Drewshape

Director of Sales

Unpopular opinion about BDRs

In software sales there is a tendency of hiring young resources, at their first sales experience as SDR or BDR.

Prospecting (especially outbound) is probably one of the most difficult sales skills. I would argue that anyone could close a very well qualified deal, however not anybody can create outbound pipeline in targeted accounts.

In my opinion outbound should be done by the most experienced sales people in the company: senior reps should have a solid grasp on the value proposition, buyers personas, use cases and are better at articulating the messaging.

Why do we leave the most important task in the sales process to junior SDR and BDR reps?

🔎 Prospecting

💌 Cold Emailing

📞 Cold Calling

15 comments

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JuicyKlay

Celebrated Contributor

Because senior reps either don’t like cold outreach or think they’re too good for it 🤷‍♂️

Chep

WR Officer

Bitcoin Adoption Specialist

Exactly what I was thinking. Spot on answer JuicyKlay

BCD

Politicker

BDR

nailed it

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

Not everyone can close a well qualified deal. It also takes a fair amount of experience to figure out what a well qualified deal looks like.

Kanyebut4sales

WR Lieutenant

Account Executive

10000%

Lumbergh

Politicker

Sr Account Exec

VERY good point. Proper qualification is something lost on way too many reps I've worked with. Happy ears and bloated pipelines galore

MrNiche

Valued Contributor

Senior Account Executive

Absolutely love this. It typically takes several months to understand what buying signals look like in your industry. My personal preference with the SDR/AE relationship is where there's a 1:1 alignment. An SDR partnering with an AE. But if the AE has a good SDR, they're doing a disservice by not including them on down funnel activities (mostly to listen & learn, not contribute). AEs in this role should be mentoring their SDRs to help them better understand the full cycle beyond the first call. Without exposure, there's no context for them to identify well qualified deals & how to approach them.

salesnerd

WR Officer

Head of Growth

I've seen some organizations where the seniormost SDRs do all the handling of inbound. People assume that inbound is the easiest and therefore should go to the most junior folks... however, they're also your most expensive leads that often close at the highest rate.

AlecBaldwinsHairline

Valued Contributor

Head of Sales Development

BDRs in terms of talent, are the gap between SDR and AE.

BDRs should be people who can be an AE in less than 18 months

SDRs should be more junior and fully inbound.

CaneWolf

Politicker

Call me what you want, just sign the damn contract

Yeah, I didn't mind prospecting as much in the early days of being an AE. Now I'd really, really prefer to limit my time spent doing that.

And maybe any competent AE could close a well-qualified deal. There are AEs/managers who can screw that up and the general population certainly wouldn't close that deal.

Beans

Big Shot

Enterprise Account Executive

I completely agree.

It is one of the hardest parts of sales, and there's a reason a lot of young BDR's who come from the service industry tend to crush it.

Rallier

Politicker

SDR Manager and Consultant

I agree that it's probably a better way to do things. The issue is that tenured salespeople don't want to do it. Nobody likes cold calling, cold emailing, and generally being a pest. So while it may be a better option, having inexperienced reps doing the hard part still works

Telehealth_2the_Moon

Notable Contributor

Director of Business Development

I agree completely. A BDR role should be a rewarding position in and of itself. BDRs with a year+ of experience that take the job seriously are lightyears ahead of new hires, they should be rewarded for that by having a role designed to happily keep them there. All levels of sales positions require different skill sets and shouldn't be considered a traditional pyramid hierarchy from BDR - AE - Manager - Etc.

scubasteve

Valued Contributor

Key Account Executive

I am an enteprise AE with a shared BDR. My BDR is awesome, but I still hold myself accountable for building pipeline as well. However, most of my propsecting involves networking (actual networking, not just connecting with people on LinkedIn), leveraging partner and customer relationships, and deeper researched outreach. It would be very challenging to consistently call at a high enough volume on top of my own propsecting and working deals. All in all, it takes a team.

cw95

Politicker

Sales Development Lead

I've been at my company (tech start up) for 2+ years now and never had good quality inbound leads. I have been 100% outbound prospecting and the only one in the company that does. Gets very tiring very quickly sometimes. Especially when marketing send a campaign randomly to a prospect you've been working on and then claim they got them in haha.

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Drewshape

Unpopular opinion about BDRs

15 comments

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