Build Better: The Secret to High-Performing BDR Teams

Most BDRs are in seat for call it like a year or two, maybe three years at a time, and most of them don’t have any of tactical experience. So a lot of what you’re looking for is very intangibles. What do the high performing BDRs have? And first and foremost, it’s grit, it’s curiosity, it’s general mental ability, and conscientiousness. This is Revenue Makers, the podcast by Sixense investigating successful revenue strategies that pushed companies ahead. Saima, it’s either a hell yes or a hell no. I would apply that to many things in life, actually most things in life. But what are you talking about, Adam? Well, our guest today, awesome guest. I always say that, but he is awesome. He’s a star. He really is. And we get to work with him every day here at Sixense. He’s, one of our BDR leaders, but has a, one, an amazing backstory, personal story about how he became who he is today into this role. And secondly, just some really, really amazingly strong but really actual insights on how do you build a BDR team starting from the profile, the right leader, down to recruiting to your your individual reps. So just a great conversation, like, how to go do that. And we talked about our favorite word AI. We did. The guest today is Ernest Owusu. He’s a star like we mentioned, and he’s been doing this for a while. And we’ve done a couple of episodes on BDRs to your point, and we talked about how outbound is dead and whatnot. But this is really about setting your team up in the right way, attracting and really weeding through the right candidates to build the right team, things to look for, even specific questions to ask. So to your point, it’s a really tangible takeaways in this specific episode. And he’s just, you know, great to talk to. And I will say, I’ll maybe put in a little teaser for the end of the episode. Ernest probably wins on the best story of the most ridiculous thing he’s been asked to do. Yeah. And I would say we we need a photo of what he talks about, but I’m sure he’ll never share that. Anyway Well, let’s do it. Let’s do it. Alright. Ernest, you’re here. We were looking forward to this, but we are very lucky because we work with you every day. So now we’re gonna share. Not the we say share you with the world, but you’re out there more than we are probably, and everyone sort of I got that. Well, I feel lucky as well. So we’re we’re feeling the same way. Thank you. Celebrity status. We love working with you. We get to see firsthand the magic you create with the BDR teams and how you’re really such an evangelizer of it outside of six ends. The BDR program here, let’s be honest, like, you really helped build up from scratch. And so we want to share what you did with the world. But why don’t you first tell us a bit about yourself, Ernest? Yeah. Sure. So first off, thanks so much for having me. But, again, my name is Ernest. I guess my background is before getting to tech in this amazing b two b go to market world, I’m actually professional athlete. So I I played for the Minnesota Vikings in Tampa Bay Buccaneers for a number of years, and it was a great experience. Probably a lot more stressful than being in tech, I’ll say. But I loved it, and I got hurt like most athletes do. And, when I was trying to figure out my next step, I had no idea what I was gonna do. And I just took a leap of faith and jumped into a career in sales. And I started in SDR, loved it, became an account executive. And then after that, I had that that need to lead, coach, mentor people. So I was asked to be a be our leader, and I basically made a career out of it. And that’s kind of what you know, just the sense. It makes perfect sense to me actually that you would go from professional athlete. We’re gonna dig into building a BDR team leadership and all that. And it just it works so well, and it makes so much sense to me. The reason why I did choose this path because, as you can imagine, getting to that elite level, it was very hard. And I was trying to figure out what I could do that could kind of allow me to still be just as successful in many different ways. So I took a hard look at myself to figure out what it took me to get there. And lo and behold, the career in sales was exactly what that what what would help me get to that next path. And, that’s why I jumped in. And a lot of the things I learned here at Succession as well as the other companies in the past and succeeded with were because of what I did as an athlete. So that’s why I took off to the teams and helped build from there. Yeah. There’s a lot of studies around how I guess the discipline and the rigor that, you know, having a career in athletics, not even at your level, Ernest. I mean, not many of us have been in the NFL. Right? But just I think having that overall discipline of being in sports, being on a team, having to win as a team, like, it really plays into a fantastic hiring profile both as a player, but also as a coach in the corporate world. Yeah. Definitely. And I know we’re gonna talk later on about building teams with, you know, leaders as well as SDRs. But, specifically, there are studies on, like, not just athletes in general, but