Culture & Engagement
Opt In | Ep. 42
Don’t look for culture fits, look for culture adds.
Building a sales development team is hard enough. The moving pieces (your SDRs) are unique individuals that require different levels of attention, support, and encouragement.
You shouldn’t expect or want them to blend in with the existing culture of your team – you should want them to progress that culture and continue making it a great place to work, learn, and grow.
But you have to make that possible. And SDRs have to be proactive. Like Alex said…
You don’t have to like the people you work with, but you should feel obligated to get to know them.
It’s more than just happy hours, random coffees, and being active in your Slack/Teams channel.
It’s breaking out of your comfort zone, figuring out how you can best contribute to the team, and refusing to settle into the background.
Because if you don’t, the already difficult job of an SDR can become isolating. And that’s a recipe for disaster.
AJ and Alex touch on some tactical ideas for teams & individuals to create and evolve their culture. And keep scrolling for more tips from our culture & engagement symposium!
Opt in to being a social butterfly, not a suffering caterpillar.
Building a sales development team is hard enough. The moving pieces (your SDRs) are unique individuals that require different levels of attention, support, and encouragement.
You shouldn’t expect or want them to blend in with the existing culture of your team – you should want them to progress that culture and continue making it a great place to work, learn, and grow.
Key Takeaways
Culture & engagement was the topic of our September 2022 SDR Symposium. Below are some quotes & insights from demandDrive SDRs on why integrating yourself into team/company culture is so important.
“Nobody would be mad if someone you don’t know said, ‘hey, you did a great thing.’”
Celebrating someone else’s wins is an easy way to be a team player, and it costs you nothing in return. If you want to foster a “win together, lose together” culture, putting the effort into uplifting teammates when they’re down and when they’re up should be top of mind.
“How could you be successful without the support of others? You need people to lean on. The role is too hard without it.”
Being an SDR is hard. Doing it alone is insane. Our entire panel agreed that while being a culture add is important, it’s more important to have a group of (or even just one) other SDRs to connect with. Whether you commiserate with them, bounce ideas off each other, or help with messaging, working through something with someone else is much easier than going at it alone.
“Be easy to root for.”
Don’t just come to the table with complaints, come up with possible solutions. It’s fine to vent, but nobody likes it when that’s all you do. Growth opportunities will be a lot more attainable if you adopt a problem-solver mentality.
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