the top of the sales funnel – it is hardly surprising that the price of a good SDR has been bid up to the point where there isn’t a big wage gap to support the econom- ics of functional specialization. But what is the alternative? It’s simple: Provide your AEs with ev- erything they need to set their own meetings without wasting their time. Fortunately, they really need only three things: • A list of targets: These are people worth talking to within their territory.
• A message: Cold and follow-up calls need a different message from discovery calls.
• A conversation accelerator: An AE’s time is too valuable to be wasted dialing the phone and navigating 20 or more phone calls to get one live conversation. For AEs to succeed, their critical
threshold is around one net-new dis- covery meeting per week – requiring around six to 10 conversations. Using conversation-acceleration technol- ogy, like ConnectAndSell, reduces the time to reach that goal to less than 15 minutes per day. A list of targets plus message development takes another couple of hours, but it only has to be done once. Then results begin to appear immediately on the AE’s calendar. As with any functional analysis, it’s key to break the job down into its components and then try to fit them back together to make a functional flow that can be resourced and man- aged to maximum advantage. Here’s the standard breakdown. • SDR – Does everything needed to identify, approach, engage, and qualify prospects from the sea of all companies, roles, and individu- als that have the greatest chance of being taken from discovery to closed/won by an AE.
• AE – Conducts discovery con- versations, qualifies for further engagement, engages, negoti- ates, and closes deals.
Here’s an alternative functional breakdown. Admittedly, it requires
additional technical machinery as well as identifying, hiring, onboarding, training, and managing two additional functional roles. • Market strategist – Converts the firm’s go-to-market strategy into prioritized lists of target compa- nies and role definitions.
• List manager – Converts the output of the market strategist into dynamically managed lists of contacts, with contact information and supporting information.
• Call navigator – Navigates phone systems and gatekeepers to convert a target contact into a conversation, if available.
• Appointment setter – Converts conversations with target contacts into scheduled meetings with the optimal AE.
• AE – Conducts discovery con- versations, qualifies for further engagement, engages, negoti- ates, and closes deals. (Just like above!) The alternative looks more com-
plicated, doesn’t it? However, it has huge advantages over the standard “two generalists plus a handoff” sales-development model. One only needs to note that the role of the appointment setter can be filled as easily by an AE as by a specialist SDR for one reason: The market strategist, list manager, and call navigator work in concert as true functional special- ists to completely eliminate the hours wasted trying to get a conversation. That is, give an AE with the power to push a button and have a con- versation with someone they really want to talk to (as determined by the company, in the form of the market strategist, represented as a validated contact by the list manager, and de- livered effortlessly in real time by the call navigator), and they can be their own SDR! After all, the SDR’s ultimate job is to get meetings scheduled on their calendar – and who better to execute the conversation portion of doing that job? With the addition of this new func- tional breakdown, we now have two
additional ways of achieving the goal of having enough meetings for AEs: 1. Provide AEs with the means to efficiently be their own SDR by eliminating all list definition, contact management, and call navigation. Let them do their own talking – end to end. Here’s what this looks like for two months for 71 AEs who need one meeting per week:
• Average Prospecting Hours Spent: 8 hours, 14 minutes (11.7 minutes per day)
• Average Meetings Scheduled: 7.67 (about one meeting per week)
• SDRs Employed: 0 2. Provide AEs with a smaller team of SDRs who focus on one thing – having conversations that convert to scheduled meetings. It’s even possible for these SDRs to be true professional appoint- ment setters rather than the usual short-timers on their way to an- other job, allowing their skills to develop even further as they per- fect their craft through hundreds of conversations. Here’s what this looks like for two months for eight “conversationalist” SDRs, each with a goal of 11.5 meetings per week:
• Average Prospecting Hours Spent: 187 hours, 30 minutes (4 hours, 46 minutes per day)
• Average Meetings Scheduled: 117.11 (about 14.6 meetings per week)
• SDRs Employed: 8 So, it is possible that your best SDR might be your AE. Just take away the company strategy work, the data management work, and the call navi- gation work, and you are left with the need for conversational skill – which AEs have in abundance. As do great “conversationalist” SDRs. The choice is up to you.
Chris Beall is CEO of ConnectAndSell, the only patented, award-winning cloud solu- tion that solves the #1 B2B sales challenge – getting hard-to-reach decision makers on the phone.
SELLING POWER NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2021 | 15 © 2021 SELLING POWER. CALL 1-800-752-7355 FOR REPRINT PERMISSION.
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