even, like like, single sport athletes. We run a team. Like, how do they perform in certain environments? And there’s a lot of information that you can use to help build and scale SDR teams. And I did that over here at six cents, so excited to show her account on that. Yeah. I’m not very athletic, so I’m feeling a little bit, like I don’t do any of those things. Maybe I’ll pick up a sport. I will say pickleball is an opportunity. A lot of people are playing pickleball nowadays. So that’s very true. Let’s dig into the first kind of big area. Right? Let’s talk about leadership. Let’s talk about because obviously, you yourself have hired EDR leaders. I’m sure you’ve you’ve made some amazing hires. It’s probably long been like, oops. Maybe not. But if you were to start there and say first, like, what are the characteristics of a great BDR leader? And then we can kinda, like, get into, like, how do you find these people? But, you know, maybe start there. It’s really challenging hiring the right BDR leader. I’d say, for your organization, first and foremost, really understand where you’re at and what you need because there are very different skill sets and different leaders that you’re gonna have to tap into. If I had to kinda categorize into three buckets, you have to assess, are you an organization that needs an innovator, a manager? So basically, know more or less of what you’re looking for. And for me, when I first started out here at success, we had to hire that first leader who actually still here today, Ben, phenomenal leader that we have on the organization. We’re still building, so we need an innovator. Right? So we need someone to come on board and, like, build new different best practices that we could develop and make sure that we’re scaling our team that way. And, again, being focused on what you need and, obviously, some certain things to think about with your profile and how you’re asking questions are important, but, you gotta really know where you’re at first and foremost. I think running a BDR org, it’s just so unique because of the amount of you know, you’re holding them really, you’re bringing people on board with the goal of moving them up into different careers. And so there’s just so much more hiring happening consistently as a leader, and there’s a lot of turnover. There’s a lot of attrition. It’s just by nature of the role. And so how do you manage that and get ahead of that, particularly when you still have quota you need to fill and carry and you still have goals you need to hit? Going back again to the hiring profile of a good leader, your ability to hire BDRs should be the number one skill set. When I think about building a scaling SDR teams, first and foremost, can you hire and can you onboard? If you can do those two things really well, they can build teams that that operate very efficiently. But specific with BDRs, it’s really hard because your point, like, most BDRs are in seat for call it, like, a year or two, maybe three years at a time, and you always have the expectation they’re not gonna be there. And not to mention, most of them don’t have any of tactical experience. So a lot of what you’re looking for is very intangibles. Again, going back to what it’s like to be an athlete. And for us, actually, interesting enough, actually, in the book right here, there’s this book called Leading Sales Development. It’s the go to book that I’d use to hire and build profiles. And the specific thing they did was they actually, they did a research study with Salesforce, SalesLoft, I think called a company called Alphasense. And they were able to determine all those intangible skill sets, what do the high performing BDRs have. And first and foremost, it’s grit, it’s curiosity, it’s general mental ability and conscientiousness. And then if I could get specific as to, like, what those four things are and how to assess them, grit is essentially it’s having a long term goal and being passionate about it despite plateaus and and successes. Right? So and and think about the BDR role where it’s a very monotonous job. You’re doing the fainting over and over again and but you wanna make full money. You wanna be that that AE, What it might be, and you can kinda go through those things. Right? So being able to assess that is really important. And, also, I will say too, hiring an individual who does not have grit, really tough to train someone to be in place to be effective based upon that. So the first one is grit. The second one is general mental ability. And with general mental ability, think of that as, like, clock speed, if you wanna call it. But especially right now in this whole day and age of, like, AI and how how much more difficult the role is getting, Can you hire someone who does not necessarily need a script and they can think on the cup, they can think on the fly and and find ways to prospect? That’s a very challenging thing to train someone to do to be effective in the role. The third one is curiosity, which some some things we’ve done over here that have been effective is, like, has this person read any books on prospecting? Have they followed the influencers on LinkedIn? Are you looking for, like, different