OMG_It_has_a_watermark

Head of Sales

Marketing Inbounds vs SDR

Despite the fact that marketing is notorious for adding a form to anything and calling it a "lead", my org wants to build a sales and marketing strategy based on industry-specific / feature-specific ebooks and have the SDR field them.

The theory is they will contribute significantly to pipeline growth, however, in my past experience they normally have low conversions.

Thoughts? Has this worked well for anyone, is there any advice you can share?

Should the SDR team field ebook / content downloads?

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🔎 Prospecting

👑 Sales Strategy

📨 Marketing

12 comments

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Rallier

Politicker

SDR Manager and Consultant

ooooof my company recently tried to do this. If you're entirely dependent on booking meetings from content downloads, you're going to have a bad time. Downloading an ebook is NOT buying intent, despite what marketing thinks.

Edit: This was a startup. It may be different at other more established companies with a reputation for thought leadership

OMG_It_has_a_watermark

Good Citizen

Head of Sales

We are actually a start-up too, which is why I was concerned about allocating too much time towards connecting with these downloads. Even though I have seen relevant companies and great titles come through recently, not sure the intent is there. I agree.

Rallier

Politicker

SDR Manager and Consultant

That's exactly the issue I ran into. Great companies and great names, but absolutely zero intent. I was much better off chasing completely cold leads

CoorsKing

WR Officer

Retired King of the Coors Knights

I can confidently say in my 3 years of selling at my current company where we do this, I have never had a single marketing lead actually convert to a closed deal. I have however, woken up at 4am to take calls in different time zones with "hot leads" marketing insisted on having convos with to find out they are interns or people actively trying to get a job at my company.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

This makes me so damn angry I can't see straight. Glad to know it's not just my company.

paddy

WR Officer

Director of Business Development

Depends on what your product is and identifying the intent. If you're using forms for leads you should probably invest in click tracking. For some products, things are bought and not sold.

OMG_It_has_a_watermark

Good Citizen

Head of Sales

I know the team is looking into content experience platforms that should help with the click tracking, but that is a good point.

Riss

Opinionated

I don’t even know anymore 🤪

Depends on what other pipelines you have for leads. I typically handle these more like "research & feedback" calls. If I can't set a meeting, I can at least know what drew their attention enough to download. It takes 1 minute to make a phone call and while most of my AE's avoided and ignored these leads, if I bulk dialed in through 50-60 of them, I'd usually have a couple good conversations, and maybe a booked call. But, the other reps had plenty of pipeline/other useful outbound tactics ...I usually saved this for when I was running dry.

Riss

Opinionated

I don’t even know anymore 🤪

It's good cold call and thinking on your feet practice too.

kelun8

Politicker

Never had luck getting meetings from those people, most of them are usually not the right person or have no intend to buy. Someone even said to me "thought I downloaded this to help with some headaches but got another from this cold call instead"

Not worth the effort or time for very poor outcome, don't think we ever closed a deal or even got past a demo from content downloads. To the drip campaign they go!

kelun8

Politicker

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

Hasn't worked for me.

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OMG_It_has_a_watermark

Marketing Inbounds vs SDR

Should the SDR team field ebook / content downloads?

12 comments

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