SDRs: The Connective Tissue Between Marketing and Sales with David Dulany, Founder and CEO of Tenbound

SDRs: The Connective Tissue Between Marketing and Sales with David Dulany, Founder and CEO of Tenbound

David Dulany, Founder and CEO of Tenbound

David Dulany joins Rachael to discuss his expertise and advice on how we optimize and build successful sales development teams. David is the Founder and CEO of Tenbound, an advisory firm focused and dedicated 100% to sales development. He is a sales development program building specialist with deep experience building highly successful sales development programs from scratch for technology companies.

David brings over ten years of experience in sales development and previously led sales development teams for companies such as Glassdoor and Act-On Software. He is also the host of the #1 sales development podcast on iTunes; The Sales Development Podcast. David frequently speaks at conferences, seminars, and more, including the upcoming Virtual Sales Development Conference hosted by his company, Tenbound.

Key Highlights:

4:10 – 6:08 – What Is an SDR? – Most software companies divide their sales team into the sales development team, account executives, and the customer success team. The sales development team connects marketing and sales and ensures that they are leveraging the investments that the marketing team is making.
10:10 – 15:00 – Who Does SDR Report to? – The data shows that SDR teams primarily roll up to the sales team, but now we see that shifting. As companies shift GTM strategies, more sales development teams are rolling up to marketing. It’s an evergreen debate and there’s a lot of directions to take. It can even make sense to have the SDR team roll into Revenue Operations.
15:00 – 18:15 – Content Creation and Persona Alignment – Look at the skill development of the SDRs like a Venn diagram. One of the circles is the sales skills and the other is understanding the personas and the pain points that they’re dealing with out there. Start with an overview of the industry, the main players, understand their top pain points, and put together a basic onboarding program for the first couple of weeks for new SDRs to better understand who they are calling on.
18:15 – 21:25 – Metrics to Measure – Start with your classic marketing funnel and highlight the right accounts that you want to be able to sell to. Within those accounts, find the personas you are interested in talking to and see if you have information about them. Within that persona cohort, find that narrow group of people who may be trying to solve the pain point your product can solve for. Then narrow down the group to individuals with pain points and prioritize them. Break down the conversion rates from each stage of the funnel to see what’s working and optimize that.
28:08 – 29:55 – The SDR Tech Stack – The space has exploded and continues to grow every year. Four key areas to consider: Focus on clean and prioritized data, sales enablement, remote collaboration, and CRM.

Who Would David Like to Take For Lunch?
Jon Miller, CMO at Demandbase

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“You need pipeline, it’s evergreen and one of the best ways to do that is to invest in an SDR program. And don’t just set it and forget it. Really take it seriously, put top leadership in charge, and make sure you put a lot of care and feeding into the program because it can really payback if you do it right.”

David Dulany, Founder and CEO of Tenbound

“The Sales Development Team is the connective tissue between Marketing and Sales. They sit between the Marketing and Sales department and make sure that they’re leveraging the investments the marketing team is making to make sure all the leads are routed correctly to turn them into appointments for the sales team.”

David Dulany, Founder and CEO of Tenbound