The Sales Development Playbook: Build Repeatable Pipeline and Accelerate Growth with Inside Sales

by Trish Bertuzzi

A specialized role focused on the frontend of the sales process—qualifying inbound leads and/or conducting outbound prospecting—to generate sales pipeline

I’ve identified six elements for sales development success (see figure I.1).

Sales development reps (or SDRs) are responsible for the front end of the sales process. They either set introductory meetings or generate qualified opportunities for sales partners.

Account executives carry a revenue quota. Also called territory managers, sales executives, or similar, they convert opportunities into closed business. For our purposes, this can include inside (phone-based) or field (road-warrior) sales reps.

The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do. MICHAEL E. PORTER

The companies that win today are those that are willing to reach out, stand out, and point out flaws in status quo thinking. Your prospects are primarily concerned with how you can help them build a better business. Selling isn’t interruption or trickery. It is, at its heart, about service.

As a result, account executives (those reps who close sales) increasingly lack the time—and often the desire—to focus on building new sales pipelines. They argue that their time is better spent advancing and closing opportunities. “I’m busy doing demos, drafting proposals, and chasing contracts. I’m not prospecting because I just don’t have the bandwidth,” they say.

The sales development role is our best response to the realities detailed above. If both prospects and account executives are crazy busy, we need a dedicated role for executing top-of-the-funnel activity that is purpose built for generating new pipeline.

The value of a sales development effort is measured by increased won business per account executive and/or accelerated new customer acquisition.

If you increase lead conversion rates, but you aren’t closing more business, what’s the point? Similarly, if your account executives are having twice as many introductory meetings, but you aren’t gaining more new customers, you’re just spinning your wheels. Effective sales development is about ratcheting up your ability to build new pipeline and accelerate revenue growth. Period.

I’ve built a five-step framework for thinking about the modern B2B buying process. I call it The Five Whys (see figure 2.1). Figure 2.1 – The Five Whys

The essence of sales development strategy is deciding how far down The Five Whys your reps can and should take prospects. Where to draw the line is a decision that you’ll have to make and likely revisit as your team grows.

Sales development teams can be tasked with either a) setting introductory meetings or b) generating qualified opportunities.

SETTING INTRODUCTORY MEETINGS: Let’s be clear on the realities here. The meetings being set here are introductory—from the Latin “introda,” meaning not ready to buy yet. (Kidding!) This can include face-to-face meetings or a discovery phone call.

GENERATING QUALIFIED OPPORTUNITIES: Qualified opportunities differ in that they are, well, qualified. The rep is still closing on a meeting or call but has a) moved the prospect from curiosity into interest and b) vetted that the prospect meets or exceeds a minimum threshold of “sales-worthiness.”

One of the biggest mistakes I see companies make is setting internal expectations using introductory meeting metrics (quantity) and then requiring opportunity-level qualification (quality). This seemingly innocuous misstep often ends in total disaster. “Qualified introductory meetings” is an oxymoron.

You should deploy an introductory meeting model when the market for your product is immature and/or when your account executives need more at-bats.

If your SDRs are booking meetings with the right types of companies, the right people within them, and the prospects are at least curious about addressing a potential pain point, then the reps have done their jobs well.

REASONABLE: A meeting with a director in the “quality operations” department at a $500M+ pharmaceutical company who has high-level pain around collaboration in bringing new drugs to market. Right profile, right person, right pain: check, check, and check. These types of meetings will be plentiful and will set your AEs up for success.

If you’re selling a disruptive solution, asking BANT (budget, authority, need, and timing) types of questions makes no sense. There isn’t going to be a budget set aside for problems that prospects don’t know they have.

Now, what’s your budget for a trip to Mars? Feels like an odd question, right? Perhaps that’s because you aren’t sure you need or want to make the voyage. I should probably spend some time convincing you that Earth isn’t what it used to be before I ask if you have decision-making authority to book inter-planetary travel.

