Why Your Top Outbound SDR Will Be a Great “Closer”
Michael Hanson
CEO, Growth Genie - I Share Daily B2B Growth Tips + Beautiful News Stories on Tuesdays
Here are 5 Reasons you should consider promoting your top Outbound SDR to a closing role:
Imagine a director of sales starts to ghost you. An outbound SDR will call the Chief Revenue Officer and say “been having an interesting chat with your colleague Rick, who mentioned?you're struggling with high no show rates on your discovery calls. What's your plan to reduce that in February?". In contrast, Account Executives who haven't done outbound in years, may give up more easily.
2. They will continue generating their own pipeline. There may be months in which marketing produces less leads for sales. In those cases, those with SDR experience are less entitled and don’t complain “where are my leads?”.
Instead they hunt themselves, and they now have the added benefit of knowing which probing questions, customer stories and pains are more likely to resonate based on their demos.
3. Outbound is a mentality. It is not just something SDRs do. If you have a proactive attitude, you won’t?send an email with a proposal and wait for your prospect to come back to you.
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You'll add other stakeholders on LinkedIn, share helpful content with them and call your champions to see how you can help them.
4. They are naturally resilient. A 10% conversion rate as an SDR of cold leads to qualified opportunities is extremely high. That means even if you are a top performer you are hearing "nos" 90% of the time.
If you can bounce back from this rejection as an SDR, when you are promoted to an Account Executive role, those instances where buyers ghost you at the last minute will be seen as "lessons learned" rather than failures.
5. If you have a good process, they will have shadowed your AEs already on calls.?This means they have already heard what a good discovery call looks like, which case studies resonate with customers, and how to push deals along the funnel.
If you hire someone from the outside, they will be starting from zero in terms of your sales process and product knowledge.
Think I'm wrong? Feel free to DM me on LinkedIn and continue the conversation.
Chief Executive Officer at Why Not Gus LLC
1 年Michael Hanson?i agree that the two roles are probably separated for a reason, I just feel in this company it should be one fluid process. Only exception is our “collectors” , which are just stay at home moms that initiate the first “cold call”, but our “nurturers” often do that as well, it depends on the prospect list and who is working it. Once s relationship has started I see no benefit I’m interrupting it with multiple people sticking their input in it. I want my people to follow it through! Obviously our model isn’t for every “closer” but I hope some of them stick around after they see the training model, I think combining them as SDR+Closer=nurturer will ultimately prove healthier for client relations, which in turn will increase sales. Only time will tell!
Chief Executive Officer at Why Not Gus LLC
1 年Micheal, as a owner of a marketing agency (Why Not Gus) headquartered in Phoenix , we are building a team of closers that will take on the role of SDR AND CLOSER, our goal is to extensively train them to nurture the client from cold call to close, while building their clients relationships. We got a little pushback when one person was investigating the position and literally told me the position was for SDR, and that as a closer he didn’t want to work that hard at his job. We passed him up obviously, but it made me think we may face more pushback from the team we have recruited once they start training! Any thoughts, we are not looking to have our prospects handed off to multiple people during the process, so combining the SDR with the closer might prevent that and by the time the “close” arrives its really more of a conversation. Curious your thoughts! Btw I am a former network administrator so sales/marketing is a mystery I am learning to navigate with my tech team every day, and our recruited sales team teaches us new stuff every day as well.
Helping organisations manage workflows between on-premises infrastructure and Cloud
3 年I spent my 1st 3 years as an SDR before being promoted to field Sales and found the adjustment very difficult, even with training and employer support. The issue is that as an SDR my job was simple - break down doors, make appointments and sell over the phone. As a Sales Rep I had to develop accounts, deal with issues, work with colleagues. I rose to the challenge, fortunately, but whether promoting from inside or out, SDR's may not be suitable candidates for account exec roles unless it's a 100% new business role and a highly transactional business.
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3 年I think businesses need to stop hiring and promoting on a hunch and really invest in their employees education. Why not give them AE sales training then promote them?
Chief Revenue Officer
3 年Couldn't agree more with number 3. It really separates the wheat from the chaff.