4 Weeks SDR Onboarding Plan: Playbook and Guide for a Successful SDRs Sales Onboarding Process

Is the ramp-up time for your Sales Development Reps (SDRs) too long?

The most recent study by The Bridge Group indicates that it typically takes slightly longer than three months to onboard an SDR. Three months is a long time to ramp up if the average SDR works there for a year.

There is evidence that many businesses are having trouble keeping SDRs. SDRs only have an average life of 14.2 months. The high turnover rate could be partially attributed to the inexperience of the majority of SDRs. 72.5 percent of SDRs hired by startups have less than a year of experience.

To quickly and effectively get them running. You must teach them the ropes so they can begin producing for your business. A new hire who gets off to a good start is more likely to stick around the company for a long time.

The Bridge Group's 2021 report shows that SDRs in the US produces an average of $3 million in raw pipeline sales. And although businesses make significant investments in finding the best talent available, they rarely make the same investments in the SDR onboarding process.

A sales development representative's (SDR) hiring and onboarding process can be costly and time-consuming. However, the effort is worthwhile because SDRs are an essential component of the sales process.

Here is a 4-Week SDR onboarding guide that will help you make your new hire a quota-crushing SDR.

WEEK 1: SDR Onboarding

It takes a lot of effort during the first week of onboarding to fully educate SDRs about your company's sales mindset, industry positioning, and omnichannel strategy. It's crucial to familiarize your new hire with the workplace, organizational structure, and established procedures during the first week of employment.

Monday: Begin with an introductory call to get to know your new employee. Next, go over general company information, such as values and beliefs, as well as the roles and responsibilities of the current team.

• Provide access to company resources and go over the fundamentals.

• Plan a team introduction, and invite new SDRs to team chats and

  other internal channels of communication.

• Provide an official company email signature and address.

• Give them the employee handbook so they can become acquainted with

  company culture.

• Industry Overview: Details about the industry that are necessary for

  them to comprehend your product and the place of your business within it.

• Sales Mindset: The most crucial information they'll learn on Day 1

  is - their mindset towards sales. what their approach to sales should be. how that functions within the sales procedure. The angle from which they will be making their pitch and the tenor of your company's messaging.

NB: Although much groundwork is done on Day One, the first day is really all about the industry position and sales mindset. Your SDR must leave the first day knowing a lot about your company culture and the industry.

Tuesday: It's time to explain to them the team's organizational structure, reporting, and hierarchy. Internal sales apps and other essential apps ought to be included.

• Add to the daily Huddle

• Give CRM authorization

• Set up Poseidon, Salesforce, and Hubspot

• Learn about the various buyer personas and the key characteristics

  of the ideal customer profile.

• Carry out competitor research.

• Send out videos and other resources about making ICP

• Describe the target market

Wednesday: Get to know the various buyer personas and the essential ideal customer profile.

• Carry out competitor research.

• Send out videos and other resources about making ICP

Thursday: Take a tour of the rest of the tech stack in addition to the sales engagement platform, including its key features, entities, and touchpoints.

• Describe the target market

• Examine the knowledge base's chosen resources. Follow thought

  leaders and influencers on Linkedin eg Josh Braun, Will Allred, and Justin Michael.

• Walk through the rest of the tech stack as well as the sales

  engagement platform's key features, entities, and touchpoints.

Friday: Have a weekly recap meeting on day five. Check other products (if any). Introduce the agendas for the important meetings to the new hires. Discuss the state of sales development right now and what the future holds for it.

WEEK 2: Product Training, Playbook, and Persona

The second week is crucial for starting the sales process with the new SDR because the first week is all about welcoming. Give them a thorough breakdown of the entire sales process from beginning to end so that your new SDR knows where they stand before starting the actual workflow. It is also dedicated to developing inbound sales. The new hires will learn about the internal process in detail and become familiar with the fundamental ideas (MQL and SAL) before being given the opportunity to design their own sequence.

Monday: Overview of the main styles, components, and structures of outreach emails. The checklist, attributes, excerpts, and frameworks for subject lines. Create two email templates using the ICP and criteria provided. Day 2: Discover how to use LinkedIn for sales engagement and the various touchpoints there, as well as the fundamentals of a social selling strategy. ✅ According to the checklist, overhaul LinkedIn profiles. Create four LinkedIn messages for the selected leads: two voice notes, one GIF, and plain text.

• Create two email templates using the ICP and criteria provided.

• Overhaul LinkedIn profiles.

• Create four LinkedIn messages for the selected leads: two voice

  notes, one GIF, and plain text.

NB: Learn about the use of LinkedIn for sales engagement and different types of touchpoints there, the basics of the social selling approach.

Tuesday: It's time to reveal your sales playbook as a prospecting strategy. Show them how your sales and marketing relate to the customer journey, the fundamental buyer personas, and the customer pain points.

• Overview of Cold Calling: This overview discusses the elements of a

  call as well as the "top-level concept" of cold calling. Have new sales representatives listen to a few examples of successful cold calls. Describe a call's steps and the logic behind each line.

• Cold Call Shadowing: Arrange for SDRs to spend a portion of the day

  following a few of your cold callers. Don't let your SDRs perform excessive unplanned shadowing. Only when you are aware of what you should be focusing on can observation be useful. Set clear goals for SDRs to learn from whoever they are shadowing. Ex: "Here's Jim. He has a very professional demeanor and an exceptional vocal tone. Observe these."

