The CRAP Report

You know, another movie that I really love is Rodney Dangerfield’s “Back to School.”  You remember that one, right?  The story of a guy (Thornton Melon) who goes to his son’s school to teach him the importance of getting a college education.  There are so many things I love about this movie, but one reason I enjoy it so much (besides the Triple Lindy) is because it stresses that education isn’t just something you can “buy”, it’s not a destination, but rather more of a journey.  I feel the same way about sales prospecting and lead generation reps.  You can’t just “buy” a good BDR.  It takes work, it takes a journey, to build a great BDR.

There are misconceptions out there that anybody can be a good Business Development Rep.  I don’t necessarily buy that.  Look, if you’re reading this, chances are you either have your own inside lead generation team or you’re outsourcing.  Maybe you’re somewhere in the middle, but what you want no matter where you fall, are BDR’s that are effective at generating sales qualified leads.  If you want those types of BDR’s however, you’ve got to understand three things: 

1. Where are their skill levels now?
2. Where do I want them to be?
3. How can I get them there?

This takes some brutal honesty on your evaluation process.  Where are the skill levels of your BDR’s now?  I don’t care if you use a scale of 1 – 10, 1 – 5, or okay-good-great, but what you need to do is evaluate their skill levels.  This isn’t rocket science folks, but it is a necessary step.  Where would you rate the level of aptitude for each one of your BDR’s (or your vendor’s BDR’s)?  This gives you a great starting point for understanding the level of work you’re going to get into in determining how you can make them better.  Next, though, you’ve got to put together a framework of where you want them to be.

What type of BDR do you want?  How productive do you want them to be?  What’s more important to you, the number of dials they make or the number of conversations they have?  This is where you answer the ol’ quantity versus quality issue.  Do you want BDR’s who lightly qualify opportunities because you’ve got a hungry sales team salivating for anything with a pulse, or is your sales team so busy from their own prospecting efforts that you really need BDR’s who qualify almost to the point of ready to purchase?  These are the types of questions you need to answer yourself.

Now comes the tough part: figuring out how to train your BDR’s to be better.  You understand where they are now and you know where they want to be, you just need to put a plan together to get them there.  That plan could include a lot of things, like workshops, training sessions, individual coachings, or even call shadowing (though I wouldn’t advise call recording – see my pal Robert Lesser for that discussion).  No matter what you decide on, make sure it’s strategic in the sense that you know exactly why you’re going to train them on what you’re going to train them on.

Well, at a very simplistic level, you’ve got yourself an outline of how to build a great BDR.  In the words of Thornton Melon, “…it’s a jungle out there.  You gotta look out for number one – but don’t step in number two!”