When it comes to expanding a business’s reach, the role of the sales development representative (SDR) is undeniable.
In This Article
What Are the Key Responsibilities of an SDR?
Skills and Qualifications Needed for SDR Jobs
Building a Successful Ongoing Career in Sales
Sales Development: Challenges and Rewards to Keep in Mind
When it comes to expanding a business’s reach, the role of the sales development representative (SDR) is undeniable. These sales representatives take charge of a company’s outreach to new and prospective clients, building up the pipeline of possible customers and ensuring sales leads are qualified and targeted to maximize a company’s sales budget and results. They often work closely with sales representatives at the company to prepare leads, so that sales representatives can convert them into long-standing customers. SDRs may even be responsible for closing leads themselves.
Because the sales role is such an essential part of just about any business’s success, both short-term and long-term, the sales development representative is a key player. So, it’s a career that promises longevity and lots of opportunities for growth.
<h2 id="responsibilities">What Are the Key Responsibilities of an SDR?</h2>
As a vital part of a company’s sales team, the sales development rep works alongside fellow teams such as customer success, customer support, the product manager, software engineer, product design, and more to help highlight what the organization offers to potential consumers. In tech-adjacent fields, that can include individual apps, software packages, enterprise software systems, and more.
As a development representative focused on sales, you will:
Look for viable prospects
As an outbound sales representative, you will reach out to potential customers for your particular products. This requires a mix of skills, including understanding where to find your ideal customers, a willingness to talk to new people, an ability to create a strong and positive first impression, and staying connected through authentic and meaningful touches throughout the sales cycle.
You’ll need to be aware of various trade shows, industry conferences, online communities, social events, and other ways of building connections. It also helps to stay in touch regularly, and you’ll likely be contacting multiple people daily to foster connections that lead to closed sales.
Educate people on the company’s products
An integral part of your role will be explaining your organization’s offerings to people and businesses that want to learn about them. You’ll need to have a good understanding of what each product can do, which means closely collaborating with product designers and software engineers to understand the strategic talking points to go over with interested leads.
Qualify leads and connect them with account executives
Once you’ve garnered prospective customers, you’ll vet them to ensure they are a logical fit for your company. This can include research to learn their budget, conversations to understand the type of product they need, their timeline for making a purchase, and more. If someone isn’t a good fit, you’ll filter them out, and narrow down the list to those who make sense to market to.
After the prospect is qualified, you may also be responsible for setting up appointments with inbound sales representatives and account managers who will work with them during and after the actual purchasing process. Your role will be to help make the sales process smooth for the consumer from first touch to closing and continuing service, so that their overall customer experience is pleasurable.
<h2 id="skills">Skills and Qualifications Needed for SDR Jobs</h2>
In any sales position, a certain set of skills and mindsets are beneficial to success. You’ll do well in this career if you can show these abilities:
Resilience
You’ll need to be able to handle rejections and the word ‘no,’ as you may be turned down by prospects at any point in your conversation with them.
Sales-mindedness
It is essential to be skilled at overcoming objections by asking questions and raising points that keep a prospect talking and thinking about your product. Understanding your company’s key customer profiles will aid you in recognizing and approaching potential customers with greater ease.
Effective communication
You’ll benefit from being confident in your communication skills, because you’ll interact with many people at various levels in an organization as you build relationships with potential leads. Emotional intelligence also helps. You’ll need to read people, connect with them authentically, and help them feel empowered to make good decisions about their purchases.
Persistence over time
Since you will need to weed through many contacts to identify those ideal prospects to bring to your sales team, it will benefit you to be patient and committed to pushing through to reach your goals.
Research abilities
Finding good prospects is a mix of skilled analytical research and the art of networking. You’ll be digging into finding new prospects all the time, so a creative approach mixed with grounded research will help you be successful.
Relationship management skills
To keep track of your leads at every step of the process (first contact, follow-ups, and more), you’ll use an automated customer relationship management system. Hubspot and Salesforce are two common ones you’ll likely want to be familiar with. You’ll not only need software knowledge, but also an ability to stay organized, keep track of information in a streamlined way, and draw on it as needed to help turn a prospect into a purchasing customer.
<h2 id="career">Building a Successful Ongoing Career in Sales</h2>
As you seek out new positions as an SDR, tailor your resume to showcase your relevant skills and qualifications. Focus on highlighting key skills and abilities that an effective sales development representative needs, such as cold calling, email outreaches, lead generation, proficiency in CRM software, an understanding of networking and prospecting, communication, negotiation, and time management. Where possible, use metrics and statistics that show your successes—such as “increased prospect pipeline by 20%”—so that employers can grasp what you can do.
As you continue your career in sales, you can transition from a development representative to positions such as:
- Account executive or business development executive, responsible for closing deals and overseeing a client’s relationship with your company
- Team manager for the SDR department, overseeing fellow development representatives and training them for success
- Customer success manager, who helps existing clients maximize the value and results they get from the product or service they’ve purchased from your company
- Sales operations manager, maintaining and developing the tech solutions that tie into your company’s sales pipeline
- Marketing roles, which are a partner to sales and can create interesting lateral moves for those who enjoy messaging, social media sharing, and content creation
The best way to position yourself to grow in your sales career is to continue learning and mastering skills. Invest in ongoing training, engage a mentor, pursue professional development, and continue working on soft skills such as active listening, communication, and time management. If you desire to rise in the ranks or make lateral moves into roles such as marketing, look for opportunities to build transferable skills that you can showcase in future job applications.
<h2 id="development">Sales Development: Challenges and Rewards to Keep in Mind</h2>
It’s a fact that sales often has a reputation for being a tough career, but it doesn’t have to be. It will have its challenges, like any field will. For SDR roles, you’ll need to be aware that rejection, resistance, and objections are all a natural part of the job as people you talk to are trying to decide how best to invest their money to achieve their goals. It helps not to take that personally, but to understand and empathize with your prospects.
It will also be important to look for ways to properly maintain work-life balance. Make time for regular breaks to step away from the phone or computer. Leverage technology to automate some of the sales process so that you can save time and streamline your day. Set clear boundaries for when you’ll be off work, and coordinate with your manager so that any time spent outside of normal business hours for prospecting can be balanced with time off or other perks. Being realistic about what you can do can help you maintain your well-being and ease the stress that can come with this highly people-focused position.
The good news is, there are great rewards for those who take on a sales development position. This career offers strong opportunities for advancement into higher-level roles, the opportunity for commissions and bonuses based on the effectiveness of your personal efforts, and the satisfaction of knowing you’re helping people and businesses find effective solutions for their needs through the products and services you represent.
Summing It Up
Without a doubt, the development role is a key player in the effectiveness of an organization’s entire sales process. By finding and qualifying ideal prospects, you’ll be helping your company succeed with its bottom-line goals and profit targets. And you’ll be setting yourself up for long-term success in the workplace by using this role as a stepping-stone to future opportunities.
As you explore jobs in the area of sales development, remember that every industry has a need for this type of role, so your options are wide open. At inTulsa, you’ll find updated listings of opportunities based in Tulsa as well as other cities, offering both in-person and remote roles to consider. Join our Talent Network today to see what’s new in our job listings and sign up for notifications to stay up to date on new open positions.
