Top 5 Things to Know When Creating an SDR / BDR Organisation
credit Bill Kiani

Top 5 Things to Know When Creating an SDR / BDR Organisation

Business Sales Development is not new. I started leading BDR (also known as SDR) teams back in 2009.

Many competitors have consistently struggled to get it right, making unfounded big changes to the setup, locating the team in the wrong part of the business or under the wrong leaders, and not ever being fully comfortable with having 'non-closers' in the Sales Org.

However, those that have made it work (think Salesforce.com for example) are now reaping the benefits of the monumental pipeline growth that can be gained with a team focused on exactly that task..growing pipeline!


Below are 5 Top Things to consider with your BDR team;

1. COMMIT TO THE CAUSE

Clearly define roles and goals

Many bootstrapped companies wait too long to launch a BDR program because they’re hesitant to hire a non-quota carrying headcount. When they do take the leap, they hedge on the investment by having their first BDRs also sell, upsell and cross-sell.

This hybrid structure may help justify the cost in your mind, but it can lead to confusion around goals and responsibilities. Further, it can delay your ability to develop a true BDR team that can make your closers more effective.

When you decide to launch your BDR team, commit to building a true BD function.

Define the Goals of the Function

Be clear about what you are trying to accomplish with your BD Organisation. Are you trying to create a new channel to generate new leads? Is your goal to more efficiently qualify leads flowing in from marketing? Are you prospecting into your customer base to identify expansion opportunities?

Decisions about whom you hire, how you compensate, and how you measure success will cascade from the objectives you set for your BDR program, so don’t skip this step.

Define the Goals of the BDRs

Once you’ve committed, develop goals to measure your BDRs’ performance.

There are two pitfalls I have seen in this step that I recommend you avoid:

  1. BDR goals that are too high in the sales funnel, such as the number of?scheduled?appointments. In this case, BDRs may be incentivised to convince prospects to agree to a meeting, regardless of their level of commitment. This can have a negative effect on the productivity of your Sales Rep resources, wasting your Reps’ valuable time on unwanted meetings. Make sure your BDRs are incentivised to ensure that opportunities are real and will soon have actual pipeline value.
  2. BDR goals that are too far along in the sales funnel, such as bookings from BDR-sourced opportunities. This might work for a high-velocity model (sales cycle of 7-14 days), but for businesses, with longer sales cycles it can cause BDRs to focus too far outside of their lane. They may get preoccupied with which rep they want to feed their effort to, or tracking down “stuck” opportunities to move them along — which is really the job of sales.

Better options for measuring BDR performance include: Sales Accepted Leads (SALs) and/or Opportunities Created, and Pipeline Value Creation. These goals not only help keep BDR teams focused on near-term results, but also keep the team accountable for the quality of the leads they are generating or passing on to the sales team.

2 : HIRE AND TRAIN THE BEST TALENT

The BDR role can be a challenging hire because many BDRs are early in their career or fresh out of college, meaning they have little in the way of a performance track record. As a result, many successful managers hire BDRs based on character traits rather than experience.

Traits most correlated with success include:

  • Intellectual curiosity
  • Competitive drive
  • Coach-ability
  • Outgoing personality
  • Resiliency
  • Positive attitude

Of course, it helps ramp-up results to hire sales experience, but don’t get way-laid looking for a BDR who has sold software. Instead, look for people with competitive drive or natural sales talent.

Hire Teams

Many companies hire a single BDR to “run a pilot.” The risk you take with this approach is that you may get a false positive or false negative and not learn anything to inform future hires. A/B testing is as critical for the BDR function as it is for any channel.

Additionally, hiring in teams allows you to create a competitive dynamic that should drive results. A single BDR will provide you only a single data point on “the right” level of activity and results whereas two BDRs provide multiple data points from individuals pushing each other to perform.

Onboarding

Because you’re emphasising aptitude over experience, your training needs to be dependable. Comprehensive, yet focused training is essential for getting the desired results from your BDR team.

Example onboarding process and schedule, Weeks 1 – 6:

  • Intensive training on the following topics:
  • Systems training — get conversant in CRM, cadence tool, phone system, etc.
  • Product training — learn the elevator pitch on all products
  • Customer training — memorise personas and pain points
  • Prospecting training — learn the protocol for emails, calls, and scheduling
  • Social Media training — know how to use social to research and prospect
  • Shadow high performers
  • Begin making calls to Target leads
  • Check-in and follow-up training on areas of weakness
  • Manager sit-down meeting to discuss progress so far

3: SCALE-ABLE STRUCTURE

As you ramp up your BDR program, the structure of your sales team will evolve. You will hit critical milestones along the way, some of which will require making decisions and changes.

