Opt In | Ep. 40

The right first step in building out your sales development function

One of the biggest reasons SDR teams underperform?

It’s not a lack of tech. It’s not bad management. It’s not limited training.

All of those things are problems, but they pale in comparison to bad goal-setting.

More often than not, leadership teams end up creating unattainable, unmeasurable, and unmanageable goals for their SDR function.

That trickles down to the SDR manager, who attempts to build a team that can hit those lofty expectations…

And that trickles down to the SDR, who ends up burning themselves out in the process.

Then, it’s ‘rinse and repeat’ with a new crop of reps.

AJ and Alex talk about how you can solve this problem in our latest Opt In.

In it, they cover some of the points that Lindsay Frey (dD Co-Founder & CEO) made in her onDemand Webinar on Forecasting and Capacity Planning.

Some of the big takeaways include:

Math scales infinitely – sales KPIs don’t. You have to consider the point of diminishing returns. You’re managing people, not a dashboard.

Goals need to be rooted in hard numbers – examine your historical conversion rates and set reasonable inputs for those outputs.

Match your incentives and your desired outcomes. Don’t measure your team on quantity if you need them to produce quality meetings (and vice versa).

AJ & Alex’s Take

The best way to learn about this is to watch the recording, but if you’re looking for an abbreviated learning experience we’ve got you covered:

One of the biggest reasons SDR teams underperform?

It’s not a lack of tech. It’s not bad management. It’s not limited training.

All of those things are problems, but they pale in comparison to bad goal-setting.

More often than not, leadership teams end up creating unattainable, unmeasurable, and unmanageable goals for their SDR function.