NB: This only applies if your SDRs would be making cold calls. You can set up systems like Poseidon to help make the calls, record conversations, and provide real-time coaching for your reps.

Wednesday: Discover the best ways to use video prospecting, as well as use cases, tools, and strategies. Get familiar with using them in sequences.

• To use with the email and message templates from the previous days,

  record one video.

• Review of the Product: Your SDRs will only receive this brief

  introduction to the products you sell as product training. They shouldn't know everything, but they should understand what it does and what makes it so great.

• Walk through your product in detail (highlighting value proposition)

Thursday: Try Roleplaying and learning about different sales frameworks

• The SDR should perform at least three cold call role plays

• Learn sales frameworks like Force Management, QBS Selling and

  Sandler

• Observe an Account Executive sales call.

Friday: Customer interviews are something your new reps should conduct. In this way, they get a sense of the people they'll be speaking with and can start to understand how your product can help them. The foundation of sales is empathy. Recap the main touchpoint categories and general best practices for multichannel sequences.

WEEK 3: B2B Sales Development Starts

The actual prospecting begins at this point. Your SDR should be able to track responses from the campaigns in the third week and set up a call with the prospect. At this point, you should give them a little more leeway to put what they've learned into practice and carry out daily tasks, gradually taking over the sales development process as a whole. As a result, by the end of the third week, you can anticipate that your SDRs will schedule their first meeting.

Monday: Final preparations for the initial outreach. It's time to launch their first outreach effort to strangers.

• Link the campaign app to the email address to be used and the

  LinkedIn profile (e.g. Poseidon)

• Establish the campaign's setup (Import saved contacts from Sales

  Nav or third-party list and map contacts, check for custom fields, and add the variables in the doc)

• Increase the emails and messages' content

• Create the sequence with follow-up delays and triggers.

• Check the campaign one last time before launching it.

• LinkedIn messages for the selected leads: two voice notes, one GIF,

  pdf and plain text.

Tuesday: Track campaign metrics, pickups, follow-ups, and reservations. Set up the initial meeting. Keep in touch with potential prospects via LinkedIn messages.

Wednesday: The SDR should be prepared to answer the first call from a disco or demo after running the campaigns, but don't anticipate that discos and demos will start pouring in right away. With all of their efforts, an SDR can take up to three months to schedule the first call.

• Study the prospect business and get ready for the meeting.

• Have a disco or demo call first

• Jot down notes and transfer them to CRM

• Send a call-related follow-up email.

Thursday: Daily monitoring of the active campaigns is required. Any responses, opened emails, or messages should be appropriately followed up on.

• Utilize various follow-up techniques in accordance with the results.

• Assemble relevant documents, PDFs, images, and presentations to

  share with potential customers.

• Follow up with potential clients and examine interest.

Friday: Compile campaign results, compare, and adjust as necessary. Check the open, click, reply, and bounce rates. Prepare new content for upcoming campaigns by optimizing it. Recap the weekly activity and be open to improvement where necessary.

WEEK 4: Effective SDR Onboarding and Ramp-Up

Your SDR should be operating at full capacity by the fourth week and be familiar with the fundamentals and the more complex steps of prospecting. Try to dive deeper into contact lists, data cleaning, enrichment, advanced list segmentation, etc. during the final week of your SDR onboarding.

Monday: It's crucial to have good data and, of course, to segment it well when conducting inbound and outbound prospecting. Make more comprehensive prospect lists using ICP. Clean up and double-check profiles and emails.

Tuesday: Even when cold outreach is conducted on a larger scale, data segmentation is essential for having hyper-personalized outreach. segment lists according to various data points (job titles, industry, firmographics, demographics interests, etc.)

**Wednesday:
**

• Develop campaigns on a larger scale based on segmentation by

  industry, city, and other factors.

• Add more email addresses to the list of campaign senders

• Check the deliverability of your sending domains.

• Create various campaigns with targeted advertising

Thursday: Of course, the data isn't everything. Regardless of the industry, they are in or their job title, you should get in touch with anyone with who you can offer value and a solution to their problems.

• Prepare email follow-ups with useful content

• Distribute free resources

• Invite them to your company webinar

Friday: End the week with some positive stats.

• Prepare and send proposals to potential clients that show interest

• Follow up with valuable and well-tailored content

• Share SLQ reports

• Make a call to finalize the purchase.

Conclusion

Let's break down the lengthy and complex process of onboarding SDRs into its component parts:

1. Get SDRs used to rejection as soon as possible. Limit the amount of product training you give them. Be a proactive trainer. Apply the lessons you've learned as you go about your training.

2. The 4 Weeks Onboarding Plan should be implemented. A basic plan was created for effective ramp-up. A 4-week intensive training period with a focus on experience-based learning.

3. Verify that your onboarding is effective. By giving your SDRs specific goals to reach, rewarding them for putting your advice into practice, and keeping tabs on the crucial metrics, you can monitor their progress.

The Sales Development Representative role can be difficult and very dynamic. Always keep in mind the general state of the sales sector, as well as the newest innovations, tools, trends, etc., that will influence the market. Because of this, having a strong onboarding procedure will aid in keeping your team productive over the long term.

Due to the constant changes in sales, you should evaluate your onboarding procedure every six months in order to put new plans into place, support your team's ongoing learning, and create a scalable business structure.