I recently had a stimulating conversation with a Head of Business Development at one of our customers I was involved with as a Strategy Director. This resonated greatly with me, given that I am an ex-Business Development Manager (Lead Generation).
We were talking about how excited he was to get Clari in the hands of his team, to drive the entire team to forecast, to think like salespeople, for these often young people to take accountability and plan for their success. This particular company prides itself on hiring BDR, also known as SDR (sales development), with the view for them to use the role as a stepping stone for a future sales career.
During their Clari implementation, we created forecasting metrics rolled up from two angles:
- The pipeline owned by the BDRs, the “pre-pipeline”, so to speak
- The pipeline no longer owned by the team, the SQL'ed or accepted by sales pipeline.
We did this based on Count (Volume) and Value as both metrics are essential to the BDR function. We jointly uncovered how useful the analytics modules Waterfall and Funnel are to this customer.
- Waterfall shows them how the value of the pipeline passed over to the sales team will develop over time
- Funnel provides them with conversion rates at their fingertips.
Both modules can then form a platform for BDR coaching.
Given the current economic downturn, perhaps investing in internal resources is more critical to your organization, and Clari might be there to support you in this endeavor.
Is this something you want to hear about, or are your BDRs still just stuck in working marketing leads, rather than becoming strategic business partners for sales?
