SDR’s/ SDR managers, what do your KPI’s look like and do you think they help?

Hey WR fam,


Company is undergoing a lot of changes (acquisition, new leadership etc.) the most pressing of the changes to me is our new outbound strategy. It’s a good idea overall but very unrefined and lacking data.


One of the main issues with it is because of how it’s structured, the average SDR on the team is only making about ~25 calls a day.


I want to know how you or your team is breaking up their day. (Ex. 60 calls, 15 emails, 10 inmails or something) and do you feel like having those KPI’s actually helps with opp generation?


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5
RedLightning
Politicker
3
Mid-Market AE
They absolutely do as long as it's data backed. They can function as great benchmarks, but it seems like you're at that experimental phase. You can always look backwards and see that the team generated X opps, from Y accounts, by doing Z activities therefore every Z activities per account should mean X opps and scale from there. Just keep tweaking. You can only learn from doing.

There are some variables here, like the addressable universe etc.

60 is a reasonable number of dials/ day. In the past, we've set it up where you were encouraged to get your first 10 dials in before 10 AM (we were CST). These would typically be late stage in the cadence - think of it as a warm up to prime you for the warmer leads or fresher cold ones.

Two power hours/day to knock out the remaining 50ish with some calls between. 

Between those sessions, obviously take a few mental breaks. But, block out time for those targeted emails/inmails.

So have some account research time blocks in there. It doesn't have to be too crazy but - I saw you hired X or Y news - something that ties in with your Value Prop or is a good outreach trigger. It'll give your team a reason to call outside of "you fit our ICP"


The time blocks should be something like - account research, emailing/inmail, dialing, follow up emails (scheduling, more info, etc), following up on missed meetings, and some time for various catch up work breaks and self improvement

Hope this helps! Good luck 


Meetingsetter
Politicker
0
SDR
Wow, redlighting, I wish I could upvote you 100 times on this. Thank you! This helps a ton and honestly gives me a lot of hope, seriously. Gonna share this with my manager so we can sort the team out as a whole
RedLightning
Politicker
1
Mid-Market AE
NP. Good luck. One thing I forgot to put in there or contextualize was that 60 dials is doable depending on what the SDR's have to do for their leads. Are they given to you or do you have to go find companies/contacts? @Meetingsetter 

Also, how do you set a profile picture? I'm trying to get THE red lightning as my profile pic but it wont work
Meetingsetter
Politicker
0
SDR
To answer your first question: I’m on the outbound team so primarily hunting down net new business, or new contacts at existing business. We use Sales Nav, ZoomInfo, and we kinda still have a trial of lusha (ZI alternative) going.


Well I did it on my phone, profile > edit (top right pencil icon) > then I added the screenshot from my gallery 
KendallRoy
Politicker
1
AM
I've always been of the opinion that minimum metrics will inevitably lead to faked or low quality outreach. A rep also might make lower activity but have a higher meeting conversion rate. The quality of emails and calls is the most important thing. 
Meetingsetter
Politicker
0
SDR
I see where you’re coming from and tend to agree with that school of thought, especially for the more experienced reps. 

However, in my current situation a majority of the team is new (like 4 months or less experience) so I feel like having some structure to the day will get us that experience we need to where our quality of messaging is good enough that those metrics aren’t really needed anymore
GDO
Politicker
1
BDM
What gets measured get done (quality of how it gets done needs to be measured as well)

Most KPIs should just benchmark. Looking at the peer average and looking at the benchmark of the more successful SDRs.
BlueJays2591
Politicker
0
Federal Business Dev Director
We only track calls currently. 30 calls per day. Everything else is up to the BDR and how they want to set meetings. the calls ensure a certain volume, but for the most part its up to the BDR to hit quota. If you hit quota, I don't care how you get there.
CuriousFox
WR Officer
0
🦊
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