{"id":13078,"date":"2022-01-05T15:53:04","date_gmt":"2022-01-05T23:53:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/somametrics.com\/clone\/?p=13078"},"modified":"2022-06-06T12:43:33","modified_gmt":"2022-06-06T19:43:33","slug":"the-hidden-cost-of-sales-low-sdr-bdr-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/somametrics.com\/clone\/the-hidden-cost-of-sales-low-sdr-bdr-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hidden Cost of Sales\u2014Low SDR\/BDR Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Story Behind Rising Cost of Sales<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

According to HubSpot, the cost of new customer acquisition (cost of sales and marketing) has increased by 60<\/strong>% over the past six years or so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What makes this even more alarming is that when we combine it with another finding. A 2019 Accenture study reported that 80% B2B buyers are switching vendors at least once in a 24-month<\/strong> period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s add a third stat: a 2019 Salesforce study found that 57% of sales reps weren\u2019t making their numbers<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know about you, but I am having a hard time reconciling these numbers. If 80% of B2B buyers are changing vendors within 24 months, how are 57% of sales reps having trouble meeting their numbers? Shouldn\u2019t it be easy to win new customers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looks like there is more to the story here.<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

And to tell that story, I have to tell another one first. In the 1990s (feels like a century ago, doesn\u2019t it?), Dell Computers was growing faster than any other company\u2014at least 100% every year for many years. Needless to say, they didn\u2019t miss their numbers much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One strategy Dell used to grow that fast was to cut sales territories by half each year<\/strong>. Sales reps screamed in anguish how this would kill their income\u2026and each year they made more money than ever before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why? Because they got to know their customers more intimately when their territories were smaller. They focused more, learned more, and became far better resources to their customers\u2014who became raving fans of Dell and wouldn\u2019t buy anything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems that\u2019s the story with every company that is growing fast\u2014Zoom, Amazon, Netflix, HubSpot, Salesforce\u2026They all know their customers\u2014deeply<\/strong>. They, therefore, don\u2019t lose customers, and their customers only buy more and<\/em> rave about them to others\u2014which means their cost of customer acquisition is going down<\/strong>, not up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cCost\u201d in Cost of Sales<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

With that setup, let\u2019s focus our discussion on what we mean by knowing your customers deeply. And for our discussion, I\u2019m going to focus on just the front end\u2014sales and marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In most B2B companies, and especially those that sell to enterprise accounts, their \u201cfront end\u201d consists of Marketing, Sales\/Business Development (\u201cSDRs\u201d), and Sales. Each is focused on a specific operation. Marketing builds the top of the Funnel, SDRs focus on the middle funnel, and Sales focuses on converting the bottom funnel into revenues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, In many of the companies we work with, only their best sales people truly understand their customers, and thereby close the largest deals and have the highest win rates. Alas, they make up maybe 10% of the entire \u201cfront end\u201d. The rest barely know anything about their customers, let alone deeply understanding them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The inevitable consequence of that lack of customer understanding? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marketing content that is too generic and doesn\u2019t draw the right customers; SDRs not getting leads and sending their own generic emails that mostly lead to more unsubscribes; meetings that are canceled because prospects don\u2019t see the value in keeping them; underwhelming pipelines forcing sales reps to spend their time generating their own leads rather than moving the sales pipeline to close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short\u2026more sales reps missing their targets, leading management to hire more SDRs and sales reps in the hopes of making their numbers, leading the cost of sales to rise each year.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before you spend more\u2026<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As yourself, in your company, who really deeply understands the customers? Who can talk for hours regarding the customers? Who is that person, \u201cyou can turn on your recorder, sit back and let them talk?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How many will describe your customers in terms of: what they struggle with each day, what their priorities, concerns and goals are; how their company makes money and how they get compensated; what they have worked on for so long to get right, and what they are afraid could change to disrupt that? How many know where the customer\u2019s industry is headed, where new competition, regulations, and other threats are?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does your marketing team understand this clearly? Is that what they are building their marketing content on? Are they driving the right prospects into the top funnel for your SDRs?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do your SDRs know this? When they pick up the phone and call a senior decision maker, do they clearly understand how they can eliminate the key pain\/cost\/risk of that person and improve their numbers by \u201cX\u201d amount? Can they articulate that? Can they book and keep meetings with highly qualified senior decision makers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the very least, hold off spending more until you know the answer to these questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Hidden Cost of Sales<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

That is the hidden cost of sales for most companies\u2014their SDRs\/BDRs don\u2019t really know how to engage their prospects to get quality meetings booked for their sales reps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a result, pipelines are not sufficient to hit revenue targets and too many of your sales reps are spending too much of their time prospecting rather than moving leads in the pipeline towards a successful close.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unsupported SDRs\/BDRs are the hidden cost of sales and there is a simple solution to fix that\u2014support them with these SDR services.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s discuss your specific environment, challenges, and potential solutions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
Schedule a call with us today<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Story Behind Rising Cost of Sales According to HubSpot, the cost of new customer acquisition (cost of sales and marketing) has increased by 60% over the past six years or so. What makes this even more alarming is that when we combine it with another finding. A 2019 Accenture study reported that 80% B2B …