I’m the first BDR at a growing Silicon Valley marketing agency - need direction

I was selling SaaS until this year, & jumped into an agency as their first sales hire. I report to a VP and the CEO, and we have no processes in place. None. I have to write sequences and do all prospecting for several LOBs. I book meetings, but everything up to that point is a process I need to build. Would love to hear people’s thoughts on how to successfully scale an agency thru generating SQLs.

🔎 Prospecting

👑 Sales Strategy

✌️ Growing Pains

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poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

Have you been responsible for building the sales process from scratch? Sounds like you’re in a position to fail if you don’t have the background or playbook to pull from.

How much is the VP willing to help?

tz_sv

BDR

VP is definitely willing to arm me with whatever tools I need, and they had very manual processes for new business, but they mostly relied on relationship and back-door deals. But I don’t know what I don’t know, it’s a huge undertaking. We have a good stack but as far as prospecting goes, I haven’t found great channels or messaging yet.

IAMTHEDOG

Valued Contributor

Director of Sales

I am in the exact same situation. Ask what the problems are, and figure it out. If there's no sales process or CRM, build one. E-sign docs have been a godsend for me as well btw.

dncsv

OG Sales Savage

SD manager

To get messaging under control you need a couple of things:

1. Learn as much about your current customers as possible. i.s. what problems did your agency solve? What was life like for your customer before you started working together and how has it improved since then.
2. Ask your CEO and VP to help you prioritize vertical/industry/persona/Titles. In other words, Ideal Customer Profile. Make a plan with them to go after a specific segment of those for a specified period of time. Spend a month or so prospecting into that segment but pivot quickly on messaging if you don't get traction within the first few days. Dialing will be your best friend during this time, you can ask for prospects for advice on what they care about.
3. A fast way to validate your automatic is through conversion rates. How many emails are delivering, how many replies/unsubscribes. Same with phone calls. When are the prospects hanging up, when are they engaging with your script.

At the end of the day, knowing your audience and what pains they're dealing with everyday will be how to develop valuable content that gets responses. Personalization is fine but intentionality in knowing what your prospects need is better.

hope that helps!

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tz_sv

I’m the first BDR at a growing Silicon Valley marketing agency - need direction

4 comments

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