Their job is to qualify leads to assist sales reps in finding people who are more likely to close. However, in the end, SDRs simply complicate the task of actually closing sales. The human touch has always seemed to be an obvious sales and marketing concept to me. The irony of the SDR role is the position was created to make sales forces more powerful, but they have just made the process heavily layered, complex and time consuming. Many of the SDRs in today's workforce would be valuable in other roles that do move the needle for a business, where their salaries and attention would be better spent. This is why sales reps must be experts, not salespeople. When a consumer is close to buying the first time you speak to them, it changes everything about the interaction. SDRs with a primary focus on qualifying leads and assisting sales people represent the past. Business owners and salespeople need to move beyond the old sales environment and gain control of their own success. The future belongs to experts who know their company, product, service and industry inside and out, and who can focus on helping people that are already partially or fully sold.
What was once meant to speed up the sales process is slowing it down.
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I got into sales for the same reason many others do. I had no other option. Yes, it paid well, but it slowly crippled the quality of many aspects of my life. My marriage was beginning to fail, my kids never saw me, and I kept gaining weight. I’m sharing these intimate details to shed light on the behind-the-scenes version of what working in sales is really like.
The culture was brutal, and the sales methods were old fashioned and direct: on the phone for hours, cold-calling with no Google search aids, databases, or anything resembling a system. I was a boiler room sales guy for more than 13 years, and those early years of my career taught me what to do and what not to do.
Understanding the issues with sales development representatives.
As my understanding of sales and marketing broadened, so did my realization that sales development representatives (SDRs) are an unnecessary financial burden. Their job is to qualify leads to assist sales reps in finding people who are more likely to close. However, in the end, SDRs simply complicate the task of actually closing sales.
If you look in your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, you will notice thousands, if not tens of thousands, of leads SDRs deem “hot prospects” for closing deals. Eventually all of those prospects morph into scores of data fields and reams of tabs, tags, lists — a blinding assortment of blinking, multi-colored sections that demand to be fed with new information. All of that data sits in a cloud waiting to be plucked down.
The problem with this unnatural number of prospect leads is that the human brain simply cannot handle it. According to Dunbar’s Number, the human brain only has the capacity to remember or develop meaningful relationships with 150 people. Once you pass that magic number, all hopes of developing a personal connection with leads is gone. The human touch has always…
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