In this Expert Insight Interview, David Dulany discusses his book The Sales Development Framework: How to Build and Scale a Highly Productive Sales Development Program. David Dulany is the founder of Tenbound, a research and advisory firm 100% focused on and dedicated to sales development.
This Expert Insight Interview discusses:
- Focusing on the “people” component of sales development
- Why do companies fail in building SDR teams
- Taking the SDR role seriously within the organization
The “People” Component
Sales development requires a skill-set to be successful. David Dulany and his associates at Tenbound couldn’t find anything on the market that really focused on the “people” component of sales development. When companies start sales development programs, they tend to go straight to the tech.
This can lead to varying results, so Tenbound likes to take a step back and think about things like company culture, recruiting process, and training. These steps are frequently missing from many companies’ sales development journeys.
Finding the Right Person
Many people go into sales development jobs looking for a stepping stone into an outside sales job or enterprise sales. Unfortunately, sometimes companies don’t put the required amount of effort into finding the right person for the right job, as opposed to finding somebody who will “do the job.”
This pattern is particularly evident in Silicon Valley SaaS companies that have received some traction and investment. As soon as they acquire some funding, they tend to set up sales teams without really putting a lot of emphasis on the screening process and checking whether this is something that people really want to do.
Taking the Role Seriously
The first step towards having successful sales development reps (SDRs) in your company is to take the role seriously within the organization. The top-performing sales development programs have executive support, executive sponsorships, and executive interest.
Both the employee and the employer need to understand that this is an important position, not a transitory entry-level step towards something bigger. It is a critical position to the success of any enterprise.
Our Host
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist, he has conducted over 1500 video interviews of thought leaders for Sales POP! online sales magazine & YouTube Channel and for audio podcast channels where Sales POP! is rated in the top 2% of most popular shows out of 3,320,580 podcasts globally, ranked by Listen Score. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
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