Let’s take a look at the role of SDRs and the ways managers can support them to supercharge their sales.

What does an SDR do?

SDR stands for Sales Development Representative and they’re responsible for introducing legitimate new leads to your sales team.

Part of their role involves outbound prospecting (reaching out to potential clients), progressing leads through the sales pipeline and qualifying leads (determining whether a lead has promise and is worth pursuing).

In the sales industry, many use the term Business Development Representative (BDR) to refer to the same role as an SDR. However, some define SDRs as reps dealing with inbound leads (where customers initiate contact) and categorise BDRs as those handling outbound leads (proactively reaching out to potential customers).

How to hire SDRs

The first stage in building a superstar SDR team is hiring the best candidates.

The SDR position is typically an entry-level position, filled by recent graduates or those looking for their second and third job. This newness to the industry can be an advantage: sales managers have the opportunity to instil best practice from the beginning, to build sales teams with the right approach.

As discussed on our recent podcast with Chris Duddridge, hiring for SDRs involves assessing a candidate’s skillset and attitude.

Do they have the organisational skills needed to cultivate and keep track of a number of leads? Do they possess the attention to detail needed to qualify them and tailor their approaches to different clients? Do they have strong interpersonal skills to help them connect with clients and work well with others in the sales team?

This last point is more important than you might think.

Research from our Uhubs Sales Performance Pulse Data 2021 survey found that internal supportiveness was the most important skill category for sales among CROs, team managers and reps. Internal supportiveness ranked even above client communication and sales drive and motivation.

Of course, a candidate’s attitude is crucial too. On our podcast, Chris spoke of the importance of the coachability of SDRs and the need for them to listen and take instruction well.

And anyone who is to succeed in a sales environment needs to be highly motivated, goal oriented and possess a growth mindset: believing they can develop their skills and abilities over time.

However, sales managers and HR teams should interrogate closely what they mean by ‘best’ and the ways they’re judging candidates during the hiring process.

Unconscious bias affects hiring across all sectors and means businesses lose out on talent by overlooking candidates who are disabled, from ethnic minorities, lower socioeconomic backgrounds or are from other marginalised groups.

Businesses should be taking active steps to counter unconscious bias in hiring as team diversity is crucial for competition and culture.

How to smoothly onboard SDRs

You’ve chosen your new SDRs - now what? The next stage in building a strong SDR team is ensuring your onboarding process is as smooth as possible.

The more seamless your onboarding, the faster your ramp time and the higher your sales.

How well a company onboards new joiners will also affect employee perception and retention.

Studies show that 90% of employees decide to stay with a company within the first 6 months of starting, so making a bad impression with subpar onboarding could come back to bite businesses further down the line.

The onboarding process is also a chance for managers to build and reinforce company culture by sharing their vision and values. This is especially important in a world of hybrid working, which offers many benefits but increases the challenge of maintaining a strong company culture. According to Uhubs’ research, 73% of sales leaders say a positive remote sales culture has been harder to cultivate remotely.

A smooth onboarding process is in a sales team’s best interests. But many are holding themselves back through the way they train new joiners.

There’s a reliance on huge, outdated Excel or Notion spreadsheets to deliver information to new joiners. Such sheets overwhelm SDRs with blocks of text, fail to engage them and give managers no visibility over whether information has successfully been taken in. This isn’t a successful solution for modern sellers.

If sales managers want to effectively engage and train SDRs they need to rethink the way they’re delivering information.

First, managers need to review the information they’re sharing with new joiners. Are they aligned with the HR team on the information they’re passing on? Is there any outdated information that needs to be removed or any gaps in their new joiner training - and can those gaps be filled internally or is external help needed?

There’s no shame in augmenting training with resources from external sources such as on demand training content: few organisations are able to deliver everything themselves.

Managers also need to review the way training is being delivered. Varying types of content to suit different learning styles, adding quiz elements to check engagement and using milestone features for visibility and a sense of achievement are all ways to add smart functionalities to your onboarding.

Such functionalities help keep new SDRs engaged, whilst allowing managers to track their progress and understand which areas they’re struggling with.

Coaching and upskilling SDRs

But training isn’t just for new joiners.

A superstar SDR team relies on continuous training and coaching so reps are always honing their skills.

One way sales managers can help their team achieve this is through asking them to complete a Professional Development Plan (PDP). This involves SDRs setting short-term, mid-term and long-term goals and identifying the steps they need to take to achieve them.

A popular way to structure such goal-setting is by following the GROW model, as outlined in our 1:1 Coaching Whitepaper.

Developed in the 1980s by business coaches Graham Alexander, Alan Fine, and Sir John Whitmore, it’s a collaborative method that helps structure coaching and mentoring sessions with team members. It supports employees in creating a realistic, actionable plan that allows team members to stretch themselves and, in turn, increase the value they’re bringing to the business.

The Uhubs platform offers an online GROW template that SDRs can use to help them develop their skills. We recommend sales managers conduct quarterly meetings with reps to check the status of their goals and to discuss how to remove any obstacles they may be facing.

And sales managers shouldn’t underestimate the value of regular 1:1s. Check-ins that go beyond pipeline reviews help catch issues early and create a positive employee culture where reps feel empowered to voice their challenges and concerns. This both accelerates their personal development and helps the sales team - and wider business - evolve as a whole.

How Uhubs supports SDRs

Uhubs is designed to make SDR onboarding and continuous training as easy and effective as  possible.

With our sophisticated tools, sales leaders save time, increase revenue and improve employee retention.

For instance, our Onboarding Wizard saves sales managers 15 hours a month by reducing onboarding overhead and streamlining a sales team’s development.

Our platform helps managers build training content into an easy-to-follow journey, add smart functionalities and break training into bite-size tasks that are simple for SDRs to absorb and retain. Managers can design their own plan or use our extensive template library to get a head start, and can track SDRs’ progress across their training journey.

That’s not all.

Our Pulse feature combines sales data with lightning team surveys to establish a competency baseline and identify development opportunities.

This gives managers critical knowledge to help train new joiners but also assists in continuous training for the whole team. Pulse will automatically recommend courses and build a development journey for each user, based on their profile, to help them address weaker areas. It’s the perfect partner for those growth-oriented SDRs you’ve just hired.

Uhubs also offers live and on demand training courses (Sprints) to supplement training across your team. Our Sprints give team members the chance to gain new skills, test their knowledge and receive CPD accredited certificates for their progress.