11 Skills Every BDR Needs to Master in 2023
From where I stand — as the manager of an inside sales team — one thing about sales development has become increasingly clear.
The standard process for sales development representatives or business development representatives (or whatever your organization calls them) of sending out sequenced emails, calling, leaving voicemails, rinse and repeat? It’s no longer working well.
BDRs have a unique opportunity to help account executives close deals. While the traditional way of doing outreach might work for some businesses, there are a few hard and soft skills BDRs can apply that will yield your inside sales team even more success.
If you’re new to the BDR role, or if you’re leading a new team of BDRs, let’s start with a simple definition of BDR sales. Then, we’ll get into the 11 skills every sales development rep needs to master.
To become a successful SDR, you’ll need a specific set of soft and hard skills.
Our in-house sales experts cited these 10 skills as the most essential for a sales development representative in 2021. If you're an BDR, bookmark this list for reference. If you’re a manager, you’ll want to share this list with your team in your next sales meeting.
BDR Skills
Video Prospecting
Customized Outreach
Active Listening and Adaptability
Follow-up
Resilience
Coachability
Self Awareness
Organization
Curiosity
Relationship-Building
Overcoming Objections
1. Video Prospecting
"Video prospecting" is a buzzword that’s been floating around for a few months, but it’s popular for good reason. Simply put, video prospecting is customised outreach in a short, two-minute max, video format. Unlike a phone call or an email, the prospect gets to connect with you on a more personal level without the time commitment that comes with scheduling a Zoom call.
We've seen great results with video prospecting. My team uses Vidyard — an easy-to-use tool that lets you quickly create videos using your webcam and screen share function. There are several software options that can be used for video prospecting including Loom and Soapbox by Wistia.
An BDR doesn’t need to be a technical master or Oscar-worthy movie star to create effective videos. They only need to be comfortable on screen and interested in meeting the prospect in a follow-up conversation. Practice creating short, engaging clips during which you introduce yourself, deliver value with a quick tip, and ask to schedule a call.
The more videos you make, the more efficient your workflow will be. In time, you should be able to whip up customized videos like they're emails.
2. Highly Customised Outreach
As an BDR, balancing quantity and quality when prospecting can be tricky. On one hand, you want to build a healthy pipeline for your sales rep. On the other, you know that connecting with qualified leads takes a little more time. I'm seeing that balance shift — the most successful reps are actually slowing down, spending more time on outreach and connecting with fewer prospects.
Brandon Kirsch, an Inbound Growth Specialist at HubSpot, is a fantastic example of someone who balances quality and quantity in his outreach efforts. His emails are personalized and timely for the prospect, and he always addresses an immediate need they’ve identified (this is sometimes called a “hand raiser.”) Here's an example:
Hi Michael,
I hope this email finds you well! I wanted to reach out to you because based on my research on LinkedIn, it seems like you are heading marketing initiatives that focus on the overall growth strategy for Dunder Mifflin.
After doing some research on Dunder Mifflin, a bunch of things stood out to me as reasons to have a timely conversation about how inbound marketing & HubSpot could help:
Employees at Dunder Mifflin have explored our all-in-one solution before, however, the timing wasn't right.
You're currently using a few different tools for your marketing — A, B, C, D, and E. I'm curious how things are going with them & if you'd be open to a conversation re: HubSpot and using an all-in-one marketing automation platform?
Looks like you understand the importance of content marketing/inbound marketing based on the blogs, white papers, & testimonials — but there's a huge missed opportunity because it doesn't seem to be gated.
You've got "buy now" and "order" options on the site but you're missing out on converting at least 90% of your total website traffic to the site.
Here at HubSpot, we've had some exciting product updates to the marketing & sales platforms as of January 2019.
Any interest in connecting sometime this week? Feel free to book 15 minutes with me here.
