We celebrated XDR appreciation week — business, sales, and account development reps, otherwise known as BDRs — this past week at 6sense because we strongly believe BDRs deserve a lot of love. BDRs connect the pivotal dots between Marketing and Sales and for that reason alone, it’s important to not only understand but appreciate the foundation they create for robust pipeline.
Being a BDR isn’t always glamorous. Our research shows that BDRs are naturally driven, hard-working, and competitive people. 6sense research also found that almost half of BDRs (46%) do not know their targeted prospects or if these prospects are in-market. More than half (57%) receive negative responses when engaging with a prospect and nearly a third of prospects (29%) that BDRs try to engage with aren’t at the right stage in their buying journey.
With the right tools and BDR-centric culture, these vital members of your revenue team can thrive and set the stage for sales and marketing.
Here are the top 5 reasons to hug a BDR this week (and every week!)
1. They work HARD.
The traditional business or sales development function has BDRs doing research to scrape together insights for accounts. As B2B buying units have evolved, so has the need for BDRs to scour the internet looking for websites, blogs, profiles, annual reports to understand what B2B buyers actually care about. On top of that, BDRs have to field leads from marketing, some of which are prospects that aren’t even a good match for your product. To make matters worse, BDRs might not realize a prospect’s poor fit until they’ve invested way too much time trying to engage with them. Without insights into an account’s behavior, BDRs are in the dark, relying heavily on guesswork.
2. They consistently cold call and get the cold shoulder.
Getting prospects to even pick up the phone is the first step but what are BDRs supposed to do when they pick up? Without the valuable insights they need to understand a buyer’s pain points, motivations and pressures, it’s difficult to make a good impression and represent your brand well. In short, cold calls and email blasts are a waste of BDRs time. At best, they give a window into an account (rarely the full picture). At worst, they chip away at your rep’s confidence, making them dread the inevitable block on their calendar to smile and dial. When BDRs make calls, they need to be armed with specific information about their prospect like their role and where they are in their buying journey. That way, BDRs know they have value to deliver and a reason to be on the phone.
3. They’re warming up leads marketing should have warmed up for them.
B2B buyers need hyper-personalized, hyper-relevant multi-channel experiences to be truly engaged and interact with your BDRs to move the buying process forward. BDRs spend a lot of time spinning their wheels and trying to deliver value to cold leads. The thing is, it’s Marketing job to warm up accounts, not BDRs. It’s up to Marketing to drive awareness, educate prospects, and deliver the right content to warm them up from being a target to in the consideration stage, prior to BDR outreach. Armed with tools and technology, BDRs can then connect with accounts that are warmed and ready to buy with confidence and ease. When an account does cross over to in-market, moving from the consideration stage to either decision or purchase, Marketing has warmed the account up and they are mature enough for engagement from BDRs.
4. They never have enough time in a day.
Prioritize. Prioritize. Prioritize. In the “old days,” without the right technology, a BDR would come to work and scroll through their rolodex or CRM to determine who to start calling. At 6sense, the first thing our BDRs do is log in to Salesforce and prioritize accounts that are in-market, based on their “hot-accounts” dashboard. They look at how long the account has been in-market and map that to our 27-day timeline from when an account crosses from a target in our ICP to “in market.” This strategy enables BDRs to use their time wisely, and that means eliminating cold calling, tedious research, and other inefficient processes that are slowing down our BDRs.
5. They’re coachable and eager to learn.
Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, BDRs are naturally driven, hard-working, and competitive people, which is likely what attracted them to this role and your organization in the first place. However, BDRs are also typically just entering the workforce and need guidance and support. It’s important to take that lighting in a bottle and invest in the talented BDR workforce you have. A motivated, creative, and enthusiastic team is critical to winning the battle in your market and that starts with guiding and coaching your BDRs to work more efficiently and effectively. It’s also critical to enable your BDRs with best technology to be successful at doing their job.
You’d be pretty demoralized if you had to hear “no!” as many times as a BDR hears it in a day. Coming into a conversation blind, or worse, after your competition has already crushed it is painful. If we’re not giving BDRs what they need to uncover insights and understand an account before engaging with it, how can we expect them to approach cold calls and outreach with confidence and gusto? We can’t, but we can give them the tools to give them the full picture.
B2B buying has changed, and so too has the B2B tech stack.
The right Marketing and Sales technology is essential to automate and scale selling processes. You’re considering messaging, segmentation, targeting, and ICPs but you also need to consider if the technology you’re enabling your BDRs with is effective enough so that the research and strategic decisions you’re making get put to use. BDRs need to be working smarter, not harder.
Instead of sequestering BDRs to a corner of your office and leaving them with a phone and a call sheet, give your BDRs the cross-functional support they deserve. With 6sense, BDRs can see every touch point and pit stop of the buyer’s journey to paint a realistic portrait of the account and approach every conversation with a spring in their step. 6sense also provides revenue teams with the power to create holistic views of accounts, from discovery to purchase, so that when an account is in the right place at the right time, BDRs can pounce on the opportunity.
BDRs are the most significant pipeline drivers for world-class companies, generating 57% of pipeline on average. So, give your BDRs a well-deserved hug, handshake, or high-five. To learn more about how marketing can support BDRs and generate quality pipeline more efficiently, check out our BDR tell-all ebook, BDRs are a BFD.
