Written
by Jason Richman
From where I stand — as the
manager of an inside sales team — one thing about sales development has become
increasingly clear.
The standard process for SDRs
or BDRs (whatever your organization calls them) of sending out sequenced
emails, calling, leaving voicemails, rinse and repeat? It no longer works well.
SDR Sales
SDR stands for sales development representative, a role commonly
held on inside sales teams. Individuals in this role focus on outbound
prospecting.
Before we discuss how to
develop critical skills for SDRs, let’s review how the SDR position differs
from other sales roles.
What does a sales development representative do?
Many sales reps are focused on
closing deals to meet or exceed their quota for a given time period, and their
performance is measured by their ability to meet targets. In a sales
development role, reps are focused on moving leads through the sales pipeline
emphasizing quality lead generation over closing individual deals.
For SDRs, successful
performance is measured by how effective they are at moving leads through
the sales pipeline. With this team structure, SDRs
often receive lead information from their marketing team, and are responsible
for qualifying and nurturing leads before introducing them to account managers
or sales reps to land the sale.
So if you're an SDR, here are
the top 10 skills to focus on gaining or honing. And if you're a manager,
here's what you should be teaching to your team.
SDR Skills
1.
Video prospecting
2.
Highly customized outreach
3.
Active listening and adaptability
4.
Great voicemails
5.
Resilience
6.
Coachability
7.
Self-awareness
8.
Organization
9.
Curious learner
10.
Realtionship-building
1. Video Prospecting
"Video prospecting"
is a buzzword, but at HubSpot, we've seen great results. My team uses Vidyard — an
easy-to-use tool that lets you quickly create videos using your webcam and
screengrabs. But there are several options out there, including Loom and Soapbox by Wistia.
SDRs don't need to be technical
masters or Oscar-worthy movie stars to create effective videos. They do need to
be comfortable on screen. Practice creating short, engaging clips (no more than
two minutes) during which you introduce yourself, deliver value with a quick
tip, and ask to schedule a call.
The more videos you make, the
more efficient you'll become. In time, you should be able to whip up customized videos like
they're emails.
2. Highly Customized Outreach
It's always been tricky for
SDRs to balance quantity and quality when prospecting. I'm seeing that balance
shift — the most successful reps are actually slowing down, spending more time
on outreach and connecting with fewer prospects.
Brandon Kirsch, an
Inbound Growth Specialist at HubSpot, is a fantastic example of someone doing
this right. His emails are really personal and hinge around a triggering event.
Here's an example:
Hi Michael,
I hope this email finds you
well! I wanted to reach out to you because based on my research on LinkedIn, it
seems like you are heading any marketing initiatives and focused on the overall
growth strategy for Dunder Mifflin.
After doing some research on
Dunder Mifflin, a bunch of things stood out to me as reasons to have a timely
conversation about how inbound marketing & HubSpot could help:
·
Employees at Dunder Mifflin have explored our all in one solution
before, however, the timing wasn't right.
·
You're currently using a few different tools for your marketing —
A, B, C, D, and E. I'm curious how things are going with them & if you'd be
open to a conversation re: HubSpot and using an all-in-one marketing automation
platform?
·
Looks like you understand the importance of content
marketing/inbound marketing based on the blogs, white papers, &
testimonials — but there's a huge missed opportunity because it doesn't seem to
be gated.
·
You've got buy now and order options on the site but you're
missing out on converting at least 90% of your total website traffic to the
site.
·
Here at HubSpot, we've had some exciting product updates to the
marketing & sales platforms as of January 2019.
Any interest in connecting
sometime this week? Feel free to book 15 minutes with me here.
Thanks in advance,
Brandon
I don't want to suggest
quantity no longer matters in the SDR world. During my weekly one-on-ones with
SDRs, I do a pipeline review. I often find they're spending too much time
qualifying before picking up the phone.
Connect calls are a lot like
voicemails — to get good at them, SDRs have to do a lot of them until they've
developed "muscle memory." Allocating time wisely based on lead
quality is very important, but SDRs need to get on the phones as much as they
can to hone their skills.
New SDRs will benefit from
hearing their prospects' most common objections, begin to understand which
soundbites resonate best with target personas, and start to sound much more
confident on the phone if they make a lot of calls up front.
So with that in mind, I'd
recommend developing a scalable process for writing customized emails and doing
prospect research. LinkedIn Sales Navigator can
be a big help; you can save leads and accounts, learn important information in
one glance, and get notifications when they've had a notable change.
3. Active listening and adaptability
How can SDRs continue to add
value to a sales process that's increasingly run by automation — especially in
the prospecting stages?
To me, one of the answers is
the combination of good questioning skills and active listening. A
chatbot might be able to qualify you, but no one asks and listens to
information like a human (at least not yet).
A connect call should be like a
game of catch — a genuine conversation between a prospect and an SDR.
No matter what your company
sells, you must be highly attuned to phrases that indicate a prospect could be
a good fit for your product. It's more important to focus the conversation on
gathering valuable information than to check qualification boxes.
For example, during our weekly
SDR "film club," we listen to a seasoned SDR's recorded call. In a
recent call review, the SDR discovered the prospect's company offered a
freemium version of its product. The prospect confirmed the annual value of an
average new customer, and the SDR immediately moved on to the next topic.
