When it comes to upping your team's SDR game, these six things are absolutely essential.
- Develop a routine: And stick to it whenever possible. This kind of discipline will help shape your days, focus your efforts and yield far better results than a haphazard approach. When it’s calling time, call. When it’s prospecting time, prospect. Block out some time for meetings and 1:1s, too — whenever they don’t interfere with your daily schedule. Speaking of which, here’s one to try out:
- Exercise or meditate — to clear your mind and boost your endorphins.
- Eat something healthy— some eggs, a smoothie, whatever. Your body and brain need fuel to function.
- Outline your follow ups for the day — who do you need to call back or send emails to?
- Schedule dial blocks during times where you think people will pick up the phone the most often based on your industry and ideal customer persona. Don’t just sit and dial all day. It’s exhausting and unproductive. Also, work within your time zone. If you’re PST, know that people in ET probably won’t pick up past 2 p.m. or so.
- Schedule time later in the day for administrative activities — you want to be sure your CRM is up to date.
- Schedule time for personal development. Especially if you’re new to the job, read books and watch online videos of how to improve.
- Evaluate your performance at the end of the day — what were your goals, and why did you hit or not hit them?
- Create a plan for the next day — emails, calls and goals.
- Chill out, forget about work, do some socializing with friends or family and get a good night’s sleep.
- Communicate regularly: Make sure to keep in constant touch with fellow reps and your manager — on your virtual sales floor if you’re fortunate enough to have one, but also via videoconferencing, your favorite direct messaging platform or even phone. (Sometimes old school is the best school.) You might work alone, but you shouldn’t feel alone. Communication is vital: about lead generation and outreach strategies; time management challenges and overcoming objections; priorities and goals. Transparency about all of that and more is the key to keeping SDRs, and by extension teams, on track to crush quota.
- Call together: Not always, but schedule regular outbound power hours so the whole team can be together in one place and learn from each other. Of course, doing this effectively as a remote team requires a virtual bullpen on a platform like Teamflow. But trust us: Teams that call together, ball together.
- Listen to yourself: We’re talking about your calls here. It’s the best way to improve your technique. Pay especially close attention to your overall tone, your ratio of listening to talking (it should always be more of the former than the latter), when your prospect begins to lose interest and what finally convinced them to move forward.
- Respect personal time: If you reach a prospect and they tell you they’re just sitting down to dinner with their family, stop right there, tell them you completely understand and ask for another callback time. If you respect them, that respect is more likely to be reciprocated.
- Set goals: Hitting team goals requires SDRs to hit individual goals. Big ones and small ones. Big, by the way, doesn’t mean “make a million bucks” or even “crush quota.” It should go beyond mere compensation and competition. Maybe it’s paying off student debt. Or buying a tricked-out hog to ride cross-country. Or leasing a fancy villa in Tuscany. Small, on the other hand, is all about milestones. Slow and steady wins the race — less the former than the latter. Hit one, then another, then another, and before long you’re gazing out at the Tuscan hills while sipping a nice chianti.
Check out Teamflow’s virtual sales floor: https://www.teamflowhq.com/salesfloor
