This is the second in a series of Revcelerate posts exploring how to get the best out of your Sales Development Representatives (SDRs). In this article, Revcelerate’s SDR Director, Katherine Simches, looks at how sales development leaders (SDLs) should best manage their SDR teams once onboarding is complete, and ideal approaches for reporting on the team’s performance.

1) CONTINUOUS SKILLS DEVELOPMENT

The SDL’s role doesn’t end after the first three months of onboarding, because the SDRs will need ongoing skills development to keep them on track and improving. As their manager, you need to create regular time to listen in to calls, give feedback and support, review performance, and suggest constructive improvements.

Role-play is vital here too – listening back to calls that didn’t work out, and replaying conversations to try and steer them to a more positive outcome. ‘Did you think about saying this?’ ‘Have you noticed you always say that?’ This kind of granular feedback is essential to maximise the value of your SDRs.

Likewise, SDRs will always appreciate a manager or team leader who is prepared to lead by example. If you can hop on the phone and show them that you can still book a meeting, you will earn a lot of respect. Continuing to do a bit of outbound yourself will also help keep your coaching fresh and relevant. That said, a player-manager approach – where the team is led by an SDR team lead who still has a full quota of their own – is doomed to failure.

Another reason why you need ongoing performance monitoring and optimisation is because it’s virtually impossible to completely nail your onboarding for everyone first time round. Having a team of SDRs helps make ongoing training more efficient – for example, if everyone is struggling with handling the pricing objection, you can run a great group session on this and pool ideas and approaches.

Time is of the essence

The group approach is also valuable where you need to train people in a soft skill which, giving their junior level, they have probably not come across yet. A good example is time and productivity management. Some simple hacks from you or an external trainer – such as learning to batch similar tasks and process them together, for example – can significantly improve the work an SDR can get through in a day.

Where it’s an individual issue, there's a couple of different ways to do it. If the person is struggling with something that another SDR is really good at, we would look to partner them up and work on the challenge together. This is always a popular approach. Another way is for the manager to sit with them and try to show them a better way.

A good SDL will always be looking to proactively nip issues in the bud before they can escalate. That’s why you need open communication channels. Revcelerate CEO, Phil Guest, says:

I try to do stand-ups as a group every day, just 15-20 minutes to check in with everyone and get them energised for the day ahead. This is a good chance to spot any issues – and if there aren’t any, just have a bit of fun and bring everyone together. You can always check in with people individually as needed over the course of the day too.

Managing performance

If things are going well and everyone’s doing a good job, you don’t need to be a micro-manager. But you can still chip in with positive messages of reassurance – celebrating a success, for example, or inviting people to listen in to an SDR’s call that went really well. The key is to keep engaging – these young people really do crave that attention.

At the same time, if an SDR’s activity is just not going well, it’s essential that their manager is ready to look at that and have the difficult conversation. For example, I might ask an SDR how their day is going; if they say all’s fine (when I know it isn’t) I’ll share a screenshot of their activity and say something like, ‘It looks a little low. Is there anything bothering you or blocking you today? Anything I can help with?’ So long as they know that you are there to support and manage them, and to keep them accountable where need be, it’s all going to go a lot more smoothly for everyone. There’s nothing worse for an SDR than feeling they are operating alone in a vacuum.

In a tech business there will usually be an official comms channel, typically on Slack, which senior management can also see. But it’s tough for SDRs when they’re not hitting their numbers and feel under pressure, so I like to have another channel which is just for them – a place where they can vent without worrying too much about who’s listening or having to watch how they say things. And as part of helping people to plan their day efficiently, I like to give them half an hour or so after their morning calls to decompress, catch up with admin and so on.

These things become even more important when people are working remotely, because there isn’t the opportunity for pals to go off for a walk together or let off steam in the kitchen over a coffee.

All in all, then, ongoing skills development is about being available as a proactive resource, both for positive reinforcement and where necessary correcting course.

2) REPORTING TO THE BUSINESS

SDLs get pulled in a lot of different directions. You’ll be required to report to the Board or a Senior Management Team, and pulled into all sorts of other meetings: sales pipeline meetings, marketing meetings, Board planning, product sessions. This is one reason why it’s crucial that you don’t manage too many SDRs – about 5-7 per manager is the ideal ratio.

When reporting on the performance of your team to senior people, keep it simple and report on the headline figures. Execs don’t want to know the granular detail about every individual – what they care about are things like meetings booked and the state of the pipeline.

• Proactively tell them what they want to see, manage up, and show how you have built all the dashboards they need in the CRM.

• Report regularly and consistently. Where there are issues, be up front rather than wait for someone senior to spot the problem.

• Prepare detailed notes and be prepared to present a plan for how you are going to remedy the situation.

If you can show your CRO or CEO that you own the issue and are top of it, your own one-to-ones will be mercifully short.

Next in the series: Managing SDR teams #3 - Upskilling