​Can you define the SDR sweet spot?  The perfect combination of skills and mindset to take your results to the next level? 

How valuable would that be... More appointments, more pipeline, more sales. Faster promotion to AE or wherever you want to go within the company. 

At Tenbound, we’ve given this a lot of thought and developed a simple diagram for SDR success. 

While this is simple, like anything else, it’s not easy. 

But with hard work and determination, anyone can get there. 

We call it the Amazing SDR Trifecta.

The Categories of The Amazing SDR

As a Sales Development Representative, you’ll need to draw upon three broad categories to generate quality leads, blow out your quota and get promoted:

Industry and Persona Knowledge
Prospecting and Sales Skills
Gritty and Entrepreneurial Mindset

You obviously need each one, but it’s where they overlap that things get interesting. Just one is not enough. You might see some success with a combination of any two. 

But this is the SDR Trifecta. We’re aiming for the intersection of all three in the middle.

That’s the sweet spot that creates the Amazing SDR. 

Industry and Persona Knowledge

This refers to your ability to a) speak intelligently about the various industries — both broad and niche — that your solution is targeting, and b) understand the specific pain points and struggles of the individuals within it. 

You’ll be speaking to experts within their industries, and you need to demonstrate that you know it and them. 

Otherwise, why would they trust you and your offer?

Prospecting and Sales Skills

Ultimately, your job is to sell them on you and your solution, even though you won’t actually be closing the deal. 

That requires sales soft skills like persuasion, painting a mental picture, asking the right kind of questions, removing resistance and friction, basic communication abilities, and more.

Without them, you’re unable to adequately qualify leads for the account executives on the sales team, and the system breaks down. 

Gritty and Entrepreneurial Mindset

Sales development is not an easy job. That’s the harsh reality. You’re cold-calling individuals who in most cases do not want to be cold-called. They don’t know you or your product. 

That’s a tough sell. Literally. 

Have you got the mindset and mental fortitude to push through that? Can you think outside the proverbial box to find new approaches and techniques when the old ones fail?

When 1 + 1 = 0

This is clearly a situation where ‘two out of three ain’t bad’ doesn’t apply. In fact, you might as well have none of them if you don’t have all three of them.

Industry/Persona Knowledge and Prospecting/Sales Skills? You may see some sporadic success, but it’s not going to be consistent, and if things get challenging, you lack the determination to power through.

Prospecting/Sales Skills with Gritty and Entrepreneurial Mindset? You’ve got the know-how and drive to get your foot in the door, but lack credibility without being able to discuss the industry and individual pain points. You’re spraying and praying. 

Gritty and Entrepreneurial Mindset with Industry/Persona Knowledge? You’re working hard, finding creative solutions, but not seeing any results (i.e. sales-qualified leads) because you can’t close the “sale” for the appointment.

You’ve got to develop and hone all three for supercharged results day in, day out. 

Find and stay in that sweet spot. 

As a manager, how can you enable this trifecta through recruiting, hiring, training and coaching? It may be time to rethink your program. Call Tenbound today to discuss how we can help.

The companies with the largest SDR totals are Salesforce (2,406), Dell (2,170), Oracle (1,860), and IBM (1,720). Sources below. Company
Salesforce
2,406
https://www.salesforce.com/
Dell
2,170
https://www.delltechnologies.com/en-us/
Amazon
1,980
https://www.aboutamazon.com/
Oracle
1,860
https://www.oracle.com/index.html
IBM
1,720
https://www.ibm.com/
Microsoft + Linkedin
1,633
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/
Google
1,082
https://about.google/
DocuSign
809
https://www.docusign.com/
Cisco
727
https://www.cisco.com/
Adobe
514
https://www.adobe.com/
Apple
492
https://www.apple.com/leadership/
VMware
491
https://www.vmware.com/
HP
472
https://www8.hp.com/us/en/hp-information.html
Paychex
336
https://www.paychex.com/
Autodesk
308
https://www.autodesk.com/company
Zoom
297
https://zoom.us/
NetApp
291
https://www.wwt.com/
RingCentral
228
https://www.ringcentral.com/
Zoominfo
225
https://www.zoominfo.com/ 
Citrix
222
https://www.citrix.com/


Quick take: 

Why Sales Development?

Companies that hire Sales Development teams convert 40% leads more than companies with quota-carrying reps that convert only 5% of leads.

To target more enterprise customers, outbound prospecting is essential to a company's pipeline building strategy.

50% of software companies with sales under $25 million have at least one SDR per sales representative; over $25 million, the ratio is 1 SDR for every 2 sales reps. 

The types of companies and/or industries that hire Sales Development Representatives are enterprise software and network solutions, internet, computer hardware, and software, IT services, technology, telecommunications/communications, human resources, and payroll technology, financial services, electric (mechanical engineering),and biometrics.

As of May 20, 2021, the average annual pay for an SDR in the U.S. is $49,537 per year.

 Virginia, Massachusetts, California, Texas and Washington D.C. are among the highest paying states for Sales Development Representatives (SDRs).  

The following cities are paying the highest salaries for Sales Development Representatives (SDR): Santa Clara/San Francisco, California and Austin, Texas. 

An SDR salary is a major investment to a business after factoring in commission, infrastructure, taxes, benefits, perks, and tech subscriptions, this role will cost a company on average $6,400 per month- and the average tenure for the role is only 14.2 months. 

Top performing SDRs spend 22% more time on external interactions than low-performers. 

76% of business leaders think remote sales interactions are more effective than in-person engagements when prospecting for new customers. 
​
Sources:
For this research on Sales Development teams in the U.S., we leveraged the most reputable sources of information that were available in the public domain, including Gartner, McKinsey, Zippia, ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor, Macrotrends, LinkedIn, Forbes, Autoklose, and Hire Assemble.