The Challenges of Scaling a Sales Team in the Bay Area

I can speak for the expats that worked for Tito Bohrt to make this model work. It's interesting work, a fun atmosphere and well managed process with clear goals for the people on the front lines... and the weather was great!

Talha Husayn, those are fantastic questions! I didn't want to add all the details to the post, because it would've made it boring but here are the answers. Mingling with the team: You are right, this is not the best solution for a 30 man company that has 4 SDRs. We are a fit for the 100+ person company with 15+ sales people. Once your training, processes and SDR knowledge requirements have been established, that is the right time to go abroad. They are also not going abroad forever, they will come back in 6 months and continue to train and get better. They will have the chance to join the meetups and do all those things. More importantly because of how much they have bonded with one another they will stick in the SDR role longer and give your company a better ROI. Consider that the average SDR churns after 10 months at startups. They either get forcefully promoted to AE or they quit... Company Culture: Before employees go down, they spend 2 weeks at HQ, in that way they see what is possible after their time abroad. Remember that these employees are just spending 6-12 months abroad, so they have high motivation for growth. We also send some current employees down for a week, so we get teams to work together. The office setup is the same as in the HQ.... so similar to having a NYC and a SFO office, the fact that you are going to Costa Rica, should not be any more difficult culture-wise. You are hiring US employees. Advancing their knowledge: For us, training these employees is most important, we still have them attend seminars via GoToMeeting and we have specific reading material. The managers and coaches we have in staff excel at what they do. That is the reason why AltiSales has trained the top 3 most successful sales reps in Citrix ShareFile history! More importantly, retention rates increase, meaning you get more productive months out of your employees and reduce recruitment costs. I hope you read my next post, I really appreciate your 2 cents =)

Very interesting. I have been outsourcing my SDR busy work (other than calls) via upwork and suggested that SDR managers allow their team to do the same once an SDR has reached mastery. However I see some drawbacks. How about company culture? After hours work? Advancing their knowledge? They can "technically" do their job in Costa Rica (or Iowa), correct. Yet there is a lot of power in training SDR's on premise, as a team. They get to interact with marketing, engineers, sit in different meetings, and compete under one roof. They might have an idea and want to hash it out over some beers with marketing after hours. When I was an SDR at RightScale, I would hop over and ask the engineers technical questions. Other times, I would connect with marketing on helping test out new strategies. Finally, there will always be nuances in communication lost over chat, email, and phone. In terms of advancing their knowledge. Having SDRs join reps at onsites, attend local meet-up groups, manage the booth at trade events, and network can speed up their mastery while removing the pain of the day-to-day monotonous grind. Flying the out everywhere would be costly and inefficient. Just my 2 cents.

Sign me up!

David Dulany, talking to you made me write this post.