Jaga

Director of Sales and Business Development

Personal Narrative

Onboarding an AE who was an SDR at your company that got promoted.

hi all, wanted to get the opionions of those of you who have been in both the hiring position as well as the rep position for this scenario.

I manage a team of smb AEs and midmarket AEs, and currently we tend to promote SDRs internally to the smb role as it's smaller less complex deals to get their feet wet.

I've hired many AEs and BDRs in the past, or varying levels of experience. But I've found the internal SDR > AE promotion to be the most unique in that there are many areas you can cut corners such as not having to teach them as much about your ICP or tech stack since they're familiar with the company already - BUT they still need the attention and enablement of a truly green AE.

The ask here: what do you all feel is the best way to ramp this type of rep. 30-60-90 day actionables. Besides just setting them up with someone to shadow, and running calls/process with them.

Anyone had a great experience or bad experience they could pull from?

🎯 Career Development

☁️ Software Tech

7

8 comments

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Pachacuti

Politicker

3

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

Set the expectations from Day 1 that "play time" in the SDR pool is over:

Teach them a Sales Methodology. It doesn't matter which, just teach them one. Buy them a couple sales books too - GAP Selling is a good starter. Set up a regular 1-1 cadence to go over questions, results, etc.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

0

🦊

I was never a SDR/BDR so this kind of advice helps me better understand that role.

ASalesCoach

2

National Director of Sales

i have done this a number of times and might be about to do it again. if you have ever read the book the One Minute Manager, you have a good guidebook to follow.
You are correct in that they have more knowledge than a net new employee to the company, but they often do not have the level of details that the AEs have. you will need to take inventory of their knowledge, skills, relationships, experieneces, tendancies, and attitude to create the right path.
I take my entire onboarding program and go over with them each of the meetings I will be scheduling to get their input and understanding. I than determine which, if any they will skip. I also have to work with them on understand how the role they had a BDR differs from the AE so that we can start working on those Gaps. this can be a slower process than you will like because the BDR will almost certainly think they know more than they do and have greater skills than they do. They also will ask you for help less thinking that they should be able to do this without you.
Love the 30-60-90 day goals. Ask the new AE to develop that for you and it should include: activity levels, pipeline size, # of deals, closed deals, partner relationships (if you have those), customer interactions, product education, selling skills gap closing, negotiating skills, etc....
I think you get the point.
interact with them at the level they are for that explicit item in that meeting. they might be a function feature expert while being a business outcome based newbie. let them lead the discussion around the features and functions, but coach them / direct them on how to find the business value outcome.
let me know if this helps or if you want to dive deeper.

Maximas

Tycoon

0

Senior Sales Executive

Apparently, it's the very first time to promote SDRs internally to the AE positions.
What I recommend here is to focus on both training and coaching parts through specifying at least the last 2 hours of their shift for shadowing with the existing AEs and definitely to add meeting sessions with the latter to discuss challenges and best ways to outperform.
Finally if it's going to be a permanent path to hire AEs internally, I would definitely recommend to establish a training and a quality department for max support for that transition if the company doesn't have this yet!

ASalesCoach

0

National Director of Sales

i have done this a number of times and might be about to do it again. if you have ever read the book the One Minute Manager, you have a good guidebook to follow.
You are correct in that they have more knowledge than a net new employee to the company, but they often do not have the level of details that the AEs have. you will need to take inventory of their knowledge, skills, relationships, experieneces, tendancies, and attitude to create the right path.
I take my entire onboarding program and go over with them each of the meetings I will be scheduling to get their input and understanding. I than determine which, if any they will skip. I also have to work with them on understand how the role they had a BDR differs from the AE so that we can start working on those Gaps. this can be a slower process than you will like because the BDR will almost certainly think they know more than they do and have greater skills than they do. They also will ask you for help less thinking that they should be able to do this without you.
Love the 30-60-90 day goals. Ask the new AE to develop that for you and it should include: activity levels, pipeline size, # of deals, closed deals, partner relationships (if you have those), customer interactions, product education, selling skills gap closing, negotiating skills, etc....
I think you get the point.
interact with them at the level they are for that explicit item in that meeting. they might be a function feature expert while being a business outcome based newbie. let them lead the discussion around the features and functions, but coach them / direct them on how to find the business value outcome.
let me know if this helps or if you want to dive deeper.

Diablo

Politicker

0

Sr. AE

I don’t have a detailed insight but we have a proper onboarding session for such reps and they lack nurturing and closing experience. We put them on a hybrid role for a few weeks where they spend much time learning about the products, customers, spending time
with AEs, CSMs etc.

quotascammedeverytime

Opinionated

0

account executive

I think the bar is remarkably low and the fact that you listed 4 different check ins puts you in the top 10% of managers

salesblazer7

Fire Starter

0

Senior Account Executive

I'd start by assessing their current sales competency relative to your objective best talent. There are very few absolutes in life and sales is the perpetual gray area. From a coaching perspective it's about extracting the most from each person. There's no prescription that will serve as a one size fits all that everyone will apply the same way for maximum results. 10/10 times they won't individually have a clue what the gap is between where they are and where want to/need to be in terms of quality. If you can extrapolate the gap and define an action plan, that'll organically boost their sales proficiency on top of the expected procedural onboarding to the role

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