​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. 

The Tenbound Virtual Conference June 23rd 2021 

The Tenbound Sales Development Conference is back for the Summer session with a laser focus on SDR/BDR prospecting, plays and pipeline. Free registration is here. 

The subject matter will be focused on tactical applications SDR/BDRs can use today, with the top practitioners and thought leaders in the space including Becc Holland, James Buckley, Nikki Ivey, Richard Harris, Scott Leese, Jeremey Donovan, Liz Gaherty, Dan Wardle, Ellen Stafford, Julianne Thompson, David Dulany, Katie Pawlica, Shawn Finder and many more. 

This is an awesome opportunity not only to learn from these top minds in Sales Development but also to network with other Sales and Marketing professionals on the conference website, Airmeet. In this interactive setting, you can meet the other conference attendees, sponsors and speakers in a virtual environment. 

This is a can't-miss event for the summer to get you through the heavy pipeline season coming up. You’ll walk out with a list of new tactics to try and friends you can help support throughout the year. Jump in today!

Book Launch: The Sales Development Framework by David Dulany and Kyle Vamvouris 
Tenbound CEO David Dulany and Vouris CEO Kyle Vamvouris have taken The Tenbound Way Sales Development process and put it into the easy to read and implement book: The Sales Development Framework How to Build and Scale a Highly Productive Sales Development Program. 

Over the course of the chapters in a step-by-step format on Culture, Leadership, Hiring, Onboarding, Training, Coaching, Analysis, Results and Reputation, each dives deeply into the fundamental building blocks of a high-performance SDR Team. The book also includes a useful Sales Development Market Map quadrant and a glossary of terms. The book is now available on Amazon and the Tenbound website. 

New! Online Learning SDR and Sales Dev Manager Training Courses 

Over the last five years, Tenbound has delivered hundreds of SDR and SDR Manager training classes, both in person and on Zoom, however, scheduling and travel were always an issue for participants. So Tenbound put it into an online self-paced version that SDRs and SDR Managers can take at any time from the convenience of their own computer. Created with an interactive mix of videos, downloads, chat functionality, community and achievement badges, participants get the same knowledge and expertise as the in-person training programs, without all the hassles. Register directly for the courses here: Sales Development Rep (SDR) and SDR Manager. 

Sales Development Benchmark Research Survey Report Launch

Tenbound, in conjunction with RevOps2, surveyed over 200 high-level Sales Development leaders in the early part of 2021 to establish the benchmarks for high-performance Sales Development programs today in our post-pandemic world. 

Now, Sales Development Leaders can calibrate against the top performers in our industry to see where they stack up with the best-in-class programs they are doing today. Make sure you have all the latest research before going into the next quarter. The survey report is available for free download in our Research Center.

Market Map V7 / Sales Development Directory

Tenbound has recently released Version 7 of our Sales Development Market Map, which gives you a high-level overview of the different tools and services that are available to help support your Sales Development program. 
Each aspect of that support is divided into quadrants, such as Data, Sales Engagement Platforms, Sales Development Training Courses and Conversational Marketing. Viewers can then double click on the Market Map to access the Sales Development Buyer Directory, which includes all the companies on the Market Map and allows you to investigate further companies that you're interested in.
​
Tools and service providers can then showcase their products by upgrading their Directory page to enhance profile giving buyers a more in-depth look at the capabilities of their tools or service. 

Building Your Go-To-Market Team Around Your Customer’s Journey

Is this the end of the Sales Funnel, and rise of the Customer Journey Circle?

Why do some businesses have consistent success with Go-To-Market (GTM) team alignment when others fail - sometimes having similar products or services?

Most SaaS companies have their Go-To-Market teams set up focused on a model based in siloes. Marketing -> SDR -> Sales -> Customer Success. 

Problem is, customers don’t care about the structure of your company. 

They care about products or services that solve problems, offer value, and make their life better in some way. Not about how you set up your process.

You know the feeling: you start exploring a SaaS solution. You fill in a form or set up a free trial. An SDR calls you, asks a bunch of questions. You feel like you’re being interrogated. Then you have to take another call with an AE, who was late for the call and asks all the same questions. Then you have to take another call with a Solutions person, who actually knows what they're talking about but ends up asking all the same questions again. 

