How to Win at Sales Development – 27 Tips from the Experts

Sales development is a tough job, and SDR’s deal daily with rejection, sometimes hundreds of times per day. To succeed in this profession, you need resilience, exceptional conversation skills, as well as listening skills and some really smart sales technology. At XANT, we asked the most prominent sales development leaders, thought leaders and reps what is their top advice for SDR success — and the result was a well rounded eBook you can download right now.

The sales development representatives (SDR’s) are true phone warriors who are on a mission to  keep the pipeline filled with hot leads.

Recent data shows that the sales development departments now produce the largest percentage of the sales pipeline, at 38.3% on average. In our study, the Sales department followed closely with 37.8%, and Marketing produced 23.8%.

There’s no going around it, sales development is a crucial function in any company with a sales team.

How to Win at Sales Development

In 2018, XANT took 20,000 votes from sales professionals to determine the most influential sales development leaders, managers, and reps. These votes gave us a list of the who’s who in sales development (see the full list of winners here).

We then reached out to each of the winners and asked them to give us their one top tip on how to succeed in the sales development profession.

The eBook “How to Win at Sales Development” contains all 27 tips from the most influential sales development leaders, managers, and reps.

Top Trends: Omni-channel Communication, AI and Data

What I loved the most about this project is, we got to find commonalities among the sales development leaders, who are highlighting the most important trends affecting SDR’s today. Omni-channel engagement, AI technology and data are the key things that are making a difference for sales development reps in the field.

Omni-channel Communication

“You need to think omni-channel. Omni-channel communication is one of the biggest trends coming out this year. Not only do you need to build a flawless cadence, you need to build it using the communication method and content strategy that each unique buyer wants to absorb,” said Trish Bertuzzi, Founder & CEO of the Bridge Group.

“2019 is the way of the omni-channel approach to prospecting. One of those channels includes the use of video. Using video for sales is critical for ultimate selling success – here’s why. 75% of executives watch business-related online videos every week – and 59% reported that they share work related videos with colleagues weekly. Using video for sales works because it communicates the authenticity of your brand and can create a more lasting “trust” connection with your buyer,” said Mario M. Martinez JR. CEO, Founder of Vengreso and Digital Sales Evangelist.

Using Data and AI to Succeed

“Teams with the ability to understand data have a significant competitive advantage. Studying the underlying success metrics of your team will help you to design success plans for each group, and individual by giving you an objective way to understand where a specific player could improve. At Toast we have a maniacal focus on activity level data. These lenses allow you to design a sales motion that leverages real data to drive specific improvements in your players,” said Ross Nibur, Director of Revenue Operations, and Strategy at Toast.

My thought for sales development in 2019 is to embrace the data by developing the discipline around data integrity which will allow you to trust your process. If we embrace artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, we need to agree that the tool is only as good as the data it uses. Otherwise it is trash in – trash out. So if your data is clean, your predictions are reliable and you can work more efficiently,” said Jake Reni, Head of Adobe Sales Academy.

Download the eBook – “How to Win at Sales Development”

Download the eBook “How to Win at Sales Development” and learn strategies from leaders such as John Barrows, Trish Bertuzzi, Jeb Blount, Brandon Bornacin, Steve Burton, David Dulany, Richard Harris, Morgan J Ingram, Gabe Larsen, Mario Martinez Jr., and many many more…