Bessemer Venture Partners’ Post

SDRs/BDRs are the lifeblood of your sales pipeline. So, how do you build an SDR function primed for growth? 🚀 Bessemer's latest guide shares 33 tactics from high-performing sales orgs in our portfolio on building SDR / BDR teams: ✅ Defining the SDR role & ideal candidate profile 📈 Ramping & managing SDRs to hit targets 📊 Key SDR metrics to track ⬆️ Creating SDR career paths Setting the right culture, hiring practices, and processes are critical to building a scalable SDR program. Dive into the guide today: https://lnkd.in/grQNreEM

What if the “BDR problem” of low-depth of knowledge, annoyingly salesy, and contacting us when it's inconvenient could be solved by hiring a different kind of BDR with a different charter? I have been so inspired by the way Vercel’s Hank Taylor built out their “BDR/SDR” team by hiring developers and technical people and naming them Product Advocates; I've detailed it all at carilu.com today. Hank built three SDR teams before Vercel's and found that teaching technical people persuasion and sales skills is easier than teaching business folks technical depth. To support Vercel's developer audience, Hank started recruiting his "Product Advocate" team straight from developer boot camps, put them through customer service onboarding, and had them do a tour of duty in support for a whole month before starting their real job. He had the Product Advocates email the best resources to prospects and check in about their projects instead of trying to qualify based on Budget, Authority, Need, and Time frame (BANT) out of the gates. He found that prospects responded more, faster, and more deeply to people who deeply understood their challenges (duh?!). Hank shared, “For technical sales, an SDR's absolute ceiling is usually below the floor of knowledge for the technical prospect. It’s a really bad mismatch.” His Product Advocates had a goal of 10 minutes to respond to any inbound email within business hours - a speed unmatched by most teams even to route an inquiry! It turns out prospects respond faster when you catch them while they are still thinking of you (duh #2) All this, and the Product Advocates were less expensive and easier to promote into the organization. His first set of advocates went on to become a Sales Engineer, a growth engineer, a customer support manager, a partner engineer, and one of the top salespeople at Vercel. I cornered Hank so I could write this article, but he's hosting a workshop in a few weeks to teach the philosophy, process, and practice: https://lnkd.in/gCg76ZzB Do you think a Product Advocate team could work at your company instead of a BDR/ SDR function? Have you tried something like this before? I can't stop talking to my clients about it. #BetterBDRs #b2bmarketing #TechnicalSales #HypergrowthLeadership

What if the “BDR problem” of low-depth of knowledge, annoyingly salesy, and contacting us when it's inconvenient could be solved by hiring a different kind of BDR with a different charter? I have been so inspired by the way Vercel’s Hank Taylor built out their “BDR/SDR” team by hiring developers and technical people and naming them Product Advocates; I've detailed it all at carilu.com today. Hank built three SDR teams before Vercel's and found that teaching technical people persuasion and sales skills is easier than teaching business folks technical depth. To support Vercel's developer audience, Hank started recruiting his "Product Advocate" team straight from developer boot camps, put them through customer service onboarding, and had them do a tour of duty in support for a whole month before starting their real job. He had the Product Advocates email the best resources to prospects and check in about their projects instead of trying to qualify based on Budget, Authority, Need, and Time frame (BANT) out of the gates. He found that prospects responded more, faster, and more deeply to people who deeply understood their challenges (duh?!). Hank shared, “For technical sales, an SDR's absolute ceiling is usually below the floor of knowledge for the technical prospect. It’s a really bad mismatch.” His Product Advocates had a goal of 10 minutes to respond to any inbound email within business hours - a speed unmatched by most teams even to route an inquiry! It turns out prospects respond faster when you catch them while they are still thinking of you (duh #2) All this, and the Product Advocates were less expensive and easier to promote into the organization. His first set of advocates went on to become a Sales Engineer, a growth engineer, a customer support manager, a partner engineer, and one of the top salespeople at Vercel. I cornered Hank so I could write this article, but he's hosting a workshop in a few weeks to teach the philosophy, process, and practice: https://lnkd.in/gCg76ZzB Do you think a Product Advocate team could work at your company instead of a BDR/ SDR function? Have you tried something like this before? I can't stop talking to my clients about it. #BetterBDRs #b2bmarketing #TechnicalSales #HypergrowthLeadership