March 28, 2024

What is a Sales & Business Development Representative (SDR & BDR Roles)



Published May 15, 2023, 4:20 p.m. by Monica Louis


sales business - What is a sales business development representative (sdr) / bdr?

sales business development Representatives (SDRs) are the key link between a company and its potential customers. They are responsible for generating new leads and nurturing them until they are ready to be passed on to the sales team.

The main goal of an sdr is to increase the company’s revenue by expanding its customer base. To do this, they must first identify potential customers and then build relationships with them. They need to be able to understand the customer’s needs and pain points in order to offer them the right solution.

SDRs usually work in teams and are managed by a business development Manager (BDM). The size of the team and the number of SDRs will depend on the size of the company and its sales goals.

The role of an sdr has evolved over the years as the sales landscape has changed. In the past, SDRs would make cold calls to potential customers in an attempt to generate leads. However, with the advent of the internet and social media, the role has changed to focus more on building relationships with customers through these channels.

Although the role of an sdr has changed, the core skills required remain the same. These include excellent communication and interpersonal skills, as well as the ability to think on your feet and problem-solve.

If you’re looking for a challenging and rewarding role in sales, then a career as an sdr could be for you.

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- Hey everybody, it's Patrick Dang here.

Now in this video, we're gonna talk about

Sales Development Reps also known as an SDR

and a Business Development Rep also known as a BDR.

So we're gonna talk about exactly what these roles are,

how they work and what the work life is like

on a day-to-day basis.

And what the different career advancement opportunities are

after you do these jobs.

And my goal for you at the end of this video

is for you to get a deep insight on exactly

what these roles are

and if it's something you should actually be interested.

(upbeat music)

Now, before we get started

make sure to give this video a like,

subscribe and turn on notifications.

Now, for those of you who may not be familiar

with my background,

I actually started my sales career in Silicon Valley

working at Oracle.

So I got to see the world of, what exactly an SDR is

and the Business Development Rep and Account Executive

and all these different things, right.

So this is coming from a place of personal experience

being at the hotspot of sales in Silicon Valley.

Diving right into it what I wanna do first is

kind of describe exactly what a SDR is and the BDR is

and what role they play in the overall sales team, right.

Because there's many different people,

there's many different many different roles in sales

so this is a very specific role.

Now, SDR, BDR Sales Development Rep,

Business Development Rep they have different names.

And if you Google it and you look online,

you ask different people

a lot of people have different definitions,

but for the most part and what I found

they're pretty much the same thing.

And a lot of companies

actually use these terms interchangeably.

So some person might call this one SDR

another person might be calling this one BDR,

but they might be doing the exact same thing.

So no matter what you're calling it,

the basic job description is

it's basically a junior sales role

where your job is to generate leads

for other people to close, right.

So it's a lead generation role

and they're gonna be many different ways to generate leads.

But let me talk about the strategies

when it comes to an SDR and a BDR.

So essentially when it comes to a sales process, right,

the first step in any company

is you have to do some kind of prospecting

or lead generation.

Meaning you've got to find people who are interested

in potentially buying your product or service.

And step number two, is once you find these people

you have to get a meeting with them

and then someone will actually get on the phone

or meet this person in-person to convince them

to understand their problems and then see if

whether or not they're a good fit

and then they'll close the deal.

After that, once the person closes

then there's account management

and that's just really taking care of the customer

making sure they're happy

continuing to renew them

and have them spend more money with you over time.

So when it comes to with the BDR or SDR, right,

your role is gonna be step one

which is the prospecting and lead generation side.

So whether it's BDR, SDR

a lot of times you may not be closing right away

and your only job might be to set up appointments

for someone like an Account Executive

to actually close the deal.

An Account Executive is pretty much just a sales person

who closes deals.

So the reason why this is a junior entry level job

is because there's not much high risk,

all you're really doing is reaching out to people

and trying to see whether or not

they wanna take a meeting with your company

and you set up that meeting for another person

who closes the deal.

And because you're setting up these meetings

which will potentially result in revenue for the company

a lot of times you may get a commission based

on how many meetings you set,

or you might get a commission based on how much revenue

is closed.

So now you've got an understanding of what a BDR is

an SDR, let's go ahead and talk about the day-to-day life

of these roles.

Essentially, there's gonna be two different types

of prospecting, there's gonna be outbound and inbound.

Let me talk about outbound first, right.

Outbound means you're reaching out to people

who might be a good fit for your product or service.

A lot of times they may have no idea who you are,

so you're reaching out to them cold.

So you would do activities like cold calling,

sending cold emails or connecting with them

and sending cold messages on LinkedIn.

So a lot of times for these roles,

most of your time I will say like 90% of your time

is just doing this.

Coming out with ideas and trying to see,

who will be a good fit for your product or service.

