For a field sales representative, an SDR can be an incredible ressource that can really help you to build a healthy pipeline and as a result overachieve your revenue quota. However, in some cases, it can also be challenging as you will need to invest time in this relationship, be patient and trust the outcome. Depending on how your react through this process, you will either succeed or failed in making this relationship work. I wanted to spend some time in giving more details around some key areas which I have witnessed being the key of a succesfull relationship.

Communication

Whenever, you try to build a partnership, you should first understand what motivates and drives your interlocutor. An SDR will likely be paid on Sales Accepted lead (SAL) as it is under his control to find and qualify a lead. Upon certain criteria (BANT new version or BNTT as examples) and the validation of the rep accepting the lead as being an opportunity, the SAL will be paid. However, a Rep is solely interested in sales revenue and ARR (annual recurrent revenue). Even if he recognizes the way an SDR is compensated and the criteria of acceptance of an SALs, every Rep will set up different standards for himself to accept having a new opportunity in his pipeline. Forcing an sales rep to accept and SAL is not the solution as well. How do you measure how well the NEED is qualified ? It is not a tick in a box.

Some organisation find a way to fix this gap by having part of the SDR remuneration on the Revenue (1% of the ARR for example) or having a revenue quota being the same of the Rep.

I believe it is important to share the same goal so definitively having a shared quota really helps but it doesn’t resolve the fact that it is not under the control of an SDR that the Rep closes a deal or not.

So, it is down to the trust you are building through constant and bidirectionnal communication.

To build a trustworthy relationship, you also need to understand what you should expect from one another.

One of The first exercise will be to clearly stated what are your expectations:

Example:

As a Rep I expect the SDR	As an SDR I expect the Rep
- to allocate x days on outbound prospecting on my territory	- to share all his knowledge on the account (contacts, previous history, possible challenges based on the industry…)
- to share all his weekly activities on the account provided	- to develop jointly strategies around the account before contact
- to set up a goal of minimum xx qualified lead a week on my territory or xx Meetings	- to provide me with a minimum of 5 new accounts every 2 weeks
- to have a well defined agenda on meeting set	- accept my lead within 24 hours if qualification criteria met
…..	…..

Knowledge transfer

How do you ensure, you are prepared to deliver the best message to your prospect and keep iterrate this message to improve the outcome of your outbound initiative ? Using collaboration platform where you can communicate asynchronuously is a great way to start.

At Github, we document everything into GitHub issues. It is a great way to start a conversation. If the SDR had a great conversation with a prospect and a defined next step, he will typically open a GitHub issue and @mention the Rep.

We are also using slack where we can always keep the information shared during our conversation and it is integrated with GitHub. Therefore, the information is really never lost and we don’t depend in tribal knowledge.

As well, using an open collaboration platform like GitHub, you can get the support from an extended team of expert within your company. It is really a great way to share knowledge and learn from eachother.

Accountability and transparency

I encourage both field Sales Rep and SDR to be accountable of each other actions and initiatives. I have already stressed the importance of constant communication. It is also important to have weekly meeting scheduled with a more structured agenda. I recommend two meetings a week : 1 meeting to plan the week ahead and 1 meeting for feedback. During the first meeting, as an SDR you share your goals and commit on the actions you will take to achieve them.

I recommend the CRM to be the unique source of truth where will you can see all the activities report of the week. Everything is completly open and visible. It is the foundation you need to build trust.

For the meeting at the end of the week, this is an opportunity to share what was good and what went wrong, why and being open and transparent about it. Part of the trasnparency is also being open with your feelings and with what you are thinking. You must be able to overcome differences and opinions and expressing it.

Mentoring

As a young sales professional, the SDR is eager to learn the sales techniques and methods that makes a sales representative succesfull and very often I have seen that they will prefer working with the most experienced and succesful rep of the team.

While it is the role of the SDR manager to really train the SDR in a regular basis, the SDR will always seek for more guidance and coaching. Having a senior sales rep as a mentor can foster a different relationship where you will have more freedom in giving very honnest feedback. I often feels more like a frienship.

Listening phone calls, running sales campaign together or role playing are very valuable activities which will really build out this relationship.

It is not to forget that baby boomers have a lot to learn from Millenials so it is very often a two way street. The role of the mentor and the mentee can be easily reversed.