Sales Development is a tough gig, no doubt. A lot of the advice out there focuses on helping already top performing SDRs to be even better, but that is not the reality for so many of us. So I thought to myself, why is no one talking about how to help a struggling SDR? As an SDR who struggled in the beginning myself, dreams of being a “Top Performing SDR” Or “Crushing my SDR Target” were the furthest thing from my mind, I simply wanted to keep my head above water. If you are here right now, please know two things; firstly, you are not the first and will not be the last, even if no one is talking about it and secondly there are some things that you can start doing right now which will vastly improve your situation and quickly.
If you are struggling as an SDR, the first things to do are:
- Control what you can control
- Reframe Success
- Stay Consistent
Control What You Can Control
As a Sales or Business Development representative, when we are starting out and/or struggling it can feel like there is a lot that we cannot control and we tend to focus on what is outside of our control. We are not wrong, there is a lot we cannot control. However there is also a lot that we can control, and this is vital. If you are struggling, the very first thing to do is to make a list of everything that we feel is impacting our opportunity for success or failure. This can include things like “Bad time of year”, “less mature market”, “Too many AEs”, “Not enough time in the day”. This list can include anything that comes to mind, so don’t be shy just get it down on paper.
Once we have this list created it is time to divide it into three columns. The first column will be ‘Things I cannot control” and the second will be “Things I can control”, the third will be “Things I can Influence” Start with things that we absolutely cannot control such as “Global Economic Crisis” which are worldly and completely outside of anyone’s control in our company. Then level down to things that others within the company may be able to control and we can possibly influence. As we get closer to completing this exercise we must really think about what we can and cannot control and where we have influence. Sometimes it can be easy to adopt a victim mentality when things aren’t going well. Be weary of this and avoid it at all costs. Instead, think honestly about it and make the list as accurate as possible. Let’s take a look at a list that I created as an example and for inspiration.
Things I Cannot Control | Things I Can Influence | Things I Can Control |
Pending Recession | Prospect perception of our company | My understanding of our value during a recession |
High Targets | Management’s awareness of our situation through feedback | My Effort – volume of activity |
Time of year e.g. August is holiday season | Future meetings setup during the holiday period | My consistency of effort – July & Sept will carry you through Aug with consistent effort |
Low company headcount (large workload) | Feedback on resource allocation requirements | Time Management – High vs. Low Value Activities |
AEs very busy | Focus on different AE/ Feedback to AE/Manager | The value I can deliver to AEs |
From here, we must review our list of “Things I Cannot Control” and decide are there any points in there that can and should be moved to our “Things I Can Influence List”? For example, let’s take “AEs very busy”. If we only have two AEs to work with. And both of them are too busy so they cannot progress our calls and opportunities. We must deal with this, as if we don’t it is impossible to be successful. Although we cannot control this, we can report back to our manager, speak directly to the AEs and explain how much influence they have on our success, we can speak to their sales manager. We cannot control but we can influence. But should we? On the other hand if we have seven more AEs to support, maybe we don’t need those two, and instead we just ignore them and focus on what we can control.
Once we have our final list, we need to be ruthless. And this is easy to say but not easy to do. From Today, we stop thinking about, talking about and worrying about things we cannot control. We work on the things that we can influence on an ongoing basis and we focus as much time and positive energy as possible on the things that we can control. As you’ll see from the example list above these are things that we can focus on almost on a daily basis, they involve working hard, adopting a positive mindset and seeking out opportunities to do more and do better. I promise you, regardless of the impact that this will have on your targets, you will start to feel better by implementing this step and empowering yourself to be successful.
Reframe Success
Most of us are probably aware that (if we view sales through a selfish inward lense) it is all about targets, hitting quota and collecting the commission cheque. It may be fair to say then, that if we hit our target, we are successful. In the early stages of your sales development and indeed sales career, I urge you to reframe success. In fact, this ties in nicely with the previous point about controlling what we can control. If we are struggling to even get through to a prospect via phone or email, it is very difficult to set a meeting. Even if we do set that meeting, there are a lot of variables that will impact whether or not it gets progressed as an opportunity. (My target was based on the number of opportunities I could secure). My level of control reduces the further we go in that example, but what I can control is the number of calls and/or emails I send and the quality of them. The more people I try to contact, the more chances I have of connecting and setting a meeting that may turn into an opportunity. Therefore, in the beginning, it would be wise for me to reframe success and base it on what I can control. Such as volume of activity, level and consistency of effort. Everything in sales is measured, so it is pretty easy for us to measure something other than our final target.
