Your sales development reps should be precision shooters. Snipers of prospects. Marksmen in finding and reaching your buyer persona.
This means they are experts at identifying, contacting and communicating value to your ideal customer profile.
A great way for SDR leaders to coach around this is with team targeted call-out sessions, where you gather your entire SDR team in a conference room for an hour or so and practice making phone calls. Each rep should have the chance to make a phone call to one of their contacts. If you have more than ten people on your SDR team, consider breaking the team into smaller groups.
These sessions are valuable because they allow you to coach reps on their calling techniques, and the entire team gets the chance to learn from their peers. This also inspires peer collaboration and mentorship.
Here are five easy steps to hold your own sales development targeted call sessions:
5 Steps to Run a Sales Development Targeted Call Session
Step 1: Prep reps
Send your SDRs an email invite to the targeted call session. Ask them to each bring 15 contacts that they’d like to reach out to during the session, as well as a computer, pen, notepad and energy. (You should come prepared with these things, as well).
If they aren’t familiar with the exercise, explain that this is not to throw anybody under the bus or highlight what they aren’t doing well. Emphasize that this is purely a coaching session to help reps hear and learn from their peers, as well as receive feedback from you.
Step 2: Participate
Kick off the call session by doing the first dial yourself. Whether you have your own batch of leads to pursue or you’re just reaching out to make connections with key players, the best way to get reps fired up for this coaching session is to set the tone by making the first call.
Start by introducing the contact you’re reaching out to. Quickly review with your team:
- Who the contact is
- What the contact does
- Why you’re reaching out to this contact
- What the goal of your conversation is
- What messaging you’re going to use (and why)
Then make the call. You can either mute yourself to make comments to your team during the call or do a quick recap afterward to explain your decisions and strategy.
Step 3: Take Turns
After your call, go around the room and let your reps take turns going through the same process. For each rep, ask them to explain those same five points you went through:
- Who is your contact?
- What does he or she do?
- Why are you reaching out to this contact?
- What is the goal of your conversation?
- What messaging will you use, and why?
Then let them make the call. If the contact doesn’t answer, you can all still provide feedback on the voicemail.
Step 4: Provide Feedback
This is the critical step to your call session. Listen carefully to every aspect of their call, including the introduction, the messaging, the language, the pitch and the tone. Then provide feedback based on your organization’s selling techniques.
Did the rep start by listing off features and functionality of your product? Show them how to focus more on the problems your product solves. Did they leave a three-minute voicemail? Coach them around making a quick pitch in 30 seconds or less.
Step 5: Repeat
Last, but certainly not least, go through this exercise with each of your reps in the session. You can run through the entire group two to three times, but try to not let the session drag on for so long that the initial energy and excitement is lost.
Use these five steps to hold effective team coaching sessions, and feel free to adjust or add anything that might fit better with your sales process.
Great sales development teams start with hiring the right people. Check out this free guide on SDR hiring tips from today’s top experts:
