In 2022, we’ve seen companies redefine themselves in their sales motion. Some companies have had to become very creative to create the pipeline, and we’ve highlighted several of the tactics here on this blog.

In our experience, only some of these tactics will remain. Here at Tenbound, we have had the privilege to talk to Sales Development Leaders (SDR) who are on the leading edge in their industry. Based on those conversations, we’ve highlighted three main areas of the SDR  functions that will grow and become more important in the future.

Automated Tools for SDRs
Over the past five years, we've seen the rise of artificial intelligence tools, but they haven't been widely adopted by sales organizations. However, over the past eighteen months, we've heard good things about automated dialing platforms like ConnectandSell and Orum.

With these tools, SDRs can now handle twice as many calls per day than before. The hope is that they can use the extra time to perform additional tasks like personalizing emails.

Another tool that has recently gained traction among revenue leaders is Lavender.  Let's face it, most SDRs aren't copywriters. We can always use a little bit of help getting an initial concept off the ground or clearly and succinctly conveying our point. This is why most people use Lavender. 

We've found it works especially well when SDR Management doesn't have the time to read each and every email their sales reps send. Honestly, you shouldn't be reading them yourself either.

SDR Support team

If you ask any SDR manager, they’ll tell you that they have a plan to get each new SDR to ramp up and be at full productivity. The average time they’ll give you is 3 months.

What they fail to tell you, is how little support they receive from other areas of the company and how that ultimately affects the BDR ramps time. We’ve seen SDR teams get looked over, because enablement and sales operations focus on Account executives first, and then dedicate whatever time they have left to the SDR function. But let's face it, they rarely have any time left.

In the last 9 months, several companies have advocated for a dedicated SDR Ops and enablement headcount. The idea of having a dedicated support team for your SDRs is alluring, especially for those managers who juggle it all by themselves. We predict that this is a trend that will continue to grow, especially as teams further specialize and become more strategic.

SDR Process Changes

Two major process changes have also appeared. One of them is focused on Product led growth. CEOs have seen the growth of Slack and Twilio - among others - and want to replicate it.

We should note that the SDR functions generally start a long time after these companies get going, so it’s mainly focused on going up market. This is a specialized skill set that we are starting to see CEOs ask for.

The other process change that we are starting to see, (and that we are very very excited about. Did we mention how excited we are?!) is the emphasis on coaching. So much so that Cory Bray and Hillmon Sorey are attacking this issue. 

At the end of the day, nothing will grow your team more or increase retention than dedicated coaching. 

We expect to see teams focus on improving their current team - and to do so, they’ll need to ensure that their SDR teams are coached in the best way possible.


Want to learn more about the future of Sales Development? Come join us at out The Tenbound Sales Development Conference LIVE in Austin, Texas. This will be a VIP In-Person Gathering of the Top Minds in Sales Development.

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I Visited 100+ Booths at the SaaStr Conference: Here are my 3 Big Takeaways

I had the opportunity to visit the SaaStr 2022 conference in person this year, my 3rd time going. After being stuck inside way too long, this year I decided to make a huge effort to catch up with everyone, check out all the latest software tools, and see all my old friends in our industry. 

It was awesome, an amazing experience. Highly recommended for anyone in our industry. 

But I had another challenge. I wanted to see what was new for SaaS companies since the pandemic, specifically Sales and Marketing software related to Sales Development pipeline generation. 

Tenbound gathers tools specific to Sales Development in our Market Map Directory, which is free to download and explore as you make your decisions. 

Also, as a Conference organizer myself, I wanted to see how the Tool Expo Marketplace looked and performed. 
So I made a plan, took some time to study the floor plan, and stopped by as many booths as possible. SDRs, Salespeople and Marketers, take note. 

Here is what I learned:

• Please! Engage your audience when you are standing at your booth

I saw several booths where the people working there turned their back to the audience, making it hard to engage with them to start. 

Put your phone or laptop away unless you are giving a demo. It’s also helpful to acknowledge attendees as they walk by your booth. If allowed, you should also stand in front of the booth and engage people walking by. 
I know that it’s been a while since so many people had the opportunity of presenting at a conference. I’m not sure if this should have been an excuse for how I felt visiting booths. It didn’t feel as engaging as I thought it should’ve been. Even if they don’t look like a hot prospect, make an effort to engage. 

• Ask questions about the person you’re talking to.  

Remember, the people walking by don’t care about your company, your product, or what it does.  They care about themselves and the problems that they’re trying to solve.  Those are problems you can understand and potentially help them solve. Act accordingly. 