So you might say, okay,

"Today I'm gonna find all the companies

"who are in the casino business

"and there are this size company

"and they have this specific situation.

"So let's find all these people,

"let's find all the people that work at this company

"who might be relevant

"and we want it to get a meeting with them

"and we make this big old list."

So if you're SDR BDR, you're just going down

making those huge lists of maybe hundreds of thousands

of people over the span of time.

And once you make a large list,

you can then start sending out your campaigns

and that might be again, cold email, LinkedIn messages,

or you might even get their phone number

and just cold call them.

So depending on the company you're working at,

what product services they're selling

and what industry you're in

they might have different activities.

Some companies are really strong

when it comes to cold calling,

so 90% of your time is on the phones.

Other companies hate cold calling

and they don't think it works for them

and they're just gonna send cold emails all day, every day.

So depending on where you're working

all these different strategies can work

but it just has to work

for that specific product or service.

So when you're applying for different jobs

you're looking at this opportunity to become a BDR

or an SDR.

You have to ask yourself and ask the company,

how exactly are you generating leads?

And you have to make sure that whatever method you're using,

you're okay with that.

If you wanna to be on the phones,

make sure they're doing cold calls.

But if you don't wanna be on the phones

and that's not your thing,

then make sure they're not doing cold calls

and they're doing cold email or LinkedIn.

And as you would have guessed,

day-to-day is a little bit of a grind

because it's kind of repetitive

you're doing the same thing over and over,

but at the same time it's an extremely valuable skillset

and it brings a lot of value to the company

because, if you think about sales,

if you cannot generate any leads

then literally that company will not make any money

because they're not getting new meetings

with potential customers.

So again, it is a grind, yes,

but at the same time extremely critical

and it pays really well

because if you are able to get the meetings

with the perfect dream customers every time, every day,

then people are gonna pay you a lot of money to do that job

and in forms of commission.

So it's a grind, but you get paid a lot if you do well.

Now that you understand the role of the BDR and SDR,

let's go ahead and talk about the career opportunities

once you step out of this row and you level up

and you wanna do more advanced sales roles.

So here's some natural transitions

that a lot of people have, so after they're an SDR or a BDR,

they might become an Account Executive.

So I'm just gonna use SDR,

so I don't have to keep saying SDR and BDR.

An SDR generates a meeting for an Account Executive

and then Account Executive will take the meeting

and try to close the customer.

So the natural next step for an SDR

is to become an Account Executive

where they're on the phones, closing deals.

And this is kind of nice because you have another person

generating all your meetings

all you gotta do is get on the meeting and close the deal.

So that's one option you could potentially go

other options might include

you might want to become an Account Manager.

So instead of being the one that closes a deal,

you might be the person that works with customers

after they have already been closing

and you just renew them and get them

to continually spend with the company.

This role is lot more stress free

because the customer is well already a customer

and just trying to get more money out of them,

so that's another option.

You might also wanna be a Sales Development Rep manager,

instead of being on the closing side,

you can handle or manage a team of SDRs

and help them become more successful

by reaching out to the right people

and generating more meetings.

So you don't have to be an Account Executive

to be a manager for SDRs.

You can become SDR then you can become a manager for SDRs.

You see so it's a whole different career path

and it's more of a managerial role.

And lastly, you can do things like sales operations,

like working in Salesforce or a different CRM

and just managing all the data,

understanding like why customers are buying

and how to optimize your sales funnel and things like that.

So that is more of a technical role

you're not really selling anymore

you're just helping sellers do a better job.

So those are a couple examples of different opportunities

you can explore and go into, after becoming an SDR or a BDR.

And from my personal experience and what I've seen,

a lot of people are SDRs or BDR for maybe a year

and then they'll advance to another role.

Sometimes it could be faster depending if you're good

it really just depends on that company.

And lot of times, a company may not even have a SDR role,

they might just have an account executive

that has to close deals

and they have to produce their own leads.

Really you've just have to ask the company

what roles exactly do they have

to get an understanding of exactly what you can do there.

In a nutshell, that's gonna be my perspective

on SDRs and BDRs.

Hopefully you got a great understanding of how it works,

and if you enjoyed this video

make sure to give it a like.

Subscribe if you wanna see more videos like this

and make sure you turn on notifications

because I'm gonna be dropping new fire videos

every single week.

And if you wanna get more advanced sales training

make sure you click the link in the description

where I have an advanced sales training

on how to sell anything to anyone

especially if you're just starting out your sales career,

it's gonna give you the full breakdown

of how everything works.

And if you wanna learn more about sales

and business development,

I actually created another video

about the difference between sales and business development

because they are not the same thing.

So if you wanna check it out, click the link on this screen

and it's going to take you there.

So with that said, my name is Patrick Dang,

I hope you guys enjoyed this video

and I'm gonna see you guys in the next one.

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