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.
An amazing number of companies have been founded and are still based here in San Francisco. Here at Tenbound we've been blessed to work in this Sales Development teams ecosystem.
Big Thanks to G2 Crowd for this graphic.Click here to read some G2 Crowd reviews of Tenbound!  The seismic changes in the Sales Development landscape over the past few years have been nothing short of phenomenal.
Just a few years ago, the Sales Development process was much slower and more manual; pretty much just a combination of Salesforce, Google searches, Excel sheets, Post-it notes and duct tape. Whether qualifying inbound leads or going outbound, it was slow, clunky and difficult to execute. Fast forward to today, where the explosion of technology to support Sales Development around data quality, workflow organization and email messaging has been amazing. The power and speed afforded by this technology now in the hands of SDRs is incredible. They now have the ability to work faster, be more organized and send out more messages to more people than ever. What is Sales Development?
10/31/2017
 Let's take it back to basics. What is this thing called Sales Development, and is it right for your company?
Quite simply, Sales Development is the practice of creating sales pipeline for your company through proactive outreach to prospective customers and of following up on inbound leads created by your marketing efforts. The practice of Sales Development has exploded since the economic downturn a few years ago, especially in software as a service (SaaS) technology companies. As the economy crumbled during that downturn, companies realized the importance of having someone in the organization always laser focused on sales pipeline generation; whether through proactive outreach to target accounts, or ensuring proper follow-up on the high quality inbound leads created by marketing. The State of Sales Development
10/3/2017
This article originally appeared on the SalesForLife blog Sept 25th, 2017 as "How 900 Companies build and execute successful Sales Development Teams" by Julia Manoukian
Sales development is one of the more misunderstood roles in sales. Many people debate the definition of sales development while others argue which department it should report into or how much sales development reps should be compensated. Either way, the sales development role is here to stay. In an effort to understand the sales development function and its role in the sales process, InsideSales.com Labs led a study in partnership with Tenbound, SalesForLife, BridgeGroup, Drift, Datanyze, and OneMob.  Next week, we’ll be hosting the first ever conference 100% focused and dedicated to Sales Development, at the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco. September 21st.
When I originally thought up this conference, I had no idea what the response would be. Was I the only one who thought it was time to start treating Sales Development with the respect it deserves in 2017? Was I the only one who thought this topic was important enough to warrant an entire conference dedicated to it? Collectively, can we push this practice forward a few steps? Well my fears have been totally allayed as the response has exceeded even my wildest estimations. The hunger in the Sales Development world for fresh knowledge, leadership, networks, and research has been overwhelming, and even though the conference hasn’t happened yet, I already consider it a success. Sales Development as a Strategy
6/30/2017
 Conference: tenbound.com/conferenece
This article first appeared on the Sales Development Management Newsletter Anyone who listens to the Sales Development Podcast knows I’m passionate about getting the Sales Development function the respect it deserves within organizations. Yet, in many companies (not yours, of course) the SDR team is often seen as an “entry level” job that you want to exit out of as quickly as possible, sometimes not really worth investing in or focusing on, since it’s considered transitory. Churn & burn, smile & dial, hire & fire, go up or get out. The attitude from the top becomes for an SDR, “well, I’ll do this for a year and then go get the big money…” I think that whole thought process is totally broken. On both sides. It’s 2017. The buyers have changed. The technology has changed. Performance expectations have gone way, way up. The result of all this old school thinking becomes robotic spamming, burnt-out SDRs, high SDR attrition, annoyed prospects, disappointed executives. Public shamings on Linkedin… usually by Sales and Marketing execs, no less!  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. |
