SDR Sales

A sales development representative (SDR) is an inside sales representative that focuses on outreach, prospecting, and lead qualification. SDRs don’t focus on closing business, but connecting with as many leads as possible and determining if they’re a good fit.

SDRs move leads through the sales pipeline. They connect and learn about their businesses and needs. If a prospect is a good fit, SDRs schedule next steps with sales reps higher in the organization.

A SDR sales person fills this role in the process of selling to large organizations. Another term for this is complex selling. Selling to large organizations is far different from what’s called transactional selling, like a typical retail sale. That’s because a sale most often involves months of effort, many meetings and interactions, multiple decision-makers, competitive bids, big budgets, complex negotiations, multi-year contracts, and a major impact on the organization’s operations. While very challenging, successful sales can lead to significant revenues, enhanced brand credibility, and profitable multi-year business relationships for you.

How do I succeed in sales?

While there are many factors to successfully closing a large company sale, there are 4 top principles for you to consider. In simple terms, those 4 principles are: know your customers, know your products, know your solutions and build long-term relationships.

To know your customers, you need to research the marketplace and your customer, of course. Even more importantly, you need to experience your customers’ products and services. All the reading and research in the world won’t match actually experiencing your customers’ products and services.
To know your products requires focus and effort. It’s imperative that you understand the features and functionality of the products you’re selling. This can be especially challenging as the product you’re selling may evolve over the course of the sales cycle. Don’t rely on others in your organization to explain the value of your product to your customer. You must have this knowledge and the ability to expertly explain the features, benefits, and unique advantages of your product.
Beyond knowing your products, you must know how your products can become solutions to your customers’ needs. It’s not up to your customer to connect the dots for you. You need to be able to articulate how your product delivers solutions to real business problems. Often this means being able to provide relevant case studies and success stories at the right time and in the right words.
Ultimately, successful selling requires the building and nurturing of strong, long-term relationships.

Modern Selling Challenges for SDRs

Sales and marketing teams are facing lower budgets, burnt out buyers, and more noise in the SaaS space than ever.

Not quite convinced?

Deals are more complex. Between financial and security scrutiny, more integrations and more complex products, sellers face quite a few hoops.

Buyers are doing their own thing. Two-thirds of buyers prefer self-service over speaking to a rep—and most spend just 17% of their time directly with vendors.

Every champion may have a detractor. According to Gartner, more stakeholders are involved in the buying process than ever. Buying committees and multi-threading are the new norm.

Teams are facing a crunch. 92 percent of sales and marketing professionals think remote work will remain the norm; but 85 percent also say they expect leaner teams and fewer resources.

How can Showpad Help Make Your Sales Pitch Stronger?

Showpad is a global leader in revenue enablement technology, providing teams with a modern selling solution for maximizing hybrid sales. In more than 50 countries, customers rely on the Showpad platform to empower their teams to be at their best. Showpad has been named a Strong Performer by Forrester’s Wave for Sales Content Solutions, recognized as a top 10 software company by G2, and listed in Deloitte’s Fast 50 and Inc Magazine’s 2019 Best Workplaces.

Showpad will support your current needs and future growth because we help prepare sellers by making it easy to find the latest on-brand content in a central location for every opportunity. Showpad also supports sales onboarding, training, and coaching to maximize teams’ productivity, increase active selling time, and accelerate sales rep onboarding time.

Sellers can more effectively engage buyers by leveraging Showpad to more efficiently prepare for and personalize sales presentations. Sellers can easily share the most relevant content with buyers from any device and collaborate with all stakeholders in one branded location
By tracking their buyer’s level of interest through Showpad insights, sellers can optimize their performance, shorten their sales cycles, and have increased visibility into buyer intentions
Sales leaders can identify and replicate their top sellers’ behavior to scale success, decreasing the overall long-term cost of sales
Marketing can leverage our bottom of funnel insights and buyer insights helping marketing identify the content and experiences that engage buyers and drive revenue
Administrators can support content management and distribution of content as well as sales training efforts at scale from one unified platform, decreasing the administrative burden of launching and maintaining a Sales Enablement program

Want to learn more about Showpad?

Show Me How