Dan Brockwell💥 Importance of SDR Career Progression
A career progression strategy is no longer optional for SDR organisations; it has become an essential prerequisite for those aiming at sustainable growth of the function. If you don’t have a plan here, you will end up losing a lot of your best talent.
Retention
According to SaaStr, >50% of companies report that the average tenure in their SDR organisation is a year or less. While this may seem concerning, it is in part due to the nature of the SDR role as a stepping stone into other roles, rather than a long-term destination.
Unlike other roles, SDRs typically enter with specific career goals or timelines in mind, making it a transient role. To address this, implementing a formal career progression strategy is crucial for improving SDR retention and engagement.
Here’s a recent poll we conducted among our audience:
SDRs who engage in career conversations with their managers are better informed about timelines, required skills, and next steps for career advancement.
In contrast, those lacking such discussions may explore opportunities elsewhere that offer clearer career progression plans.
Recognising that SDRs rarely see this role (particularly in Australia) as a lifelong career choice, a well-structured career progression strategy becomes an essential tool to prevent burnout, maintain motivation, and secure the commitment of the SDR team.
Better, Faster AE Hiring
While not every SDR progresses to become an Account Executive, the transition from SDR to AE is a commonly pursued path. Establishing a robust career progression strategy not only cultivates the SDR talent pipeline but also contributes to the growth of the Account Executive talent pool.
Impact on Performance Today
SDR career progression significantly impacts team motivation and performance. Managers offering clear next steps, performance recommendations, and coaching conversations motivate their teams.
In contrast, managers with empty promises or vague career discussions struggle to motivate and meet targets. Career progression acts as a symbolic motivator, driving SDRs to achieve targets. Without a clear path and actionable steps, motivation quickly diminishes.
🛣️ SDR Promotion Pathways
Beginning as an SDR opens doors to various career paths. While many opt for the SDR to AE route, remember your team may have different preferences and options.
Above all, your first focus should be fleshing out and formalising the SDR to AE career track.
Below are the common ways to assess whether your SDR is ready to move into full cycle:
🛠️ Skills Competency Framework
To effectively guide individuals along their chosen career paths and ensure clarity in progression, it's vital to clearly outline the essential skills and competencies needed for each potential role.
Furthermore, it's crucial to establish specific objectives and criteria that SDRs must meet before transitioning to a new role. Clear performance standards should be set to ensure that promotion is based on merit rather than entitlement.
One effective method is to develop a skills competency framework, a clear scorecard with measurable criteria, categorising performance into tiers. The threshold for advancing beyond the SDR program should be clearly defined.
It's recommended to document this system for easy reference and use it for coaching, individual discussions, self-assessment, and performance evaluations. While the exact criteria may vary depending on the, it's essential to maintain a culture of continuous coaching and ensure that promotions are seen as rewards for outstanding performance.
Feel free to use this template and customise what’s important for you.
💪 Intermediate Steps from SDR to AE
To retain top talent without immediately transitioning them into an Account Executive (AE) role, a recent trend has emerged, which involves breaking down the SDR function into multiple tiers.
This can include progression paths like:
- Customer Set: Having an SDR team dedicated to just SMB, then mid-market and eventually enterprise before being able to become an AE.
- Performance Level & Tenure: You can split out the progression into levels like SDR I, SDR II, SDR III, and SDR IV based on sustained performance, with increased quota and responsibilities leading to an AE position.
This tiered structure not only simplifies the promotion pathway but also facilitates focused development efforts aimed at elevating representatives to the Account Executive level.
Here’s a template to define how you might structure different SDR progression levels
🏆 Progressing Responsibility, Not Just Title
Ideally, people should earn titles by first proving they can execute on the responsibilities involved. Just because you don’t have AE headcount open, doesn’t mean you can’t start giving them some of the AE-level work, even if they still have gaps to improve on.
Here are a few factors to consider:
Greater Funnel Ownership: If your SDR currently doesn’t get involved in discovery calls, get them to support on and start to lead these for smaller customers. As they build confidence there, get them to start leading demos for smaller customers. You may even get them taking a few small deals to end state themselves if you do sell to SMB. The sooner they get this practice, the more confidently they can ramp into AE responsibilities when promoted.
Ritual Leadership: Get more experienced SDRs leading or helping you prepare for team rituals like daily standups, pipeline reviews, learning sessions, retros. As an AE, they’ll need to be comfortable driving meetings with internal stakeholders, so give them a taste of this early.
Systems Thinking: Alongside that, you may give them projects in sales operations to improve team systems e.g. reporting dashboards, prospecting workflow, call and email playbooks. As an AE, they’ll be taking deeper ownership over their metrics so building a more systematic mindset early helps.
Mentorship Opportunities: Encourage them to take on more formal mentor/buddy roles with new SDRs, and get more involved in designing and delivering rep onboarding. As an AE, they’ll often work closely with SDRs and cultivating the mentorship skill early will prepare them better for this.
To get them comfortable taking these next steps, we recommend buddying high-performing SDRs with high AEs to:
- Shadow the work of AEs, and then
- Roleplay with these AEs on things like discovery, demos, negotiation, and ] then
- Begin to lead later stages of small deals with an AE shadowing
🙌 Supporting Alternative Pathways
You may not always have sufficient headcount to be able to promote high-performing reps to AE, and likewise, some may have their sights set on a different path. It’s better to retain great people in a different role than lose them altogether.
Aside from the SDR → AE track, the two other most common destinations for SDRs are:
- Sales Team Lead: For sales team leadership, look out for reps who show a particular passion for mentoring newer members of the team, motivating others, and thinking about broader team metrics, processes and responsibilities. In laddering their responsibility upwards, lean into handing over team ritual ownership, buddy & training responsibilities, and support on team processes + playbooks.
- Customer Success & Account Management: For CS/AM, look out for reps who excel in building relationships and show good commercial acumen. In laddering their responsibility upwards, flag their interest with your counterpart on the post-sales side, get them buddied up with a CSM/AM for mentorship and give them access to post-sales call recordings + playbooks to review in their spare time.
Note: these opportunities aren’t something that’s just extended by default. They should be earned based on sustained performance in a rep’s core responsibilities.
💬 Communicate early and often.
When implementing an SDR career progression program, prioritise open communication with your team. Ensure they grasp the goals and benefits of the initiative and address any inquiries they may have. Emphasise that the program is an evolving process and that you value their feedback throughout its implementation.
Demonstrating genuine concern for their well-being and involvement will foster a collaborative and supportive environment for the program’s success.