SDRepresent: Training Course for SDRs & AEs
Best Practices & Actionable Tips for Modern-Day Sellers
Course Summary
Sales development gets knocked for doing a thankless job, yet it’s an integral function behind some of the fastest-growing B2B companies in the world.
The value behind a sales development representative is undeniable:
- Buyers can get their first impression of a brand
- Sales teams can access new, undiscovered territory
- Marketing teams can gain real-time intelligence on the frontlines
- Startups can compete to start conversations in any B2B market
However, the SDR role has changed drastically over the last 5-10 years as new technologies, sales channels, buyer behaviors, and competitive strategies evolved.
Today’s reps are no longer simply drones for cold calling and CRM data-entry: sales development has grown into a sophisticated function that’s uniquely tailored to a company’s target buyer, business model, and culture.
To help outline the best practices for modern SDRs, we interviewed 7 experts to hear their experience and highlight actionable tips to be successful in sales development.
Course Details
- x7 Videos of Expert Interviews
- x7 Downloadable Interview Transcripts
- 20,000 Words of In-Depth Overview
4hrs 9 minutes Completion Time
Course Benefits
Get the big picture behind the sales development role
Clearly define the career path & trajectory as an SDR
Better understand the strategy behind targeting specific buyers
Overview of effective sales development processes & best practices
Learn how to build a unique personal brand for a career path
Tips for leveraging social networks & audience development
Learn ways to stick out from the crowd, be unique, & memorable
Get a crash course on modern prospecting & follow-up strategies
Learn about discovery meetings, demos, and hand-offs
EPISODE OVERVIEW
EPISODE #1
SDR Career Development & Personal Brand Growth
The sales development role is often the stepping stone to a sales career, yet too many SDRs leave their career path and personal brands in the hands of their employer. Learn how to be a pathfinder and build a personal brand that aligns with your future career vision in sales.
EPISODE #2
Targeting & Prioritizing
Leads as an SDR
SDRs make hundreds of touches per day and handle thousands of accounts, which means reps must be careful with their limited time. Learn the targeting strategies behind sales development that enables SDRs to organize, prioritize, and manage leads in such a fast-paced environment.
EPISODE #3
Research & Sales
Development Process
Sales development is one of the hardest but most important functions in a B2B organization: constant conversations with strangers and high activity levels for low conversions is a tough job. Learn how to master the processes behind sales development to help you perform more consistently, improve skills faster, and dominate your market against competitors.
EPISODE #4
Audience Development &
Using Social as an SDR
Buyers, industries, and competitive strategies constantly evolve, which makes it a continuous challenge for today’s SDRs to stay relevant. However, the rise of social networks has given sellers a powerful tool to educate, influence, and interact with their buyers. Learn how to properly leverage social as an SDR to build your brand, grow an audience, and book meetings.
EPISODE #5
Sticking Out from the Crowd
& Being Unique as an SDR
Tens of thousands of SDRs compete for the time of buyers who depend less on sellers and are overwhelmed by the volume of sales outreach they receive. How does an SDR stick out from the crowd? Learn how to find your uniqueness, catch attention, and be more memorable.
EPISODE #6
Sales Follow-Up & Nurture for SDRs
Less than 5% of any market (on average) is in-market for a solution right now, which means 95% or more of qualified buyers require additional follow-up, nurture, and remarketing until they’re ready. Learn how to build repeatable, scalable systems for follow-up & lead nurturing as an SDR.
EPISODE #7
Discovery Calls & Demos
Sales development is focused on selling prospective buyers on the valuable experience of a discovery meeting, which is a critical step that can make or break a potential deal. Learn about the discovery & demo process and how to make these important conversations successful.
Episode Details
Episode 1: SDR Career Development & Personal Brand Growth
Today’s sales professionals have more access to jobs and career development opportunities than ever before, yet so many reps are starving for more..
