Four Fresh Ideas to Accelerate Your SDR Onboarding Program
3/13/2018
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Are your Sales Development Reps (SDRs) ramping too slowly?
According to The Bridge Group’s latest study, onboarding an SDR is taking a little more than three months, on average. If the typical SDR stays on the job for about a year, three months is a long time to ramp up. Here are four fresh ideas you can use today to help speed up this process for your new SDRs. 1. Instead of Product Training, Start with Persona Training Many SDRs are coming into the Sales Development profession with little or no experience in the field of selling, and also know little or nothing about the people they will be calling on to set up meetings. SDRs are usually given a bit of product and company training, then cut loose to start calling on prospects, many of whom have 20+ years experience in the industry. 2017: The Year of the SDR Manager
2/11/2017
I’m officially declaring 2017 The Year of the SDR Manager.
Ah, the SDR Manager, that beleaguered soul who doesn’t get nearly enough credit for the contribution they make the health of your business. Beat down from so many angles; Sales VPs, their own SDRs, Senior Execs, Marketers, HR, Vendors… the list goes on and on. In some companies, scant respect and little recognition, unless of course things start going wrong. No clear career path. Not making as much money or getting as much stock as other managers... It’s a tough, and at times, thankless job. And yet, their function is vital to connecting marketing spend to real sales results. To creating predictable revenue. To preparing your next generation of Sales leaders. So, what’s going on? Let’s look at the day in life of the SDR Manager. On any given day they are a career counselor, psychiatrist, sales trainer, analytics guru, firefighter, and interdepartmental translator. 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. In his bestselling book, Drive, Daniel Pink outlines three concepts that lead to success and fulfillment in one’s career. He boils it down to these big three: autonomy, mastery and purpose.
In usual Pink style, the book is an easy read, full of data and packed with relevant anecdotes to keep the pages turning. Building off his research, Pink argues that, while money is obviously a critical factor in career satisfaction and required to support your lifestyle, it is just one part of the overall hierarchy of what contributes to overall happiness in one’s career. It takes more than just a fat paycheck to achieve career satisfaction. While reading Drive, I kept thinking about how integrating this advice could create a more positive approach to building an effective and motivated SDR team. By encouraging these concepts into your SDR team’s workflow, could you drive more success, longevity and career satisfaction among the team? Searching for top SDR candidates is a never-ending quest.
High producing SDR’s don’t hang around long, and hiring the wrong person ends up being a painful experience all around. Once you post an SDR position on a major board, you’ll get a flood of resumes because too many people see the role as a “foot-in-the-door” to great companies and as a way to “try out” a career in sales. But as a manager, you don’t have time for “try outs.” Recruiting top talent is just one aspect of your job, and you have a program to run. So how do you efficiently sift through the resumes and find the golden nuggets? Finding top talent for Sales Development Representative (“SDR”) positions can become a full time job for an SDR Manager if not done right.
SDR Managers often waste valuable time talking to candidates who are not the best fit. Job boards are hit-or-miss. After top talent is finally placed, high-performing SDRs tend to get snatched up by closing sales teams or other companies just after getting fully ramped and productive, while poor performers tend to move on. The search for the best and brightest can be expensive and never-ending. This is where University Sales Programs (“USPs”) come in. Several universities and colleges throughout the country offer Sales Certifications as part of a business or marketing major. These programs offer a strong curriculum focused on the core skills needed to be successful in Sales. |
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