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.
You may also like to read about:
- 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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