Spend time talking about the person in front of you and try to dig out any problems they may have, like they are human beings and not a “prospect”.

Listening to irrelevant pitches over and over can result in people zoning out, especially with over 100 booths like at SaaStr. Talk about them, not all about you. If they start showing some relevance or interest, do a quick overview of your solution. But only if they want it. 

• Focus on standing out and being memorable

After visiting too many booths, everything started sounding and looking the same to me. Another demo screen, another slide. Another gee-whiz moment. 

As a sponsor, you’ll want to think about the experience that the attendees are having at the conference. How tired will they be, and what sessions will they have just come out of?

If you think about the attendees, you can work to create an experience that will ensure that they remember your booth and your company long after the event.

The one thing I remember is somebody handing me a stuffed giraffe … not sure what they were selling but I do remember it. 

What have been some strategies you have used to maximize your time at events?

Bonus tip: Sign up for more Braindates. Braindates are an amazing program where you can set up “dates” with people before and during the conference and then meet with them. I filled my calendar with dates with amazing people doing awesome things we can help each other with. 
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What were your favorite parts of the show? Let us know your learnings by leaving a comment below.

There’s a reason that “breaking into tech” is trending right now. Aside from the flexibility and the growth potential, employees are attracted to high earning potential. Here we’ll share 20 companies that rank with some of the highest On target earnings (OTE). In previous years, SDR salaries varied greatly based on location, but because of the pandemic and remote work, we are starting to see a leveling across geographies (location is starting to have less of an impact on salary).

1. LiveRamp – Base:$55k  OTE: $110k
2. Quantum Metric – Base:$57k  OTE:$101k
3. Google Cloud – Base:$70k  OTE:$100k
4. LogDNA – Base:$63k  OTE:$100k
5. Sprinklr – Base:$58k  OTE$99k
6. Aviatrix – Base:$74k  OTE:$97k
7. Talend – Base:$68k  OTE:$97k
8. Anaplan – Base:$54k  OTE:$97k
9. Conexiom – Base:$60k  OTE:$95k
10. Cockroach Labs – Base:$68k  OTE:$93k
11. Juniper Square – Base:$66k  OTE:$93k
12. League – Base:$56k  OTE$93k
13. Amazon Web Services – Base:$73k  OTE: $92k
14. Lacework – Base: $68k  OTE: $90k
15. Attentive – Base$60k  OTE:$90k
16. Cohesity – Base$60k  OTE$90k
17. IBM – Base:$63k  OTE:$89k
18. Airkit – Base:$62k  OTE:$89k
19. Everlaw – Base:$67k  OTE:$87k
20. AlphaSense – Base:$61k  OTE:$86k

Notable mentions

1. MuleSoft  – Base:$52k  OTE:$84k
2. Zoom – Base:$46k  OTE:$83k
3. Workday – Base:$54k  OTE:$82k
4. Google – Base:$55k  OTE: $81k
5. Okta – Base:$55k  OTE:$80k

This is just a starting point. While the OTE is high, it’s important to check to see what the average total compensation is and what percentage of reps are hitting quota. To investigate which company is performing well, check out our Free: Job Interview Questions Cheat Sheet for SDRS. This will help you think about some of the top questions that you can ask during an interview. Note: We’ve sourced this data publicly. This is just a starting point and doesn’t take into account seniority.
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Sources: https://compgauge.com/salaries/sdr/ https://salestrax.com/blog/companies-paying-software-salespeople-the-most  ​

Want to get into tech sales? Here’s how you do it...

Breaking into tech is not always easy, but it’s not impossible. While many believe that you need to have a technical background to be in tech, we’re here to tell you about a lesser known way to break into this industry.

And the cool part is that you can access it without any previous experience.

Yup, we are talking about tech sales. And don’t worry, it’s not the used car salesperson that you are used to thinking about when you think about sales. This is one of the faster growing job sectors in 2022.

What is Tech Sales?

Tech sales is generally seen as the sale of technology to other companies or customers. Most people often start their career in tech sales as a sales development representative or business development representative.

These professionals will prospect for new clients and respond to inbound leads when they’re purchasing new products. They identify and create new businesses in addition to providing support for inbound inquiries. The day to day also includes cold calling and sending emails with the goal of qualifying customers and booking a meeting for the account executive. 

Huge demand

As the tech industry grows, there’s a huge demand for non technical roles to support the marketing, sales and support of the customers.

