Many sales leaders say the SDR job is the toughest job in sales. It's where the bulk of rejection occurs, and it's where novel problems arise. The willpower to call dozens of strangers every single day is a critical part of enterprise growth processes. Managing and leading these teams is an equally daunting challenge.

The SDR job varies in expectations and nature at each company, but by and large the role attracts young professionals looking for a foothold in sales. Setting up a quota and expectations for these teams can be very, very difficult, and unfortunately a lot of companies have work to do on how they manage SDR teams.

SDRs are forced to be pests.

Most SDR teams are not set up with the proper financial or cultural incentives to be trusted advisors. SDRs are paid per meeting and hand deals over as soon as they can, given they have no long-term interest in the opportunity or prospect's success.

Start giving SDRs small commissions from every Closed Won deal they source. Watch what happens.

Too many sales managers think they are data scientists.

When in doubt, make more calls, send more emails, make more LinkedIn connections. These are the bread and butter of a typical sales boss. Analytics tools like Salesforce and Outreach have given unprecedented visibility into everyone's activity metrics. When dollars are low, activity must go up, right? Yes and no.

A typical "data-driven" justification managers will make for activity goes something like 'based on our average deal size, we will need to close X number of deals this quarter to hit Finance's targets. In order to close a deal, we need to source 8 new opportunities per month. Historical conversion rates say it takes 150 dials and 200 emails to source an opp, therefore, you need to make 1,200 calls and 1,600 emails this month to source 8 opps. So you need to make 60 calls and send 80 emails every day.'

This is certainly logical, but hardly reasonable. What about territorial TAM calculations? Engagement history in that territory? Account executives having different close rates from the average? A conversion rate that was lower in the past? An unsellable product?

Managers obsessed with 'grit' have a tough time explaining how an SDR can consistently be a top performer making 11 cold calls every month. It happens.

Funnel that grit into obsessing over customers, not internal metrics. Leave those as a side-project.

Most SDRs care about numbers more than customers.

This is a dangerous situation. Teams who can't collectively see past their numbers will inevitably be caught in downward spiral of performance and morale. Customers always need to take priority, especially in the sales org.

Some SDRs will send as many emails as they can in the shortest amount of time in order to appease metrics, with potentially disastrous results.

Email quality decreases as email volume increases.

All productive activities require a balancing act between speed and quality. In sales it is very clear: more emails = lower quality. Lower quality of who you target, and lower quality of the sent message.

The best SDR managers I've ever seen provide a platform and environment to talk about customers and solutions, and don't breathe down anyone's neck about activity metrics.

Obviously, in sales, you need to be reaching out to a lot of people in order to reach massive growth targets. You need grit, determination, and resolve. But that determination shouldn't be all funneled into quantity. Develop quality instead, and your prospects and wallet will thank you.

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