Is Sales Development more of a sales function or marketing function?

Most of the time Sales Development rolls up to Direct Sales but sometimes it rolls up to Marketing. In your opinion, which one makes more sense and why? How have you seen the sales development function change depending on if it’s part of marketing or sales?

Is sales development more like sales or marketing?

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👑 Sales Strategy
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4
Telehealth_2the_Moon
Notable Contributor
2
Director of Business Development
B2B Marketing really should just be under the sales umbrella in my opinion. It's just the highest point of the same funnel most of the time. Unless you're a large company with a real advertising budget, marketing's goal is lead gen, just like sales. 
Donut_giveup
Praised Answer
1
SDR Manager
Interesting perspective!
ilovemondays
Executive
0
Senior Account Executive
Precisely put.
Donut_giveup
Praised Answer
1
SDR Manager
At my current company, sales development used to roll up to sales and now it rolls up to marketing. 

the biggest change is we no longer have a designated inbound SDR. The inbounds are distributed across the team. Each day one SDR handles inbound inquiries but distributes to the appropriate sdrs territory to reach out. 
ilovemondays
Executive
0
Senior Account Executive
So it was a cosmetic change since you should have been doing that from the start, even when it was in sales, lest you had a humongous amount of inbound leads.

Inbound leads make you soft.
CuriousFox
WR Officer
1
🦊
Marketing at my company.
Donut_giveup
Praised Answer
0
SDR Manager
Does it work well for your company that way? How is inbound handled?
CuriousFox
WR Officer
1
🦊
I'm going to say no. It's pretty frustrating. 
slaydie
Big Shot
1
Account Executive
Originally SDR's rolled up to sales at my company but then they switched to marketing...it's kind of bonkers to me as it truly is more of a sales job. They are all just doing outbound prospecting anyways and the inbound leads go to the AE so I am not too sure why it works this way. Would love to hear from a SDR/BDR manager or someone else who may know why
Donut_giveup
Praised Answer
1
SDR Manager
Oh interesting that you give the inbound leads directly to the AE!  We still give the SDR the chance to work the lead and set a meeting. Whether it’s a content download or demo request... the SDR works those “for” the Ae. 

I kind of feel like sdrs are the liaison between sales and marketing. Regardless of which dept they roll up to they will interact with both. Sdrs are doing top of funnel work just like marketing is. But sdrs also need to work closely with AEs. So I see the role as a bridge. 
slaydie
Big Shot
1
Account Executive
Yeah, we used to give leads to the SDR but realized that it was just adding an extra step - in the customers process so we've been having better conversion rates since they funnel right into the AE now. I definitely see how it can work well both ways depending on the company, product and of course customers.
ilovemondays
Executive
0
Senior Account Executive
Yeah it really comes down to the quality of the leads you're getting.
Sometimes it's a waste of AE time, sometimes it's a waste of SDR time.
ilovemondays
Executive
0
Senior Account Executive
The definition is that it is Demand Generation.

Where do you consider Demand Generation to factor within, marketing or sales?

In my not so humble opinion, There's no such thing as marketing, there's only the Revenue org, which can be CRO or CMO-led, depending on the nature of your solution/product/service.

But don't say that within earshot of your marketing folks... They don't even know the definition of marketing nor how it is different from advertising and communication.

Think of it this way - who do you think is more responsible, or has more leverage, in making your company top of mind - BRANDING or your sales reps who are helping execs on a day to day basis?

'Marketing people' overestimate their strategic relevance to the company 99% of the time.

One thing I can tell you though, is that marketers and copy people are shit at empathy, and that's why you don't wanna soil your DemandGen people by having them meet on the regular with these folk... Or worse, report to them.

And you most DEFINITELY don't want to let them write outreach cadences or sales enablement.

It takes a salesperson to do DemandGen, a full-blown salesperson.

Even full-stack marketers with ~10 years of experience barely have any notion of how revenue is actually acquired by the sales rep, or the commitments that must be established between you and the prospect for a deal to close, so usually, unless you have a really good culture with really good managers, it is bad form to have Hunters (SDR, MDR, LDR, BDR, ADR) report into marketing
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Discussion
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