In these cases, setting introductory meetings is an effective mechanism for rapid learning. The process would follow these four steps: 1. HYPOTHESIZE: Build a hypothesis of which companies need your solution. Develop baseline messaging and identify target prospects. 2. TEST: Schedule as many introductory meetings as possible. SDRs and account executives test messaging before, during, and after meetings. 3. ITERATE: Based on learning, iterate on both the target profile and the message. 4. REPEAT: Rinse and repeat, learning more and more each time.

Tom’s point is that degree of qualification and conversion rates are important concerns, but only after your account executives have full pipelines and numerous active opportunities to work. That is the tipping point.

Qualified Opportunities To clarify, a qualified opportunity is still a meeting or call, but one where the account has reached a qualification threshold. At some level, this means: ● A problem has been identified ● A potential solution was introduced ● And the prospect has committed to a next step

I’ve built a qualification methodology I call PACT: pain, authority, consequence, and target profile

Their biggest issue is fear that the cure will hurt worse than the illness. You need to dig for the implications of not acting

If your market is mature, I recommend using PACT2: pain, authority, consequence, target profile, and timing.

shared this story about a high-growth company in his portfolio. As with many startups, account executives at this particular company were wearing many hats. They were identifying accounts, reaching out to secure first conversations, conducting discovery calls, working existing opportunities, the works. This created a problem.

To meet its aggressive growth targets, the company decided to build an in-house sales development team. This not only allowed account executives to focus exclusively on moving prospects through the sales process but also gave the company access to a pool of new candidates to nurture and grow—a farm team for future account executives.

The first rule of sales development is no fighting in front of the kids.

MARKET-MESSAGE FIT: Do you know enough about your market to build a solid process and messaging that fledgling reps can use to establish credibility over the phone? It takes more than “hungry” to be successful in sales development. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that just because you hire eager and aggressive reps that they will be effective. Your prospects don’t have time to educate your reps on their businesses.

I recently published research on the practices of more than 340 business-to-business (B2B) companies with sales development groups. This SDR Metrics Report can be found at http://sdrbook.io/SDRMETRICS

Setting expectations as you build and grow sales development is critical.

Of course, the end game is to get to repeatable pipeline and revenue growth as quickly as possible. But if you have a complex solution or one that requires that your account executives educate the market, you have to think long term.

Make sure your team members know that they’re contributing from the get-go. They have a tough job and suffer massive rejection every day. Reward them for collecting relevant information, and celebrate the small wins as the group scales.

Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else. JUDY GARLAND

Role specialization involves separating inbound SDRs (lead qualification) and outbound SDRs (outbound prospecting) into distinct roles.

INBOUND: Prospects who take action in response to marketing activity (filling out a web form, signing-up for a trial, attending a webinar, etc.) OUTBOUND: Prospects whom your reps target with proactive outreach

You can download a copy at http://sdrbook.io/ISMETRICS

COMPANY REVENUE PERCENT MARKETING-SOURCED PIPELINE < $10M 41% $10–50M 43% $50–100M 48% $100–250M 32% $250M+ 29% Figure 5.1 – Marketing-sourced pipeline by company revenue

My point is that no one should be “cold” calling anymore—meaning having only a name and number, but lacking a compelling reason to call.

Your philosophy should be inbound + outbound = allbound. Let’s leave inbound versus outbound to those peddling wares to their respective markets. For the rest of us, we’re building sales development to drive opportunities to the top of the funnel.

The funnel is entirely agnostic about how opportunities are sourced.

Ken Krogue is president and co-founder of InsideSales.com.

It means identifying the accounts that are the most profitable and targeting them with outbound activity.

Try this exercise. Ask a senior sales leader to define the characteristics of your ideal prospect. Next, ask a recently hired account executive. Finally, ask your most junior marketing person in charge of demand generation. If those three responses overlap by even 50 percent, count yourself lucky.

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

One outbound SDR can typically target one hundred to two hundred accounts per month. This is cumulative, not net new.

For example, in a relatively simple, high-volume sales process, thirty days after last touch could be your holding period.

If your reps have compelling events and key research points at their fingertips, they will have better conversations. Access and context are the primary reasons to consider the lead researcher role.