This is where the sales team comes into play. There is no shortage of sales jobs available now (despite all of the recent layoffs). We see the demand still being very high and the overall industry growing at an alarming rate.
We are also seeing that tech sales continue to be a financially lucrative career path. While the average salary for a tech sales representative will vary, we see that the average starting salary for a sales development rep to be about $75,000.

More than anything, because most tech companies are smaller, they offer a lot of opportunity for advancement and career growth.

Now, let's transition into how to get started with your tech sales career.

Updating Your Resume

Just like any profession, you need to prepare a stellar resume for your job search. Updating your resume to match the company and role is always a given, no matter which industry you are in.

However, in a tech sales job, you want to show transferable skills along with data driven successes.

Most recruiters expect that you won't have any experience, so come prepared to tell your story based on the research you’ve done and why you want to transition into a tech sales career.

If you feel like you need additional knowledge, you can always check out the different sales bootcamps and certifications around (some paid and some free). Working to complete one of these helps to signify that you are serious about breaking into tech and show a level of grit.

Job Search Process

Before you begin to submit your resume to companies, it’s important to know what type of companies you’d want to be a part of. You should be able to answer questions like these:

• Do I want to be at a large company or small company
• How much structure do I need?
• What am I looking for in the next role?
• What’s my desired salary?
• What benefits are important to me?
• What type of culture do I want to be a part of?

After you’ve gone through these questions, you should create a prospect list of companies you’d like to pitch. This way, you’ll be able to prioritize those you find the most attractive. The next step is to strategically reach out and network with these prospects without seeming desperate.

You’ll also  want to make sure that your LinkedIn profile is up to date so that employees take you seriously.  Most companies have a referral fee. That means that the employee will get a referral bonus if they introduce a candidate to the company and they get the job. This is why networking is so important.

Connect with employees on LinkedIn and join  mutual group chats like on Twitter or mutual Slack groups (e.g Sales For The Culture,Vendition, SDReady, TenboundPlus)

Interview Prep

When preparing for your interview, one of the most important things you can do is investigate the company’s upcoming projects. Therefore, you’ll be prepared to provide valuable insights to the company on what products they can utilize to ensure their project’s success.

At the basic level, be sure you know the CEO’s name. Furthermore, research relevant leadership teams and offer to reach out to them in order to provide relevant product information pertaining to their projects. If you’ve come prepared, you’re already off to an excellent start. 

Find out what kind of person the company is looking for in terms of traits and values. Understanding the company’s core values is a great place to start. You can take this one step further by practicing sharing what those core values mean to you.

Nailing the Interview

Remember, you’re still applying for a sales position so showcase your skills during the interview. Stay calm and keep control of the narrative.

Teams love when you answer questions in a concise and articulate manner. Some managers value thoughtfulness, curiosity and grit. Teamwork is another major trait that is useful. Oftentimes these are asked about in behavioral interviews. These looks like; “tell me about a time when you. . .”.

Feel free to go on that company’s Glassdoor page and research some of the top questions asked during interviews. Practice, practice, practice.

More than anything, stay consistent with your search. Make a plan, seek out help, and learn as much as you can after each interview. Transitioning into tech won’t always be easy, but it can be worth it.
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These are proven steps that we’ve seen work over the last 5 years. If you are interested in learning more about the industry or want to check out an SDR course, take a look here.

Most people don’t have a plan for their sales training. Here are four ways to fix that.


Companies spend over $70 billion on training and an average of $1,459 per salesperson annually. Yet, these trainings are nowhere as effective as leaders would like them to be.
To increase effectiveness, retention, and performance, sales trainers should draw from the best practices of learning and design professionals.
Here are four ways to incorporate better planning into your training:

