Cold Callers become Your Best Closers
The idea of hiring SDRs to cold call prospects and pitch them on your enterprise technology product is a horrifying one. I know because I’ve been there.
However, not only does it work in terms of driving leads, but these Sales Development Representatives (aka Business Development Representatives, SDRs or BDRs) eventually grow up to become your organization’s best Account Executives.
This sales script cannot credibly be taught to kids.
It’s not politically correct to refer to one’s employees as kids, but that’s what I was thinking. And if you’re pondering hiring SDRs for the first time, you’re probably thinking the same thing. I’m just putting it down on paper to let you know that you’re not alone.
Let’s get on with the story.
I’d done my fair share of cold calling, but I was also a founder. While I didn’t like to be hung up on any more than the next person, I knew that if I got a hook I could shine. Not because I was taught any sort of sales script but because the product was essentially part of my DNA.
That said, an SDR team of one — a founder no less — is obviously not a sound model for attaining scale.
But how could this stuff be taught, much less to a group of fresh college grads in the form of SDRs? Surely it couldn’t, right? RIGHT?!
Inevitable failure be damned, I hired a team of three SDRs because that’s what the sales books said to do. Apparently three is a magic number that drives both competition and camaraderie, so three it was. I gave them the basic lay of the land, trained them on a script and got them comfortable enough with the few AEs we had on board. Then it was off to the races: they were cold calling within a week of hiring them.
(Yikes.)
But then the craziest thing happened — and you’ll just have to take my word on this: they started to produce demos. My mind was blown.
More than that, the SDR team was laughing and having fun — trading tips of what did / didn’t work as well as funny tactics they’d use to get prospects to respond. Quite honestly, I was just as happy to be in the dark on these tactics. The hate mail wasn’t pouring in about what terrible SDRs we have and we were driving demos. Whatever the SDRs were doing was working and frankly if I was to find any peace, I didn’t need to know every detail.
Ok so they can cold call. But how are these kids going to sell our fancy $30,000+ product?
So we started to scale things pretty quickly thinking that while the SDRs might be having fun now, they’ll burn out in no time. We needed a deep bench to get ahead of turnover so we can keep these demos pouring in.
But turns out they didn’t burn out nor did they leave the company.
Instead quite the opposite occurred: our SDRs shifted into overdrive. They were often first in and last out of the office. Cold callers by day became rising AEs by night as they learned our go-to-market in and out, ranging from our sales processes to our demo script to becoming experts on the product themselves. Within 12 months of hiring our first SDR, we were ready to promote one of them on to the Account Executive team.
I’ll spare you the details of this once-upon-a-time SDR’s growing up process in the AE program, but suffice to say she ramped pretty quickly. Not only that but she eventually went on to become the best AE in the company, running circles around those who were 10, sometimes 20 years more seasoned.
This SDR-to-AE story was not one of a kind. Not even close.
Sure not every SDR went on to become a shining star AE but the success rate was shockingly high — far better than hiring experienced AEs. And that’s not even considering the ramp time, which was far shorter for AEs who rose from the SDR program versus those hired in straight to closing positions.
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
Once you’ve discovered product-market fit, it’s time to start building your SDR program. Not only because they’ll drive leads (they will!) but because you need to start building a bench of future talent for your blossoming AE program. And there’s no better strategy than developing your AEs organically through an SDR program.
