Jason Lemkin of SaaStr, Brendon Cassidy, VP Sales at HackerRank, and Kyle Porter, CEO of Salesloft take a deep dive into Sales Development and discuss hiring, metrics, comps, churn, outsourcing and team building.

1. Building an Outbound
Sales Team
Brendon Cassidy, VP Sales / Talkdesk / EchoSign / LinkedIn
Kyle Porter, CEO SalesLoft
Jason Lemkin, SaaStr
October 29, 2015

2. Q. What’s your advice for someone
building an SDR team from scratch?
• The sales stack is constantly changing.
• The re-emergence of the cold call as an integral part of
the workflow is undeniable.
• You have to pick up the phone, and that has to be at
least half of how you're measuring activity for a
sales development
• It helps them develop quicker and faster, and I think
it has to be part of your core DNA.
“Whatever you thought
the sales stack was four
years ago, it's probably
completely different
today.”

3. Q. What’s your advice for someone
building an SDR team from scratch?
• It really can't be too early. If you have no
leads, your first hire should really be an
SDR and not an account executive.
• if you don't have any marketing-driven
demand early, then you should hire a VP
or head of sales development early.
• SDRs play a role in inbound as well,
because what you're doing in the sales
development function is three parts.
You're connecting, you're qualifying,
and you're converting.
• Even if you've got inbound leads, they
may have downloaded a whitepaper,
you've still got to call and email until you
get them, and then you've still got to
qualify them.
• If you don't have money, then you can't
do it, and the founders have to do it.
“If you've got money, you hire
people to do it, and that's how you
get your business launched.”

4. • If you have no leads, one to one. it's a
50/50 type scenario. Inbound to
outbound, maybe two to one, two AEs
for every SDR.
• For AE’s you'd rather that they were
great at closing than great at creating
their own deal flow.
• When we first got in the business, we
saw two AEs to one, then three AEs to
two, and now we're seeing a one to one
• Getting out and acquiring customers
and getting repeatable customer
acquisition strategy's a lot more
important than what you're paying for
those customers at that point in time.
• You've got to have cash to pay for it, but
I think from our perspective, we look at
how many new appointments can an
AE take on a given day? How many
SDR's do we need to produce those?
We don't want our AEs booking more
than 15 percent of the appointments
they take.
"You want your AEs running at full
speed all the time.”
Q. What's the learning of the rise of
specialization?

5. Q. How much longer are sale cycles from
outbound versus inbound
• With Outbound, it's going to take longer,
and it's going to take some time to get
your SDR work, like fully built, baked,
flushed out, messaging, nailed, and all
that type of stuff. All those things are
going to take time
• 10 percent of the cold calls that you
connect, you're going to get someone
that just happens to say, 'Hey, you
know, I've been in this market. I'm
interested in this space.
• 40 percent, you'll get will say,
'Absolutely, not.‘ The other 45 percent
are convincible to take an appointment.
• You have an ability to pick the right
logo, when you go outbound, maybe
driving higher ACV's.
"Outbound is a little bit of a larger
sale cycle, historically and
traditionally."

6. • If you have no leads, one to one. it's a
50/50 type scenario. Inbound to
outbound, maybe two to one, two AEs
for every SDR.
• For AE’s you'd rather that they were
great at closing than great at creating
their own deal flow.
• When we first got in the business, we
saw two AEs to one, then three AEs to
two, and now we're seeing a one to one
• Getting out and acquiring customers
and getting repeatable customer
acquisition strategy's a lot more
important than what you're paying for
those customers at that point in time.
• You've got to have cash to pay for it, but
I think from our perspective, we look at
how many new appointments can an
AE take on a given day? How many
SDR's do we need to produce those?
We don't want our AEs booking more
than 15 percent of the appointments
they take.
"Outbound, inbound, I'm doing all
the things. I'm all bounding and
each one grows each other."
Q. How long does it take to see the first
fruits of it from the budget?

7. • You're hiring talent, not resume. You're
looking for personality and raw skills, not
10 years selling for Salesforce, Oracle
or whoever else. That's a given. You
need to identify what is the culture of
your company, what type of skill sets or
personalities that have succeed it.
• Hire people that were curious about
technology rather than salespeople that
were uninterested in technology.
• You're going to lose them in the first 90
days, if you don't get them up and
running, understanding, and
knowledgeable of the company, product,
mission, and the pitch.
• Be diligent about the person you select
on the front end in the first place. Do
SDR coaching.
• Get them on the phone in the interview
process. Do mock calls, really dive in to
Are they going to be able to accomplish
this?"
• In the interview, we ask our sales team
members to give a pitch, and then after
the pitch I give them feedback on one or
two areas that they could improve on.
Then I ask them to do it again, and I
see did they take the coaching? Did
they implement it? Did they change?
• Get a play book.
It's a routine of things that we've
learned and been successful. We
repeat it, and we improve.
Q. How do you ramp new college grads as
quickly as possible for an ABR, SDR role?

8. Q. How should you think about turn in
SDRs versus AEs
• Sales Stack is constantly changing
processes and techniques are changing
so much faster than they ever did
before, and you have to look at the data
and decide what's the right way to do it.
• We look at the efficiency score of our
sales development reps, how efficient
are they with their time, with their
resources?
• Connect to conversion ratio.
• We still are paying on completed
appointments, but the more
sophisticated SDR teams are paying on
that contribution to pipeline.
• Most effective scaling sales
development organizations aren't going
after the people first, they're going after
the companies first. They're identifying
not just the ideal profile for the person,
but the ideal profile for the organization.
““Big trend that we're seeing now, is
this account-based strategy for sales
development.”

9. • It's a phenomenal list building service,
and I know not just SDRs but
salespeople that use it too. But it's not
your best foot forward when you're
Talkdesk at 20 employees or
HackerRank at 50 employees or
SalesLoft at 30. It's not just not
marketing.
• Outsourced shops do a really good job
of building the lists
• More success with the outsourced SDR
as a service with the later stage
companies like private equity back
companies where they've carved off
and they've got a repeatable sales
cycle.
• The things you're hearing back from
those prospects, that's like product
feedback, sentiment, it's all these things
that matter to the heart and soul of an
organization.
I'm going to outsource it, and then I
will take it in-house as soon as I can
find some people.
Q. Can you outsource SDRs in the
beginning?

10. • Don't reach for, like try to build a team in
a cheaper labor market where you don't
have somebody to build that team that
you know and trust.
• Good success to go remote when you
are between that series A and series B,
when you’re past $10m – at escape
velocity.
“I pay $22 a square foot for real
estate in Atlanta, so I don't have to
worry about the space much.”
Q. Local vs remote SDR teams?

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