Hiring an SDR without sales experience? Here's my take: It depends.
First hire?
No.
More than 3 SDRs?
- 1 front-line manager
- With onboarding and training programs
- The existing team consistently meets their quotas
In these cases, yes, it makes sense.
Why?
Early-stage businesses lack:
- An outbound process working
- SDR management skills
- An onboarding process
- A training program
- Defined your ICP
- Buyer personas
Expecting a newcomer with no outbound sales experience to just jump in and handle everything.
And without any guidance from an SDR manager ...
It's just not realistic.
Often, we see these folks struggle for 6 months, and then, sadly, leadership let them go.
But honestly, the problem isn't really with them not being able to do the job.
It's more about us jumping the gun and hiring them without having the right support, and environment in place.
As first hires, we should be focusing on bringing in people with experience, those who can shape and build up the SDR function.
With outbound experience, they're going to get up to speed much faster and start delivering business results sooner.
3 months ago, I decided to go for candidates with a solid track record, even though there weren't that many to choose from.
These folks have been absolute game-changers, despite being pretty unhappy in their previous gigs.
Now that we've laid down the right groundwork, we're in a good spot to start considering people without sales experience.
PS: No, we're not hiring at the moment. 👀
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8moyou the man Terry!