When and How to Promote Business Development Reps

Your best business development reps want to be closing, and you want to help them get there. Influitive VP of Sales Emmanuelle Skala explains how to do it right by defining a clear path for promotion.

Hiring a great sales rep is hard enough. Once you have one on board you want to do everything you can to keep them and help them advance. For business development reps (BDRs) that means offering them a chance to be promoted to Account Executives (AEs). But as Emmanuelle Skala, VP of Sales at Influitive explains, not only will having that promotion track clearly defined and standardized help your BDRs succeed, it will also save you considerable pain and confusion.
Find out what Skala looks for to determine which reps are really ready for a promotion, and learn what she considers to be a suitable time frame.

How to Develop a BDR Promotion Track

Key Takeaways

• To even be considered for a promotion, hitting your metrics is table stakes. Plain and simple — to make the cut and get promoted to an account executive role, a business development rep has to hit his or her meetings, SQOs, and activity metrics.
• But there is more to becoming a good AE than hitting your SDR metrics. A rep can always hit your numbers but not necessarily have the right skill set for the next job. Give the BDR a chance to demonstrate the characteristics of an AE by letting them run their first call or letting them run a deal that they are less qualified for. Then have them give a demo or a mock call, and go through the interview process. These things are going to demonstrate whether the rep is truly ready for a promotion.
• It typically takes between six and 18 months for a rep to be promoted. Of course, that varies on a variety of things: the product you are selling, the ASP, the sale cycle, etc. The shorter the sale cycle and the lower the ASP, the quicker you can promote a BDR to an AE. Generally speaking, though, between six and 18 months is a suitable time frame for reps to demonstrate their skills and for you to know that they’re ready for a promotion. Longer than 18 months, you’re not getting the best you can out of somebody. The kind of person you want to promote is an achiever.

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Photo by: Collin Anderson