The Early Stage Sales Development Playbook: A Guide for the Newly Hired SDR

By Kartheek Mulpuri and Ian Grover

This straightforward, no-distractions guide to the sales development role at small- to mid-sized software firms will fast track your path to success in B2B sales. Get the inside scoop on everything from tools to mindset and jumpstart your sales career!

In The Early Stage Sales Development Playbook, Kartheek Mulp

• Language: English
• Publisher: SalesCombine
• Release date: Apr 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781087879277

Book preview

SDR_Playbook-cover2.jpg

THE EARLY STAGE SALES DEVELOPMENT PLAYBOOK

A GUIDE FOR THE NEWLY HIRED SDR

By Kartheek Mulpuri & Ian Grover

Copyright 2020 Kartheek Mulpuri. All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be copied, redistributed, or reproduced in any manner without prior consent of the copyright holder.

Designed by Kelley Creative using resources from Vecteezy.

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1: Overview

Chapter 2: Preparation

Onboarding

Defining the Stack

Interfacing with Marketing

Chapter 3: Outreach

Chapter 4: Lead Acceptance

Chapter 5: Measuring an SDR’s Effectiveness

Chapter 6: A Day in the Life of an SDR

Chapter 7: The Little Things Go A Long Way

Chapter 8: Conclusion

Acknowledgements

About the Authors

Introduction

I’ve spent ten years

in the technology industry in many roles with companies at different stages. I’ve owned sales operations at an early stage company that had an exit, set up a lead generation strategy to bring American consumer electronics brands to the Middle East, and seen the different sales development methodologies used by early stage companies as a venture capitalist.

Ian, the co-author of this book, and I have worked together the past two years. He has prospected for 4-, 5-, 6-, and 7-figure deals at early-, mid-, and late-stage companies over his career. As he was transitioning from Yelp, a public company, to Brickwork, the 19-person SaaS company where we first met each other, he had to adjust much of his playbook. We saw a lot of great blog posts and articles out there but no comprehensive guide for a sales development representative (SDR) working at an early stage company. Thus, we’ve taken our learnings from our experiences, conversations with peers, and helpful online content to put this guide together.

There have never been so many early stage SaaS companies in existence. Per Crunchbase, there were 11,288 SaaS companies in existence as of November 2018. This figure has only grown since. While it has been exciting to see so many new companies emerge this past decade, this also means more new SDRs than ever are being hired into imperfect situations. Early stage companies typically lack structured training, tools, and processes. As a result, hundreds of newly hired SDRs at early stage companies burn and churn out within their first year on the job. This book is a guide designed to give you, the new SDR, the strategies and tactics to succeed in this role so that you go on to have a highly successful career.

As you delve into this book, you will notice a common theme. We cannot emphasize enough that the material here is intended to serve as a framework. You, as an intelligent and creative SDR, will have to adapt this material so that it works for your situation. Every company is different and every SDR has their own style. You will have to iterate to find solutions that work for you.

We wish you the best of