The SDR ‘Knowledge Penalty’

Scale the Sale – A series on building a world-class enterprise tech sales organization, from the ground up.

Can knowing ‘too much’ derail an SDR’s sales efforts?

I’ve helped hire and on-board more than 80 SDRs over the last 18 months. There’s plenty of lessons to share, but one interesting and unexpected trend keeps emerging during these experiences—and even the most innately talented SDRs aren’t immune to its effects.

I’ve been calling it “The Knowledge Penalty.”

We continually tell SDRs and salespeople: “Study your industry, know your product inside and out, know your customers and personas” and more. And while it’s true that SDRs need to know these things, this valuable knowledge appears to have a negative side effect when it comes to achieving success within their role.

Let me explain. We all know that an SDR’s primary job is to book quality appointments with accounts and prospects his or her company cares about. You may also know that when SDRs truly understand their company’s offering, their confidence grows—especially when they interact with prospects.

On the surface, this isn’t a bad thing at all. They’re feeling good, they effortlessly toss out the lingo, they quickly get on the same level as the managers and VPs they’re targeting. In our organization, this confidence usually emerges around the third or fourth month of an SDR’s tenure.

This naturally leads to a desire to share all of this hard-earned, valuable knowledge with prospects.

That can become an ongoing challenge for a sales team. While confidence in sales is critical, the fast talking and enthusiasm can quickly over-educate new prospects. Sharing in-depth knowledge during an initial prospecting call can leave prospects feeling like they have all the information they need about your offering.

They may also feel like they were drinking from the proverbial fire hose. Too much information!

In cases where the prospect was impressed by the SDR’s information, they may attempt to relay all of the talking points to their team for evaluation. They may also try to convince the SDR that they need to “discuss the matter internally” before they can schedule a follow-up call with additional resources.

The problem with this is that the prospect rarely—if ever—can capably describe the full scope of your offering after a five or ten-minute prospecting call. They don’t have the benefit of thoughtful, educational follow-up conversations. They think they know what your company does, but that knowledge is often under-cooked.

Bad internal selling by influencers and internal stakeholders can kill a deal right at the top of the funnel. Oftentimes, the SDR Knowledge Penalty is the root cause.

Ways to Detect Knowledge Penalty

Thankfully, there are ways to determine if your SDRs might be sharing too much knowledge with prospects too early in the sales cycle:

• A successful first two or three months in role, meeting or exceeding goals
• A dip in appointment production at around the third or fourth month of a SDR’s tenure
• An overwhelming sense of frustration among the afflicted rep, with a lack of understanding as to why their production has slowed

In my organization, we tell these SDRs to “get back to the basics” on their prospecting calls in order to punch through this production rut. We coach them to run these calls exactly as they did when they were new. We also have them re-listen to calls they made when they were consistently booking appointments.

Why do we encourage this rollback? When reps first start at a company, they don’t have enough institutional or product knowledge to cite, so they push prospects quickly to an appointment. They don’t have the confidence to feel like they can “sell” the prospect right then and there.

A call with all the right players and influencers on the prospect side—and all of the right selling and technical resources on the selling side—is one that will drive a positive outcome.

Ways to Avoid the Penalty Altogether

There are also ways to sidestep this challenge altogether:

• Anticipate, anticipate, anticipate. Know that the Knowledge Penalty is a real thing that affects many SDRs, and coach to it before it happens.
• Train people with intention. Don’t give them too much knowledge too quickly. Give them just what they need to do the role successfully, then slowly layer on additional knowledge.
• Know your people. Everyone will progress at different rates. Understanding the personalities and skills of your team will allow you to monitor their progress and “see and avoid” issues that may be on the horizon.

The Takeaway

It may seem counter-intuitive to think that more knowledge, which breeds more confidence, can be a detriment to success. However, in the SDR role—especially in complex enterprise selling—it can hurt more than it can help. Anticipate, monitor and address Knowledge Penalty challenges as proactively as you can.

Jake Rothstein is the Director of Global Sales Development at MotionPoint, a U.S.-based technology firm that helps large enterprises launch, operate and optimize their multilingual websites to serve their global customers.