What is the difference between an 'average' and a 'great' SDR?

I think that one of the biggest differences between 'average' SDRs and 'great' SDRs - from what I've seen - is the amount of preparation that some are willing to put into their craft compared to others who 'just do enough'.

When you're an SDR and first join a company you go through your onboarding and training, you meet the teams in different departments, learn about the product that you're selling and what it can do, get to know who you're targeting, put a pitch together and basically get ready to get on the phones, start booking some meetings and making some commission!

After a while of doing the same thing over and over again some SDRs will wonder why they aren't penetrating their accounts deep enough; why they feel like they aren't making a difference and why they're not getting the results they had hoped for. After all they had completed all the training, they had passed all of the onboarding and know all of the products features and can probably list a whole bunch of benefits for those features.

So why are some SDRs more successful than others? Why are some SDRs able to penetrate their accounts further and faster than others? Why are they able to make a real difference given the fact that they have received the same onboarding as the rest of the team?

Well the difference between 'average' and 'great' in the SDR world is not to dissimilar between 'average' and 'great' in any other walk of life - it's about what you put 'in'. It's about going that extra mile. Going above and beyond, pushing the envelope and taking things to the next level.

If you're not prepared to put 'in' - don't expect to get 'out'.

And putting ‘in’ is what you need to do if you’re ever going to succeed in this game. And one area in particular that needs to be worked on and improved by most is the preparation that goes into the creation of great discovery questions.

Watching SDRs in this job bust a gut to do enough of the right activities everyday to finally get through to a decision maker on the other end of the phone only to hear the SDR open with an ill-prepared and weak question really deflates and frustrates me, God knows what it must do to them!

Maybe it hurts me more because of the fact that I've been here before, I know how difficult this job is and how hard it is to have finally got the attention of the decision maker on the phone prepared to listen to me. To do all of that and then to throw away that opportunity that you have worked so hard for and have them 'check out' of the conversation before you've even started is criminal, absolutely criminal.

Let me give you some examples of ill-prepared and weak questions that I often hear average SDRs make to decision makers over the phone:

Example 1

SDR: I wanted to talk to you about our product and how it can benefit you - do you have a moment?

DM: No

Closed question where the answer can only be a 'yes' or a 'no'. You have already opened up the conversation talking about you and your product. I'm busy, I don't have time, the answer is 'no'. Where do you go from here? Nowhere. End of conversation.

Example 2

SDR: Tell me about your business?

DM: Well, what exactly do you want to know about my business?

Zero context, not explicit enough. Decision maker fires back a question and regains control of the conversation. Next.

Example 3

SDR: How are you coping during Covid?

DM: OK, thanks....

How many phone cold calls do you think decision makers get every day? How many times do you think that they are asked that question? How are you supposed to differentiate yourself in the market and stand out if you ask the same old tired question?

Efficient and Effective Discovery Calls

When it comes to running an efficient and effective discovery call we need to start right and come out with some great questions once we have exchanged pleasantries. We need to prepared, practised and polished to make the most of the hard-fought opportunity which we have earned ourselves in talking directly with a decision maker.

Their time is precious and let's be honest they probably don't want to be on the call and will take any chance you give to them to end it - so we can't afford to not a have a well-thought out plan which creates velocity in the sales process by communicating consistently the messages that have the highest impact in converting good prospects to customers; and disqualifying the bad.

We need to control a call with our decision maker by ensuring that we add value to them and to us, by asking carefully prepared and crafted questions that ensure that we are uncovering pain points that our solutions can solve, in the shortest amount of time.

Because guess what? That's what people care about; their own problems, solving their own pain points and making the most out of their time. They don't really care about you or what you're selling - that's not what interests them so why should they listen? Why should they care?

In our game it's not about 'you', it's about 'them'. It's not about the 'products that you sell', it's about the 'problems that you solve'.

Question preparation 

In order for us to prepare the right type of discovery questions, we need to be able to understand the Features and Benefits of our own solution and - more importantly - what Problems they solve.

This is the exact point where average performing SDRs get left behind by great performing SDRs. The average SDR knows the features and the benefits of the product - they have read the brochure on induction day. Whilst great SDRs put ‘in’, go that extra mile and understand why the product exists, why the product was created and what problems do they solve?

