Watch a quick demo or schedule time with us.
Schedule a demo, or contact support.
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to setting up a Business Development Representative (BDR) team, but there are some best practices and BDR strategies that can help ensure its success.
First, it’s important to have a clear understanding of what your BDRs will be responsible for. What’s their primary Nurturing leads? All of the above? Once you know what their main focus will be, you can start to build out your team.
It’s also important to consider the size of your team. How many BDRs do you need to reach your goals? Too few and they’ll be overwhelmed; too many and you’ll have idle hands. Find the sweet spot that will allow your BDRs to be productive and successful.
Finally, make sure you have a good process in place for training and onboarding new BDRs. They need to be up-to-speed on your products or services, your target market, and your sales process. The more they know, the more successful they’ll be.
In this article, we will discuss these key points in depth to set up a BDR team and list some of the best practices to enable your BDR team to scale for success.
So let’s get into it…
Business development representatives play a vital role in the sales process. They are responsible for finding and qualifying potential customers and introducing them to the company.
BDRs typically make cold calls, send emails, and network with leads in the early stages of the sales process. Without BDRs, businesses would have a harder time connecting with potential customers.
BDRs are the first point of contact between a business and a potential customer. After BDRs discover prospects, they contact them to introduce the company and build a relationship.
BDRs play an essential role in developing new business opportunities and driving revenue growth.
Now that you understand how essential BDR teams are for a business, it’s important to assemble them with the most sophisticated approach out there.
Here’s what you must do when hiring and assembling your BDR team:
BDRs are the driving force of any successful sales team - they’re the ones responsible for generating new leads and business opportunities.
As such, it’s important that your BDR team is composed of individuals with the right skill set and personality traits.
First and foremost, your BDRs should have an affable demeanor. They’ll be representing your company to potential customers, so it’s critical that they make a good first impression.
BDRs also need to be patient and persistent - it can often take multiple attempts to connect with a decision-maker or it may take 8-12 attempts before a BDR reaches a prospect. Therefore, a BDR must compose itself with patience and persistence to win the right prospects.
Additionally, BDRs should be willing to learn and adopt the company culture to successfully deliver the voice of the business in any engagement.
Many BDRs are early in their careers, so it’s important that they’re coachable and willing to listen to feedback.
The best BDR training programs are those that have a clear and repeatable onboarding process for new hires.
New hires need to understand your company’s products and services, your target market, and your sales process inside out. It’s also important to give BDRs the flexibility to change and adapt their approach as new techniques are developed.
Some companies even let BDRs practice cold calling for weeks before they speak to a real prospect.
Gamification can also help to incentivize BDRs - by providing rewards for meeting or exceeding targets, you can keep them motivated and focused on bringing in new business. By investing in your BDR team, you’re ensuring that your sales pipeline is always full of high-quality leads.
Now that you have hired them, and set them up for training, you need to evaluate how you can enable your BDR team to truly set them up for success!
Here are some of the best practices you need to follow to enable your BDR team:
Setting up SMART goals for your BDR sales team can help unify the team and allow them to get on the same page about realistic project expectations. There are various metrics or KPIs you can track to measure the success of your goals.
But before we get into that, let me remind you of the S.M.A.R.T goals:
Following are examples of the kind of goals that marketing and sales managers would usually like to track:
The BDR team sits at the intersection of many different departments within a company.
Because the BDR team’s main job is to generate new business opportunities, they collaborate heavily with the marketing department to create targeted campaigns that reach the right people. The collaboration helps to create targeted lists of potential customers, develop personalized messages, and arrange for follow-up communications.
BDR department collaboration with finance allows access to budget information and approval process knowledge so that BDRs can decide what prospects are worth pursuing.
The collaboration allows BDR teams to work with a pricing roadmap and strategy so that any deals they make are financially sound.
They also work closely with the research and development department to keep abreast of new products and features that can be used to attract new customers.
The collaboration with the R&D department provides BDRs with an understanding of the product development pipeline and technical feasibility. This allows them to speak intelligently about potential features for upselling or cross-selling.
By collaborating with other departments, the BDR team is able to provide a more holistic view of the company to potential customers and increase the likelihood of closing a deal.
When setting up a BDR team, it is important to identify the target market segments that the team will focus on. This will help ensure that the team is targeting the right customers and that they have the proper resources to reach them.
There are a few things to consider when identifying these target market segments.
First, it is important to understand the needs of the target market. What are they looking for in a product or service? What are their pain points?
It is also important to consider the size of the target market. Is it large enough to warrant a BDR team? If so, what is the potential revenue that could be generated from this market segment?
Once the target market segments have been identified, the BDR team can then start to develop strategies on how to best reach these customers. This may include developing targeted marketing campaigns or developing relationships with key influencers in the market.
By taking the time to properly identify the target market segments, the BDR team can ensure that they are set up for success.
One of the most important things to keep in mind when setting up a BDR team is to create personas for each type of buyer in the target market segments. This will help you better understand who your buyers are and what they are looking for.
Once you have a good understanding of your buyer personas, you can then start to craft sales and marketing efforts that are specifically tailored to them.
If you are interested in creating personas, a great sales persona template will come in handy!
BDR teams are responsible for generating and qualifying leads.
The first step in developing a process for qualifying leads is to identify the criteria that must be met in order for a lead to be qualified.
Once you have determined the criteria, you will need to create a list of questions that can be used to determine the potential of a lead. Once you have developed the process, it is important to test it out and make sure that it is effective.
If it is not, you can adjust the criteria or the questions. Finally, you will need to train your BDR team on how to use it.
Check out our sales process playbook to learn more about creating winning approaches.
There are a few key things that you can do to track and measure your BDR Team’s performance:
First, you’ll want to establish some metrics to track. This could include things like the number of calls made, emails sent, appointments set, etc. Once you have chosen which metrics you’ll be tracking, you can then set goals for your team. This will help to keep them focused and motivated, as discussed earlier.
Second, you’ll want to develop a lead scoring system. This will help you to prioritize your leads, and focus your efforts on the most promising prospects.
Finally, you’ll want to set up a process for tracking progress and follow-up. This could include using Top Sales Enablement Tools, setting up weekly check-ins, or sending out monthly reports.
As the backbone of any successful sales team, it’s your BDRs prospecting and dealing with your potential customers, day in and day out.
As such, it is crucial to provide continued support for your BDR sales team in order to stay ahead of the competition.
Additionally, new technology should be utilized to enable BDRs to be even more effective in their roles.You should put a lot of stock into your BDR’s insights, as they are directly dealing with your prospects and should understand them better than anyone else on your team.
If you get stuck behind the trends and don’t use technology to enable your sales team, you’ll be left in the dust by your competitors.
Your BDR sales team is constantly sharing sales content to engage with their prospects. And to help them make sharing a more efficient process, they need a platform where they can discover marketing and sales content in one place.
Content Camel is a sales content management software that is designed specifically for sales and marketing teams to enable their BDRs to access the most relevant content to pursue their prospects.
You can share files and folders with tracking links to understand what content is winning amongst the prospects.
Your entire sales and marketing department can collaborate on this platform and create custom collections as per your unique sales cycle to enable a tailored approach while prospecting.
By giving your BDR sales team the right tools, you can set them up for success.
Get the most out of your content and deliver trackable results
Content Camel is a sales enablement tool used for sales content management. High-growth sales teams use our system to quickly find and share the right content for each specific sales situation and measure content use and effectiveness.