ways to improve their craft? Right? If you can find someone who’s naturally curious, yes, leaders should be enabling their teams, but that person is gonna enable themselves over and over again without your help. Right? So it’s kinda like one of those multiplier effects to make sure that they’re that much more effective. And then the last one of the four is conscientiousness. And that comes down to think of that as, like, a competitiveness of not just your team, but also with yourself. Are they always looking for ways to make themselves better every single day? Are they detail orientated? Are they thoughtful with everything they’re doing? I’ve noticed consistently that those four core traits are the intangibles that make great BDRs, but also it actually flows up into BDR leaders as well because a lot of teams don’t necessarily realize that BDR leaders are essentially okay. They are individual BDRs at scale because good BDR leader, they’re always trying to find ways to you know, pass opportunities and pass the insights to their teams. So they have to have those skill sets even though they’re actually leading the teams on their own. Yeah. Now given they are all intangibles, one of the things that I’ve I think I’ve said this in another episode too. I’m always it feels like a contradiction where you’re you’re hiring people that are, in a lot of cases, the first experience that someone’s gonna have with a brand. They are driving what could be millions and millions of dollars in pipeline and business, but ultimately will probably be some of the most junior people in the company at a pretty much an entry level salary. Yep. There’s that sort of contradiction. But when you’re talking about the intangibles, how do you screen for that? How do you actually create interview questions and create scenarios to say, like, this person’s showing grit. This person’s got curiosity. Like, that’s gotta be really challenging. It really is. And and the one thing I will say in this those of hiring general, the mantra I’ve always had here is if it’s not a hell yes, it’s a hell no. Right? So, like, even if, like, you’re you feel like you’ve got the answer, but it’s not an amazing answer or you don’t feel really good about it, then unfortunately, it’s not enough to move the person forward. So specifically with those main four core traits, when you think about grit, one thing we like to ask is, like, talk me through a time where and it could be from personal life, from school, from work, it doesn’t really matter. But talk me through a time where you were trying to achieve something and you failed. What caused the failure? What happened? What was the end result? And we don’t really care about the failure. We care about more or less of, like, what was the thought process? How are they trying to bounce back? Do they keep pursuing the goal? Right? That’s a very easy ten or a way to assess that grit. Again, with curiosity, like, very easy to assess. Like, have you read a book on on sales development? Have you read a podcast? Have you watched any any interviews on YouTube? And the ones who have done this, not only can cite it, but they give you, like, very specific examples of what they learned about those. Those ones are naturally curious and it’s exciting because, well, they actually do come and see, but it did the exact same thing once they’re in the role, which is phenomenal. If I had to pick through general mental ability, and again, this is this is one that can be very careful about when it comes to higher BDRTs because it’s a very hard skill to to teach. It can be taught, but in terms of how much time it takes to get someone to learn that in terms of the production you need, you gotta be very careful about that. But what I’ve always seen a lot of teams do and we’ve done this here in the past is get them some kind of writing assignment. And it’s really important if you’re writing assignment to ask them questions on it because lo and behold, some people do get help. So, like, let’s just call what What? We’ll call away. Come on. Come on. Yeah. They they do get help with the questions. So oh, with the prom. So it’s more so asking questions on, like, what does our company do? What does the persona do? Why should they buy our product? They don’t have to be experts on your product or personas, but can they connect the dots in a conversation is really important. And then a weird one is with the conscious, this is we always ask people, like, how do you stay organized? Like, do you use Excel sheets? You take notes? Things along those lines. Because, typically, people that are very intentional and thoughtful fitting these the things they do have a very robust system for staying organized. It’s a very clear sign they’re gonna do in the role. So in terms of BRs, those are the clear ways to do that. Now let’s talk about leaders. So, again, the main profiles are builders, managers, and innovators. It depends on where your company’s at. The biggest distinction I’ve noticed to kinda set yourself apart to determine what you actually need is, like, can you identify as a person a right brain stinker or a left brain stinker? The challenging part about being a BDO leader is you