SellingSherpa

B2B Sales Best Practices

The Sales Development Playbook (Book Summary)

  1. Strategy
    • A major advantage of building in-house sales development is creating a “farm team” of future account executives
    • 76% of companies place outbound sales development in sales; inbound SD is mostly in marketing, but placement does not matter
    • Establish organizational agreement around your ideal customer profile (ICP)
    • Put the highest possible emphasis on improving data quality
  2. Specialization
    • Separate people who source/update data (“lead researchers”) from people who make calls. This is especially important if your ASP is high or if you are in a hyper-competitive market. Lead researchers might also be tasked with developing “talking point” memos for accounts or contacts
    • Leverage SDRs for setting introductory meetings when account executives are not overloaded or the market/product is complex. Otherwise, leverage SDRs for generating qualified opportunities.
    • Qualification framework (BANT, excluding “B”, and expanding on “N”): PACT^2 – pain (“N”); authority (“A”); consequence (“N”); target profile (“N”); timing (“T”)
    • If possible, split inbound from outbound
  3. Recruiting
    • Make recruiting a top priority
    • Most companies look for candidates with 6+ months of sales experience
    • Hire in groups
    • Seek passion (for the position), compassionate competitiveness (win but not at expense of colleagues), and curiosity (ask candidates how they prepared for the interview)
    • Ensure job description leaves candidates with sense that this is a place to advance your career by starting with “why work here” rather than “what you will do day-to-day”
    • Go after passive candidates (actively employed as SDRs) by selling advancement opportunities
    • Maintain a great Glassdoor profile by asking employees to review a few months after joining or just after promotion; in addition, respond non-defensively to negative reviews
    • Have applicants complete a survey or commercial assessment (Disc, OMG, SalesGenomix, Talent Analytics, etc.)
    • “These are the first two questions you should ask: What do you know about our company? 2. What do you know about me personally?”
    • Ask candidate about what they did in the past rather than what they will/would do
    • Pay close attention to the quality of the questions the candidate asks during the interview
    • Expect a 50% success rate for SDR hires
  4. Retention
    • “the single biggest factor that drives average tenure (up or down) is the person managing the team.”
    • SDRs expect a learning culture to build functional and professional skills
    • Establish a coaching goal, for example, 4 hours per month per SDR
    • Consider buying and reviewing one business book per quarter
    • Provide SDRs with the opportunity meet other people from across the company
    • Beware of setting expectations for promotion that are too short; 6 months might be just as likely as 2 years
    • Establish micro-promotions such as associate SDR (appointment setting) to senior SDR (generating qualified appointments) based on achievement, not tenure
    • Be open to SDR-to-non-sales career paths
    • For the first few weeks, provide SDRs with daily schedules
    • Make sure to train SDRs on your prospects’ worlds = challenges, motivations, status quo (consider video Q&A with customers)
    • Have SDRs sit in on meetings between prospects/customers and account executives
    • Certify SDRs throughout the training program
    • Get new hires making calls fast – by the end of their first week
  5. Execution
    • It takes 3 to 4 months to ramp a new SDR to full productivity
    • Always have a compelling reason to call each individual prospect
    • Setting inbound quotas is a nightmare. Hence, either use round-robin (easiest) or territory based.
    • One inbound SDR can handle 200-300 inbound leads per month;
    • One outbound SDR can handle 100-200 accounts per month, cumulative, not net new. Pay outbound SDRs on meetings held but with accelerators (lower rate before quota, higher after)
    • Quarterly earnings calls are a good source of prospecting information “nuggets”
    • Build a library of recorded calls
    • First line managers must regularly make (at least a small number of) calls
    • Use 3-C pre-call planning by developing a couple bullet points on each of Company, Contact, and Conversation Starter; conversation starter might reference something relevant to industry, role, or company.
    • Execute multi-touch, multi-media (phone, email, LinkedIn, etc.) cadences
    • Voicemails should start with value (not reps name & number), have a strong call to action, last no longer than 40 seconds
    • Prospecting email structure: authentic subject; opening line addressing relevant problem (perhaps framed as provocative question); personalized value prop from prospect’s perspective (I noticed…); call to action (separately try: “How can I get 10 minutes on your calendar to share more?” or link to valuable content)
    • Never use any deceptive tactics
    • Engineer the SDR-to-AE handoff (calendaring, sending discovery call agenda to introduce all parties and communicate next steps, 24-hour confirmation preferably via text message). SDR should kick-off and participate in the discovery call.
    • After the discovery call, SDR and AE should debrief and update CRM.
    • Prioritize speed and degree of response to prospect priority
    • When a lower level contact engages, concurrently or subsequently reach out to a higher-level contact too
  6. Leadership
    • Do not just promote your best rep since SDR management is a totally different job; figure out who the other reps go to for answers
    • Hire leaders who have the ability to spot and develop talent, have high motivational credibility,
    • Develop and maintain an “SDR Toolkit”/playbook that includes: (1) information about target markets and prospects (2) processes for inbound lead qualification and outbound prospecting including pre-call planning, etc. (3) Multi-touch, multi-media cadences (4) email and voicemail messaging samples (5) objection handling guidance (6) technology & tools guidance
    • Set goals so that 65% of reps hit quota; make use of ramped quotas for new reps
    • Activity metrics: total activities per day; inbound lead response time; attempts per lead; # of prospects per account;
    • Objective metrics: connect rate; quality conversation rate; email response rate; bad data rate
    • Results metrics: # of discovery calls; discovery call to opportunity rate (target 40 to 50 percent); no-show rate (target 15 to 20%); SDR-sourced pipeline; SDR-sourced wins;
    • Share the formula: x activities (calls, emails, …) will lead to y outcomes (meetings, opportunities) and drive z results (revenue, commission)
    • Double down on tools proven to increase productivity (ex: insert calendar tools)

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