You’ve acquired all the latest sales tools and technologies for your company’s sales enablement efforts, but now what? Who is going to use all these tools to their fullest capabilities? Right—your team of highly skilled business development representatives.
A team of business development reps (BDRs) is necessary for a successful sales enablement strategy because it sets sales development reps (SDRs) and account executives (AEs) up for high-quality pitches and B2B appointments.
Throughout this blog, we’ll highlight the following topics:
What Is Sales Enablement?
Sales enablement refers to the tools, salespeople, and content that enable account executives to sell more to prospective businesses. In the past, account executives would prospect, cold call leads, and manage the sales pipeline themselves. Today, sales and business development representatives do this activity for them. This enables AEs to spend more time selling, closing deals, and managing the satisfaction of current customers.
Sales enablement efforts can also include marketing professionals who practice inbound lead generation strategies to generate leads. These individuals perform a variety of digital strategy methods, including writing website copy, social media posts, and other forms of sales and marketing collateral used to convert leads into customers.
What Is the Goal of a Sales Enablement Program?
Overall, the objective of a sales enablement program is to provide all the resources AEs need to sell and close business effectively. This includes hiring salespeople to prospect, cold call, and email businesses in the pipeline to set up meetings between prospective companies and AEs.
In addition to scheduling B2B appointments, sales enablement teams also provide valuable marketing and sales content to catch the eye of prospects and provide top-of-mind awareness. This includes writing website blogs, emails, and social media posts. It can also include marketing collateral such as digital brochures, sell sheets, and promotional videos.
Why Is a Sales Enablement Strategy Important?
A sales enablement strategy is essential to generating business growth. Sales enablement programs allow your sales team to:
- Set qualified appointments: Not every lead is worth chasing. By setting qualified appointments, you ensure that every lead is ready to make a purchase.
- Send relevant content to prospects: A sales enablement program ensures that each piece of sales content sent to a prospect is relevant and aligns with their needs.
- Actively learn about industry and market trends: Sales enablement helps you learn more about trends in the industry and the market you’re pitching. Regularly communicating with prospects allows business development representatives and sales reps to gain insight into your target audience’s needs and determine what is important to them.
What Does a BDR Do for Sales Enablement?
A business development rep is a member of the sales enablement team that focuses on finding and qualifying prospects. They are responsible for cold calling, emailing, and networking with leads in the early stages of implementing them into the sales pipeline.
Business development representatives are typically the first point of contact between your business and the potential customer. After business development representatives discover prospects, they contact them to introduce the company and build a relationship. Without business development reps, you risk setting AEs up with appointments that have little to no value. Business development representatives help set AEs up with appointments that are likely to convert from a lead into a business deal.
How Is a BDR Different From an SDR?
Business development rep and sales development rep are titles that are commonly used interchangeably. However, they do have some differentiating responsibilities.
The role of a business development representative is to find and qualify prospects and introduce them to the company. On the other hand, sales reps are responsible for connecting with prospects when they are closer to the end of their sales funnel. The goal of an SDR is to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks.
While neither the BDR nor SDR are responsible for making a sale, they both get the AE one step closer to closing new business for the company.
How To Successfully Build a Sales Enablement Team
A sales enablement team is crucial for a sustainable sales process. But how does a company successfully build a sales enablement team? Here are some ways to make your team your greatest sales enablement tool:
Work as a Unit
For a sales enablement team to work successfully, they must operate as a business within a business. By this, we mean that all sales and business development representatives should hold each other accountable and always do what’s in the best interest of their colleagues and the company. When each salesperson works as an individual rather than as a team, a sales enablement program fails. Working as a unit makes each aspect of the sales process cohesive so the company can close more deals.
Have a Business Growth Mindset
Many salespeople are motivated by progress. If your sales enablement team isn’t motivated by growth, you risk wasting valuable company time and money. Each sales rep, business development rep, and account executive on your sales enablement team should have the drive to grow professionally and personally. If they aren’t motivated by growth, they’re losing money not only for the company but also from their own pockets.
Be Knowledgeable About the Sales Industry
Each key player of the sales enablement team should be knowledgeable about the sales industry. Without an in-depth knowledge of the industry, you risk inconsistent communication and an unsuccessful sales enablement program. Hiring sales reps, business development reps, and account executives who are already experts in sales allows them to spend less time training and more time selling.
Embrace Change
Sales best practices are constantly changing, which means your sales enablement team must keep up with the pace. Rather than refusing to adjust your sales process, embrace change and implement it into your sales enablement strategy. Even if your approach is working now, it may not be successful in the next few months. Keep up with the times and implement new tools, technologies, and practices to stay ahead of the sales curve.
Measure Your Success (or Lack Thereof)
How do you know if your sales enablement program is working? After several months of kickstarting your sales enablement strategy, measure the impact (or lack thereof) of your team’s efforts. This allows you to identify which parts of your strategy are thriving and where there may be inconsistencies. If there are gaps in your sales process, adjust as needed to advance your sales enablement program.
Why Do Companies Outsource BDR Teams?
While many small to medium-sized businesses decide to internalize their sales enablement teams, others may outsource their business development representative team. Many companies choose to outsource BDR teams to:
Find New Business Opportunities
Outsourced business development representative teams give you access to new regions and markets that you may not have had the opportunity to pitch before. In addition, outsourcing sales enablement allows you to test new markets and introduce new products, opening new business opportunities for AEs.
Get Better Leads
Contrary to popular belief, having more leads doesn’t necessarily mean better leads. By outsourcing your BDR team, you have better access to high-quality leads that meet your ideal customer persona. In addition, outsourcing business development representative teams ensures that appointments are set with prospects closer to the end of their buying cycle.
Improve Close Rate
Outsourced business development representatives are experts in all things sales-related. They have significant experience in pitching prospects and following up when the timing is right for them. By having higher-quality business development representatives, your company has a better opportunity to close deals and generate revenue.
Increase Customer Satisfaction
When businesses consider outsourcing business development representative teams, they forget about the additional benefit of the customer experience. By outsourcing your cold calling, emailing, and nurturing, you free up your internal team’s time. This allows them to focus on their current customer relationships. Your internal team is more likely to follow through on promises because they are not sidetracked with additional sales efforts.
Free Up Company Time
By outsourcing business development representatives, you and your internal team have more time to do what you do best—run your business. BDR outsourcing allows you to focus on your day-to-today business operations. When you outsource sales efforts, you don’t have to worry about onboarding and training an entire sales team.
Provide Flexibility
Modifying a business development representative program can be expensive and take a significant amount of time when it’s handled internally. When you outsource your BDR efforts, you can adjust your program easily. This could include implementing new products or services, changing the pitch style, or integrating into new markets.
Key Takeaways
While SDRs and AEs are great at what they do, implementing a team of business development representatives allows them to prioritize other pressing tasks. With BDRs, your SDRs and AEs have the opportunity to effectively pitch hot leads and quickly close business deals. However, we know that continuously building up an internal sales team can get costly with all the tools and technologies they need to build and sustain a sales pipeline.
Are you looking to save time and money by outsourcing your BDR efforts? Contact Abstrakt Marketing Group to learn how we’ve been able to help businesses like yours find qualified leads and close business deals!
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