The Definitive Guide to Building An SDR Team

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The Definitive Guide to Building an SDR Team
Contents
Introduction 4

The Core of the SDR 5

Always Be Prospecting
Increase Meaningful Conversations
But, What About Inbound?
Building an SDR Profile

The SDR at Work 9

From Good to Great Managers
Prospecting 101
The Motivation Metric
The Career Growth of an SDR

Outreach Strategies for SDRs 14

Sales Reps as Mini-Marketers
The Right Messaging
Never Send a Blind Email

In Conclusion 17

The 5 Item SDR Checklist 18

ToutApp: SDR Edition 19

About ToutApp 20

References 21

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Introduction
Most sales organizations are structured in a way that a salesperson handles the
entire sales cycle. From prospecting, leaving voicemails and running product
demos to closing deals—the whole cycle runs through one salesperson.

That was sales yesterday. Today, the sales world is changing.

This isn’t the first time you’ve read about the changing world of sales. There are
hundreds of articles about this. But, we’re going to go deeper than that.

We’ll be exploring how you can increase the productivity of your sales team by
segmenting the role of a salesperson between prospecting and closing; we’re
talking about building a Sales Development team.

The three chapters in this book present a look into the future of sales development
teams and their cutting-edge strategies. The strategy is simple: segment and spe-
cialize your sales team. As an increasingly large number of younger sales teams
are growing fast, many large companies are taking notice and adopting the sales
development methodology.

If you want to keep up and drive serious sales for your business, you need to build
a Sales Development team.

Here’s some insight on how a few experts did that.

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The Core of the SDR
Prospects are your company’s biggest asset. But, prospecting can be difficult. Today,
prospects have so much more information available to them. In The Challenger
Sale, authors Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson state that “57% of the purchase
decision is complete before a customer even calls a supplier.”

That’s why you need a team of reps to capture the interests of your prospects.

Enter the SDR.

SDR stands for Sales Development Representative. Elsewhere, this role might be
called a Business Development Representative or Lead Qualification Representative,
but for simplicity, we’ll call them SDRs.

No matter their title, SDRs are specialized to do one thing insanely well: outbound
prospecting.

Always Be Prospecting “SDRs learn how to craft a proper email and

In 2011, Ross and Tyler, the co-authors how to break down that ‘No, I don’t want
of Predictable Revenue, advocated for to talk to you’ road block. They get larger
a segmentation of roles within the prospects with bigger logos and larger
different stages of the sales cycle. prices. That’s the trajectory that you have to
Ross then applied this segmentation hit to be a sustainable company.”
at Salesforce and it changed the sales
industry.

An SDR often is the first point of contact

someone has with your company.
Neal Donahue
Director of Sales
They’re the ones making the first Development
impression and educating prospects.
Prospects have limited time and may not KISSMetrics provides web analytics solutions
want the whole sales song and dance. to assist companies in customer acquisition
However, SDRs are there to get your and decision making.
company name in front of them and Offices
San Francisco, CA
open the door for further conversations. Company Size
51 - 200 employees
SDR Team
5

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Sales is moving away from the one-person-does-all model to more specialized and
segmented teams. An SDR is there to generate interest, get your company’s foot in
the door and get meetings booked for Account Executives (AEs).

And with that, SDRs are changing the way sales gets done.

Increase Meaningful Conversations

SDRs open deals. They prospect into targeted companies and book meetings for
Account Executives. But of the many invaluable assets that an SDR brings to the
table, the most important one is their tenacity. SDRs are the reps that are proactively
talking to your prospects.

SDRs want to feel well established with their account territory and prospects. Since
not every prospect thinks in the same way, it’s important to allow SDRs to have
the autonomy to prospect as resourcefully as they see fit in order to book more
meetings.

“Businesses are so specific in terms of Chris Calkin

their needs that SDRs need to spend extra Business Development
time learning about their needs before Manager West Coast,
even beginning to nurture those prospects Brands & Agencies
and educate them about your company’s Tune builds products to help marketers drive
product.” better results with technology for growing
businesses.
Offices
Seattle, WA (HQ), San Francisco, CA
Company Size
201 - 500 employees
Sales Team
2

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But, What About Inbound?
Inbound Sales Representatives are responsible for the leads that are delivered right
into your sales funnel, generally from marketing efforts, referrals or organic means.

An inbound lead requires no prospecting. These leads flow in and can be highly
engaged with your company’s product. But, they also can be unpredictable and hard
to target.

On the other hand, outbound prospecting is targetable and manageable. You

can structure your team so that you have SDRs going after prospects in specific
industries or specific company sizes. There’s no ceiling to outbound prospecting.

But, let’s get back to SDRs.

“We have named territory accounts. With “We look for curiosity and coachability,
an SDR, we have an opportunity to go after which is really important to the SDR
them and generate significant revenue by function where that rep needs to be open
targeting those accounts.”