Thanks in advance,
Brandon
Quality matters just as much as quantity in sales prospecting. During my weekly one-on-ones with BDRs, I do a pipeline review to understand how a rep is allocating their time compared to the quality of the leads they usher through the pipeline. I often find they're spending too much time qualifying leads before initiating connect calls with them. Allocating their time based on lead quality is very important, but any good skill is only honed with practice. This includes leaving voicemails.
The benefits BDRs achieve by practicing calls and leaving voicemails include hearing their prospects' most common objections, understanding which soundbites resonate best with different buyer personas, and gaining confidence in their ability to communicate the next steps in the sales journey.
So with that in mind, I'd recommend developing a scalable process for writing customised emails and doing prospect research. LinkedIn Sales Navigator can help you do this. Using this tool, you’ll learn important information about a business in one glance and receive notifications when they've had a notable change that could affect your sales pipeline. Once you’re prospecting is underway, a tool like HubSpot’s free meeting scheduling can help you plan connect calls.
3. Active Listening and Adaptability
How can BDRs continue to add value to a sales process that is becoming more automated every year — especially in the prospecting stages?
To me, one of the answers is active listening. A chatbot might be able to qualify a lead, but nothing asks questions and listens to information like a human (at least not yet). The interaction between a prospect and an BDR should be genuine and helpful, not robotic and forced.
No matter what your company sells, you must be highly attuned to phrases that indicate a prospect could be a good fit for your product. This is where active listening comes in. An adaptable and empathetic BDR focuses on gathering valuable information that will help a prospect further down the pipeline as opposed to checking lead qualification boxes.
For example, during our weekly BDR "film club," we listen to a seasoned BDR's recorded call. In one of the call reviews, this BDR discovered that the prospect's company offered a freemium version of its product. The prospect confirmed the annual value of an average new customer, and the BDR immediately moved on to the next topic.
Swing and...miss.
Any sign of a freemium model should be explored further. Why? HubSpot has a solution that can help this prospect improve lead conversion rates. The BDR should have explored the following with his prospect:
How many new freemium users a month do you generate?
How do you nurture freemium users? Customers?
What percentage of freemium users convert to paid users?
What are common triggers for freemium users to upgrade?
How do you re-engage users who used the free product once several months ago?
The answers to these questions would have been crucial to understanding how HubSpot could solve a major pain point for this prospect. In general, these questions can uncover a wealth of information about virtually any business that offers a free or reduced-price trial of their product. These questions help an BDR understand not only the opportunities within the prospect’s company, but they also help the prospect reflect on things they may have been putting off for another time simply because no solution existed yet.
Practicing active listening means being adaptable — pivoting away from a prepared checklist and recognizing when an opportunity to dig deeper presents itself. A successful BDR understands the value of being present and having a real conversation.
4. Follow-up
Ideally, BDRs want to speak with a prospect on the phone, but sometimes a voicemail is a next-best option.
I participated in a sales training several years ago, and one of the presenters made a simple comment that stuck with me. “If you leave 25 quality voicemails, you’ll at least have a chance to receive a callback. But if you leave no voicemails, your probability of getting a callback diminishes significantly.”
Leaving a good voicemail is harder than it sounds. In a short amount of time, you have to entice a prospect you've never spoken with to call you back. Some people like to be concise — "Hi, I'm [Salesperson] from [Company]. I would like to speak with you about X strategy. Give me a call back at XXX-XXX-XXXX."
Personally, I like to add a snippet of value to this equation. For example, "I saw X on your site. Here are a few best practices I'm hoping to share with you."
Leaving a good voicemail is an indispensable skill for an BDR, and thus requires practice. Don't simply go through the motions so you can log an activity in your CRM — be committed to quality touch points across all the activities you complete to move a prospect through the pipeline.
5. Resilience
There's no doubt that BDRs have a tough job. Unlike sales reps whose main goal is to close deals, BDRs don't get that type of glory. They usually spend their day sending emails and making calls. That can be exhausting.
