Chaos to Control: Transforming Your BDR Team's Performance

"So how did you grow the number of meetings booked and pipeline? What did you do with your BDR team that made the difference?" Those were the questions put to me over a coffee with a colleague (VP Sales), the other day. Frankly he was skeptical about growing the impact of a BDR team beyond just adding bodies to the melee. The answer was a combination of structure and growth of the team, made this work. This grew SQL's (Sales Qualified Leads) by 24.8 times over the span of a year and a half. Still not believing it, my colleague pushed further, ‘but really it was simply about hiring more team members ... right?' Clearly, he had been trying to achieve growth, and despite throwing additional resources at it, had not succeeded.

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Answers

Straight up, the answer was ‘No’. That is definitely not how we got the BDR team on track. It wasn’t just about adding headcount. But at the same time I will admit this is part of the answer as well. The correct answer was to structure the team first, giving it proper processes, sound approaches, tools, training, cadences, good one on one coaching, setting expectations, keeping an open communications flow, and setting achievable – yet aggressive targets.

Opening Gambit

Before starting this journey the CEO called me up to discuss taking on this team. After accepting he then immediately told me that seven other VP's before me had failed at making the BDR team work for his particular company. His point was later confirmed by another colleague who had witnessed the ups and downs of the BDR team over the years.

Aside from feeling this was some kind of a setup for failure, I felt undeterred about taking on the challenge. Not surprisingly there was not much structure this team was following. It started with three BDR's. My predecessor had hired a particularly expensive BDR manager with the expectation this would fix the problem, but it did not.

From the little data that existed the number of meetings booked per quarter were averaging 9. Although this is small it was not odd as they sold large B2B systems running between $125,000 to $1.5 million. Although not atypical, 9 SQLs per quarter was just not cutting it. Worse there was little consistency from quarter to quarter. Keep in mind too that a meeting booked does not directly translate into closed-won sales. Like the consistency of the meetings booked, pipeline performance for the team was extremely erratic. The pipeline could be as high as $1.5 million in a quarter but it was more often in the $5,000 to $7,500 range. Not a compelling nor a controlled picture.

Observations and Changes

Breakthrough growth happens when you have a sound strategy that is executed effectively. It also means pivoting when needed and when the metrics tell you that you a new direction is required.

We put in place a three-point strategy:

• Stabilize
• Industrialize
• Optimize

First step what's to assess what was working and what was not. This followed by doubling up on what was already working. In other words stabilize what you've got.

Second what's to industrialize. This meant bringing in the right tools and setting up the structures to help the BDR team succeed. Remember that we needed consistency, repeatability, and growth. Where previously the team had been left to their own guile and devices, we brought in a few tools to help them make their process faster. In addition, we tied the marketing team into the picture to directly engage in setting up detailed cadences for the team. All new demand generation marketing campaigns flowed through the BDR team and each had a properly structured cadence to help a BDR's stay on course.

As for tools, we brought in several. Most important was the BDR tool to help manage their routines, work, and contact flows. Two good tools that I recommend are either Outreach or Salesloft. Both help take away the administrative thinking (what do I do next), to keep the team blasting through activities that count. Once you have these properly integrated with your CRM, you will have a powerful engine.

However, having all the right tools doesn't unto itself bring success. There were still the occasional complaints from different sales leaders about the grammar, spelling mistakes, or lack of proper messaging in a BDR's emails or call script. This is where having integrated the marketing management team into the process setup made tremendous sense. The marketing managers structured the cadences, making sure that there was a logical flow between leaving a voicemail message, then sending a pre written e-mail (automation made this even faster), following up on LinkedIn, and then making a few more calls in a prescribed window of time. The cadence made sure no prospect was forgotten. They also ensured there was the proper follow up, again with the right messaging.

Implementing these changes alone started to show good improvement and control over the business. The number of meetings booked and the pipeline started growing, and becoming more predictable. Showing this greater consistency opened the door to growing the team further. Notice that step two was to grow the team, once the structure and new discipline proved this was the right approach.

Monitoring – Feedback – Communications

Naturally another important part of the equation was managing the team effectively. At the beginning of this journey we started measuring anything and everything that made sense. Intuitively there was a sense that the amount of activities and the engagement the team had with prospects would both be key factors in booking more meetings. Fortunately both of these ideas were correct. Empirically, I found a correlation of ρ = 0.88 between activities and meetings booked. Our original intuitive feeling was correct. Basically this means the more work you do as a BDR team, the more results you'll get in meetings booked and pipeline generated. Not a surprise, but good to show empirically.

This too is where the tools became extremely important. Although I'm not suggesting that any leader become a micro manager, it is important that they understand the volume of activities the team is driving. And there are times as a manager but you must have serious conversations with the team about cranking up their activity volumes, when things slip (as they will from time to time). This is part of being a manager and a leader.

Finally another important part to this equation was the feedback and communication elements. We are all motivated by being on a winning team. The BDR team wanted to know how they were doing. They wanted to see their successes collectively. So it was extremely useful to both have weekly meetings as a full team, run individual coaching sessions, and host monthly reviews of how the team was performing against KPIs.

Load Balancing

To leaders taking on a similar challenge I highly recommend using an idea that I called load balancing. Word of the team's success spread quickly. Regional sales VP's started wanting more and more of the BDR teams time dedicated to their specific area. One even approached me about dedicating the entire teams full resources towards exclusively their specific business segment (not an option, BTW).

Naturally this created a situation ripe for contention and arguments. There were many perceptions that one area was getting more resources than another. Or that resources were not allocated to a marketing campaign - with finger pointing toward the team as the reason why certain campaigns failed. To resolve this and to better manage the team, the idea of load balancing proved instrumental.

After a while you will get a sense of how many activity cycles each BDR can complete in a week. Tools like the CRM, Outlook, or Salesloft can track and provide these metrics. You will also get a sense of how many cycles can be completed overall in a given period of time. Monitor these on a spreadsheet for example. Note the various different campaigns in progress and that are forthcoming. Then, on a weekly basis estimate how many cycles are needed for a given campaign. Allocate the resources (BDRs) who will work on that particular campaign with an estimate of how many cycles (touchpoints) they will be able to complete during a week. The point being that you allocate the right number of resources to the different projects that you have underway.

Doing this provided a highly visual means of quickly seeing whether projects were being worked on, or not. It immediately took away many of the arguments between the different RVP's and answered the question as to whether a particular campaign was being worked on or not. This also provided a very visual and ultimately numeric means of assessing different campaigns and their effectiveness. Tracking the cycles needed to book meetings and build pipeline across different campaigns made it clear which were effective and which were not. This part was the optimization phase. Choosing which campaigns to double down on, and which to either change or drop, to improve efficiency and effectiveness.

Results

Back to my friends original question the correct answer was threefold. First it was important to stabilize the team and develop a plan to create process to make any successes repeatable. With some early successes this provided the confidence with the CEO to grow the team, adding headcount. The final step being to monitor and manage the team in pursuit of effectiveness. Ultimately this brought the 24.8 times growth in meetings resulting in an elevenfold growth in pipeline over the span of a year and a half.

I suggested to my friend but he copy this methodology to turn around his own BDR team’s success. Best of luck, Pierre.