actually have to be both. And what I mean by that is, like, you have to be that person who, like, is creative and innovating and seems super excited, but you also have to be an exceptional operator. Or you also whether or not you’re a manager or you’re a VP. That is really hard to assess. What I’ve always noticed is, like, creating a scenario of a company that’s in a gap. And, like, it could be from hiring. It could be from motivation. It could be from the the KPIs that are set in place for the team and just ask them questions how they solve it. Typically, going back to, like, the BDR profile, their level of curiosity towards those different components will be the the clear determiner as to whether or not they are that right brained or left brained thinker and the one that you need for your organization. Yeah. I love, you know, that if it’s not a hell yes, it’s a hell no. Let’s talk about making the team successful. I’d love your POV on whether BDRs should sit in marketing or sales. Because there’s that angel question of how will they be promoted if they sit in marketing, but then on the flip side, you want the BDRs to be telling the same story that marketing is telling in the market. And so wonder if you’ve got a strong POV either way. So, unfortunately, my POV is not gonna be what you want. I think it it depends. Right? So there are many organizations where if the majority of your pipeline is generated through marketing activity, through in market accounts, through imbalance, then you better be in the marketing because that alignment needs to be strong. Now on the flip side, if it’s, like, very small TAM, like, large enterprise strategic accounts where it’s hard to break into at times, it probably makes more sense to be associated with with the sales team. On the flip side, again, I’ve seen those, like, massive organizations with hundreds of SDRs actually rolled to operations. So it it is hard to say where exactly should land. I’ve always thought that it should it’s contingent upon your situation. But the most important thing is it’s on the leader. Every leader has to know what your gap is based upon whether or not you’re in sales, marketing, or operations, or even finance. I’ve been at finance before And account for that to make sure your team is getting the support they need. And, Simon, to your point, like, I’ve seen examples where some SEO leaders have really struggled to get their teams cloned because they’re not in marketing. From my perspective, that’s on them. Right? Like, are you building relationships with the AEs or the sales leaders? Are you making sure they’re getting enabled to go to move forward? And if you’re not doing that, then, yes, it is gonna happen where it might be more challenging. But, again, there’s no sweet spot. It depends on what your company is at the time. And, honestly, you could pivot in a couple years or so as your company grows, but it’s on the leader to make sure the team is getting the support they need. Yeah. Makes sense. So we’re talking about being successful. I think the BDR function is rapidly changing, and we have our favorite buzzword AI to certainly thank for at least part of that. And Sima had an interesting statistic that we just received about teams that are using AI in outbound. It was fifty five percent. But the really interesting thing was that only seven percent were actually seeing a were using that as a catalyst to reduce headcount. So here’s data that says that it’s not coming for people’s jobs. It’s helping to augment or helping to make them more effective. So from your perspective and even you’ve been in it right here at sixth sense about how AI is working with BDRs, augmenting BDRs, enhancing BDRs. Like, what do you think? Where are we headed? Where do you where are you seeing the good, the bad, the ugly? I’m surprised that fifty five percent number isn’t a bit higher. There are so many opportunities and applications within the SDR role to apply AI, and, frankly, the ones who would sit in that forty five percent are are missing out right now. So that number should be higher. It’s also interesting to hear that we’re only at seven percent thinking about reducing headcount. Now I’m not saying that the role completely go away with AI, but, like, I am very confident, and we’re seeing over here at success as well as in the industry that, like, you actually can do more with high quality with AI. So maybe that seven percent is an indication that companies are growing. They’re not looking to reduce headcount. But, again, like, I’m seeing it time and time again. There there are some things I will say that, like, that human, that creative, that relationship building aspect that we’re not quite there yet with AI. And I don’t know how and when they’ll be impacted. So maybe that’s intact, but I just don’t see how there won’t be an environment where teams are smaller because of how much more efficient they are with AI. And I’m already seeing it. Again, not to say that the role will be completely eliminated. It just needs to be a lot better at your job than you were in the past. We were very early adopters of AI. I mean, we’re Sixense. We’re a company that was built on AI, and and we launched