1. Understand the purpose of the training and learning objections

Before you start, ask yourself the essential questions about what’s needed. There’s generally something driving the need for the training. It could be that there are new hires and they need to learn the product and process. Or it could be that you’ve rolled out a new product, and you need your reps to learn the new messages. More often than not, the goal of the training is to increase the team's performance.
Once you’ve identified the purpose of the training, it’s now time to ask yourself what kind of training it will be. To do this, you will need to decide the gap between where the sales reps are today compared to where you want them to be. For example, it could be a knowledge or skill gap. These are the most popular ones. Obviously, training to overcome a knowledge gap is much different from training to overcome a skill gap.
Lastly, in this early phase, you want to clearly state, in two sentences or less, the desired outcome of the training. You should be able to fill in the blank here: “After the end of the training, the reps will be able to  __________________.”
        2. Plan the content and flow of the training
After you’ve decided on the purpose of the training, the gap you want to cover, and the desired outcome, now it’s time to put the content together.
The first step to doing this is to brainstorm the resources that you or your reps may need. Are there worksheets, videos, or templates that you already have, that you can leverage? And if not, does it make sense to build these out?
Are there other people within your organization that might have insights into what else might be needed for the training? It could be your enablement person, your marketing team, or even your reps. Leverage the different stakeholders to start getting buy-in with the training.
You’ll then want to consider the best format for the training. This is very important because the training methods will change depending on if it’s in person, virtual or hybrid. 
Think about your content and how it might be effective depending on the medium. Live role play is often way more engaging in person. On-screen polls are great in a virtual/hybrid environment. Attention span is way shorter online, and trainees get more easily distracted. These are all things to consider when planning the content.
We’ve seen that when you think about these things and try your best to incorporate them into your training design, then your content will be more effective.
A tip that we use regularly is to complete half the training, then share it with other stakeholders to get feedback. This way, you get early feedback before you get too far into the completed program.
        3. Training time
On the training day, always ensure you have the necessary equipment. There’s nothing worse than having a “technical difficulty”.  This could delay the training and put the attendees in the wrong frame of mind.
Before you begin, you’ll want to set the stage. In fact, we recommend sending out at least two notices ten days before the event. This should include the proposed agenda and learning objectives. This is a great way to start getting buy-in.
You’ll always want to think about how you’ll keep the trainees engaged. What questions will you ask? What breakout sessions will you have? What polls might you do? Again, this all depends on the learning gap that you are trying to bridge.
It’s best to take some time beforehand to think about your audience. If you know everyone in the group, you’ll generally have a good idea of the sales reps who will overshadow and have a tendency to take over the meeting, compared to the reps who never talk during group meetings. It’s essential to figure this out if you require engagement from the entire group.
Always optimize for retention. How you present the information and the type of engagement you decide on, should always be optimized to help the reps retain as much of the training material as possible.
         4. Solidify learnings
Speaking of retention, before you show up on the training day, take a few minutes to think about how you will test the effectiveness of your training. In other words, how will you know if your training accomplished what you set out to accomplish? For most people, you might see an increase in sales or an increase in pipeline generated. But those might take a long time to see.
The best way to see how effective the training was, is to test to see whether there’s a change in behavior with the reps. If it’s a knowledge gap that you were trying to fill, you could use a simple quiz. If it’s a skill gap, you could do role plays or “ride along” on sales calls.
We see too much training that has no follow-up. At the end of the day, this is what truly matters; Did the training benefit your team the way you wanted it to, and did you have a way to verify that?


If you are interested in learning more about how to plan an effective sales training session, check out our Free Sales Training Checklist here: Sales Training Checklist

You see it all the time. The CEO has a vision and OKRs for the company, yet John on the Customer Success team doesn't know how it matters to his role.

It’s like the sales leader who is asking for more marketing-sponsored webinars and events, while the marketing team is more focused on traditional collateral like one pagers,  Google ads, and pitch decks.

Each department goes off pursuing its individual goals, only ever sharing results at the end of the quarter. And then it’s too late to make adjustments.

These companies should start to consider making structural changes that better align the organization around a single source of truth and shared goals. But how?

What is Revenue Alignment?

In our recent article highlighting common themes from our upcoming conference, we leverage John Moore’s definition of Revenue alignment as “a customer-centered approach to business success. It places a bonus on creating measurable outcomes, delivering solutions that customers adopt, and a high degree of collaboration between customer-facing teams.”

Here we will dive a bit deeper into the importance of revenue alignment, some pitfalls to avoid, and a couple of ways to fix them.

The goal of revenue alignment is to improve the customer experience your customer receives from your team from start to finish. As you can imagine, this involves sales leaders, marketing, customer success, HR, Finance, and enablement. Each company must work really hard to remove any friction in the process.

As we’ve noted, greater alignment across the organization shows great benefit. Research showed that organizations that “maintain a focus on alignment achieve up to 19% faster revenue growth and up to 15% higher profitability.” 

Unfortunately, few teams ever get there. Based on our research, here are some ways that prevent companies from getting the revenue growth that they desire.

Problems of revenue mis-alignment:

• Most teams have siloed data which causes friction 
• Blaming and finger-pointing between teams wastes time and money 
• Only thinking that Marketing, Sales, and Customer success are the only revenue teams that need to be aligned (you need everything from Finance to HR as well - every team!)

