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Breaking out the research function for SDRs

8/23/2016

A key piece of intel that should be on the shelf of all Sales Development leaders is "The Sales Development Playbook" by Trish Bertuzzi.

If you’re a Sales Development professional, or have a Sales Development function at your company you’re seeking to better understand, "The Sales Development Playbook" is a must read.

The book lays out the foundation for the most important aspects of creating a high-performing Sales Development function, including Strategy, Specialization, Recruiting, Retention and Execution, in a logical and easy to follow format.

After being involved in Sales Development function for several years, I was very impressed with the way the book is laid out, and I see it as an excellent overall framework you can use to implement a winning program, all the while putting your own signature on it.

Every company and market is different, but Trish does a great job in laying out the framework to follow.

Breaking out the SDR research function

One of the sections that really stood out for me was the chapter on breaking out your SDR research function. This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and something that bemoans most Sales leaders I talk to about SDR’s.

The consensus: SDR’s are generally spending way too much time researching and not enough time interacting with prospects.

It’s about what has been called the “Silent Sales Floor” phenomenon; or the fact that a large percentage of the SDR’s day is now spent doing silent online research on their targets, instead of actually talking with them.

And even if there is a tremendous amount of activity on the sales floor, is it pointed in the right direction? If if they are making a ton of phone calls, are they calling the right people? Are the people they are connecting with able to buy your product?

While specialization of labor has proven to increase business efficiency for years, that fact is being ignored right now by most SDR organizations.

Thought leaders in the Sales Development space have been working on this problem for a while, and I believe it’s an issue that should be on the radar screen of all Sales Development leaders. By being laser focused on the research function, tremendous efficiencies can be unleashed.

A few years ago, Russ Hearl introduced me to the book “The Goal” by Eli Goldratt, which dives into the Theory of Constraints. I would recommend this book, at least in cliff notes.

The basic idea of the book is to focus your attention on your business process, and its inefficiencies, and do everything you can to remove complexity, wasted time and lack of focus on the end goal

It forces you to look at the SDR workflow system with an eye toward ruthless efficiency and ask the question, does having SDRs skipping around to different tabs throughout the day, taking their eye off the ball of calling people, create a lot of wasted time?

Coming back to the Sales Development Playbook: Trish brings up a great point in the Research chapter; by raising the question: why are SDRs spending so much time silently researching and not talking to prospects? Answer: because they can.

With the proliferation of tools available for them to find emails, find direct phone numbers, find facts they can use in their initial outreach, they can get caught up in it all. All the sudden most of the day has passed looking up the right information to enter into Salesforce, or to craft the perfect email and the SDR hasn’t spoken with anyone.

Something else Trish mentions in this section is that the Outsourced providers of appointment setting services figured this out a long time ago because they run everything by the numbers. If they can squeeze more phone calls and conversations into the day of one of their callers, they know they can set up more meetings.

Meetings equal pipeline, pipeline equals closed business.

When Aaron Ross first brought up the Sales Development process in Predictable Revenue it was interesting how he broke out inbound, outbound, closing and customer success. I would say the next big step in structuring SDR programs will be to break out another facet: Research. A team of people whose job is to enable SDRs with the data they need to fill in their sequences with the latest and freshest data.

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5 Benefits of a Good Beat-Down

8/15/2016

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Have you gotten a good beat-down recently?

If not, maybe you’re not trying hard enough.

Any time you try something new, try to build something, try to improve yourself, try to leave the herd and blaze your own trail, you’re going to get beat-downs.

The bigger risk you're taking, the bigger beat-downs you're going to receive.

What do I mean by beat-down? It’s anytime you’re physically, emotionally or psychologically beaten-down. It could be by negativity, hostility, rejection or expulsion.

It’s when things don’t go your way, when you hear “no”, when people “pass”, when the door is slammed your face. It's when nobody returns your calls or emails.

The list of beat-downs goes on and on.

Palm-faced rejections, missed opportunities, hard knocks, bad decisions, abusive bosses, crappy companies, disappointed spouses, let down parents, sad-faced kids, vendors who don’t come through like they promised, salespeople who don’t sell, team members who phone things in...

If you’re really going for the gold, the beat-downs can be constant and last for years. The only thing getting you to the next day is a cold beer and thoughts of the weekend!

So what’s the upside?

While they’re hard to bear in the near-term, I believe beat-downs are good for you in the long term.

Let me give you 5 reasons why getting beat-down as a gift, and once you lick your wounds and stand up you're going to feel a lot better:

1. A good beat-down reveals your weak spots.

Think about, and unpack your latest beat-down. Why did you get beat-down? What do you need to work on? What are parts of your personality or your work ethic or your way of doing things are not positive and not helping you move forward? How can you improve those aspects about yourself? What are some ways that you can shore up your differences?

Never blame, never point fingers, always look at YOURSELF and understand what it what was your cause of getting the beat-down. That way you never waste a good beat-down.

2. A good beat-down makes you re-evaluate the path that you're on.

Are you getting beat-down continuously and never be able to move forward? Are you continuously trying something that's just really not working? Maybe it’s time to get real. You may be going down the wrong path.

Sometimes continuous beat-downs give you a chance to re-evaluate if this is the true path that you want to be on. Or sometimes, if you keep getting beat-down by the same person or group, maybe you should leave that situation.

Even if it’s a big-money job or situation like that, believe me, your life will get way better when you leave. Living with a bully or soul-destroying jerk really sucks, especially when nobody else sees it except you.

3. A good beat-down makes a funny story.

To paraphrase the awesome Lenny Bruce: pain + time = humor. Having some epic beat-down stories make you more relatable to people. They make your victories that much sweeter, because after the time has passed and your pain has subsided, it can be funny sometimes how badly you got beaten down and what a ridiculous mess you were laying down on the ground. Where’s the drama in a good victory story without a few major beat-downs?

4. A good beat-down deepens your relationships with people, especially with people who love you.

You can learn a lot about your relationships when you’re getting beat-down continuously and laying on the ground in agony. Who was there for you and who reached out a helping hand? Perhaps more importantly, when was the last time you helped someone who was in the midst of a beat-down? How do you deal with people who are severely beat-down? How do you deal with people who have given up hope?

A good beat-down will improve your relationships with the people who love you and that you love because they've seen you in your weakest condition and they know what you're like in the worst-case scenario, where you've been completely beaten down. Beat-downs make you human.

5. A good beat-down can lead you to practice mindfulness.

Are you being run by your emotions? Do you take everything the person beating you down says as the gospel truth? Or are you more mindful about it? Like most people, I let beat-downs get to me. But what if I learned to let them go and take the lessons I needed from them? How much could I improve if I used the beat-downs as educational tool?

Just as anyone who's ever seen the Rocky speech to his son knows: “It ain't about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward.”

So, while they hurt in the near-term, nothing beats a good beat-down to build you up.

What do you think?

Leave a comment if you've had a good beat-down lately and the lessons that you might have learned. And this doesn't mean just a physical punch in the face it also means being booted, put-down, yelled at, rejected, denied, all those things.

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Breaking out the r﻿esearch function for SDRs

5 Benefits of a Good Beat-Down

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Breaking out the research function for SDRs