our own generative AI product three years ago. And it really has been about augmenting. So firstly, of course, just the technology to work on accounts that are in market. Right? But then what do you say to them? How do you say it to them? And we’ve taken some of those repeatable tasks off of the plate of the BDR, things like webinar follow-up, email follow-up, and we’ve pointed our BDRs to more higher value add activities like picking up the phone and and actually, you know, calling the prospect, can doing connections on LinkedIn, hyper personalizing. Like, talk to us about how you have worked with the team to really integrate AI into their workflows. A lot of the metrics in the past have, like, the a twenty rule where you have to personalize twenty percent and automate the rest because you don’t have time. Those things should be going away, and we’re seeing over here as well. And we’re working towards a world where basically everything that the team does is very high touch. Right? It’s like you have the time and resources to, like, do a lot of personalization research on that one account, that one contact, and the killer cold calling gonna be in that way. Right? Or you have the ability to do a lot of personalization on the email or social selling to try and find an engagement plan. So that’s the MO of what we’re following right now is trying to create an environment where the volume of quality activity increases across the board. And anything else that can be automated is still effective in in producing pipeline. The BDRs just don’t have to worry about it. We’re still bringing it to fold so we can create pipelines in the team. But, having them focus more on, like, the high touch, the relationship building, the hyperfocus personalization that, again, maybe AI one day will be able to do, but we’re not quite there yet. I was gonna do that question talking about the personalization factor. But is there anything that you’ve seen that you would say, okay. Like, the next step we’ve got hyper personalization. That’s the next step. But what else what could be the next evolution if you were to put on your fortune teller hat for a second? If you could create anything, I guess, would be a really better question. Yeah. So I think email through personalization, like, that just keeps getting better and better and better through time. Like, I can imagine a world where BDR is just, like, joining the email at all. Right? Because just because it’s so good with AI. The thing I’m curious about is through social selling or through the phone or even through trade shows. If AI will have the ability to replicate some of the relationship selling, that can be effective at times. I haven’t quite seen it yet, at least through social and through the phone. There there are some things with the phone that I’m they’re popping up recently. I’ve seen them effective, but not quite something yet. Email is killer right now. You you can have some great emails that go out to you. You have no idea. What’s my SDR, which is pretty cool. But through the phone and through social, I’m not quite seeing it yet, but I do imagine in time that it’ll start creeping into that and the whole entire prospect of landscape will be impacted by AI. Yeah. Any other interesting trends or topics that you’re you’re seeing out there, particularly around just making the teams more effective? And it could be tech it could be completely non tech related too. Like, what have you just found really works well? Yeah. I mean, I think kinda going back to the whole thing of AI, again, with recruiting. So right now, it’s definitely a bit of an employer’s market. There are a lot of candidates out there in the market. It’s hard for individuals to find roles. But as this thing keeps developing, what we’re gonna be expecting from candidates and and the profile we’re looking for is gonna get higher and higher through time. And not say right now, but in the past, you could make bets on individuals who’ve had all those intangible qualities, but, like, maybe you weren’t quite sure in them. I do imagine that because AI is getting so good, more as we expect from our reps in due time that, like, the profile and expertise and even potentially, like, their domain experience before they enter the role is gonna be a lot higher than it is right now. And that’s not saying that individuals like myself who made a career transition or individuals that are coming straight out of college won’t be able to find that next SDR role. But I do see a world where, like, someone who, say, for example, has been in the auto industry and they have relationships, you know, the industry, like, the back of their hands. Like, maybe the the next wave of SDRs that we have because they just know us so well. But I guess in short, like, as we’re building teams, I would just encourage everyone to think about the long term impact of hiring people that really know the industry and are domain experts if you can because AI is getting so much stronger and that expertise might be needed in the future. Yeah. To that point, actually, we’ve talked a lot about what employers look for and what employers and leaders do. Let’s put it in kind of the POV of