Here are some key decisions and recommendations along the path to scale:

  • Should BDRs report into Sales or Marketing??Mostly, it simply comes down to which Leader in your organisation is more qualified and experienced to manage BDR. I tend to see more success with Sales experienced Leaders managing the BDR team based on several factors: 1) The need for tight alignment between Sales associates and BDRs, 2) The inherent capabilities of the Sales Leader as a coach, and 3) The common career path of a BDR into Sales.
  • When to hire a full-time BDR manager??Once you have 4 BDRs, consider hiring a full-time manager or transitioning one of your BDRs into a manager role. I’ve seen a lot of success with a BDR who has demonstrated leadership abilities transitioning into a player-coach team leader role and ultimately into a dedicated manager once the team has scaled.
  • When to specialise BDRs into inbound and outbound??I recommend separating out the inbound and outbound roles as soon as you can sustain inbound lead generation to support a full-time dedicated person in the team as an inbound only focused LDR (Lead Development Rep).
  • When to hire your next BDR??This is just maths. Think about the number of potential accounts in your database, and the opportunity to identify new opportunities against requirements. These factors relative to the capacity, conversion rates, and ramp time for a single BDR should inform the hiring plan.
  • When to partner BDRs with Sales Personnel? When first launching a BDR program it is likely that the first couple of BDRs will be serving a large team of Sales Reps and trying to team them up won’t work.?However, once you get to scale I recommend teaming Sales Reps with BDRs on a 4:1 ratio. In my experience, I’ve found this team structure can create tremendous leverage, increase coordination between BDRs and Sales Reps, and create a competitive dynamic amongst the teams.

4: MANAGE METRICS

As with most functions, the success of a BDR team, or an individual BDR, is measured in activities and results.

My preferred Key Metrics for success:

  • Opportunity Creation #
  • Pipeline Generation $
  • Closed Won Revenue from BDR generated Opportunities $

Targets for these benchmarks will vary based on a number of factors, including the products being sold, brand awareness, the quality of the contact database, and the prospecting approach.

I have found that making these metrics monthly rather than quarterly or yearly targeted keeps the best momentum and activity focus, and commission paid monthly enables fast reward for achievement.

5: CREATE CAMPAIGNS

A common downfall seen in new BDR teams is a failure to coordinate efforts with best practices being repeated or shared across Business Units or Regions.

Here are three ways you can organise your BDR team’s efforts:

  1. Target specific market segments and verticals: Building out campaigns around specific market segments or target verticals creates a focus for your BDRs, allowing them to hone in on key messages, create repeatability in their sales motion, and leverage specific assets to prospect more effectively. Marketing should support these efforts with case studies, industry-specific thought leadership content and campaigns targeted to specific personas and market segments. When done right this focused strategy has the opportunity to increase conversion rates at every stage in the funnel.
  2. Tradeshows and conferences: Without BDR resources, the approach to tradeshows is often to show up and collect business cards with inconsistent follow-up. A well-orchestrated campaign led by BDR teams calling into tradeshow attendees in advance should yield meetings and demos pre-scheduled to occur at the event. I have seen shifting to this strategy can result in tons of meetings set up in advance at a tradeshow, ultimately increasing the ROI for that event for Marketing (and they appreciate it!)
  3. Product launches:?New product launches provide an opportunity to re-engage prospects who may have been closed lost or moved to a nurture campaign due to product or feature gaps. BDRs should be part of a coordinated effort with marketing and sales to communicate new products to the market.

BDR outreach becomes exponentially more effective when it’s focused on specific themes and targeted audiences and coordinated with wider business efforts.

DO NOT DELAY!

While BDR teams may at first seem like additional overhead and costs, they can ultimately increase the ROI on the significant investments you’ve made in your sales team, and professionally prospect, whilst your higher-cost sales personnel professionally sell to close.

Get to it!


Let me know your thoughts...

Tom Flowers

Ashleigh Cocker

Head of Business Development - Furza

1 年

Interesting read Tom and I agree with all your points, particularly around the importance of onboarding and training when hiring based on aptitude over experience

Joost Hagemeijer

Vice President Sales EMEA - growing revenue, market share and sales productivity by building and improving sales teams.

1 年

Great article Tom. Keep up the good work!

Tom Flowers ??

ADP | Global Sales, Business Development, Leadership, Strategy, Operations and Transformation

1 年

Over 50 article readers within a few hours of posting.. im pleased this is a topic many people are interested in!

回复
Marlon Soares

Sales Development Manager @ ADP | Sales Leadership, Sales Growth, Demand Generation

1 年

Great summary of what it takes to start right a Sales Dev Org!

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