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Summary (AI-Generated)

Introduction:

  • The speaker, Megan, has been with MongoDB for 15 years and has held various roles in marketing, sales, operations, and sales development leadership.
  • The focus is on how sales development evolves as a company grows, particularly in building a successful Sales Development Representative (SDR) team.

Impact of AI on Sales Development:

  • AI is expected to impact sales development due to its process-driven nature, such as automating emails and prospecting.
  • However, AI won’t fully replace SDRs in the near term. Human oversight is still needed to ensure personalized outreach and manage data quality.

Challenges in Building SDR Teams:

  • Managing junior reps is difficult as they often have no professional experience and need extensive guidance.
  • SDRs need to either be promoted within one to two years or replaced, which requires constant recruiting and training.

Phases of Building a Sales Development Team:

  1. Launch Phase:
    • Start with hybrid SDRs (handling both inbound leads and outbound prospecting).
    • Measure success through activities like meetings booked.
  2. Specialization Phase:
    • Separate inbound and outbound SDRs as their daily tasks and goals differ.
    • Move towards measuring more pipeline-generated metrics rather than just meetings.
  3. Scale Phase:
    • Align SDRs tightly with field sales teams and possibly include revenue as part of their success metrics.
    • Focus on aligning with the overall sales strategy and measuring their impact on final sales outcomes.

Strategies for Starting a Sales Development Team:

  1. Hire Experienced Leaders: Find someone who has built an SDR function before or has a strong sales background.
  2. Outsource SDR Function: Use third-party firms, but be aware that you’ll still need to manage strategy and messaging.
  3. Give SDR Function to Marketing: Align SDRs with marketing for close collaboration on pipeline creation, but ultimately, sales leadership is preferred to grow career-oriented salespeople.

Pitfalls to Avoid:

  • Don’t hire SDRs without a clear playbook or expect them to figure it out alone.
  • Avoid promoting SDR managers who lack sales closing experience.
  • Don’t fully delegate the SDR function to third-party vendors without proper management.

Specialization of SDR Teams:

  • Inbound SDRs: Focus on following up with inbound leads, website chats, and product-qualified leads (PQLs), with heavy alignment to marketing.
  • Outbound SDRs: Work closely with sales on top accounts, building lists and outreach strategies based on deep research.

Scaling Sales Development:

  • When scaling, rules of engagement become critical, such as deciding which team (inbound or outbound) handles incoming leads from key accounts.
  • For large companies like MongoDB, SDR teams mirror the sales organization and are aligned with sales targets.

Key Metrics and Recruiting by Stage:

  1. Early Stage: Focus on simple metrics like meetings booked to drive volume.
  2. Mid Stage: Move to measuring opportunities created and qualifying leads.
  3. Scale Stage: Introduce a mix of opportunity creation and revenue metrics to align SDRs with business outcomes.

Recruitment and Progression:

  • Look for individuals with drive, intelligence, and coachability for SDR roles.
  • Establish career progression programs like MongoDB’s "BDR to CRO" initiative to encourage long-term career growth within sales.
  • Leverage internship programs and college campus recruitment strategies — it works very well to bring in classes or cohorts of SDRs at the same time

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