Sales Development is the hardest job in tech today. Most will say it's the VP of Sales but this is only because Sales Development rolls up to them.

I receive a constant stream of phone calls and DMs from Sales Dev leaders considering switching back to an individual contributor AE role. This isn't because they're bad at their jobs.

It's because everyone is expecting their outreach to go viral overnight.

Sales Development doesn't work like that. 

You'll find some low hanging fruit quickly but it's mostly a long game.

You're strategically gathering information at each touch-point and compiling this data over time to make more strategic outreaches MoM and YoY.

The game compounds over time into meaningful results... but like a snowball rolling down a hill, it starts out small.

If you want to know why your SDR team is missing quota, ask your SDRs.

Very rarely does the majority of the team say it's the leader's fault.

Almost always the CEO thinks they need a new Sales Dev leader.

Sales Development is the hardest job... don't lose sight of that reality.

The only thing that makes it harder is unnecessarily starting from scratch.

It breaks my heart when this happens because it takes no more than a few short Zoom meetings to speak with people on the team and understand that leadership is not the problem.

Often times the leadership is actually excellent but they're trying to bring a product into market that people aren't that excited about.

The best thing a tech company can do is lean into these weaknesses and focus on them exclusively instead of deflecting blame to the front lines.

The product has to be desired for sales development to work. That fact will never change.

Happy Selling,