How to Really Build an SDR Team From Scratch

I get asked this same question several times a week... "Tito, how do I go about building an SDR team from scratch?"

It usually comes from Founders, or the first Sales hire at a company. Sometimes, it comes from companies after several failed attempts. The truth is, there's only one way to do it right, and if this is your third try, lucky you, I'll share the formula with you.

Before we dive in, and maybe even more important than "how to" is the "how NOT to" part, so let's cover some of the mistakes most people make when building SDR teams first.

Mistake #1: Training SDRs as if they were Account Executives

This is the most common mistake, especially if your SDR organization falls within the sales department. If you've hired your SDR, and had their on-boarding be the same as the AEs, you're in trouble for two reasons.

During on-boarding, your SDRs learns about most of the features, they see the product in action, and listen to the AE give a pitch. The reason that's a problem is that the SDRs will start pitching product features. "We have this great integration with X" and assume that what they are saying is properly communicated, however, this is "The Curse of Knowledge".

When you see a product in action, you understand it differently from when you haven't seen it. Imagine you're trying to explain what an iPhone does to a tribe in Africa that has no idea what "internet" is. Maybe an extreme example, but the curse of knowledge is real, watch this:

Now watch it again and try to un-know what the song is... impossible.

You see, once you teach your SDRs too much about the product, they can't explain it to someone who has never seen it. Don't do it!

Mistake #2: Hiring junior SDRs and giving them full freedom

"Ok, I get it, Tito. No product training, so let's just give them a phone, a computer and off we go, right?"... I wish...

Your going to be in deep trouble if you're hiring SDRs and just telling them to do "as they wish" to get meetings, unless every SDR you hire has a lot of experience, and is great at what they do (these employees are not only rare, but also expensive). Chances are that most SDRs you hire are transitioning careers or coming out of college so they have little business acumen. Full freedom = Disaster.

I've heard horror stories about the work of SDRs and how they annoy executives (have you seen people publicly shame SDRs? Me too... However, I've also had an SDR a few years ago who wrote an email that said "Thank you" 17 times in one email. Emojis anyone? How about GIFs? Too much freedom can mean creativity, but freedom means responsibility. You don't hire a kid out of college and make him a pilot for Delta Airlines without training. so...

Unless you're selling a $20/mo product, keep the "fun" out. Give your SDRs some direction. Why? Because 3-9 months down the road when you realize you've spent $100K on 2 SDRs and they have produced nothing. Once you want to "put structure in place", they'll be against it.

Manager: "Ok team, so we need better results, and ehm, now everyone needs to make 50 calls every day"...

Reps: "Bullshit, I'm not making calls, cold-calling is dead, I read it on linkedin"

Note: I have also declared that the gym is dead. Please send them to this post if they say cold calling is dead. But that's not the point, the point is that by giving them full freedom at first, you have made them entitled to "do as they wish," and if they don't think you know better, they won't follow your direction. Perhaps you don't know better... that's another mistake.

Mistake #3: Not doing it yourself first

"Wait Tito, I am a manager, I'm 40 years old, I'm not going to actually get on the phone and make calls, right?"

"Thanks for your time, the interview is over. You can leave now"

Just kidding. I'm actually a really nice manager, ask my reps, or read my recommendation on Linkedin, or whatever, I don't care.

The point is... unless your SDRs believe that their manager can do their job better than them, they will not follow their direction and they'll feel entitled to more. "More? what do you mean by 'more?'"

They want a promotion ASAP. They want more money. Thy want to manage themselves. They want to be AEs. If they feel they can train fresh SDRs better than you, you've lost their respect as a manager. That's what I mean.

If they see you as the manager, and they don't perceive that you can do the job better than them, you'll have a lot of turnover...

"Oh shit, is that why my average SDR tenure is 4-8 months?"...

Mistake #4: Thinking that you can keep it cheap / scrappy

Well, that's one reason why they're leaving. The other one is that their job itself sucks when it comes to workflow.

You bought the cheapest sales acceleration tool, and the cheapest data tool, and the cheapest... Let me tell you. You're going to war, your SDRs are hunters. They're getting on the battlefield of attention trying to engage VPs and C-level executives and they have the equivalent of bows and arrows. The winning teams have bazookas.

If you're going cheap on data and tools, you're dead. Not only because it'll be harder to engage prospects, but also because the workflow is so frustrating that your reps will quit.

You won't know this, unless you've done the work yourself.

You know why else they quit?

Mistake #5: Thinking you can pay little money

"We budgeted $70K for the SDRs". If you think you can hire reps for cheap, and keep it cheap for long, I want to welcome you to Turnover-World.

Bad tools, bad data, difficult workflows and bad pay. You would probably quit too, but have you even tried doing their job? (see mistake #3).

The SDR job is mentally taxing. If their base salary doesn't even allow them to pay rent and food, they'll leave! You're setting yourself for failure because "everyone is doing it that way". If you continue following the status quo, you'll continue failing.

If you don't think you could afford living with what your reps make, then you're paying to little. This is part of "do it yourself"... are you making enough money, how does the job feel when you make 80 calls a day and your take-home money doesn't pay the bills. Ok good!

Mistake #6: Thinking that warm leads and hacks are scalable

Relying purely on trade show scans, mass market Newsletter emails, and other wide "net" strategies isn't scalable, but why? Because there's overlap.

Think about it. Two booths at Dreamforce won't bring you twice as many leads as one booth. Going to twice as many trade shows won't get you twice as many leads either. It's mostly the same people going to these conferences. Two email blasts to your 20,000 person list won't get you 2x the meetings as 1 email.

So... if you were able to get some results by purely using non-focused demand generation, your website, and other lead sources, scaling will be hard. You need to figure out how you can build pipeline from ice... ice-cold leads I mean.

If you can turn companies from "not-even-looking" into "curious about this"... you're up to something, and you will be able to scale. However, this means turning your 'Inbound Marketing' into 'Outbound Marketing'... "Outbound Marketing?! What the hell is that?!"... some people call it ABM. Select the Accounts you want to go after and have your marketing team go hunt. Replace your nets for spears.

But to be able to do that you need to understand your customers well.

Mistake #: Not understanding the Current State of the customer

Do you understand your customers? Do your SDRs understand them. Do you know where they stand today, and where they want to get to?

This blog is an example. If you've read his far, it probably resonated with you. By bringing you insights it shows I understand you. I won't pitch you to get on a call though. I'm not eager to sell you ASAP. I am though, interested in sharing more thoughts with you if you're thinking of building or improving your team. You might, or might not need AltiSales, but the beauty of it, is that regardless of if you do or don't, you'll walk out of our chat with insights about how to do things better, and that itself is worth your time.

Can you do the same for your customers? Can your SDRs attract curiosity, and can your AEs turn curiosity into interest? If they can't you're doing it wrong

And now, if you want to hear how to actually build an SDR team, here's how.

Cheers!

Tito

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