We've all been on the receiving end of cold calls from sales development representatives (SDRs) and we've all gotten countless sales emails that clutter up our inboxes. So when your business needs to conduct outreach, we're painfully aware that it needs to be done in a way that rises above the noise (and that prospects won't find annoying).
An SDR is a valuable member of any sales team looking to grow their pipeline and give their executives more time to focus on closing deals. But not all businesses have the budget to hire and train a part-time or full-time SDR, and it holds them back from expanding their sales efforts.
Enter the outsourced SDR — a more affordable way to free up time for your sales team and engage with more leads.
Let's take a look at what SDRs do, why smaller sales teams benefit from hiring them, what outsourced SDR services are, and what sets SIX's outsourced SDR program apart.
What is an SDR?
An SDR, sometimes referred to as a business development representative (BDR), is a member of a sales team who prospects for and qualifies leads. In larger organizations, there are often several SDRs on the sales team whose sole jobs are to conduct outreach to prospects — including cold calls, emails, and LinkedIn messaging.
SDRs can also take on other responsibilities to interact with prospects who are early on in the pipeline. They can monitor website chatbots, reach out to event attendee lists, and field general info requests.
Once they’ve met with a prospect and qualified them as a viable lead, the SDR then passes the lead on to higher ranking members of the sales team who will take it from there. This way, account executives can spend less time qualifying leads and more time closing deals.
Why smaller sales teams need SDRs
In smaller organizations that don’t have SDRs, the sales or business development manager (or the owners) must complete all the steps of the sales process, from outreach and warming up leads to presentations and proposals. This is a time-consuming process with a lot of dead ends.
Having an SDR to screen prospects can save executives valuable time that could be spent selling to qualified leads. When owners do much of the selling, having an SDR allows them to spend more time running other aspects of their business.
Having an SDR is particularly important when small or medium-sized companies are ramping up their marketing efforts. Sometimes marketing performs very well but the leads aren't followed up on because the sales team (or owners) simply don't have enough bandwidth. And then all the time and money put into marketing amounts to less than it should. (That's why we offer outsourced SDR services — more on that later.)
What are outsourced SDR services?
SDR outsourcing is an alternative to increasing your sales team's headcount. Instead of hiring and training a new employee as an SDR, businesses can choose to outsource their outreach efforts to an agency.
An outsourced SDR will prospect to your target audience (via phone, email, or messaging), and pass any leads on to your in-house sales team.
Outsourced SDRs speak to prospects as a member of your team, explain your products or services, answer basic questions, and try to set up a meeting between the prospect and an account executive.
The benefits of SDR outsourcing vs. hiring in-house SDRs
The decision whether to hire in-house or outsource comes down to the experience you require and the budget you have to work with.
When you choose to contract outsourced SDR services rather than hire an SDR for your team, you will:
- Save money on salary, health insurance, paid time off, payroll taxes, and other expenses associated with hiring an employee.
- Save time and money on training, because outsourced SDRs have already been trained by their agency. Many in-house SDR hires are entry-level salespeople who need training.
- Be assigned an experienced SDR (or multiple SDRs) who understands how to be a professional voice for your company.
- Be able to scale as needed; if you need additional SDRs, more can easily be assigned to your account. If you build an in-house team, you'll need to go through the hiring and training process all over again before you can scale up.
What sets SIX’s outsourced SDR program apart
If you read our recent blog, The 3 Most Annoying Marketing & Sales Tactics (& How to Humanize Them), you'll see the three tactics our LinkedIn followers said they hated the most were cold calls, cold emails, and cold LinkedIn messages — all of which are standard outreach methods.
As a marketing agency that offers sales training, consulting, and development services, we know that cookie-cutter sales tactics aren't enough to connect with your audience anymore, so we take a more personalized approach. We carefully consider your market and industry to choose the best channels for reaching your audience.
Our SDR services are often paired with Account-Based Marketing (ABM) campaigns, which enables outreach to be more personalized to your prospects' needs and goals. We'll find and target a list of high-value accounts that are a great fit for your products or services, and our outsourced SDRs will work in tandem with other marketing and advertising efforts to turn them into leads.
One more thing we offer our outsourced SDR clients is expertise: our SDRs are trusted members of our own sales team. They're trained by our sales and business development experts, and some have worked on our own internal campaigns. And because the SDRs are members of our team, the handoff from marketing to sales is streamlined, and we're able to deliver more qualified leads to our clients in less time.
Need an SDR to qualify leads and make your marketing campaigns more successful? Request a free outsourced SDR consultation with our team today to discuss your needs and our solutions.
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