Congratulations! You have successfully passed the interview process and you are ready to start your career in sales. You have been offered a sales or business development role in the tech company of your dreams (hopefully). If you’ve just started, you are most likely about to face into a few weeks of pretty intense onboarding. Generally you will spend your first month in training. You won’t have a target yet. There will be a lot of information to take in and it may feel overwhelming at times.
It will feel like everything is important and you’ll wonder how you are going to remember it all. Fear not, I can tell you now, the only thing you should be prioritising is hitting your first months’ target. This will technically be your second month on the job. Anyway here are 4 reasons it is important to hit your first Month as SDR:
4 Reasons It Is Important To Hit Your First Month as SDR
- Ramp Targets
- Get That Monkey Off Your Back
- Seeing is Believing
- Momentum Matters
Before we dive head first in, I want to preface this by saying, I am a huge advocate for focusing on the volume and quality of your activities. If you do this, the target will look after itself and you will find success and build the foundational skills you need. However, not in your first month. In your first month, focus on the target. It might sound like I am contradicting myself however there are a number of reasons why you have to hit target in your first month as an SDR. And most of them are psychological. Here we go;
Ramp Targets
Depending on where you are in your journey, you may not even be aware of this yet. A lot of companies (not all of course) offer you a ramp target in your first month or few months. This means that you will have a reduced target, to factor in that you are new and it will take you a while to ‘ramp’ up to the normal expected level of activity. Usually your ramp target will be a percentage of your real target e.g 50% of what you will normally have to do. By no means does this make it easy. You are brand new to the role and you have a lot to learn. It will still be a challenge however it is a huge opportunity. Never again will you have such a significant reduction in target for what will likely be a full month of work. Take that opportunity and try to get yourself ahead from day one
Get That Monkey Off Your Back
If this is your first time to work towards a sales target, let me tell you now it can be a bit intimidating at first. There will be leaderboards designed to create healthy competition. There will be regular conversations with your manager about how you are going to hit target. It will feel like the most important thing in the moment (I promise you, it is not!) and you will feel a bit of pressure to perform. Please don’t be scared off by this, it wears away pretty quickly and becomes part of your normal life.
However, in the first month, you want to experience as many firsts as you can to get the monkey off your back. You want to speak to your first prospect, do your first cold call and set your first meeting. Then you want to get your first opportunity accepted and log some pipeline. From there you want to hit your first target. If you can experience as many of these firsts, as quickly as possible you will no longer feel that pressure to do so and you can settle into your new life as an SDR or BDR.
Seeing Is Believing
Typically Tech companies assign what are known as stretch targets to their sales and business development reps. That is a nice way to say that the targets are high, borderline unrealistic and very difficult to achieve. When you are brand new and learning your trade, such targets can be quite intimidating. Once you get into the role and realise the level of rejection that you have signed yourself up for, you may wonder if it will ever be possible for you to be successful. However seeing is believing my friends. In order to believe that you can be successful, you need to do it, just once. The sooner you can do that, the better. The longer it takes you to be successful, the harder it is to believe it is possible. So do yourself a favour and hit that first target at all costs.
Momentum Matters
As soon as you get some momentum for success it is a bit easier to continue on that path. It all comes down to psychology, motivation and effort. The main thing for you to know now though is if you miss your first month, your momentum is already starting to sway against you. All of a sudden, you are feeling a bit more pressure to hit that second month. Which makes it just that much harder, psychologically. In order to get momentum working in your favour, the best thing you can do is to smash through that first target, if it is the only thing you do.
Conclusion
The reason I am sharing this is very often when I see new reps join, they are in newbie mode. That is they are easing themselves into their new role. They think to themselves, they will spend the first few weeks figuring it out and then they will go for gold. However, this puts you on the back foot. Instead, you want to be that gold from day one. If you get there, you can relax a bit for month two.
Of course, hitting target is not easy. Even with this advice, people do sometimes still miss. And that is okay. Even if you do miss, by being so focused on hitting, you will be better setup to conquer for your second month. Losing time at the beginning, because you don’t know how precious time is, is the number one mistake I see new reps making. This is your sign to get focused from day one and hit that first month, if at all possible. If you have already progressed past this stage, please share your thoughts and experiences to help those who have yet to face it!
Until Next Time!