sweSAE

Senior Account Executive

BDR's "hiding" demos?

Hi!

SAE here, also Squad Lead for our Nordic team leading the BDR's and AE's. I'm getting more and more aggravated with the declination of our BDR's quality of work towards prospect and would love to hear some external input as I'm clueless on what to do.

I have one BDR in my team who is constantly overusing words such as "preliminary", "expectation free", "short discussion" (instead of demo), when getting prospects to say yes to a meeting with us Account Execs.

I'm pulling my hair in what to do since our culture is so fragile, and going to the person would upset him, and the manager is very new and aren't really up to speed in everything.

WHAT do I do? I know my explanation above is terrible, but have you dealt with BDR's trying to "mask" that they're inviting a prospect to a demo by using other words to describe what the meeting is really about?

🔎 Prospecting

👨‍🌾 SDR

12

19 comments

Sort by:

braintank

Politicker

5

Enterprise Account Executive

Are they getting results?

HVACexpert

Politicker

7

sales engineer

Yeah, as long as they’re not outright lying or being deceitful , he got you the meeting booked, go and close it!

braintank

Politicker

4

Enterprise Account Executive

Exactly. If the prospects are showing up then why split hairs over verbiage.

jefe

Arsonist

8

🍁

Plus I assume that the first call doesn't have a ton of expectations tied to it, by definition is preliminary, and really should be discovery instead of demo. Sounds like a bit of nitpicking, and likely a process disconnect as @poweredbycaffeine said.

coletrain

Politicker

1

Account Executive

Bingo, if the meetings are happening and bearing fruit I see only encouragement here.
I've absolutely used similar phrases for booking meetings when cold calling and prospects weren't born yesterday. They know what they're accepting

HVACexpert

Politicker

3

sales engineer

What would you like them to say? Do you have a script written or suggestions on hand? It’s also weird you can’t talk the guy? A very simple, quick, and professional conversation could solve this quickly.

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

3

☕️

Is the first meeting intended to be a demo or a discovery? Maybe it’s a process disconnection problem?

SaaSguy

Tycoon

3

Account Executive

You should be having a discussion and discovery before pitch dumping on a demo anyway imo

antiASKHOLE

Tycoon

2

Bravado's Resident Asshole

I mean, just talk to the dude and their manager about what is going on. This is what is called professionalism. If it is hurting the conversion, then a discussion is necessary for the company's success.

pirate

Big Shot

2

🦜☠️ Account Executive

I like that it's a talk and not a demo and especially if it gets results that's really good?

Diablo

Politicker

2

Sr. AE

I agree with all the comments. What’s the expectations during the first call with you? How is the current qualification affecting you? Best is to sit with them, get their view, talk about your expectations and solve this.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

1

🦊

Straightforward. I like it.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

2

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

I have experienced the opposite problem - BDRs overpromising a meeting (eg a full- blown demo) when the first meeting is usually preliminary.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

1

🦊

Dude.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

1

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

I’m in enterprise. I can give a look at a trial environment and some basic function - but inevitably these go into the weeds about feature/functionality rather than what we would be solving for. Drives me nuts. Let me decide what’s appropriate based on the conversation and decide how much to share/show out if the gate or what will end up hopelessly derailing things and setting a bad tone.

BigShrimpin

Catalyst

1

Account executive

if you pay them on getting any meeting thats what you'll get show me the incentive ill show you the result
if you're dealing with shit quality demos then reset the expectation or change comp to qualified meetings but if what theyre setting is working fine then why are you worried?

Pachacuti

Politicker

1

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

Your first meeting shouldn't necessarily be a demo, unless its a very quick sales cycle. Don't you want to have a conversation with the customer before demoing to them?

0PercentCloseRate

Politicker

0

Oh boy

Hey I dealt with this both as an SDR and an AE.
Maybe AEs need to be flexible and ready to do a bit of discovery along with show + tell. AE/SDR relationships are hard -- I had an SDR who would often call outside the target ICP. It requires a lot of work between the two of them to fix.
SDRs are trying to hit quota and they are not incentivized to think differently. They need to be equipped with better language. The words he's using are not exactly bad imo, he's not promising a demo. As long as the AEs have the flexibility to pivot he should still be fine.
If this guy is really messing with process and can't take feedback well that's a serious team issue. If he gets upset from basic feedback by management then that's something that needs to be addressed and maybe needs to involve people above even you.

Dantback

Executive

0

SDR

If I got meetings through overusing words, my boss would put together an internal meeting to talk about the buzzwords that successfully pull people in

Bravado is a community of trusted sales professionals endorsed by their customers.

Products

The War Room Jobs Salary Guide Tech Sales U

Company

About Us How It Works Blog Bug Bounty

Contact

© 2024 Bravado Inc. All rights reserved.

Privacy Policy Legal and Privacy Center Sales Jobs

If you are hired as a contract sales rep by a Bravado customer, we may ask you to prove access to the employee email account provided to you by that customer. This data will be shared with customers to track your sales productivity; customers can use this data to confirm you meet the minimum activity requirements to pay out your ramp stipend and commission.