Quad

SDR

How do you know when you’ve mastered cold calling?

How do you know when you're ready for the next challenge and apply for an AE role? From

what I've read online it takes about 6-18 months of cold calling experience to be considered for an AE role but that doesn't measure progress or mastery.

🧠 Advice

🚀 Career Goals

😝 cold callingss

18 comments

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Pachacuti

Politicker

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

You have never completely mastered cold calling. Never.

oldcloser

Arsonist

💀

Gotta dispute this claim. You can achieve mastery, but only when you are completely aware of and have completely accepted the above, well-stated fact.

Pachacuti

Politicker

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

We are all just dust in the wind.
-Bill S. Preston, Esquire.

FoodForSales

Politicker

nice Bill & Ted reference!

Revenue_Rambo

Politicker

Director, Revenue Enablement

Mastering cold calling is only one piece of the puzzle to be an AE. Simply mastering this skill by no means translates to success in that role. It may help you get consideration faster, but that’s about it.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

🤩

GDO

Politicker

BDM

What is mastery? It all depends on

HVACexpert

Politicker

sales engineer

An AE is about organization, customer service, relationship generation, presentation skills, product knowledge, being a good teammate, and more. Cold calling helps get you up the AE door, but you have to open it, and you do so by showing you have these skills too.

Diablo

Politicker

Sr. AE

I know your need to be Ab experienced sdr to get into an AE thought sometimes I have seen people getting into a SMB role directly. Mastery? How would you measure that - quota attainment?

Kosta_Konfucius

Politicker

ERP Sales

You never mastered it since what works changes

It takes about a year if you are in a good situation to get promoted

Sunbunny31

Arsonist

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

Cold calling experience is only part of what it takes to move to AE. It's a step in the process.
How many times in the WR have we seen SDR/BDRs telling us that they're having a hard time moving to AE because they don't have closing experience?
What you're reading is only one small part of the process, is highly dependent on other factors, and may be also anecdotal.

wolfofmiami

Opinionated

🐺

It’s not abt the cold calling they just wanna see you in an SDR role for 6-18 months bc then they can measure your success as an SDR as far as how many times you hit quota.

Justatitle

Big Shot

Account Executive

In truth, you never master cold calling. There’s always some wild objection you get that throws you off and you need to consistently do it so you stay sharp with it. I went into an inbound role 4 years ago and it’s taken me until about 5 months ago to get back to being good at cold calling

ThatNewAE

Big Shot

Account Executive - Mid enterprise

You never would know if you have mastered cold calling. That's not a hard skill, it's more of a soft skill so you always have to keep changing, tweaking, learning and unlearning.

AnchorPoint

Politicker

Business Coach

When your conversion rate is 100%

ventox35

Politicker

Sales Leader

when you don't have to do it anymore

lowhangersalesbanger

Politicker

Account Executive

That is an arbitrary number to me. I think it always comes down to what you do with the time you have. I have seen people "master" the phones in a couple months and I have seen people who have been an SDR at the same company for 2 years who sound like they have never seen Mr. Bell's invention.

BigShrimpin

Politicker

Account executive

When you no longer have to do it