HubSpot has lead nurturing
tools baked into our software, so any sign of a freemium model begs to be
explored further. The SDR should have explored the following with his prospect:
·
How many new freemium users a month do you generate?
·
How do you nurture freemium users? Customers?
·
What percentage of freemium users convert to paid users?
·
What are common triggers for freemium users to upgrade?
·
How do you re-engage users who used the free product once several
months ago and then went dark?
The answers to these questions
are crucial to understanding how HubSpot's marketing platform could help this
prospect improve lead conversion rates.
Practicing active listening
means being adaptable — pivoting away from a prepared checklist and recognizing
when an opportunity to dig deeper presents itself. All SDRs need to learn to be
present and have a real conversation.
4. Great voicemails
It's ideal to get a prospect
live on the phone, but sometimes you'll have to leave a voicemail.
I participated in a sales
training several years ago, and one of the trainers made a simple comment that
stuck with me. If you leave 25 quality voicemails, you at least have a chance
to receive a callback. But if you leave no voicemails, your probability of
getting a callback diminishes significantly.
It's harder to leave a good
voicemail than it sounds. You have to, in a reasonably short amount of time,
entice a prospect you've never spoken with to call you back. Some people like
to be concise — "Hi, I'm [Salesperson] from [Company]. I would
love to speak with you about X strategy. Give me a call back at
XXX-XXX-XXXX."
Personally, I like to add a
snippet of value to this equation. For example, "I saw X on your
site. Here are a few best practices I'm hoping to share with you."
I have the new SDRs on my team
leave a voicemail for seasoned sales reps every night at 7:00 pm during their
first month. The rep then sends back a quick email with feedback and a
probability that they would call back.
Leaving a good voicemail is an
indispensable skill for an SDR, and thus requires practice. Don't simply go
through the motions so you can log an activity in your CRM — be committed to
quality touch points across all activities.
5. Resilience
There's no doubt that SDRs have
a tough job. Unlike closing salespeople, they don't get much glory. They're
also usually spending all day sending emails and making calls. It can be
exhausting.
That's why in addition to these
hard skills, it's important to learn to keep your energy up and stay positive.
If you're flat or discouraged, it will translate over the phone and your
prospect will pick up on your low energy.
It's also critical to learn to
bounce back quickly from a bad call. Whether a prospect was rude or you made a
mistake, it doesn't do any good to allow emotion to prevent you from picking up
the phone for the rest of the day or negatively impact your next 15 calls.
Resilience is crucial to keeping your head in the game. Developing this ability
now will also be invaluable down the road when you have to recover from losing
a big deal without skipping a beat.
6. Coachability
One of the most important
skillsets we evaluate when interviewing SDR candidates is coachability.
Confidence is important, but the ego can cloud an SDR's ability to receive and
implement candid feedback. The best SDRs proactively seek out coaching from
high-performing peers and crave honest feedback from their managers. Getting
real-time feedback is best, but you can also build out a list of all the
questions or challenges you faced in a given week and debrief with your manager
during a scheduled one-on-one.
7. Self-awareness
Self-awareness plays into
resilience and coachability. SDRs need to be aware of their strengths and
weaknesses. This will help them create strategies for dealing with a bad call
or rejection. And they'll be able to analyze their performance, both the wins
and setbacks, and reflect on what went well and what didn't.
Self-aware SDRs will ask for
feedback from managers and colleagues. Rather than taking negative or
constructive feedback personally, they'll have a deeper understanding of their
strengths, weaknesses, and areas for growth.
8. Organization
Processes can vary from person
to person, but they're key to staying organized. Schedule management allows
SDRs to manage their days and prioritize the tasks that are key to their
success (e.g., email outreach, calls, meetings.)
Whether they choose to write
out their to-do list or use a
calendar management tool to create their schedule, maintaining a solid schedule
will help them master the cadence for their outreach and interactions with
prospects.
9. Curious learner
Successful SDRs are curious and
eager to learn. Not only will new product, industry, or organizational
knowledge help them in their current role, but it will also help them as they
grow in their career.
They need to know their product
or service inside and out, and have a clear understanding of their customer
profile, and challenges prospects face. SDRs can gather new information through
internal resources, online research, training sessions, industry events, and
meeting with their colleagues. Learning is a continual process and it will set
the SDR up for success in the short-term and long-term.
10. Relationship-building
As an SDR, your job is to prime
prospects for the sale before turning them over to your account managers to
close. Effective SDRs are able to build genuine relationships with prospects to
foster trust.
To be a successful
relationship-builder, you must be able to communicate with a wide variety of
people across multiple channels. Whether you are connecting with a contact over
email, presenting to a prospect in a virtual meeting, or tagging up
face-to-face, you must be able to clearly communicate your points and ideas to
connect with prospects to keep them engaged.
Here's to all the SDRs, BDRs,
and their managers out there. I hope 2020 treats you well, and this list helps
you develop the most useful, relevant skills possible. To learn more, check out
these email templates to get and keep
buyers' attention next.
Originally published Jan 19, 2020
8:15:00 PM, updated January 20 2020
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