Reason one is more predictability.
Sales reps were usually not experienced enough to be switching tasks between building a pipeline and closing their own deals. They would focus more on top of the funnel for a month, and then close for two, top of funnel again and so forth. A more steady top of the funnel was brought in from SDR’s.
Reason two is role specialization.
Finding an AE that was great with both opening and closing conversations with target accounts was hard to come by. If you have been in the sales industry for some time, you know about this. So now there is a good reason to hire people who are professionals at opening conversations, and others who are professionals at leading prospects through the Buyer’s Journey (AKA closing).
What is an LRR? (Lead Research Representative)
Today, successful SDR’s are spending all day calling, sending emails, and researching their accounts and leads. At many companies, SDR’s are have too much on their plate, and they need help. Having SDR’s work so much is demonstrated to be unsustainable, and they need assistance. The reasons why the SDR role was created, (predictability, and specialization) is now searching for the SDR role itself. This is where LRR comes into play.
How should your team be organized in 2018?
The purple square is an LRR (Lead Research Representative)
Why do you need an LRR?
1) Cost
If you have SDR’s for your business, I am guessing their cost is about 100k+, and this is excluding office space, tools, data, payroll and so on. So now you are paying an SDR $60/hr when you can in fact easily save money and have someone do the work way better for way less.
2) Burnout
If you don’t stop your SDR’s from researching leads they will eventually wear out. This is because they need to either work 80 hour weeks, or they need to make 20–30 calls per day, and spend 4 hours researching.
3) Career Advancement
4) Proficiency
Learning excel comes with practice. The truth is, SDR’s aren’t as fast at managing excel and handling data. (Instead of clicking through your CRM and adding data into the correct field, which I hope you research your leads in excel….anyways) you can find people who are much faster at finding data and who can work in excel.
Grasping the workflow and reasoning
Think about one SDR and one AE working together, and how they can generate more sales than 2 AE’s.
The same thinking can be applied here as well. One LRR and one SDR working together are able to generate more meetings, compared to a pair of SDR’s working together. The SDR now has time to make 80+ calls and send 50+ emails per day thanks to the LRR.
Where to find your LRR’s and how to build a 5-star team
There are multiple ways to build your LRR team. One way is hiring part-time interns that work alongside with you finding contact data, and most of the time shadowing and attending SDR training. This gives a taste of what their life would look like if they were to join the company, which entails a nice career path.
The alternative option is to hire a remote team. Having a team operating from a remote location (for example the Philippines, hiring a team that will happily work for $10/hr compared to $50/hr in the U.S.) is a cheaper option that will get you much more leads for less money.
Finding the right people is key. Start by testing your starting platform by hiring 2–3 people and see how well they execute their tasks. Enable this team with data tools such as ZoomInfo or anything else you might use.
Once you have your LRR’s in position, you will soon start to see your SDR’s become more productive, and your team will earn more revenue.
Happy hunting!
I would like to thank Tito Bohr for sharing his insights and opinions, as his content is very rich and resourceful. Tito is very knowledgeable in building SDR teams and I recommend checking out more about his career and background on his LinkedIn profile.
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