Enacting certain sales development best practices can lift your organization to greater success. These aspects of sales strategy can take a little bit of extra effort at first. Depending on your company’s culture, there may even be a bit of resistance to them. When they’re a part of your daily sales playbook, though, it’s hard not to enjoy much greater success. Let’s take a look at the top three of these sales development best practices, and see why they’re so helpful.
1: Learn Your Product
It may seem obvious that you need to know a bit about your product before you can sell it. Unfortunately for many SDRs, it’s not that obvious to every organization. Too many sales teams bring in new SDRs with minimal onboarding and training. “Trial by fire,” “Sink or Swim” and “Fake it ’till you make it” constitute the bulk of their orientation. To some extent, this can be helpful at ensuring that the people who stay on the job are the ones who are both hardworking and resourceful. Those are both essential characteristics of a successful SDR.
The trouble arises when new SDRs have to deal with product questions from customers. Without at least a basic understanding of the product, it’s impossible to do well at this. In fact, to do well, it’s essential to have a grasp of the product’s benefits that goes well beyond basic. SDRs need to be able to envision specific use cases and applications. They have to be able to imagine how the product could work for the particular customer they’re speaking with. They don’t have to know everything about the product. In fact, too much product knowledge can become a sort of Achilles’ heel. Remember that it’s better to focus on benefits than features!
SDRs should take it upon themselves to gain all the product knowledge they can, but make sure to leave it up to the account executives to have the details needed for deal closing.
2: Build a Smart Process
No list of sales development best practices could ever be complete without touching on the importance of having a good contact cadence. Sales development is not just random cold calling and cold emailing. It gets the best results when each contact attempt is part of a carefully considered plan.
Boom Demand uses a specific cadence that weaves social media outreach in alongside traditional communications methods. The benefit of such a strategy is that it enables our SDRs to connect with prospects in the best way for each one. Some prospects become customers without ever getting a cold call because an SDR was able to skillfully engage with them on LinkedIn. That should be the goal of every SDR team. Cold calls do work, but to a decreasingly successful degree. It’s critically important to pursue strategies that work more effectively.
3: Customize Your Approach and Be Flexible
Keep in mind that every lead is different. Every company has different needs. That being the case, many will not be a good fit for your product. By the same token, the ones that are a good fit won’t always realize it unless you communicate the benefits in the right way for them.
It’s good to have a basic elevator pitch and talking points laid out and practiced. It should come naturally to every SDR to be able to explain why their product is a good idea. But how is it a good idea for the lead you’re on the line with right now? Everyone in sales should have the creative freedom to go off-script, as long as they stay on-brand! They need to be able to talk to their leads in a comfortable and natural way, so those leads will be comfortable becoming prospects.
Sales Development Best Practices are Easy to Implement with Boom Demand
What do you think about these sales development best practices? Can you envision your company’s sales team enjoying greater success when using them?
If you need a boost for your sales team, consider the advantages of getting a Boom Demand SDR team to help them find more qualified prospects, faster. Contact us today!