The Role of SDRs in Building a Strong Sales Team
You’ve got a dynamite sales team that helps your business grow with strong closing techniques. Building relationships and attending to the needs of your customers before the sale and after closing can be another challenge altogether, though. Sales teams and individual sales team members often focus on closing deals and then transferring new clients to operations. When inbound marketing campaigns fill your sales pipeline, your sales department may not be equipped with the skills and training needed to qualify leads, build relationships, and nurture leads. The sales development representative SDR possesses these exact qualities to benefit the entire sales process.
Both on internal teams and outsourced SDRs, the role of SDRs is to greet potential leads, educate prospects, convert them into a qualified lead, and transfer to sales professionals to close deals. These specialized positions ease the burden of your sales team and helps your business flourish. Valve+Meter Performance Marketing helps businesses learn how and when hiring sales development representatives increases customer acquisition levels. We also consult with you to understand your marketing pain points and how outsourcing SDRs can convert new customers and improve the sales experience for your brand.
What is the Role of SDR?
In the age of search engines, nearly every purchase starts with a search. When a person or business has a pain point, a search will refer them to your website, phone, social media, or other platforms. These role of SDRs is to promptly and courteously great these inbound leads on behalf of your brand. These skilled professionals work to identify next steps including knowing where a lead is located within the sales funnel and only advancing qualified leads to a closing sales rep.
It should be noted there is a clear distinction between the role of business development representatives. BDRs work as part of outbound lead generation executing cold calling, sales prospecting, account based marketing, and other forms of outreach. BDRs fill your sales pipeline with the same types of highly qualified leads as SDRs but outbound marketing is unique.
The role of SDRs is key to making the first impression on potential customers. While many inbound leads have engaged with your brand through the website or landing page, SDRs who are charismatic, articulate, and confident initiate a positive sales experience immediately. You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Sales development reps must be extremely knowledgeable of your products and services. This greets both new and existing customers with a powerful knowledge resource within your team.
Not every lead is hot and ready to buy. Instead of slowing your sales leaders and clogging up the pipeline, SDRs do a lot of the heavy lifting for a sales team. Through a combination of strong communication skills and following scripted prompts, your sales development representative will guide potential customers through the process. Depending on your business models, SDRS will engage leads via phone calls, social media messages, emails, text messages, video conferencing, and in-person meeting. The ultimate goal of the role of SDR is to convert prospects to leads at the moment of between consideration and intent.
SDRs versus Sales Reps
The sales development representative is one of many roles within a sales team. Each team is unique but within Valve+Meter, the role of SDR is to facilitate sales teams and individual sales reps. Sales development helps to manage leads and prevent clogs and cracks forming in the sales pipeline. Potential customers reach out to your brand everyday but these prospects are located throughout the sales funnel.
If your sales manager or sales executives contact every lead, then effort is wasted. Potential customers at the top of the funnel (ToFu) need nurturing and more knowledge before sitting with sales reps. There are two common occurrences when ToFu leads contact sales reps who are not trained and skilled in lead nurturing. First, prospects who are in the awareness or early interest stage are pressured to the evaluation process. Highly qualified leads can quickly be turned off and seek out competitors with a better structure. Second, this can lead to bottom of the funnel prospects being lost because sales reps are spending extra effort on the wrong leads.
A sales development representative is trained and skills at identifying where prospects are with the funnel. When your team has a specialist to qualify leads and manage prospects the sales cycle works more efficiently. Less leads are lost and sales representatives focus on the right tasks.
Signs You Need Sales Development Representatives To Help Your Business
Great business leaders understand that the sales development representative job is an important part of the sales cycle. Investing in sales development reps excel in qualifying leads reducing stress on sales executives and impacting revenue goals. There are number of key indicators within your data to know when hiring sales development specialists are required.
Sales Have Stalled or Come in Seasons
A consistent flow of leads is what’s needed to make sure your business stays consistent every season. Seasonal businesses are faced with a deluge of leads and SDR tools help separate the best prospects from ToFu leads. If your sales team members struggle to maintain a consistent flow of leads or are overwhelmed with unqualified leads, an SDR team could help.
Your Current Sales Team is At Capacity
Sales teams that have too many responsibilities on their plate or are overwhelmed with too many unqualified leads may not have the capacity to close deals or find new prospects. When sales reps can focus on new BoFu leads and maintaining relationships with existing customers, then overall business health improves.
