I am sure we are all familiar with the concept of goal setting both in our personal lives and in business. Indeed, we hear a lot about the importance of creating goals at the beginning of the year (and if you’d like to know why it is really important to set goals as SDRs and BDRs specifically then start with: WHY SDRs NEED TO WRITE GOALS (coming soon). Yes, we hear a lot about why, but no one really tells us how. So right now, we look at how to create goals to achieve SDR (or BDR) success in 2023, step by step.
1: Define What You Want?
2: Ask Yourself These Questions
3: Write down SMART Goals
4: Schedule Goal Review
Step 1: What Do you Want?
The first step to setting goals that will help us to achieve success is to define what success actually means to us. Therefore we must define what do we want? Of course, this will be individual to everyone and it may take a few minutes of brainstorming. But it is time well spent. As an SDR we may simply want to achieve our targets, set by the company. Or maybe we want to get promoted. Perhaps we want to gain experience or exposure in a certain area of the business. Whatever it is for you, you must define what you want first and foremost.
To do this, take a pen and piece of paper. And allow yourself 20-30 minutes of quiet time to brainstorm this topic. It is important to recognise this is a valuable use of time. Start by writing ‘by the end of this year I want..’. Then give yourself the freedom to write everything and anything that comes to mind. Do not limit yourself at this stage. Once you have a list of things that you truly want to achieve (don’t write something for the sake of it), prioritise your list 1 to however many items you have. Take the first three and drop everything else.
Step 2: Ask Yourself
Once we’ve defined our high level goals for the year, we need to start thinking about how we can get there. It is really important to create the path from where we are now to where we want to be. Starting at the end we can work our way back. And we can do that by asking ourselves a few simple questions. So, grab your pen and paper!
Q1. Where do you want to be one year from now?
Q2. What do you need to do quarterly to get there?
Q3. What do you need to do monthly to hit those quarterly goal?
Q4. What do you need to do weekly to hit that monthly goal
The most important thing about asking these questions is that we need to be honest and thorough with the answers. We will be using this to guide ourselves to success for the rest of the year. Therefore this information needs to be well thought out and accurate. As an SDR or BDR each of these questions will be answered with a combination of numbers and/or actions or behaviours depending on your goals. Of course, we need to answer these questions for each goal. As you can see in the example below, we start broad and become more narrow and specific with each question. In the end, we have a very specific list of simple and actionable to do’s.
Example
Q1. Where do you want to be one year from now?
Promoted to AE
Q2. What do you need to do quarterly to get there?
SDR Target Attainment 3 quarters in a row
Networking to get to know managers & AEs on the team(s) I’m likely to join
Q3. What do you need to do monthly to hit those quarterly goal?
SDR Target: Reach or exceed my Quarterly & monthly targets
Networking: Spend time with sales managers & AEs
Q4. What do you need to do weekly to hit that monthly goal
Correct Volume of Activity to hit my pipeline & opportunity target:
Networking Goal – ask relevant AEs & Sales Managers for time for coffee
Step 3: Write down SMART goals
Many people stop at step 2. However, we have not yet defined the path we will take to get to our goal yet. Therefore we need to take the answers from the above questions and write down SMART Goals. If you are not familiar here is a quick break down but you can read more here: How To Write SMART Goals (And Why They Matter)
Specific – instead of creating a broad goal open to interpretation, be specific and define your goal. e.g. get promoted vs. get promoted to AE in sales team X.
Measurable – Have a way to measure your goals, using a numerical value such as a $ target or even a deadline e.g. January 2024
Achievable – Your goal can’t be easy but it has to be possible. As an SDR it is not achievable to become Sales Manager by Jan 24 but AE could be (depending on your level of experience to date of course).
Realistic – similar to achievable, realistic means that your goal must be possible. For example it may be achievable to hit 200% of your target every month but at what cost? You would probably have to work 7 days per week, 12 hours per day which is not realistic
Time Bound – Define times, dates and deadlines for your goal and all of your sub goals to keep you on track and prevent it dragging out.
Using the example from before, let’s look at how we can convert the answers that we have provided into SMART goals. Firstly, on the left we can see the answers to our questions. On the right we have converted them to SMART goals:
Getting SMART
| ANSWERS TO Qs FROM ABOVE | CONVERT TO SMART GOAL |
Promoted to AE | Promoted to AE by January 2024 |
SDR Target Attainment 3 quarters in a row
Networking to get to know managers & AEs on the team(s) I’m likely to join | Quarterly: $200k Pipeline & 25 Opportunities x3 Sales Manager Coffee Chats – get to know managers of team(s) I want to join x3 AE Interviews – Understand the team dynamic & role from AEs where I want to be |
SDR Target: Reach or exceed my Quarterly & monthly targets Networking: Spend time with sales managers & AEs | Quarterly Target / 3 months: Pipeline: $200k/3 = $67K per month Opportunities: 25/3 = 9 opportunities per month Networking Meet x1 Sales Manager per month (name) for 15 mins coffee Meet x1 AE per month (name) for 15 mins interview |
Correct Volume of Activity to hit my pipeline & opportunity target Networking Goal – ask relevant AEs & Sales Managers for time for coffee | Activity to hit my pipeline & opportunity target: 50 Cold Calls per week 100 New Outreach Emails per week 18-20 Qualifying meetings Networking Goal Schedule x1 meeting with AE & Manager the first week of every month |
Step 4: Schedule A Regular Goal Review
This goal setting and planning process is very important. However, all too often, we spend time planning but never follow through. Very often, a week after we set the goals we forget we ever did it. And this is why scheduling a goal review as part of the initial process is the final step to creating goals to achieve SDR Success.
This is as simple as scheduling ‘goal review’ in your calendar at recurring intervals. Realistically, I recommend checking in with your goals on a monthly basis. Simply spend 15-20 mins reviewing the previous month, assess whether or not you have hit your targets. This way, if you have some shortfalls, you can bake them into the following months in order to make up the difference and stay on track with the over all goal.
You are now ready to create goals to achieve SDR success in 2023. Please share your progress in the comments and feel free to reach out with any questions. And remember people who write down their goals are 42% more likely to achieve them. This whole exercise should take 30-60 minutes. Really, that is just one hour for the entire year to help ensure that you are successful. I don’t know about you, but it’s worth it for me!
Until Next Time!