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If your company markets to, sells, or otherwise engages prospects in Europe, GDPR should be on your radar.
I know these conversations are taking place in legal and IT departments, but I haven't seen much awareness for SDR or AE VPs, Directors, or Managers. So, this is your polite wake-up call. If you haven't paid much attention to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), that is likely to change. And soon.
This brief post is my attempt to give you an assist.
I thought a few dozen companies would respond and I'd have some interesting results to share with the community. It turned into something bigger. Over 200 sales leaders (team leads, managers, directors, VPs) and 340+ individual contributors (AEs, SDRs, CSMs, etc.) participated. I combed through more than 250 individual, anonymous comments. Additionally, I interviewed seven senior leaders on the topic—four on the record and three off.
I’ve compiled the results in our new ebook PTO and Sales: Balancing Vacation and Work for Your Sales Organization. The primary question the research
BDRs, LDRs, SDRs - whatever you call them, the metrics that drive the SDR role are always in demand.
Today, I'm excited to launch our latest research focused on Sales Development organizations. This is our seventh round of research since 2007. The key themes we'll explore include:
I appreciate you taking the time. We couldn't do this research without your help.
A few weeks ago, I shared my research on the failure rate of SDR-to-AE promotions. (Executive Summary: 26% of SDRs who take on an AE role fail. The shorter the SDR tenure, the higher the failure rate. The post-promotion failure rate for SDRs with 11 or fewer months experience was 55%. The failure rate for SDRs with 16+ months experience was just 6%.)
A few dozen InMails and 1.5K+ social shares later, I’ve concluded that this topic hits a nerve.
The most common feedback I heard was “Yes! I’ve seen this too. What can we do to address it?” I wanted real practitioners to share advice so I reached out to Kevin Dorsey, Head of Sales Development and Enablement at ServiceTitan, and Natasha Miller Sekkat, VP of Demand Generation at ClickSoftware. Rather than post the full transcript, I’ve grouped their
The head of Sales Development for a $50M SaaS company recently shared some interesting team data with me. Excluding recent hires and the team currently in place, the group had 55 terminations, promotions, transfers, and quits over the last three years. A little high, but not too far above the median.
Breaking down the individual data, I found the following:
Roughly 60% of his SDRs were promoted or internally transferred. That’s great stuff! But on the flip side, and a concerning note, nearly 40% of the SDRs promoted to an AE role had been terminated. That surprised me.
I wondered if these results were above average, below average, or to be expected. I couldn’t find any public data on the post-promotion failure rate for SDR-to-AE transitions, so I turned to LinkedIn to do my own research.
My search included AEs at companies located in North America.
In the US, our approach to vacation is unrecognizable to much of the rest of the world. In Sales & Sales Leadership, our approach to Paid Time Off (PTO) is incomprehensible to many of our own non-sales colleagues.
A quick trip to Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis tells me that workers in the US work ~11% more hours annually than our peers. That’s roughly an extra half day. Every week. 52 weeks a year.
I suspect you wouldn't argue against the benefits of time away--improved concentration, replenished performance, refreshed attitude-to name a few. But a quick trip to LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Slack, and LinkedIn tells me that taking PTO and making the number are in conflict in many sales organizations.
Search for yourself. You’ll find example after example of reps expressing frustration around taking even a week away. My reflexive reaction was “kids these days” and “
Continue reading "PTO vs Making the Number"
I suspect you wouldn't argue against the benefits of time away--improved concentration, replenished performance, refreshed attitude-to name a few. But a quick trip to LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Slack, and LinkedIn tells me that taking PTO and making the number are in conflict in many sales organizations.
Search for yourself. You’ll find example after example of reps expressing frustration around taking even a week away. My reflective reaction was “kids these days” and “back 
