Even in the best economic times, business development reps (BDRs) hear “no” all day, every day. To keep their morale up, good BDR leaders excel at coaching reps through rejection, helping them build confidence and encouraging creative ways to connect with people. But leaders must go from “good” to “great,” which requires finding data-driven ways to motivate reps.
In my three years obsessively building a platform for BDR leaders, I’ve deeply considered what data-driven BDR leaders do that sets them apart. Here are the five best practices I’ve found:
1. Decode Top Performance
You have at least one standout performer on your team: Does every BDR know exactly what that person does to book meetings? Every week, break down the standout’s activities by number, type and cadence, and then go a step further and analyze their messaging.
What do their emails say? How many words do they use? Do they write in one-line paragraphs or chunks of text? Do they include GIFs? Videos? What subject lines do they use? What do they say at the start of a cold call?
Gather all the details and share them with the entire team. This tactic will clarify targets, build intuition, make the winning BDR feel amazing and foster healthy competition. Without it, you risk team members feeling stuck without knowing how to improve. You might also unwittingly create a negative type of competition, where teammates don’t learn from each other’s outco2. Set Smart Activity Targets
When is the last time you looked at a deal that closed six months ago? Data-driven leaders pull efficiency metrics from historical data to create unambiguous activity targets. Start with the team’s outcome goals and work backward to set weekly targets based on recent successes.
Let’s say a BDR needs to book 10 meetings this month. Start by looking at data from the past six months to find the average number of calls it took to book one meeting. If the answer is 60 calls, the BDR needs to make 600 calls this month, so their weekly target should be 150 calls.
Repeat the process for various deal types to set targets per company size, industry and so on. The specificity of your targets will help the team meet goals more predictably and with less stress.
3. Track Diagnostic Metrics
Now that you have smart goals, add scores for diagnostic metrics — the ones that inherently point to the health of a BDR’s active accounts. If low-quality meetings are a symptom, these metrics are designed to find the cause. I have two favorites: ICP score and multithreading score.
An ICP score validates that a rep is engaging the right companies. Set it up by assigning points against your ICP criteria: If your desired industry is software, weigh it high and assign it 10 points. Weigh undesirable industries low and assign them one to two points. Total the numbers and assign scores based on ranges.
A multithreading score looks at the optimal number of contacts a BDR should engage per account type, ideally against a list of desired titles. Just like you used historical success to set activity targets, use it to find the target number of contacts. Then score accounts against the target.
4. Prioritize Weekly Data-Driven Coaching
Data-driven BDR leaders hold regular 1:1 sessions and rarely cancel or move them. During the session, they review how the rep is tracking toward goals. Are they doing enough of the right activities? Are they efficient? What are their ICP and multithreading scores? The ritual of looking at metrics normalizes data-based coaching alongside the kind of coaching only humans can do.
5. Enable Cross-Team Collaboration
Driving and retaining revenue is the business of sales, marketing and customer success teams, yet different functions rarely share visibility into the customer experience. In the current best-case scenario, BDRs and account managers have strong enough relationships that they share anecdotal insights.
Data-driven coaches know that isn’t good enough; customer information needs to connect in a way that doesn’t rely on relationships. Teams need tools that share information across all go-to-market (GTM) functions.
Connecting customer information helps BDRs prospect more efficiently, avoids duplicate efforts, helps BDRs leverage marketing content that drives engagement and fosters camaraderie. Without it, you risk overwhelming prospects, spending precious time on repeat efforts and creating frustration.
Mona Akmal is the CEO and Co-founder of Falkon, an intelligent revenue automation solution for the entire GTM team. Akmal is a product and engineering veteran who builds output-driven teams that create and scale success-enabling products.
