4 reasons to separate your prospection and closing team right now

In a lot of sales organizations, it’s the salesperson who handles the whole sales cycle from A-Z : prospecting to closing. In some organizations, a marketing team is there to ‘generate leads’ for the sales team, and a common conflict between the sales and marketing teams is the sales reps complain that the marketing team doesn’t generate (good) enough leads, and the marketing team complains that the sales reps aren’t treating their leads.

Leading sales and marketing tool companies such as Salesforce, Marketo and IKO understand that the secret to bridge the gap and successfully practice marketing and sales alignment is the effective use of a Sales Development Team. (or the lead generation/qualification team, business development team…)

Whatever you choose to call them, these Sales Development Reps (SDRs) dedicate 100% of their time to contact and qualify interesting leads and deliver them to Account Executives (AE/Closers). In some organizations, SDRs are under the sales team, as mini sales reps; in other organizations, like us at IKO, SDRs are under the marketing team. In any case, the SDRs, along with the marketing and sales teams should all be under the revenue generation team, with one single and common objective: increasing the turnover.

Here are 4 reasons why having a separate SDR team will increase your sales team’s efficiency and your turnover:

1. Prospecting and closing deals are two different trades

A lot of factors come into play loooong before a lead even enters into your sales funnel - brand image, reactivity, awareness - a lot of things that the quota-burdened AEs have no time to take care of or deal with.

The job of the SDR is to create need awareness, generate interest, build trust before even qualifying the lead. The idea is to open the door for further conversation.

Only after the lead’s interest has been engaged does the qualification starts to take place. All this requires excellent organizational skills, tenacity and a lot of creativity (crafting emails that spark interests, never taking no for an answer, relaunching after a few months if maturity or timing was an issue…) Between following up on opportunities in process and writing up POs, the AE has very little incentive (or time) to prospect and nurture leads that may take time to close. Good sales & marketing team management requires therefore an eye to identify the talents in your team and delegate jobs accordingly - nobody is good at everything. Who’s good at what? What’s the best use of your team’s talent?

2. Better ROI

Account executives (closers) are expensive resources you hire to close deals. Their focus should be on creating urgency, handling objections, tailoring the product to each customer’s needs, securing and maximizing the purchase - not chasing after leads that are not interested (or interesting).

For a closer, their job is obviously:

always be closing.

At IKO, for example, the SDRs are under our marketing team, and they not only “generate leads” but also do the qualifying. When the marketing team passes an MQL (marketing qualified lead), it means that the lead is qualified with a good BANT and an appointment with an AE, not just “an interesting person to talk to” of whom they happen to have an email address or phone number. The marketing team is also only compensated when the MQL turns into an SQL (sales qualified lead), giving the incentive to pass only qualified leads with projects and affirming the focus on quality opportunities that close, rather than on meeting a weekly quota of a certain quantity of “leads” generated.

3. Higher reaction time = more revenues

Another benefit of having a separate prospection team is that when the SDRs schedule an appointment before passing an MQL to the sales team, it ensures that the lead will be treated by the AEs on the sales team. We all know that reaction time is the key to closing, and a tighter and more structured sales funnel means higher closing rates.

If you have an inbound lead generation strategy, it is even more important that there’s an SDR team dedicated to treating the raw inquiries and contact forms that you get on your website. The reaction time of a quota-carrying AE (whose priority is not answering random enquiries) will never beat that of a dedicated SDR to treating incoming enquiries.

4. Easier management and optimization

When prospection and closing are done by two different teams, analytic metrics are more measurable and comprehensible. When problem arises, it will be easier to isolate processes and identify where the issue comes from, as qualifying a lead and closing the opportunity are not done by the same team. Author of Predictable Revenue, Aaron Ross, states in an interview that “It’s harder to break out and keep track of key metrics (inbound leads, qualification and conversion rates, customer success rates…) if all the functions are lumped into single areas.”

There are also more controlled factors and thus facilitates A/B testing and strategy optimization. Everything will be more easily monitored and less dependent on a vague “Oh, I don’t know what happened!”

The SDR team will be able to evaluate the efficiency of the AE team, and vice versa. It’s kind of like the check and balances of the separation of powers, in a way.

When built and managed correctly, having an SDR team is a key factor in accelerating your revenue machine. If this post inspires you to have further discussion about the subject (or lead gen in general) - let me know!