the actual candidates. Are there things that you recommend they do? Certifications. I mean, I know you’ve done a certification for six cents. Like, what would put them above maybe another candidate? Yeah. Any kind of skill improvement or skill development you do ahead of time and through certifications, like, we have our own two six ads. There’s some amazing books out there, like, the medical prospecting. We used to require one to read it when they first came on board because it’s it’s a really good book. Strongly the the mental side as well as tax or prospecting. But anything you can do to, like, demonstrate some kind of expertise, even if you haven’t done the role, it gives the the manager a lot more confidence in the fact that they can hire you. And I also will say this, this this extends to all roles out there. Treat your interview like a BDR role. Like, multi the account. Find the the main decision maker. Reach out to them for practice on your own. Right now, a lot of us are hounded in the inbound channel of few ways doing, apply mass supplies online, and the ones that are sticking are the ones who are essentially operating as BERs. And the same thing for leaders as well. And I’ve seen a lot of leaders that kinda put their BER back hat back on and use that as a way to prosper and find opportunities. So that’s a good way to stand out, but I’d say to the point I made earlier, tobacco prospecting. There’s some great resources and guides out there on just how to write emails. I know the guys from the third and least the presence club has put out an awesome book recently that’s phenomenal on on cold calling. So anything you can do to kinda give some more confidence to a leader that you know the job before you do it, I highly encourage that. So we have a question that we ask every one of our guests, which is what is the most ridiculous thing you’ve been asked to do in your career? And it could be any one of your careers, either good or bad, just bearing in mind that the boss is on the call right now on our recording now. So if any of the ridiculousness came, you might wanna avoid that. But we’ve gotten some pretty wild answers from smuggling to all sorts of different things. I’ll talk through one from the NFL. One is one from, being in tech. It’s technically ridiculous. But so we had this tradition when I was with, the ten Bay Buccaneers where I think it was every other Thursday, we sat together as a d line, and we had dinner together. But as you can imagine, like there were multi multimillionaires in that dinner. We played card roulette and we always made a point to rack up the bill as high as we possibly could. And myself, I was, I was a rookie at times, so I was not making forty million dollars We got a twenty thousand dollar bill. So every other person in the team who had, like, a thirty, twenty, forty million dollar contract, they were the first people out of the bet. Right? And it was myself as well as someone else who was, like, a jury man. So basically someone who doesn’t typically land on teams very often with a twenty thousand dollar bill, and my card was in there. I was just praying that I was not going to pay. Unfortunately, I didn’t have to make it. But it it just it’s just tough because in professional athletics, there’s weird things to have like that where it’s like, throw your money out there and waste it and just do, like, reckless things. And it’s kinda like the culture you have to do it. And fortunately, in that one instance, I almost lost, but I did not. So that that was in in football. In tech, and then, again, this goes back to I was talking about different leaders and and the kind of profile we look for. I had a team that was not hitting their number. I need to motivate them for us to quarter, and I made a bet with them that if they hit their number, I would dress up in a costume and press around downtown San Francisco. I technically won the bet because I’m a team perform. And I went to a costume store, got a cat costume, and spent an hour just running around San Francisco. Gotcha. Are there pictures out there of that? There’s a picture somewhere to find it, but there there are some there’s some evidence up there. So the actually, that question is the most ridiculous thing you asked yourself to do, actually. Yeah. And I will say for those who don’t know, I’m six five, so it’s, like, really weird to see a six five cat just, like, running around San Francisco. You win. You absolutely win. Yes. That’s a good one. Well, this was awesome. Lot of great action. Actionable. Very actionable things. So thank you. Appreciate you jumping on. Yeah. Of course. Happy to be here. To everyone out there who’s looking for SDRs or someone who isn’t a future would be SDR, it’s an interesting market right now, but I think it’s clear that the role is not. It’s evolving quickly, but it’s definitely not going away. Thanks, Ernest. Yeah. Thanks for having me. You’ve been listening to Revenue Makers. Do you have a revenue project you were asked to execute that had wild success? Share your story with us at six cents dot com slash revenue, and we might just ask you to come on the show. 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