Solving the disconnect between AEs and SDRs
“These are my top 25 accounts. Don’t touch these. The middle 50, you can work on them, but keep me in the loop with all contact. Those bottom 25, you can have them.”
Tenured revenue executives will be familiar with the following scenario. An Account Executive (AE) has 100 accounts they are actively working on. They also have a Sales Development Representative (SDR) (or Business Development Representative [BDR]) to support them in the process of winning deals. Looking at the accounts and at their colleague, the AE makes the statement above.
It’s a common, telling sign of the disconnect between two critical parts of the sales engine. The veteran AE is protective of their turf and distrustful of the young, inexperienced SDR who ends up left with the scraps.
It’s a lousy situation for three reasons:
It creates unnecessary frustration between individuals and lowers job satisfaction for those making their first move into sales (i.e., your organization’s future talent pipeline).
Poor communication between sellers creates a poor buyer experience at a time when this is already in crisis.
It’s a colossal waste of a company’s resources.
Gartner explained this final point by quantifying the resources that go into securing a new customer. It generally takes more than 12 touches to reach a prospect. With most buyers now engaging on digital channels, this means emails and social outreach on top of traditional calls. Most AEs literally “do not have the bandwidth to manage the multichannel campaign necessary to reach leads.”
Numentum recommends that Chief Revenue Officers (CROs) and Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) oversee a program that shares responsibility between AE and SDR to make the journey to closed-won faster and less arduous. These five guidelines help to increase collaboration and maintain alignment between these two critical roles.
The challenge of AE and SDR relationships
The working relationship between AE and SDR is a challenge in many traditional revenue organizations. The AE may put an expectation to be ‘served’ on the SDR and feel frustrated by a lack of quality leads or in the handing-over process. SDRs can walk away feeling aggrieved if they perceive their AE as not doing enough to close the business and secure the commission they both rely on.
Sales can be a lonely business, and the emphasis on quotas and targets puts teamwork on the back burner in many performance-oriented organizations. This comes from the top when leaders celebrate and prioritize the achievements of individual salespeople. Executives play a critical role in changing the dynamic between key parts of the team. Numentum’s proven 5-part guidance does just that.
Five ways to ensure AEs work more effectively with SDRs
1. Objective alignment
It’s tough to align AE and SDR teams when they are held to different KPIs. For example, if an SDR is measured on how many meetings she books, then there’s an implicit incentive to focus on quantity over quality. Doing so will fast-track frustration in an AE, harkening back to the familiar “marketing doesn’t send qualified leads” complaint.
When SDRs roll into the CMO, CROs and CMOs must align on targets so that AEs and SDRs can focus on their joint objective to optimize the buyer’s experience and close the deal.
2. Creating coaching opportunities
Coaching is at the core of AEs working more effectively with their SDR counterparts.
Leaders can position this opportunity for AEs in two ways:
Sellers with team management aspirations have the opportunity to flex their coaching muscle and grow into their next role.
Sellers who are content with an individual contributor track will be surprised at how much time they get back to focus on accelerating deals if their SDR can truly own their part of the sales process.
AEs should take a practical approach to coaching SDRs, who are typically early in their careers and can benefit from the learnings and experiences of their peers. At Numentum, we teach AEs and SDRs to look at a list of target accounts together and ask questions like “If you were reaching out to the CFO here, what would you say? What do you think they would be interested in? Which would be the best path in to start a conversation?”
Answers can be workshopped, with the AE adding perspective and specificity beyond what sales enablement would typically do. Repeat this exercise for all personas in the buying committee, and then use LinkedIn and Sales Navigator to identify ways of leveraging existing relationships to secure a warm introduction.
This coaching should be ongoing, with SDRs regularly sharing their outreach for feedback and to align on brand and product messaging.
3. Research framework and structured reviews
Knowledge is power in the buying process. SDRs can become an organization’s competitive differentiator if they have the right frameworks to research target accounts and can work with AEs in a structured way.
They should be tasked with mining LinkedIn and other social networks for information. Where have key individuals worked before, and are any of those previous companies customers? Who has shared connections that could facilitate a warm introduction? An organization that has adopted the principles of the Connected and Empowered Enterprise will already be providing both AEs and SDRs with the right tools to use their network to advance deals.
Regular pipeline reviews are another must-have to keep AEs and SDRs on the same page. SDRs should be able to understand the entire sales cycle and not just their portion of it. Encourage them to listen to the meetings they played a part in setting up; if appropriate, they can attend and introduce the AE. They will feel empowered, and this also provides consistency in the buyer experience.
4. Don’t underestimate culture
A culture built on trust is crucial for the relationship between SDR and AE. Numentum teaches revenue organizations how to practice empathy and professional authenticity and why teams should share personal and work-related wins.
CROs should work with CHROs to develop team training that facilitates trust, with activities that deepen the connections between colleagues and give individuals the confidence to be vulnerable in order to grow together.
5. Shaping the next great AEs
SDRs don’t stay in position for long. The average tenure is around 14 months, which will drop dramatically in a dysfunctional sales organization. On the flip side, well-trained SDRs can become tomorrow’s top AEs. ZoomInfo reported on their success in this area, saying:
“Our SDRs perform so much better as AEs — and so much quicker — than when we hire an external AE because they’ve had a year’s worth of handling objections and going against competitors and convincing people there’s value in taking a meeting with us.”
This shows the organization-wide value of a well-oiled AE and SDR machine. AEs planning on management as their next step benefit from a high-performing team that they have had a direct hand in helping shape.
Strategies to help AEs and SDRs work better together
AEs actively supported by SDRs will be more effective and efficient when closing deals. Culturally, executives need to encourage a shift in perspective from being a lone wolf to a team player. The impact of the change will be felt beyond the bottom line. Better working relationships improve mental health and job satisfaction.
Revenue Forward
Numentum is a buyer experience consultancy that helps B2B organizations go to market faster, bigger, and more effectively without the need for an expensive and time-consuming overhaul of existing processes and systems. We partner with CEOs, CMOs, CROs, and CHROs to develop customized training programs that integrate brand, sales, and marketing to deliver accelerated revenue momentum.
By efficiently focusing on the buyer experience, we advance the skills, information, and interactions sales professionals must deploy to engage with today’s hyper-informed buyers effectively. Our approach aligns sales with marketing to maximize the utility of brand investments, content, and digital channels—dramatically improving pipelines, shortening buying cycles, and increasing conversion rates.
Learn more about our approach with this introduction to the Connected and Empowered Enterprise, and follow us on LinkedIn for more strategies and tactics that drive revenue forward.
