The Ultimate Sales Development Rep Resources Guide

Special thanks to Kaila Fleisig for helping to compile this research.

Properly hiring and managing sales development reps (or SDRs) is crucial to your bottom line. Here, we’ve compiled top resources to help you better enable your team members to succeed, plus additional information on how to effectively structure and manage your team, build out a sales tech stack and much more.

Have a favorite article or podcast we missed? Let us know in the comments.

Table of Contents

• Hiring & Managing Sales Development Reps
• Structuring Your Team: Sales or Marketing?
• Building a Must-Have Tech Stack
• Top Sales Podcasts

Hiring & Managing Sales Development Reps

Building a Career Matrix to Keep Your SDRs Happy
Sales development reps don’t often work at a company with the intention of staying on as an SDR forever. In fact, the average turnover for a sales development rep is roughly 14 months. After extensive discussion with industry influencers, SalesLoft changed the career map for its SDRs, which they think will help new hires learn more about company culture while keeping the seasoned SDRs engaged and happy.

Bridge Group 2016 Sales Development Metrics and Compensation Benchmark Report
Take a look at the annual Sales Development Metrics and Compensation Research Report, which provides valuable benchmarking data showing how metrics and compensation have changed over time for sales development teams.

7 Learnings: Building Your First, Great Sales Development (SDR) Team
While SDRs drive sales pipeline, they themselves can (and should) be your organization’s talent pipeline. There’s no better way to cut your teeth in sales or marketing than by grinding through the hard yards of prospecting. For those of you looking to build or optimize an SDR team, below are 7 learnings from creating one of these sales development engines from scratch.

Structuring Your Team: Sales or Marketing?

Why Tech SDRs Should Report Into Marketing
Gartner’s Todd Berkowitz, Research Vice President, lays out a 2015 Gartner report discussing to whom SDRs should report.

Should The SDR Function Report Into Sales or Marketing? What I Learned
Siftrock’s CEO, Adam Schoenfeld, highlights some of his thoughts on who SDRs should report to, drawing from his own professional experience.

BDR’s Should Serve as the Link Between Sales & Marketing
A shift has occurred over the past few years that has some raising their eyebrows…SDRs are reporting to MARKETING! That’s right, marketing! If you look at SDRs as a lead generation and qualification machine, this shift actually makes a lot of sense. So, whether or not you’re actually ready to bucket your SDR team wholly under marketing, you should leverage them to serve as the ever-crucial link between sales and marketing. Here’s why.

Building a Must-Have Tech Stack

A new sales technology stack is coming
A comprehensive system using the right set of tools to make sales a much more productive, quantitative effort is in order. We can no longer settle for something marginally better. Learn about the new sales tech stack now.

Building your Tech Stack: The 3 Must-Have Solutions for Startup Marketing
With all the demands facing modern startup marketing departments, sorting through 3,874 technology solutions shouldn’t be one of them. The prospect of doing that is intimidating to even the most informed marketers. So as a startup, how do you evaluate your options and determine which technologies you really need to invest in to get the most ROI?

2017 Sales Technology Stack. Selecting The Right Combination of Tools
To be successful in B2B sales you must have the courage (to get out of your comfort zone and face rejection), discipline (to do the right things and at the right time whether you feel like it or not), positive intent (where you are seeking to help your customers achieve a better state of affairs), the right ‘value narrative’ and technique for delivery (where you focus on the outcomes you help clients achieve and why it matters), and a great attitude with positive values.

Top Sales Podcasts

Best Sales Podcasts – An Ultimate List of “Must Listens”
From individual sales reps to founders, there are so many great “shows” to help you become better at your job. Take a look at this massive list with dozens of sales podcasts (ones that are still active) along with over 100 quality episodes ready to download and follow you to the gym, car, or anywhere else.

Top 11 Podcasts For Sales & Marketing Leaders
Numerous thoughtful sales and marketing innovators share their very best insights in short, easily absorbed bites that you can listen to while you’re driving to your next meeting.