Michael Gultz Ash Alhashim

Lead of Inside Sales and Director of Sales &
Direct Response (Cloud Sales) Market Development

Informatica is the leading provider of data Optimizely is a website optimization platform

integration software for over 5,000 enterprise enabling A/B and multivariate testing for
organizations to fully leverage their information companies and individual users to enhance their
assets ffrom mobile, social and big-data. website content and traffic.
Offices Offices
Redwood City, CA (HQ), Austin, TX, Boston, MA & San Francisco, CA (HQ) & New York, NY
Dublin, Ireland
Company Size
Company Size 201 - 500 employees
1001 - 5000 employees
SDR Team
SALEs Team 13
10

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 Bachelor’s Degree or Equivalent

Resume
6 -12 months of phone experience

high energy level, motivation and drive to succeed

proven track record of excellent communication
Versatile enough to be a team player, but effective
enough to be an individual contributor
strong passion for selling and ability to communicate
a product’s value
knowledge of salesforce (a Plus)

Building an SDR Profile Beyond wanting a career in sales, SDRs

Let’s say you agree - now; let’s talk about should have an entrepreneurial bent in
how to build the right SDR team for your their DNA. This entrepreneurial streak
company. gives the SDR an opportunity to make
an impact through prospecting, and then
For many companies, a rubric for hiring quickly rise through the sales ranks.
is quite useful:

As you think about hiring SDRs, you

should ask yourself: Which qualities are “I look for someone who carries themselves well.
Someone who can stare me in the eye. Someone
foundational and which are coachable? who isn’t shaken by tough questions, such as,
‘Why didn’t you hit your revenue quota?’”
Having an SDR rubric not only simplifies
the hiring process for managers - but
also helps with training and long-term
career goals.
Charles Rummelein
Once you have a written description of Team Lead of US Sales
your SDR role with responsibilities and
requirements, it’s time to assemble your
team. Nexmo provides innovative cloud commu-
nication APIs that enable applications and
enterprises to connect with their customers
“I like to build diversity. There’s no through phone and SMS.
cookie cutter candidate. What I’m
looking for is someone who is organized
Offices
San Francisco, CA (HQ), London, UK, Madrid,
and is driven to succeed. I want someone Spain & Hong Kong
who has the ability to dig and find the Company Size
unseen route to getting a prospect on 51-200 employees
the phone and being savvy,” said Neal Sales Team
Donahue of KISSmetrics. 30 worldwide
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The SDR at Work
An SDR needs to have the drive to sell today and the aspirations to be a sales leader
tomorrow. To get an SDR from point A to B, there’s one person that needs to be
present: a great manager.

From Good to Great Managers

What sets apart an average manager from a great manager is credibility.

What does credibility look like for your SDR team?

There are three main factors in the credibility assessment:

Front-to-Back Knowledge: Have a detailed understanding of what your SDR

team does every day.

A Shared Ambition: An SDR’s goals are your goals. During 1:1 time, talk to
them about your ambitions for the team and how they can contribute to
those goals.

Ownership: Take ownership of the SDR team you manage - in both

successes and failures.

Alongside credibility, it’s important to

SDR to manager ratio
have a manageable ratio between you and
your reps. To the right are manager to rep
ratios across different companies.

As companies continue to grow, their 11 8 10 5

ratio will vary as more reps and managers

are brought on to meet the demand.

7 13 3 2

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Prospecting 101
One of the best parts of being a manager is working with your SDRs to make them
better - whether they’re brand new or seasoned SDRs.

SDRs are able to grow and broaden a company because they’re embedded in
conversations with prospects. The amount of time it takes to prospect into a
company is a moving variable, but as illustrated, the process remains the same:

Measuring SDR PErformance

A manager can then measure an
SDR’s performance. Measuring
performance can help you formulate
an understanding of the progress of
your SDR team. The simplest and most
traditional form of measurement is
tracking revenue within your pipeline.
An example of tracking revenue is
figuring out whether a closed deal was
sourced by an SDR.

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 “The success of the company has been
one of the most rewarding parts of being
an SDR Manager. The company is doing
well, and a big part of that is from the
efforts of the Sales Development team.
I just think it’s rewarding seeing each
member of my team high up on the
Leaderboard each month.”

“I motivate my team in various ways.

