 

We also know a key to a successful program is strong leadership. The right leader can make or break a Sales Development team. Sales Development is expensive; it involves people, processes and technology, and it needs to pay off fast. We're pouring thousands into the program each month. We know if we don't have the right leader in place, the whole thing goes off the rails. 

But how do we treat the leadership function in Sales Development? From what I've seen, two ways. One, find a high performing SDR and promote her to SDR Manager. Or, find someone from a big name company who raised up the ranks in a few years and bring them in to run the team.  In both cases, there's little training, coaching or support given to the Manager. They're on their own. ​