What is a Sales BDR and Why Is It An Important Role?

When building a strong marketing and sales team, nearly every company understands the value of marketing specialists and conventional sales representatives. Marketers execute outbound and inbound marketing strategies to attract leads.

Sales representatives engage leads and complete the sales process. Between marketing and closing sales, numerous cracks can appear within your sales pipeline. This is where the need for representatives capable of lead management can transform your marketing efforts and help increase revenues.

The most effective way to convert leads to sales is to efficiently qualify prospects. During the lead generation process, the role of sales business development representative (BDR) helps to expedite hot leads to your sales representatives while also managing warm and cold leads. These specialists bridge the divide often missing from the moment a prospect engages your brand and when key decision makers are ready to purchase.

An experienced BDR team is an integral part of any company’s sales team executing tasks with skill and precision. Generally, BDRs are responsible for outbound lead prospecting, qualifying customers, building relationships, and representing the company often as the point of first contact. It is the job of the sales BDR to take the lead in the sales process and help the internal sales reps close the deal. This is especially important in new product development, expanding into new markets, and nearly every B2B sales process where leads must be nurtured through a lengthy or complex sales cycle. 

Valve+Meter Performance Marketing’s outreach team is chock-full of higher-performing business development representatives. As an outsourcing lead generation partner with a proven track record of success, our mission is to identify business opportunities and generate leads that will keep your sales pipeline from running dry without having to overtax your budget and your existing sales and marketing teams.

Learn all about the roles and responsibilities of a BDR from the best in the business, and let us help you build a foundation of outbound leads with a higher likelihood of success!

The term business development representative refers to outbound marketing campaigns. Inbound marketing specialists are known as a sales development representative. These terms are often interchangeable because both roles are responsible for lead management, researching potential clients and frequently are the initial contact for your marketing efforts.

At Valve+Meter, we understand that our business development representatives are the tip of the spear for your sales efforts, and we take that very seriously. Our BDRs are confident in their approach and can cultivate a long list of actionable qualified leads that a professional sales executive can close with ease.

Hiring versus Outsourcing Sales BDR

Every business and marketing strategy is unique. In some sales models adding an internal business development representative or building an entire team is possible. For many small to medium sized business leaders, there are clear benefits to outsourcing sales BDR services to professional marketing. Before you choose what options are best for you, gaining a clear understanding of what a sales BDR does within your sales process is key.

Focused Targeting

A key step of sales BDR is a deep understanding of your products and services. Additionally focused targeting determines the ideal markets and buyers your marketing will reach. In cold calling and outbound prospecting, these steps reduce costs, improve performance, and help to build more individualized messages.

V+M’s business development reps work hard to understand your company’s target market and are able to identify potential customers and create leads for your sales team. Each business development rep has experience in generating qualified prospects by researching their needs and determining if they are a good fit for the company’s products or services. This helps us filter out any cold leads and feed your internal sales team a robust list of piping-hot leads.

Relationship Building

From the first point of contact, sales BDRs work to gain credibility, authority and trust for your brand. Throughout sales qualifying and sales appointments, BDR establishes a rapport with your prospective clients. The nuanced skills of an ambassador help to guide cold leads to consider your products and services. While a conventional sales rep is keenly focused on closing a deal, BDRs are most often working toward the first stage of the sales process where a prospect moves from the engagement phases to the consideration stage. 

Our business development reps are skilled in the art of relationship-building. One of the most underappreciated parts of the sales process is being able to relate to a prospect on a personal level. You wouldn’t leave your keys to your business with a stranger. Customers are far more likely to buy what you’re selling if they have a connection with the person they are talking to.

Once trust has been established, our sales development reps can effectively and professionally communicate your company’s value proposition, promote the features and benefits of your company’s products and services, and set up meetings with your internal sales team to close the sale.

The ideal BDR will have a potent combination of education, sales experience, skills, and knowledge. While many of these qualifications seem similar to a traditional sales rep, there is a key distinction in personality and demeanor of most BDRs. 

Valve+Meter’s BDRs take a strategic approach to sales prospecting and lead generation. This includes researching the market, leveraging technology, and setting goals.

Researching the Market

As we have stated multiple times, market research is a crucial part of the sales process. Our BDRs familiarize themselves with their target market, identify potential customers in need, and have the business acumen to start the sales conversation while prospecting outbound leads. This gives our partners a leg up by effectively serving up and qualifying leads in larger quantities.

Leveraging Technology

Leveraging technology is also important for sales BDRs. This can be one of the biggest hurdles when building your own team. Outreach applications including Apollo.io, ZoomInfo, Ocean.io and Outreach.io help to find leads and reach more customers. Sales BDRs train and understand the complexity of these platforms and applications. Our BDRs are also well-versed in all the major customer relationship management (CRM) tools like Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. They use these platforms to track customer data, keep track of customer interactions, and store customer information for future use. This technology allows our BDRs to manage their relationships in a more organized and efficient way.

Setting Goals

Cold calls and meetings scheduled are the two key performance indicators (KPIs) for a business development rep at V+M . Our BDRs set daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly goals to ensure our clients get as many qualified leads into the sales pipeline as possible.

Building a sales development team of business development can be cost prohibitive for smaller companies and medium sized companies. Especially if you need sales development representatives for inbound lead qualification, outsourcing sales development aids in prospecting outbound leads.

At Valve+Meter Performance Marketing, our business development representatives (BDRs) can be an essential piece to your outbound marketing strategy. We are experienced in generating leads, prospecting and qualifying customers, building relationships, and representing your company in a professional manner as the first point of contact.

With our outreach team’s unique combination of education, experience, and business acumen, we can bring a more reasoned and strategic approach to your sales process, and cultivate professional relationships with potential customers. Start a conversation with us today! Contact Valve+Meter to learn more about how our BDR team can transform your business.