In today’s episode of the ‘Sales Samurai’ podcast, host Sam Capra, who helps marketing leaders in the retail space go beyond the sale/transaction, talks with guest, David Dulany, the Author of the Sales Development Framework and Founder CEO of Ten Bound. He is sharing keys to SDR Hiring Success.

Episode Highlights

• 01:47 – David shares, he was running the SDR teams for about seven years at a different software company, and then started at Ten bound.
• 03:00 – The salespeople got a lot of the glory and they were getting all the trophies and hanging out with the CEO, noticed David.
• 04:38 – David points out, it’s all technology and we got a little bit away from the old-school methods of sales, the way they used to be.
• 06:46 – Sam states, the SDR is the hardest position to fill to recruit for to hire for.
• 08:15 – It's not an easy thing to do, it's not plugged and play, and it's different than recruiting sales reps.
• 12:00 – They want to make sure that they design the interview process correctly.
• 14:26 – Create candidate's scorecard, and ensure that there are some aspects of candidate’s background that could lead to success in the role, not just the resume.
• 16:16 – David shares, we can send candidates a quick assessment and make sure that they're okay talking to strangers, handling objections, dealing with continuous failure, that basic blocking and tackling of SDR.
• 18:22 - if we're hiring slow because we're slow, and the process is a mess on our hiring then we're going to lose those top candidates, says David
• 20:38 – The fourth key is creating a simple project as a part of the process.
• 22:02 – Sam enquires if David is looking for how candidates are prepared.
• 24:36 – We can't sit on the offer letter for a couple of days. We have it ready to go and get them in, states David.
• 29:43 – Managing SDRs is one of the toughest jobs because we have to be able to understand marketing, sales and do training & coaching.
• 31:41 – Sam enquires that if David educates a sales leader around.
• 33:47 – Sam asks David that how the SDR will look like in four or five years.
• 36:20 - Always make sure that the outsourcing agency is sharing their playbook, their research, and the feedback that they're getting from the ideal market.
• 38:31 – David recommends looking for demonstrable sales experience on the resume even if they've been selling Cutco knives, or Girl Scout cookies, etc. 

Three Key Points

1. The tech industry has changed the sales profession. All the tools have made the many aspects of sales a lot easier and not as repetitious and time-consuming. But on the flip side of that, we rely too much on technology.
2. We've got to be able to move fast, and have everything ready to go and lock them in as quickly as possible if we've got that top candidate.
3. Sales leaders should focus on appointments and pipeline and how it's converted to sales.

Tweetable Quotes

• “A lot of the software companies in Silicon Valley, when they came out, they put their sales team into basically three parts right.” – David Dulany
• “The technology is not going to make the sale; it's the classic sales training.” - David Dulany
• “The reason that the SDR role was created is because businesses need pipeline and b2b businesses need to have 3x or 4x pipeline for their salespeople to be able to reliably hit their number”. – David Dulany
• “There's a lot of pressure to perform and if we rush through the timeline, then we just cost ourselves probably six months”. &ndash