Data from a 2018 The Bridge Group report and a recent SalesHacker survey shows some grim statistics about the state of the sales development representative role:
- Average SDR turnover rate was 38%
- Average tenure was only 15 months
- 80% of outbound reps failed to exceed 75% of quota regularly
Why are so many SDRs leaving and struggling to consistently perform?
It starts with how a career path in sales is perceived and how professionals go about the process of building a meaningful personal brand to create that future vision. With a clear path, SDRs can elevate their brand and level up their career.
In this episode you will learn:
- The real value behind a personal brand in the SDR role
- How to research, reflect, and refine a unique personal branding path
- The BW Missions step-by-step pathfinding process to grow an authentic brand
- How mindset & motivation can help trailblaze a future career path
- The true purpose behind relationships, networking, and audience development
- Career progression tips to help SDRs accelerate the pathfinding process
Episode 2: Targeting & Prioritizing Leads as an SDR
Millions of companies have the budget to buy, yet only certain buyers will be qualified and even fewer will be in-market for a solution at any given time.
In a fast-paced environment with high activity levels and an endless flow of new situations, SDRs must be hyper-focused about how they spend their time and who they prioritize.
Without the ability to distinguish between the value of one activity versus another, SDRs can easily find themselves overwhelmed, lost, and struggling to prioritize effectively day-after-day.
The success of an SDR team is fueled by a targeting strategy: clearly defined profiles of ideal accounts and personas based on an organization’s hypothesis about that specific market.
Once an SDR understands why accounts are targeted and how to measure the value of their activities, it becomes much easier to manage & prioritize leads as their sales pipeline grows.
In this episode you will learn:
- Today’s sales reality and how it impacts the SDR role
- Key elements behind a successful sales development function
- How to leverage data and research to deeply understand target buyers
- The infrastructure needed to effectively target, prioritize, and manage leads
- How to measure the value of an SDR’s time to improve prioritization skills
- Tips for effectively reviewing, comparing, and prioritizing activities
Episode 3: Research & Sales Development Process
With more data, software, and information available than ever before, today’s SDRs aren’t lacking access: An endless number of diverse ways exist for an SDR to start new conversations, book meetings, and generate opportunities.
Yet a majority of reps still struggle to hit quota and many more struggle to do it consistently.
Why?
Because SDRs are often inconsistent, inefficient, or out of touch with their buyers.
The core of sales development is a well-structured process: clearly defined workflows that SDRs can learn and repeat to generate predictable results.
Mastery of the sales development process enables SDRs to grow beyond just a single employer, situation, or market and perform in any sales environment.
In this episode you will learn:
- The true purpose behind the sales development function
- Why fear, curiosity, and trust are critical components to sales development
- How to overcome fear in cold conversations and extinguish a buyer’s fear
- Best practices for building trust, curiosity, and improving performance
- An overview of the sales development process from strategy to outreach
- Tips for effectively managing time, tasks, and leads as an SDR
Episode 4: Audience Development & Using Social as an SDR
In the past, sales professionals had very limited access to buyers and information, making it difficult for sellers to effectively educate, influence, and interact with qualified buyers.
However, today’s sales environment has evolved drastically with the advent of new technologies, communication channels, and social networks. SDRs can now grow an audience, find new buyers, and generate sales opportunities based on personal brand alone.
Unfortunately, this easy access to buyers made digital channels like social very competitive. Buyers became overwhelmed with outreach, conversations, and the endless potential to buy.
Many sellers abuse their access to today’s digital channels by blasting spam messages, regurgitating unoriginal content, and automating aggressive social selling campaigns.
The reality is that modern sales has changed: buyers do more research independently, rely less on sellers than ever before, and contact vendors much later on in a buying process.
Top-performing sales development professionals are leveraging these digital channels in a different way. Instead of selling, they focus on brand intent, content quality, and audience focus.
To generate consistent value on social, SDRs must understand how to properly use these channels in the context of B2B sales and what it takes to integrate social into their workflow.
