How SDRs Are Like Scouts In Top Sports Organizations

Think about some of the best sports programs out there. The teams that are historically good year after year and recruit some of the best talent. Who comes to your mind?

Maybe you think of Alabama—one of the most successful programs in NCAA history; 17 national championships and continuously recruiting top talent from around the country each year. Or, maybe you think of basketball, and how the Golden State Warriors have been able to recruit numerous players to help them win titles. Right here in our own backyard at Abstrakt, we have the St. Louis Cardinals, one of the nation’s oldest and most successful professional baseball clubs. With 11 World Series championships under their belt, only second to the New York Yankees, it’s no wonder that St. Louis is such a baseball city.

Whether it be football, baseball, basketball, or any sport really, all successful teams have one important thing in common: they all make it a top priority to scout out top talent every single year. Sales enablement teams are similar in that they make it a top priority to prospect and find the best potential customers for their business. This helps the overall organization to be more successful because salespeople can sell more.

Sales enablement teams are responsible for providing a sales organization with the information, content, and tools that help salespeople sell more effectively. This could mean prospecting and filling up sales reps’ calendars with meetings, or it could mean creating SEO-rich copy that drives leads to your website. Sales enablement essentially just helps your sales team sell more and sell effectively.

See what our Vice President of Sales Enablement had to say about the topic:

Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) focus on prospecting and engaging with leads (moving leads through the sales pipeline) so that executives can spend more of their time selling. On the other hand, Sales Enablement Content Creators create and design sales enablement content resources using a variety of mediums. They may write website content to generate traffic and drive web leads. Or, they might create marketing collateral to assist SDRs when selling. Your sales enablement team helps your sales reps be more successful.

The same way college scouts and recruiting departments scout out the best talent for their organization, SDRs are responsible for scouting out the best leads. If scouts weren’t out there looking for the best players and actively recruiting them, their team wouldn’t be as successful and winning as many games. Similarly, if SDRs weren’t out there talking to the best prospects, your salespeople wouldn’t be as successful because they couldn’t sell as much.

Not only do scouts and SDRs play similar roles within their organizations, but great sports teams and great sales teams also have a lot in common. If you have a solid sales enablement department, just like if a sports organization has a solid recruiting team, you’ll see success in more ways than one.

Here are four things that sales enablement teams and top sports organizations have in common:

This is probably the most obvious one, because top sports organizations win more games, obviously. But the important takeaway isn’t simply that they win, it’s why they win. Top sports teams keep winning year after year because they have a good recruiting system. They have people whose primary job within the organization is to go out there and scout out the best talent and recruit that talent.

The same can be said for businesses. Without SDRs, your sales team wouldn’t be celebrating as many wins. They wouldn’t have meetings with the best, most qualified prospects. Without a sales enablement team, your executive sales reps would spend a lot of time talking to duds (prospects that have little or no chance of becoming long-term, successful customers for your business). With an SDR team, your sales reps spend more time talking to qualified leads, they sell at a higher volume, and your sales organization grows at a faster rate.

Do you want your business to celebrate wins the way dynasty teams have? Or, would you rather be compared to a forgotten about team—a team that doesn’t prioritize recruiting top talent? You have to build an SDR team if you want to be successful.

Someone who isn’t a sports fanatic might think that the best teams are good because that’s just the way it is. But, huge fans know that isn’t the case at all. It took a lot more than just luck for the great teams to become great, and a huge factor that plays into that is recruiting. The best teams, both college and professional, are scouting out top talent and making a conscious effort to speak with the best recruits so they can keep being great.

The same way successful sports organizations make an effort to speak with top prospects from schools around the country, the most successful businesses make an effort to speak with the best prospects in their target market. The most successful business in any given market became that way because they’re talking to top prospects and putting in the work to sell their product or service. You’ll never recruit the next Lebron James by sitting back and observing, and you may never win the next big opportunity if you’re not actively speaking with prospects.

True St. Louis Cardinals fans know that the farm system is one of the many things that make the team so successful. The farm system consists of eight Minor League Baseball affiliates across the United States and in the Dominican Republic. This strategy helps the Cardinals save money: instead of bidding against other major-league teams for minor-league players, they choose to grow their own and bring them up when they’re ready to play.

The Cardinals have figured out a system that works for them, the same way many sales organizations have figured out a system that works for them to help them grow their business. While the process may look a little different for each business, all sales enablement teams have one thing in common: they help sales teams be more successful using a proven process that works.

Sure, the Cardinals don’t win the World Series every year, but they’re still thought of as a consistently good team. Even if Alabama doesn’t win the National Championship every year, you can still count on them to be good. They’re expected to be good because of their history and the way they run their organization. The same can be said for successful businesses. Because they actively work to generate leads and schedule appointments with potential customers, they can predict their revenue and plan for the future with more predictability.

A business with a sales enablement division has higher win rates, higher revenue numbers, and grows faster than an organization who doesn’t—it’s a fact. Just like it’s a fact that any sports organization is historically better if they have their recruiting efforts figured out. Is your business going to wait for the best prospects to come to you, or are you going to get out there yourself and make an effort to speak with them?

If you don’t have the resources or bandwidth to build an SDR team from scratch, look to Abstrakt for B2B appointment setting services. We’re sales enablement experts, and we can set the appointments up for you so all you have to worry about is knocking them out of the park with a great sales pitch. Interested in learning more about how B2B lead generation could help you business succeed? Schedule a meeting today.