John Swartz If they come in early, I’ll buy them
Sales Development
Manager breakfast. If they stay late, I’ll take them
to drinks afterwards. It’s close-knit,”
Adpative Insights is the global leader in cloud
said Charles Rummelein at Nexmo.
business analytics that integrates BI & CPM
suite in the cloud for midsize and enterprise
companies. Being a well-rounded and close knit
Offices team affects the camaraderie of the
Palo Alto, CA (HQ), Boston, MA & London, UK team as a whole, but it also helps ramp
Company Size new reps.
201 - 500 employees
SDR Team
7 The Career Growth of an SDR
The SDR role is a foundational one
within the larger structure of a sales
The Motivation Metric team. For many SDRs, this role is a
SDRs are a hungry, awesome and hard- stepping stone for upward mobility
working group. They’re eager to win, within their company.
especially with a fair base salary and
the right incentives. SDRs gain an invaluable skill set that
prepares them for long-term success.
In a 2014 survey of SDR Metrics and Every day they craft emails, break
Compensation, The Bridge Group found down blockers from prospects and are
that the annual base salary of an SDR personable educators. This success is
is $46k. Additionally, SDRs are eligible only the beginning of an SDR’s career
to earn more based on performance, in your sales organization. Many SDRs
such as number of meetings booked. want to fast-track their sales careers, so
To motivate their teams, managers can let’s get them on that track.
run weekly sales contests, give out gift
cards or pay out target-hitting earnings For SDR managers, a success marker
as well. of their team is in the promotion of
SDRs into closing roles as Account
Executives.

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”We bring reps into our inbound role to
learn our product and the industry, then we
promote from within to an outbound [SDR]
role. This progression can be anywhere from
Kristina McMillan
Director of Sales
three to six months on the inbound role Development
before moving to the outbound role.”
Five9 is a leading provider of cloud contact
center software that enables more than three
billion customer interactions annually.
Offices
San Ramon, CA
Company Size
501 - 1000 employees
Sales Team
11

Steps in a Sales Career

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Here’s an example of this career
progression: in June 2013, Chris Flores Chris Flores
joined Namely as the company’s Manager of
first SDR. Alongside the Director of Inside Sales
Sales, Chris generated sales pipeline,
onboarded new reps and championed Namely is the leading end-to-end HR and
a need for on outbound sales team payroll platform for growing companies and is
used by some of the world’s most innovative
for Namely. After seven months of companies in technology, media and commerce.
outbound prospecting and building a
solid sales funnel for the company, he
Offices
New York, NY
was promoted to Manager of Inside Company Size
Sales. 51 - 200 employees
SDR Team
7

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Outreach Strategies for SDRs
As you’re building your SDR team, it’s important to establish a solid set of tools that
will enable your reps to work smarter and more efficiently.

In a Sales Development study conducted by TOPO, of the 70 polled B2B companies

with an aggregate revenue of $11.7B,”The
final crucial factor to the most successful
Sales Development organizations is
technology. We {TOPO] have found a
sales-development-specific tech[nology]
stack emerge. SDR teams build this
stack level by level as their organization
matures.”

TOPO suggests that every Level 1 SDR team must put in place a technology stack
that consists of a CRM, LinkedIn, a phone system, sales-centric email tools and data
tools.

Technology isn’t everything—you will need to develop your sales strategy and tactics
supported by outbound best practices.

Email is still as popular as ever. But, canned responses are a thing of the past.
Instead, give your SDRs the right practices to do their job. Whether it’s building a
support system, peer to peer reviews or internal role plays—find what works for your
team.

Sales Reps as Mini-Marketers

For years, Marketing has utilized the power of campaigns. It’s time for sales to get
on board. Think of your SDRs as mini-marketers with a specific outreach mission to
educate their prospects about your company.

With outbound prospecting, it’s going to take a certain number of touches and
conversations to reach a prospect. Some teams do all of this manually. But, there’s a

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better way. Instead, you can use technology to your team’s advantage and automate
the process without jeopardizing personalization.

Multiple personal touches at scale is what will amp up your team’s productivity
and put you in touch with more prospects
faster. With a simple framework, called the
5x5 Method, your SDR team can maintain
a consistent cadence of conversation with
their prospects.

The prospect is always at the center of

your 5x5 Method. Train your SDRs to think
about what your prospects care about, and
then center your messaging on how your
company can add value. Whether each
email is spaced five days, weeks or months apart—it builds trust and establishes an
ongoing relationship with prospects.

“Sending relevant and spaced out emails over time, so we’re not sending a prospect
the same type of email every two days, is extremely important in our follow-up
strategy,” said Chris Calkin of Tune.

Setting up your 5x5 campaign on ToutApp is simple. With the Email Automation
product feature, SDRs will be able to set up their chain of five connected emails to
any group of prospects. Each email within their 5x5 campaign can be tailored based
on the interests of their prospects.

The Right Messaging

As ubiquitous as email is, it still holds a
lot of mystery. Studies show that 20% -
40% of the 182B+ emails sent out every
day are actually opened. Clearly you
need to break through the clutter so that
your SDRs’ emails are opened. Start with
a catchy, short and informative subject
line. The body of your email is where
you become more personal and add
value. Remember, keep it short, because
simplicity drives curiosity.