In this episode you will learn:
- Why social channels are so powerful for modern sellers
- How to develop, build trust with, and evangelize an audience
- Systems & processes for using social as an SDR
- An overview & best practices for using LinkedIn Sales Navigator
- Social content ideation, creation, and distribution strategies
- Tips to make the most out of social channels in sales development
Episode 5: Sticking Out from the Crowd & Being Unique as an SDR
Sales is a competitive space, which means the ability for an SDR to consistently perform becomes more difficult as more sellers and competing brands appear.
It’s not enough to master the sales development function: even experienced reps can fall behind competitors and lose opportunities with buyers if they can’t stick out as unique and memorable.
Among the millions of other sellers out there, how can an SDR stick out from the crowd?
Uniqueness goes beyond process: Top-performing SDRs are investing in a unique personal brand, refining their best skills, and constantly testing new ways to make lasting impressions.
When every touch generates curiosity, reps unlock the ability to create positive interactions that generate value regardless of whether a meeting gets booked.
In this episode you will learn:
- What an SDR needs to start differentiating themselves
- The mindset & process behind consistently being unique
- How to get buy-in from leadership to stick out from the crowd
- Common mistakes SDRs make when trying to differentiate
- Best practices & actionable tips for becoming memorable
- Tips for navigating uniqueness within a sales career
Episode 6: Sales Follow-Up & Nurture for SDRs
Most buyers aren’t in-market to buy when an organization makes contact, yet so much emphasis is placed on initial touches and conversions from an SDR.
The number of sales touches required to close a deal has increased as buyers become more independent, ranging anywhere from 8 touches to more than 16 touches on average.
Since most conversations won’t be immediate opportunities, SDRs must understand how to build trust, plant seeds, and grow future deals over time.
Sales follow-up & lead nurturing systems are critical to help reps do this effectively in such a fast-paced environment. Without these systems in pace, SDRs risk missing out on opportunities, losing track of qualified buyers, and neglecting a majority of their market.
In this episode you will learn:
- The big picture mindset behind effective SDR follow-up & nurture
- Processes & technologies to develop a follow-up & nurturing system
- How to handle responses & conversations in different situations
- Objection-handling & qualification best practices
- How to maintain urgency and build momentum with buyers
- Tips on how to maximize successful outcomes with follow-up & nurture
Episode 7: Discovery Calls & Demos
Sales development teams do a massive amount of work to break into a market and get buyers to a very important step: the discovery meeting.
Discovery is usually an organization’s first chance to dive into a buyer’s situation, understand their priorities, and identify the essential information needed to move a potential deal forward.
In addition, this meeting gives sellers the chance to generate value for the buyer by sharing insights, influencing their thinking, and presenting potential solutions to their problems.
However, these conversations are longer and more complicated than a cold touch: discovery calls require a deep understanding of target markets, use cases, and buying processes.
To successfully navigate a discovery call or demo, SDRs must look beyond simply booking a meeting and master the next steps involved in most B2B sales processes.
In this episode you will learn:
- The purpose behind a discovery or demo meeting
- How to think about sales discovery methodologies
- Tips for asking good questions, qualifying, & identifying pains
- Call preparation, research, and navigation best practices
- How to create a positive sales experience for buyers
- Advice for successful SDR-to-AE hand-offs
The SDR role has rapidly changed over the last decade as new innovations, buying behaviors, and market environments evolved.
As sales development becomes more competitive, global demand for great talent will increase. It’s no longer enough for SDRs to simply be task-completers or “boiler room” cold-callers.
Top-performing sales development reps embrace technology, adapt to buyers, and go beyond simple outreach activities by building personal brands and influencing audiences with content.
Sales development is already an invaluable profession within revenue operations and will become more specialized and sophisticated as the future of sales continues evolving.
With these 7 expert interviews on their experiences and best practices in sales development, SDRs can level up their performance and accelerate their growth in a sales career.