A great SDR knows that solving problems is truly what their decision makers want to know how to do and that's why they should care about the conversation with you. And that is why some SDRs are more successful than others.

Luckily for all you young aspiring SDRs out there there is a way to become better at preparing discovery questions and it's not that complicated. If you're prepared to put ‘in’, go that extra mile, create a process and build a framework around asking questions you can ask discovery questions that resonate and provoke a response which inspires a business-led conversation.

So, the most important question - and why you're (hopefully) still reading this article - is 'how do we craft great discovery questions?'

Firstly, we need to know all our features and benefits - this should be simple by now and if you don't know the answer to this by now then you have bigger problems then you think!

We need to know what our product does before we can then list the problems it solves.

So remembering that a feature is defined as a specific attribute of a product or a service - make a list of your product's features.

As an example I'll use my current company, Ometria.

For those that don't know about Ometria we provide a customer insight and marketing automation platform which lets retailers communicate with their customers in a personalised way. (See! You're bored already - it's not about you!)

Our features include:

●     Single Customer Profiles

●     Intelligence Layer

●     Customer Insights

●     Cross-Channel Marketing

Let's take the feature 'single customer profile' and ask ourselves "what would be a benefit of having a single customer profile?"

Remembering that a benefit describes the positive outcome or result of using that feature. A benefit of a having a single customer profile could be that retail marketers would be able to bring together all the relevant customer data in one place, creating a unified profile of each shopper.

Fantastic, we know our product, what it does - but guess what? Still, no one cares.

In order for someone, our decision maker, to care - we need to align the benefit to the their problem.

In order to do so we will need to ask ourselves, and this is the really important part - "What problem would a prospect need to have in order to care about this specific benefit?"

This needs to be well thought out and turned into a simple 'Problem Statement'.

So using our feature example a 'single customer profile' which provides a benefit of 'bringing together all the relevant customer data in one place, creating a unified profile of each shopper' - the problem that a decision maker would have to have in order to care enough about the product that you're selling could be:

Not having access to all of their relevant customer data as it is stored across the business in separate systems.

If the decision maker on the end of the phone has this problem then you know that you have a problem that you can solve and this is definitely someone that you should be speaking with.

Once you have created your list of features and benefits and completed your 'Problem Statement' for each one you can begin to craft your discovery questions.

Discovery Question Framework

One of the ways to craft a discovery questions can be by incorporating three key components. These components can enable us to frame and present a question in a way that provides context to the prospect before the question is actually asked. In doing so we are gaining the prospects attention, support and engagement - and, if done correctly, our question should lead to a business-led conversation which helps us identity the problem that needs solving.

The three key components are:

●     Social proof - the idea that consumers will adapt their behaviour according to what other people are doing. Especially those with similar personas and aligned interests. Inserting our social proof or personas into our framework allows us to build and create credibility between the prospect and ourselves.

●     Emotive words - which inserted correctly in a discovery question can help us discover pain by appealing to the prospect’s emotional side of the brain. A good acronym I have learnt in the past has been “CAUSE” - concerned, anxious, upset, struggling, exhausted (note that there are more emotive words which can be used)

●     Problem statement - as outlined above.

The above components can be used to build a discovery question framework, which helps form the context, before we deliver our question.

The Social Proof, Emotive Words and Problem Statement, are all that need to be replaced when you are looking to focus on another feature and benefit to frame up another question.

Simply laid out (and with a little bit of polishing up) the framework looks like this:

“We’re working with {insert Social Proof} who are {insert Emotive Words} with {insert Problem Statement}. Question?”

So, continuing with our example from Ometria, our carefully crafted discovery question could look like this:

We’re working with a lot of email marketing managers in the retail space who are frustrated with not having access to all of their relevant customer data as it is stored across the business in separate systems. How much of a problem is it for you to access all of your relevant customer data?

Make sense?

We have just asked a question which has context, is relevant to our audience, shows market and industry knowledge, lends us credibility and - because we have practised, prepared and polished it - is delivered impeccably.

If that question doesn't produce a problem then don't panic - using your pre-prepared list of problem statements simply craft another question.

SDR: Oh, accessing your customer data isn't a problem for you? Good for you! It's a huge amount of data though and a lot of our of campaign managers (Social Proof) are really struggling (Emotive Words) to understand how to extract the insights from their customer data to optimise their campaigns and create new revenue opportunities (Problem Statement). How do you go about creating new campaigns and optimising existing ones?