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Never Send a Blind Email
Email tracking is a valuable way to instantly increase your team’s productivity. It lets
you see when someone opens your email, clicks on a link you sent him or views the
sales collateral that you attached.

With the ToutApp Live Feed that offers real-time email and activity tracking, SDRs
won’t be going into their prospecting efforts blind.

Once an SDR has crafted the perfect

message, designed his 5x5 Method
and sent out tracked emails, the next
step is prioritizing his leads. With a
tool like ToutApp’s Lead Prioritization,
the SDR can get a list of his most
engaged prospects based on results
from email tracking.

A data-driven list of where an SDR

should allocate his time is a valuable
asset. It tells an SDR if his messaging
is engaging, gives him a better
understanding of his prospects and
how to authentically communicate
with them.

“The beauty of our job as sales reps

is that it never stops. There’s always
more companies to find. Just stay
hungry and keep thinking about
the long term,” said Chris Flores of
Namely.

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In Conclusion
Sales Development isn’t a trend. It’s the future of sales and is a key component of
kick-ass sales teams.

More and more fast-growing companies have adopted the Sales Development role as
a strategic asset for their sales teams. Now, many larger companies are taking notice
and adopting their own Sales Development teams.

The SDR isn’t just an entry-level sales role or a junior sales rep. He is a distinct
strategic and competitive advantage for any ambitious sales team.

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The 5 Item SDR Checklist
You’ve read all about SDRs; now it’s time to start assembling your awesome team.
Here’s a 5 item SDR checklist to get you started:
1. Define an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
This makes your sales strategy tangible and ensures that everyone on the team has the same
understanding of the end goal.
Determine your buyer personas
What kinds of titles should your SDRs talk to?
What are their specific needs?
Use a database (Crunchbase, NASDAQ, NYSE, Fortune 1000) to understand
key characteristics of your customers (location, industry and employees)
Filter the database with your newfound customer characteristics to arrive at a
list of targeted companies
Determine the opportunity size of the target company in order to prioritize
outreach
2. Develop Account Territories
Based on your Ideal Customer Profile, compile a list of account territories for your SDRs/
AEs. This ensures that you won’t have multiple reps going after the same target.
Size and distribute the territories across the SDR team so that everyone has
an equal piece of the pie
3. Write an SDR Playbook
Ask your first SDR hires to iterate on the playbook, as they’re the ones doing the role every
day.
The SDR Playbook should be no more than 3 - 5 pages and is a living docu-
ment that should be updated often
The playbook should provide an introduction to your CRM, your company’s
product, the Ideal Customer Profile and customer testimonials
Continue to test and update the playbook as your team grows
4. Determine an SDR Compensation Plan
On average, the annual SDR base salary is $46k. However, that average fluctuates based
on your company, location, experience and performance measurement.
Experience: Reps with less than a year’s experience earn less than reps with
more experience
Location: Base salary changes with varying costs of living in different cities
5. Start hiring
Work with a recruiting agency, or post a job description on your website or on job boards.
Network: Go to recruiting events and promote via social media and your
social networks
Interview: Phone screen and interview promising candidates
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 SDR EDITION
Increase connects and book more meetings by catching prospects at the right time
with the power of email tracking, templates and analytics.

Catch Prospects at the Right Time

Prospect efficiently with complete visibility in
your outreach
Go after the right targets based on who is
most engaged
Know exactly when to follow up and take
immediate action

Accelerate Your Outreach

Increase productivity while maintaining
a personal touch with your prospects
Measure and improve messaging using
real-time data that tells you what works
Tailor each email to your prospect’s needs

Spend More Time Selling

Streamline your outreach and eliminate
administrative tasks
Book meetings faster by auto-inserting
calendar times into emails
Build customized lead, contact and account
lists seamlessly with two-click sync from
Salesforce

SDR Edition: Features

Email website, presentation tracking Calendar sync and scheduling
Real-time Live Feed Scheduled emails
Customized templates Engagement data with CRM
Lead Prioritization Personalized group emailing
about ToutApp
ToutApp helps sales teams streamline communications to prospect, book meetings
and close more deals. ToutApp’s robust email tracking, templates and analytics help
sales teams increase overall engagement throughout the sales process. Founded in
2011, ToutApp has more than 80,000 salespeople using its platform, with enterprise
customers including Atlassian, Dropbox, Optimizely, Jive, Namely and more.

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References
Dixon, Matthew, and Brent Adamson. The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of
the Customer Conversation. New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2011. Print.

Gonzalez, Bryan. TOPO. Sales Development Council #3., Nov 2014. PDF.

The Bridge Group, Inc. Sales Development Rep (SDR) 2014 Metrics & Compensation,
2014. PDF.

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