Does it sometimes feel like your cold calls are encased in impenetrable ice? If your sales reps are having difficulty selling your company’s products or services, you may need a sales development rep to thaw things out a bit.
A lot goes into turning a prospect into a loyal customer. The first step is to find potential customers that are a good fit for your company’s offerings. That’s the job of a sales development representative (SDR). Having an effective SDR streamlines the sales process with highly qualified sales leads to make your sales reps’ jobs easier.
What Does a Sales Team Need to be Successful?
Comprehensive training and onboarding, an incentive program, open communication, and feedback help keep sales reps motivated for success. You can further enhance your team’s efficiency with productivity and communication tools. Your reps should also keep up to date with the latest sales trends to help them better understand the market.
Before recruiting team members, identify important skills and personality traits. Create accurate job descriptions and define your company’s goals and objectives to attract the right candidates and build an unstoppable sales team.
What Does a Sales Development Representative Do?
An SDR is the first to connect with prospects and create the person’s first impression of your company. They educate potential customers, scope out potential leads, and generate a list of qualified prospects who are a good fit for the company’s products and services.
How do they differ from a normal sales rep? An SDR communicates with potential customers at the start of the buyer’s journey. They make cold calls and turn prospects into qualified sales leads. A sales representative will nurture leads, and might also close the sale.
A sales development representative has the following responsibilities:
Connects with Prospects
This specialized rep scours online and offline sources for good prospects who may need what your business offers. They look to online communities such as social media, industry trade shows, and conferences in addition to customer referrals, and social events. After collecting names and contact details, they might reach out with personalized emails, informative content, and invitations to events.
Represents Your Company and Your Brand
An SDR is the prospect’s first point of content with your organization, so they must make an excellent first impression. They need to show interest in the prospect’s goals and challenges so that they can address them with possible solutions.
Educates Prospects About Your Products and Services
A key role of this initial rep is to educate prospects about your company’s brand and what solutions it offers. The rep does this by listening carefully to discover the person’s challenges and needs. They must be able to provide detailed information about the company’s products and services so that prospects can make informed buying decisions.
Advances Prospects to Qualified Sales Leads
A rep in this critical role of lead prospecting understands your existing customers and buyer personas and can immediately recognize if a prospect resembles this profile. Qualified leads are those who are likely to make purchases from your company. The rep will then advance them to the next phase of the sales process, which might be a product demo, sales call, or consultation.
Communicates with the Sales Team
Qualifying leads and moving them through your company’s sales process involves close communication with the rest of the sales team. This ensures that potential customers can smoothly and easily make purchases.
Skills Required for a Sales Development Representative
A sales development rep requires certain skills to be successful, such as:
- Deep knowledge of the organization’s brand, products, and services.
- Knowledge of the company’s existing clientele and buyer personas.
- Research skills.
- Organizational skills and problem-solving skills.
- Expertise with CRM (customer relationship management) tools.
- Experience with various marketing channels, like email and social media.
An SDR must have a wide range of “soft skills,” including confidence, emotional intelligence, empathy, curiosity, and creativity. They must also be good communicators and especially good listeners.
Supercharge Your Sales Team
It takes a special talent to start with a cold call and convince someone that your organization can solve their problems and make their business more efficient and successful. Not sure where to find such a sales rockstar?
We can help. At Culver Careers, we understand what makes an expert sales development rep, and our sales recruiters will work closely with your organization to find the perfect match.
Ty Culver is the Client Development Director of CulverCareers focusing on talent acquisition and workforce solutions with a wide variety of local, national and global clients.
Ty has been working in various aspects of the industry for over 10 years and developed deep expertise in Executive Search, Executive Benefit and Talent Acquisition Programs along the way. He has a range of experience from SMB to Enterprise clients and hyper specific executive searches to high volume recruiting with companies in a dynamic state of flux.
Today, Ty leads a talented team of Talent Acquisition Specialists, Executive Recruiters and Client Success Managers at one of the most respected Recruiting Firms in the Nation, CulverCareers. While leadership is a key aspect of his role, Ty still enjoys working with clients on recruiting strategies, executive benefit solutions and workforce solutions to help clients build a holistic approach to talent acquisition and talent retention.