DM: Well we actually do ok there as well - we execute lots of campaigns just fine, thank you.

SDR: It's great that you're executing lots of campaigns, but most of the Heads of Loyalty (Social Proof) that we speak with are really concerned (Emotive Words) about not being able to unify their marketing efforts (Problem Statement) How do you ensure that your marketing efforts work in unison with each other so that they can build off each other and amplify their impact? 

DM: Ahh, now that is a different story. That is a problem...

If this is a problem to them then you have just found gold, believe me. They have a problem which you can solve. This means that you should be speaking to them, you can help them and that means you can sell to them! (When the time is right of course!)

You have just uncovered a problem that you know can be solved by a benefit that a feature has on a product that you sell. Gold.

This is where you can use your SPIN* questioning technique to uncover and unearth even more pain to better understand how much pain this problem is really causing and what the potential implications are of not solving the problem. 

Let's continue the example and link the problem using SPIN to a benefit that a one of the features that Ometria's platform has:

DM: Oh well, that's a different story! Now that is a problem.

SDR: Ah ok, why is that causing you a problem ?

DM: Well it essentially means that we are all operating independently and not as one team. (PAIN)

SDR: And what does that mean to your business?

DM: Well it makes it difficult to tie back ROI to a particular effort for one. (PAIN)

SDR: What else?

DM: Well it also means that we aren't able to provide a seamless, interconnected journey for our customers. (PAIN)

SDR: And why is that important?

DM: Well if we can't provide a seamless, interconnected journey it will impact negatively the customer experience which we're trying to create. (IMPLICATION)

SDR: I see, and how much longer do you think that you can continue to negatively impact your customers experience with your brand?

DM: Well, we can't continue like this, we won't survive (IMPLICATION) - we need to solve this problem. (NEED)

SDR: So what has stopped you from solving this problem up until this point?

DM: I don't know.

SDR: Well if we could show you a way which enables you to create personalised marketing experiences that your customers love across relevant touch points such as emails, customer audiences, push notifications and direct mail (Benefit) - how interested would you be in learning more?

DM: Very interested, tell me more. (YOU'RE IN! Go deliver that pitch that you've been so desperately wanting to drop!)

SDR: Great, let me talk to you about Cross Channel Marketing (Feature)

And so, this too good to be true, text book example of a perfectly flowing conversation that leads inevitably to a successful conclusion continues.....??

When you hit gold and you've uncovered a pain keep gathering more and more information until the pain becomes so apparent that the decision maker knows that they need to fix it and change. And then, and only then, can you start to lead them out of the dark and into the light. 

These SPIN questions are the by far and away my favourite questions to ask. Firstly because they are so easy to ask but secondly because they are so much fun to ask! You ask, sharpen your pencil and jot down all of their problems that you didn't know existed before the call started - and that's the gold! That's the stuff that if you can solve you can then win the business!

This is what great SDRs then can do when proudly delivering their qualified opportunity to their Account Executive. Not only are they offering up the basic criteria that an average SDR would to qualify the opportunity, but they are able to tell their AEs - based upon the information that they have uncovered directly from what the prospect actually opened up and said - 'how' they are going to win the business.

They gained a commitment from the decision maker that if you can solve their problem then you can proceed. They have been asked and invited by the decision maker to tell them more - to show them the art of what is possible - and that's the gold.

PS - in my example above I am well aware that I have given a flawless example in which we have asked a question where there is a problem that needs to be solved. What about if the decision maker on the end of the phones tells you that they haven't got a problem I hear you ask - what then?!

Please remember that if you do this properly, exhaust your list of questions and in fact the decision maker on the end of the phone has told you they don't have any of those problems and their business is perfect then please remember to disqualify! 

There is a clearly a disconnect somewhere - if you can't help them should you be talking to them? You're just wasting everyone's time - and most importantly your own. 

The discovery framework allows you to craft questions the answer to which are the solutions which you provide. Why would you want to ask questions which uncover pain and problems the likes of which you can't solve?.....

* Never assume in this game - SPIN is a method of selling and for those of you that don't know about SPIN I would highly recommend that you read "SPIN Selling" by Neil Rackham. A book of simple and practical techniques which will improve your sales performance.