By doing this, we are empowering ourselves to be successful. And I hear you say “that won’t guarantee we hit our monthly targets”. And you are right. There are no guarantees in sales. By reframing success though, we can set ourselves daily and weekly targets that are likely to lead us to “Success” in the traditional sense aka hitting our target. Here is how you can practically start reframing success today:
- Find out the daily & weekly volume metrics for successful reps in your company. How many calls per week do they typically do, how many emails do they typically send? How many meetings do they typically set in order to hit target?
- Take those numbers and add 10-20 more per day. That is our new target. If we can achieve these daily and weekly targets, we can consider our week a success.
- If after that we are still not setting meetings and getting opportunities, we know the volume is there so we need to look at the quality of our outreach. This is where manager, mentor or buddy coaching comes in. If this isn’t set up though, reach out to successful team mates, ask them to look over some emails and get some tips.
If you are thinking “even if I do this I might not hit my monthly or quarterly target” you are right. However the importance of this is to improve how we are feeling. It doesn’t feel good to ‘fail’. If we are not hitting our targets we can sometimes feel like we are failing when in fact we are just early in the process and need a bit more time. By reframing success to focus on things we can control, at the end of each week, we can feel that we’ve had a successful week. Because of this, we feel more motivated to go again next week. And the week after. And so on. This allows us to build some consistency of effort and from there, we will start to see some ‘real’ monthly/quarterly target success. On the contrary, if we focus on seemingly unattainable targets only, we will be disillusioned after two weeks and we will lose any motivation to try, which guarantees continued ‘failure’.
Stay Consistent
I often hear struggling SDRs talking about how it’s hard to ‘stay motivated’. Motivation is a myth. Stop striving to stay motivated, instead strive to stay consistent. I have never met an SDR who did not find success eventually by delivering consistent effort over time no matter what the outcome. Staying consistent without results or success is extremely challenging however it is also very simple, all we have to do is keep showing up. We don’t need any overly sophisticated product knowledge, we don’t need any charismatic sales skills. Will these things help? Yes. Will we develop them over time if we stay consistent? Yes.
If you have read this article about Emotional Intelligence and Why It Matters for SDRs, you’ll know that continuing to stay consistent without reward is part of motivation and exercising delayed gratification. This is quite literally, delaying the gratification for doing a difficult task. It is an important skill in all aspects of life, it is a vital skill for any SDR but especially someone who is new to the game and struggling. The simplest (but by no means easy) way to develop this is to stay consistent, continuously overtime without regard for any outside factors. But how can we do this?
As human beings we crave rewards, so we can create mini rewards for staying consistent to encourage us to keep it up. This will look a bit different for everyone depending on what we are motivated by however in general here are some tips:
- Set daily & weekly goals (tie back to reframing success)
- Create a checklist for whatever you want to achieve
- After you complete each goal, tick it off and reward yourself .eg. Take a 10 minute break, grab a coffee or listen to your favourite song
It is good to create goals that are bite sized and manageable so that we can tick them off frequently. By this I mean, have a couple of small goals per day and a couple of small rewards for hitting them vs having one huge weekly goal with a big reward at the end. On Monday, that reward will seem too far away to be worth the effort.
In tough times, Sales Development very often poses more of a mental challenge than anything else. Yes there are many foundational sales skills that we can start to develop in this role which will serve us for a lifetime in sales. Yes there are lofty targets and some fairly lucrative commission opportunities especially so early in our career. However none of that matters if we are feeling like we cannot get out of first gear. Leader boards and performance competitions are designed to create motivation and healthy competition but they don’t do that for people who are struggling to get out of last place. At that point, everything is about our mindset. Being able to take charge of our mindset will improve our situation. Momentum matters. If we are doing well, it’s easier to stay doing well. We need to take control of our mindset to swing momentum back in our favour. And we can do that by controlling what we can control, reframing success and staying consistent. From there we can start thinking about developing the follow-on skills required to become Top Performing SDRs. If you are struggling as an SDR, reach out and ask for help via the comments!