The good news is that there is hope. We’ve seen some companies turn things around in just a week. While we can’t promise such a fast result, we can help you on your journey of revenue alignment. And yes, this will always be a process, a journey, and not a one-time event.

How are some ways to align your revenue teams:

• Be very clear on why this is important for your business. Having a strong why goes a long way.
• Ensure that each team understands how its goals and metrics align with achieving the broader team vision.
• Identify any friction, siloed data, and resources, then work to remove them.
• Seek out areas where team goals may be in conflict with each other and fix those.
• Communicate, communicate, communicate! It’s best to over-communicate the vision and its importance.
• Work to get buy-in from each department.
• Be agile. Move fast to correct things when they aren’t working.
• Define key metrics and work towards aligning compensation models, so that each person has the right motivation.
• Implement, test, and repeat the above until you get your desired results.

As we’ve shown, aligning your revenue teams can provide a huge lift in profitability. As teams struggle with data and organizational silos, misalignment will result in a negative impact on productivity and, ultimately, revenue growth.

To learn more about how to start this process for your team, come join some of the Top Minds in Revenue Alignment on September 8th at Tenbound’s next Virtual Conference!
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At this free event, we’ll cover everything you need to rev up your cross-functional, go-to-market teams by synchronizing pipeline and revenue generation. Attendees will learn from top names in the industry on a strategic and tactical level how to actually do Revenue Alignment vs just talking about it. Focusing on alignment can increase pipeline and revenue, and enhance their careers as revenue professionals. For more info and free registration click here.

If you feel like you have room to improve when making calls, you are not alone. That's why we dug into the research and found three ways to help you get more conversations and book more meetings within 48 hours.
But before we jump in, let's take a look at some numbers that highlight the importance of cold calling.

While the average success rate for cold calls is around 2%, businesses continue to see some of their larger deals coming from this channel. According to RAIN Group,

• Roughly 50% of decision-makers prefer to be contacted over the phone
• 71% of buyers say they want salespeople to reach out when they’re researching ways to boost their business
• Up to 50% of sales go to the business that reaches out first

This is great news for all SDRs looking to make an impact in their org.

Now let's dive in. Here are 3 tips for mastering the phones and booking more meetings.

1. Prepare, Prepare, Prepare

We’ve seen that confidence goes up the more you are prepared. Being prepared starts with knowing your prospect, what value you bring to them and what you will say at the top of the call.

Gong analyzed over 90,000 calls and found that one of the most effective opening lines is “how have you been?”  Focus on rehearsing your call openers - this is something that you can control.

It’s also essential to prepare common objection handling responses. Most sales objections fall into a few common categories.  Learn them, practice them and be ready to handle them when they come up.

Practice with your manager, your teammates, and by yourself. Listen to call records and be intentional while you practice. This is a sure way to get ready for when that executive picks up the phone.

2. Work on your communication skills

Great communicators tend to have an advantage in sales. Luckily for you, we’ve seen two areas that you can work on that will change your calls overnight.

Practice asking open-ended questions:

Let’s start by focusing on mastering the art of asking open-ended questions. These questions move away from a Yes or No answer while nudging the prospect to open up and share more details as we engage them on the call.

Open-ended questions usually start with ‘who,’ ‘what,’ ‘where,’ ‘when,’ and ‘how.’ Improving your question-asking skills also benefits you because the person asking the questions is generally the one controlling the conversation. 

Practice active listening:

After you’ve mastered asking the right questions, you can now focus on active listening.

Active listening is not about being silent and waiting to respond. It’s about being attentive to what the prospect is saying while trying to understand the emotions behind the words. It’s a form of listening that involves asking clarifying questions.

Key ways to improve include; listening with the intent to understand; avoiding the temptation to interrupt; and repeating and paraphrasing what you heard to move the conversation forward.

3. Call at the correct time

It’ll be pretty hard to work on improving your calls if you aren’t having any conversations. Calling at the correct day/time is one of the best ways to increase your connection rate.

According to Yesware’s research on over 25,000 sales calls, weekday afternoons are the best time to make cold calls. The research shows that most calls that last over 5 minutes occur between 3:00-5:00 pm on Tuesdays or Thursdays. 

There’s a time and day that works for your prospect. Look at the data in your sales engagement platform and work to iterate from there.

We hope these three tips help you book more meetings. Take 15 mins today to work on these three tips. Start here and keep testing. Keep improving!

Found this helpful? Hundreds of companies turn to Tenbound to discuss SDR/BDR strategies and best practices. Learn more here.