At this point…. you tuned out. They want to set up more meetings but at this point you’re over it. 

They forgot the main impetus for you reaching out in the first place: to solve a problem. 

When a business looks at a customer through a self-focused lens, the interaction feels more like they're being forced into your process, versus receiving the value they need from you. 

Without a deep understanding of the customer journey, it’s difficult to align to provide the value customers expect and to provide a seamless experience.

They made the experience all about them and not you and your problem. 

The way you need to structure your GTM team is not about you, it’s about the customer. 

A Customer Journey Map Can Help You See the Bigger PictureHow do you avoid this and get better results. Where do you start in mapping the journey, and aligning your GTM team to support it?

That effort starts by sketching out a timeline or map that shows each stage of the customer’s experience.
Any time a consumer encounters your brand will add a step to the journey. These touchpoints include any interaction with your company, ranging from how they see you on social media to your website.  Additional touch points might include online reviews, peer community interactions, your sales process, and your email marketing messages.

What are they doing at each step - from identifying a problem, to interacting with you, to becoming a customer, to staying a customer and expanding their relationship? What feeling do you want them to have in the journey?
Mapping Your GTM Team to the Customer JourneyAfter you’ve mapped out the customer journey, build your GTM team around it in a circle, versus a funnel or vertical diagram. Hubspot has a version of this here, they call the The Flywheel Model. 

Your goal now is to expand the size of the circle. The more you sell, the bigger the circle becomes.

Start with your brand promise- how do we want people to feel about their experience working with us? Build your brand marketing programs around that. Measure success based on the seamless experience of brand from discovery, to interaction (SDR) and hand-off to Sales/Success. 

Once customers are raving fans, Success and Marketing then work together to increase that loyalty and create more leads.

Around and around it goes. Ever expanding, always with the customer in the middle. Not your process or your system, the customer. 

The better you are each stage of the circle, the larger it expands.  
​
[caption id="attachment_114844" align="aligncenter" width="400"] The GTM Organization[/caption]If your GTM team is still contained in individual units or struggling to communicate with one another to discover the customer journey, Tenbound can help with our Alignment workshop.  


Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

As we collectively bid-ado to the year that was, now is the time to start making serious strategic decisions that will have an out-sized impact this year. But even if this year is better than the last (it has to be, right --- right?!), there is still some lingering uncertainty for the business community.

One of the largest uncertainties is the possible return of trade shows. An important channel for many businesses, trade shows make up the second largest source of B2B revenue in the US. With that in mind, businesses everywhere are anxiously awaiting the green light to reactivate one of their biggest channels. But how do you plan for an event that may-or-may-not happen? 

The way people buy B2B software has changed. The B2B sales process has morphed with B2C. 

We’re spending more time online before making a purchase, with research from Gartner showing that buyers now only spend 17% of their time meeting with potential suppliers. 

At the same time, we’re more skeptical than ever of Google results and five-star reviews. Cold calls go straight to voicemail.  

However, one thing remains: people still trust their peers. 

At the same time, there’s been an explosion of online communities over the last five years, a growth that’s been further accelerated by the pandemic, as people look for that sense of trust and connection that they’ve lost. ​

​Sales Development is an important function in many companies today, but it can also be confusing. What’s the difference between a lead and a prospect, or a sales funnel and a pipeline? Is your company’s CAC higher than your CLTV and, if so, is that a good or bad thing? 

Whether you’re new to Sales Development or an experienced pro, Sales Development has its own language; a language that’s constantly evolving. To help you out, we’ve put together a glossary of the most terms used in Sales Development and what you need to know about them.

​Overview of what we’re seeing in the Sales Dev world today, how you can play them, and the questions they spark.

Managing Virtual SDR Teams
The traditional, office-based SDR model has been on the way out for years, as remote work tools and bandwidth allowed SDRs to work from anywhere. Growing bandwidth and tools like Slack, Zoom, and various Sales Enablement Platforms have made it possible. We’ve all seen the estimates that the coronavirus accelerated the conversion to remote by 5+ years.