The Sales Development Playbook

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Strategy

The value of a sales development effort is measured by increased won business per AE / or new customer acquisition. It's simply a play to build pipeline and accelerate revenue growth. Success in sales development means accepting these two realities.

Elements of Excellent SDR teams
Strategy - Align your sales development model with your specific market dynamics and buyer's journey 
Specialization - Innovating and specializing to your prospects universe
Recruiting - Hiring, compensation
Retention - Motivating and building career path
Execution - Executing the mission
Leadership - Who and how to lead

In an immature market, the number one challenge your SDRs face is to arouse curiosity around a business issue that potentially hasn’t even been recognized yet.

PACT2
Pain - What pressing business issue needs to be solved
Authority - People who can sign on the dotted line, or influence people who can sign on the dotted line
Consequence - The implications of not acting. 
Target Profile - Confirming fit and identifying red flags. Technical, cultural, internal political issues that will kill the deal. There is no point in wasting time on a no-way, no-how opportunity
Timeline - Only really relevant when attempting to displace an existing vendor in a mature market

Marketing v. Sales Umbrella

Stop thinking about sales versus marketing. Your team should report to whoever has the bandwidth, expertise, and passion to lead it. Success hinges on who leads the group, not where it sits in the org chart.

Specialization

Specialization involves addressing two big questions: 
How should my team tackle our market? (segmenting the prospect universe)
How should my group be structured? (role specialization)

Segmenting your prospect universe is about aligning effort with opportunity.

Finding Ideal Customers
A-List - Dream clients
Bread and Butter - Thousands of accounts that share few key traits
Compelling Events - Internal or external shock that shakes up their priorities
Dead Ends - Time waster for one reason or another

Inbound
Limited to no experience
Ability to juggle inbound flow, handle interruptions
Comfortable working with influencer/user level/champions
Prospects already grasp portion of value proposition
Messaging: "How can I help you" 
Quicker to ramp. Well-defined process and high quantity of prospect interactions

One inbound SDR can typically handle about two hundred to three hundred leads a month when fully ramped

Outbound
Previous experience, not phone allergic
Able to handle rejection, resilient individual 
Comfortable targeting senior decision makers
Prospects don't yet recognize a need or pain
Challenger, reframe of thinking, challenge status quo
Slower to ramp, takes time to master business-centric conversations

One outbound SDR can typically target 100-200 accounts per month.

Moving to an AE is about managing a deal

Recruiting

Retention

Execution

Vision without execution is hallucination.

Leadership

Directors direct [Strategist]

Create things from scratch.About experimentation. What's the right mode, what process, messaging, cadence work best. What are our ideal prospect types and qualification criteria?

Managers manage

Manage team to goals, objectives, quota
ongoing hiring, training, coaching of reps
Communication and time management skills
Detailed weekly reporting
Make recommendations for improvement in areas of process and productivity

Must have
Eye for talent
motivational energy
executive presence

Leadership requirements
Business Acumen
Optimistic
Ability to instigate change
student of the game
Leadership skills and mentality
Product, solution, market knowledge
History of spotting great candidates
Enjoys coaching and developing
Offers constructive criticism
Been seen by peers as a captain
Takes on extra credit and delivers

Equip the team with a toolkit ensuring
A consistent message is being delivered
What's working is being shared
New hires ramp quickly
Struggling reps have a map for what great looks like

Creating a toolkit is 
A lot of work, months not days
Takes a village
Each companys toolkit is unique but there is a blueprint

Excuse to not have one is lack of time.

Toolkit would reinforce the way best reps are being successful, ramp time expedited and total productivity is raised

Toolkit Must 
Internalize who the target prospect and market is BEFORE product. Them before us should be the mantra
A detailed process for inbound lead qualification/outbound prospecting. What to do precall. PACT/BANT
Detail multi-touch cadence and multimedia approach. How to adjust messaging to prospect to deliver the right story
Messaging samples. 
How to overcome objections. Identify the most common objections and develop responses you want your team to use
Execute, how to execute using the technologies at the reps disposal (CRM, lead research, cadence tool, etc.)

Inbound Process Rules
Not all leads are created equally. Analyze what class of ideal customer are they (A-list? BB? Trigger event?Deadend?) and how they contacted you
Speed-to-lead requires pre-set plays to run immediately after prospect first contact

Prospect to ACCOUNTS not Leads
If a lead enters but doesn't respond, look into to others ways to contact people in that account (company). Contact a VP or director or something. Two-nos: Don't mark an account no contact until at least two prospects have said no

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The Sales Development Playbook

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