I was an SDR myself for a good chunk of my career, and I know how it is on that side of the waters. I also know, now as an AE, how it is on this side of the shore. I used to struggle massively with collaborating effectively with my SDRs. The first year went by just fighting with them for the quality of leads, for the poor qualification and how they are not helping the AEs in building pipes.
Few tips on how to have a world class collaboration between AEs and SDRs:
- Start with knowing your SDRs: Start with knowing your AEs: One shoe never fits all. So we need to start first by how this SDR / AE is professionally, how they go about working and then think of ways to get a buy-in. If you have feedback to share, they need to be receptive to it or you will end up further offending them. If they have feedback to share, you need to understand where they are coming from; or you'd end up almost burning a bridge.
- Let's get down to the Job Descriptions! The idea is to have synergies between the job descriptions. If the SDRs believe that their role is to really just book meetings, that is not really boding well for the AEs, right? They need to understand that their role is to help the AE build a healthy pipeline and get revenue FOR THE COMPANY. This needs to be inculcated and imbibed into the SDRs mindset - not an overnight process.
- Get that tone checked! I have seen (firsthand as an SDR, and now in a team of AEs) that when an SDR makes a mistake, the tone of AEs completely changes. It's also important for the AEs to know that SDRs are not choosing intentionally to pass on a bad lead. They make errors, they become desperate themselves and thus the lead comes through. The AEs need to build healthy rapport with the SDRs - it goes two ways.
- Inculcating 'The Bible Rule' with CRM: There also needs to be a habit where both SDRs and AEs treat CRM as their bible. All updates need to go to this bible. The only reason being, I have also seen AEs chasing SDRs about lead updates, SDRs chasing AEs for deal updates - that usually causes more friction than we like to believe. So the best bet - treat your CRM as your H2O.
SDR <> AE needs to be more of a team than a team of AEs / SDRs themselves. This collaboration is VITAL and I cannot stress on it enough !
Do you have more tips on making this collaboration smooth?
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