Five ways SDR teams make high-performance companies achieve more

Several of the biggest companies on the planet recognise the value of running sales development teams. What about you?

Tenbound recently unveiled the top 20 largest sales development teams in the US. Here’s the top five, with the number of SDRs they employ in the US alone:

• Salesforce – 2406
• Dell – 2170
• Amazon – 1980
• Oracle – 1860
• IBM – 1720

I don’t need to tell you that they are five of the biggest tech companies in the world, while if you look further down the list, you’ll see Google, Microsoft, Apple and Zoom. This list proves (if you didn’t know already) that the biggest companies in the world recognise the value of sales development. First, sales development built their businesses; now, it’s propelling growth. 

Research from Gartner spells out the difference that sales development teams can make to a business:

• Companies with SDR teams convert leads 8x better than companies where leads go straight to quota-carrying reps

In this article, we’ll look at five reasons you need SDRs in your B2B sales team. Let’s go.

 

1 – SDRs power your sales machine

Sales teams work better when there is a repeatable, standardised process, with specialist salespeople working at each step of the process. We call this the sales machine, a production line turning leads into customers. When you create a sales machine, it’s much easier to scale your business. New starters can slot into the standardised process, immediately knowing what they need to do.

The start of the sales process, where SDRs work, is a unique position. Much of it is trying to get through to prospects, then saying the right things to move them to the next stage. The average number of calls it takes to get through to a prospect is 13, with 23 to get a meaningful conversation. It takes an average of 3 meaningful conversations to get a meeting – that’s more than 60 calls to get one appointment. A salesperson who is paid to close deals simply cannot make that many calls. That’s why we have SDRs.

 

2 – SDRs bring you better leads

When they’re on the phone, part of the SDRs job is to qualify the prospect in or out of the sales process, assessing whether they have the budget, authority, need, and time to buy your product. Then, when the time comes for the SDR to hand the lead over to the Account Executive (AE) to close the deal, you know the AE won’t be wasting their time. 

By filtering out prospects who won’t buy in this way, SDRs make your sales machine run more efficiently. 

 

3 – SDRs boost your brand

In B2B and SaaS, potential buyers don’t come to you unless they think your product can solve a problem. However, a lot of the time, prospects don’t realise you can solve their problem, or that they even have a problem in the first place! That’s where SDRs come in.

When an SDR makes a cold call to a prospect, it may be the first time they’ve ever heard of your company. However, the best SDRs don’t hit their prospects with the hard sell on a cold call. Instead, they begin a relationship, start a conversation and seek to understand if they can solve a problem for the prospect. 

SDRs start with the goal of creating value for the prospect. They seek to help, not interrupt their day in pursuit of a deal. It’s why SDRs boost your brand in your prospect’s mind in a way that a quota-carrying salesperson cannot.

SDRs can also respond to inbound leads quickly, which is essential in today’s marketplace. When a potential buyer is doing their research, the first vendor they talk to usually gets the deal.

 

4 – SDRs reach the market faster

Another great thing about SDRs is that they can validate your new ideas with the market extremely quickly. If you’ve got a new idea for a feature or a product, SDRs can reach the market straight away and come back with detailed feedback from your target market. They can provide the insights you need to let you know whether your idea is a winner or not.

The same is valid with sales messaging. If you believe certain messaging will work better with your target audience; you can easily split test it using your SDRs.

 

5 – SDRs are your talent pool for the future

Your SDR team is a great place to find your next top-performing deal winner. SDRs are usually young grads at the start of their sales career, but it means they are fearless, flexible and hungry for success. 

In your SDR team, they will give it everything, happy to make dozens of calls a day and pick themselves up after the many rejections they face every day. However, they’ll also learn the unique skills that make you a great salesperson. They’ll also learn the ins and outs of what makes your product the right solution for your prospects’ problems. 

When you need a new AE in your team to close revenue, your high-performing SDRs are ready to step up. The best organisations recognise this and implement training processes that upskill their SDRs and make them AE-ready as quickly as possible.

 

Find out more from SaaSLeads.io

At SaaSLeads.io, we build sales development teams and deliver them to the heart of your organisation.

Our SDRs are experts at creating value for our clients’ customers. We show them how to generate excitement around the impact your product brings, moving your prospects through a structured sales process, which inevitably results in more deals.

If Salesforce, Oracle and Amazon recognise the value of running SDR teams, what’s stopping you?

If you would like to build your SDR team with talented graduates from SaaSLeads, or to find out more, visit our site – https://saasleads.io/.