Sales Development Forecasting

Setting Your Team Up for Success

Part of being an SDR is acting as a bridge between sales and marketing, making sure they’re both able to accomplish their goals.

But where do those goals come from? And what happens when they don’t align?

As an SDR Manager, you have the vital role of setting SDR goals that align with the goals coming from sales and marketing leadership.

Make them too easy and your SDRs will be unchallenged and unable to grow. Make them too hard and your SDR will lose motivation and start looking elsewhere for career opportunities.

So here you are, stuck between a rock, a hard place, and an SDR, and you have to figure out how to make them all happy.

This is where sales development forecasting comes in handy.

In order to set realistic goals, there are a lot of variables you need to take into account, from SDR bandwidth to C-Level expectations.

How do you actually go about forecasting for Sales Development success? Jump into our forecasting and goal-setting resources to get started!

onDemand Webinar: Forecasting & Capacity Planning

Forecasting and capacity planning for an SDR team isn’t something most people need to do on a regular basis.

But Lindsay Frey isn’t most people.

In this On-Demand Webinar, demandDrive’s Co-Founder & President sits down to talk about all the different strategies and processes she deploys to accurately forecast the results our clients will see from the SDR team we assign to them.

Do you want to learn how to align your goals with your desired outcomes? What about the impact of setting improper goals?

If you’re looking to develop your own SDR forecasting process, watch the onDemand event here!

Event Recording: Getting Sales Development a Seat At The Table

One of the biggest challenges with Sales Development forecasting is the constant push and pull felt by marketing and sales struggling to align around you.

Like it or not, right now the majority of SDR teams sit under one of those two departments.

We argue that it should be its own department entirely.

Curious about how we got here?

Or where it goes from here?

Get our thoughts on empowering the SDR function here.

And if you’re more of a watcher than a reader you can watch our webinar on the topic as well!

Podcast: Personal Forecasting for SDRs

Forecasting isn’t just for managers anymore.

Introducing: 💥SDR Forecasting💥

Okay, so maybe it’s not that big a deal.

But an SDR that can forecast their own pipeline is going to see:

🏆 More consistent results.

📏 Long-term connections between the work they put in now and in the future.

🧠 A better understanding of how their manager uses forecasting to set their goals.

Hit the button to check out our 5-minute Opt-In video for tips and advice on SDR forecasting ↩️

Podcast: Vanity Metrics

In order to accurately forecast your SDR team performance, you have to know which metrics to base your goals around.

Traditionally, SDRs have been measured on some combination of activities, connects, and meetings booked.

But that doesn’t mean those are the right metrics for your team.

In this episode of the 5 Questions Podcast, AJ and Alex sat down with Austin Fuller to talk about these “vanity” metrics and why successful forecasting and SDR measurement require a dive into more underlying metrics than you might think.

Listen to the episode here!

eBook: SDR Hiring Practices

Successful Sales Development should evolve along with modern buyers – easier said than done though, right?

For all of our tips and best practices to align your SDR team with your target audience and their needs, we put together an eBook focused on giving you the strategies you need to adapt as your market shifts and evolves.

Surprisingly enough (or not so much if you’re at this point on the page) SDR forecasting plays a huge role in aligning the success of your SDRs to the success of your sales and marketing teams.

Follow this link to download the eBook!

Blogs: Resilience, Sales Opportunities, and Dashboard Management

It’s one thing to set a goal. It’s another to take the time and figure out what an attainable goal looks like before putting it in place.

Check out this blog for a quick, anecdotal look at how one particular dD SDR goes about setting their own goals.

In addition to the podcast with Austin Fuller, this blog tackles those pesky vanity metrics and makes the case for why Sales Opps are actually the best way to track your SDRs.

According to Morgan J Ingram, there are 2 kinds of SDR Managers, “rah-rah managers” and “dashboard managers”.

On the surface, being a dashboard manager sounds like a good thing, but don’t let it come at a cost. The best managers are able to blend both styles in order to get the most out of all of their SDRs

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On the surface, setting up your SDRs for success doesn’t seem that difficult. If you put in the work, you’ll be successful, right?

We wish it were still that easy, but as buyers and markets evolve and become more complex, sales development needs to adapt with it.

SDR forecasting is one of the most effective ways to do just that.

By taking the time to figure out what works and what doesn’t for each of your SDRs, and then aligning their output to the goals coming from leadership, you’ll be able to get the most out of your SDRs by keeping them, challenged, engaged, and motivated.