Your Team Has Been Having Trouble Closing Deals
Nurturing quality leads takes time and multiple follow-ups. Sales development reps use active listening, mirroring, and other techniques to understand prospects challenges. If your team is overwhelmed with too many unqualified leads or is not dedicating the time needed to close deals, then additional business development representatives could be helpful.
Your Sales and Marketing Strategies Don’t Align
Data is what drives client prospecting. Oftentimes, this data comes from CRM software. Sales representatives often struggle at maintaining good data, and sales managers use this data to forecast sales. The SDR position organizes data so new customers are managed properly and your business leaders have accurate data to plan and execute marketing and sales campaigns.
Your Business Isn’t Growing
Working relationships with current customers is what keeps businesses afloat, but doesn’t help yours grow. Bringing in new qualified leads through the sales funnel is what starts growth in a business. When you execute marketing campaigns, sales development representatives can help manage new leads so your business grows the right way.
Sales Reps Spend Too Much Time in Early-Stage Activities
Sales reps that spend too much time on sales prospecting and not enough time closing deals are not doing the steps to make these qualified leads convert. An account executive should have a balance of new leads and current leads in their pipeline. When the balance is skewed one way or another, they could use help from their sales leaders to make better use of their time.
How to Hire for the Role of SDR
A sales development representative role can be challenging to hire. For small to medium sized business this job is often an entry-level position. This limits the type of candidates you will attract. You will also need to know what type of qualities and training you will need in an SDR. The personality traits of a sales development representative may be different than conventional sales reps.
For instance, while a sales development representative is involved in the sales process, the key goal is to identify whether prospects are ideal potential customers for your brand. Instead of focusing on converting a lead to a customer, the SDR role is essentially interviewing prospects. They must have listening skills paired with acumen to recognize the best business opportunities for your business.
Even though this role involves soft people skills including enthusiasm and charm, an SDR position must include time management skills, active listening, organizational skills, experience in CRM and data software, and being involved in the same learning process to become a sales professional. They must understand all the sales team members roles and your entire operations process. This means they must be of above average intelligence.
You will also need to hire people with the capacity to stay in tune and anticipate market trends. The role of SDR meets potential customer through multimedia including emails, social media, and other platforms. Sales development representatives can also handle incoming leads that are generated through marketing efforts like website content forms, content downloads, or event registration. You will need to hire for a team that understands all mediums and can intelligently and effectively guide leads through the funnel.
You will need to build a team of SDRs that has empathy and emotional maturity. Prospecting, qualifying, and nurturing leads requires patience and tact. Many sales teams struggle because leads are lost to poor stewardship. High-quality leads will need to be nurtured and move at their own pace. This is especially important in B2B lead qualifying where decision makers must account for many variables and may take months or more than a year before they are ready to set a sales appointment.
Finally, once you find the right team of candidates, you will need to invest in all of the technology and ongoing improvements for your team to of SDRs to succeed. This process can take time but can be immensely rewarding to increasing revenues.
Why You Should Outsource an SDR Team
Like most marketing efforts, building a team of expert SDRs takes capital. Outsourcing the role of SDR to an experienced marketing company, can easily save yourself time and money. Valve+Meter has a team of inbound and outbound sales professionals to increase sales opportunities for our business partners. Our team is highly trained in CRM software, data interpretation, and the other prerequisites of the best sales development representatives.
As well as expertise, our sales development rep is committed specifically to your account. The SDR team works as an extension of your sales team. All the data gathered, strategies, and results fit directly into your sales process. For seasonal companies, new startups, and businesses that are growing rapidly, outsourcing sales development representative services leverages the scale and capacity of your efforts at a fraction of the cost of building your own staff.
Valve + Meter Performance Marketing is an experienced marketing company that helps you scale your lead generation strategies based on data. This means when your business needs our services you can open the valve and increase leads. During slower periods or when your sales pipeline is full, we can scale down our efforts and close the valve. With CRM data and advanced marketing tools, we can make sure that your message is fluid throughout, and finding qualifying inbound leads is accurate, deliberate, and effective.
Talk to V+M About Adding More Leads to Your Sales Pipeline Today
If you’re ready to make your current sales team stronger, then it’s time to add sales development representatives. We have a strong sales development rep team that can get your sales qualification moving faster, meaning more leads to your business, and more conversions. Your account executives will appreciate the help by taking lead prospecting tasks off their backs while still having a number of sales opportunities available for them to close on. Talk to Valve + Meter to see how we can unite your marketing and sales efforts to create a sales team that will help your business grow.