Do you really need to hire another BDM?

You want to generate more revenue. You’re thinking about hiring another sales rep to help you do it.

Before you run off to Seek to post that job ad let me ask you a few questions.

1. Do you know the closing rates for each of your reps? That is, what percentage of Sales Qualified Opportunities are they turning into closed won customers?

2. Do you know how much time your reps spend prospecting for new business vs actually moving deals through your sales process?

3. What are the maximum number of sales opportunities a rep could manage in a given sales period (either month or quarter depending on your business).

Why do you need to know the answers to these questions?

Because, you may not need another BDM, you may just need more sales opportunities and they’re not necessarily the same thing.

Think about how your current BDMs spend their day. You want your best BDMs selling to real opportunities. Not trying to identifying and get in touch with cold prospects. You want your best people focused on the activities that are closest to generating new revenue.

If your existing BDMs are spending time prospecting you may be better off hiring a dedicated prospector or what’s known as an SDR to do this for them.

Why?

Specialisation leads to better results.

A dedicated prospector is held accountable to a single metric, like pipeline created or meetings set and your BDMs are held accountable to closing these opportunities.

This will do a number of things for your business:

1. Create steadier revenue (as your BDMs pipelines won't go through the inevitable peaks and troughs that come with both prospecting and closing sales)

2. Make it easier to identify what’s working and what’s not

3. Make it easier to identify who your top performers are and what makes them so

4. Make it easier to train new hires as each sales person focuses on a smaller portion of the sales process

5. Reduce the number of highly skilled sales people your business needs to grow (prospectors can be hired and trained much more easily)

So before you run off to Seek, think about hiring a dedicated prospector. Or speak to us and we’ll explain how our outsourced SDR services may be able to help.

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