In addition to the hard skills we’ve reviewed, staying positive is a soft skill that can’t be learned in a book. Resilience takes practice. If you're flat or discouraged one day, it will translate over the phone and your prospect will pick up on your low energy.
Bad calls happen to the best of us, but we have to bounce back after each one. Whether a prospect was rude or you made a mistake, it’s OK to feel frustrated. However, allowing those feelings to prevent you from picking up the phone for the rest of the day will negatively impact your next 15 calls. Don’t let these temporary roadblocks ruin your day — and don’t let them ruin your prospect’s day either. Resilience is crucial to keeping your head in the game. Developing this ability now will also be invaluable down the road when you have to recover from losing a big deal without skipping a beat.
6. Coachability
One of the most important skill sets we evaluate at HubSpot when interviewing BDR candidates is coachability. Confidence is important, but the ego can cloud an BDR's ability to receive and implement candid feedback. The best BDRs proactively seek out coaching from high-performing peers and crave honest feedback from their managers. Getting real-time feedback is best, but you can also build out a list of all the questions or challenges you faced in a given week and debrief them with your manager during a scheduled one-on-one.
7. Self Awareness
Self awareness plays into resilience and coachability. As an BDR, you’ll want to be aware of your strengths and weaknesses so you can offer the best experience to your prospect. When you know what you’re amazing at and where you have the capacity to grow, you can create strategies for dealing with a bad call or rejection.
For example, an BDR who lacks organisation skills might create a physical checklist they can keep handy for every call so they don’t miss any steps. An BDR who is really good at building rapport might need to set a timer for each call so they don’t spend too much time with a single prospect and get off track.
Having this self-awareness will help you and your sales manager analyse your performance, both the wins and setbacks, and reflect on what went well and what didn't.
Self-aware BDRs will ask for feedback from managers and colleagues. Rather than taking negative or constructive feedback personally, they'll have a deeper understanding of their strengths, weaknesses, and areas for growth.
8. Organization
Processes can vary from person to person, but they're key to staying organised. Schedule management allows BDRs to manage their days and prioritise the tasks that are key to their success (e.g., email outreach, calls, meetings.)
Whether they choose to write out their to-do list or use a calendar management tool to create their schedule, maintaining a strict schedule will help them master the cadence for their outreach and interactions with prospects.
9. Curiosity
Successful BDRs are curious and eager to learn. Being curious about learning a new product, industry, or organisational knowledge can help them in their current role, but it will also help them as they grow in their career.
BDRs should know the products and services they sell both inside and out while maintaining a clear understanding of their buyer personas, and the common challenges prospects face. Gathering new information is relatively easy and oftentimes free through internal resources offered by your organization, online research through blogs (like HubSpot), training sessions from sales professionals, industry events, and meetings with their colleagues. Learning is a continual process that great BDRs should prioritise.
10. Relationship-Building
As an BDR, your job is to prime a prospect for the sale before turning them over to your account manager to close. Effective BDRs are able to build genuine relationships with prospects and build trust.
To be a successful relationship-builder, you must be able to communicate with a wide variety of people across multiple channels. Whether you are connecting with a contact over email, presenting to a prospect in a virtual meeting, or sending them a pre-recorded video, you’ll want to clearly communicate your points and ideas that keep them engaged.
11. Overcoming Objections
This last skill is one that every great sales development rep I know has mastered, and that’s handling objections. 35% of sales reps say that overcoming price objections is the biggest challenge they face, but that doesn’t have to include you. Overcoming objections is a skill that most reps get better at over time because they’ve come to understand all the solutions their business provides and have seen them work in creative ways. When you can position these solutions to eliminate a pain point for the prospect, you start to develop trust with your prospect which is a key factor that influences whether they’ll buy or not.
This skill is so critical to an BDRs success that we developed an entire resource dedicated to the practice. If you don’t have time to check it out now, download it below and save it for later.