Building an SDR Team: What Breaks, and When - Tenbound

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1. The number that matters is meetings held, then whether they produced a next step. Activity is an input, and it is only worth watching when conversion is already understood. “Fix: report conversion by stage, not volume by channel.” Month six to nine: the first churn wave

   In Channel conversion rates

2. Ongoing: the handoff nobody owns “The seam between SDR and AE. It has no owner by default, so it degrades: context is lost, meetings get taken cold, AEs decide SDR meetings are low quality, and SDRs decide AEs waste their work. Both are right, and the cause is structural.” Salesforce frames the split as SDRs opening conversations and AEs closing them. Nobody owns the join.

   In Handoff ownership and SLAs

3. The most expensive omission, and the easiest to miss because everyone believes they know who the customer is until three people write it down separately and disagree. “An SDR without a written ICP will invent one from whoever replies.” Fix before hire one. Write it with the disqualifiers, not just the fit criteria. See the ICP development workshop.

   In Sales development team structure

4. The most expensive omission, and the easiest to miss because everyone believes they know who the customer is until three people write it down separately and disagree. “That reverse-engineered profile then hardens into the target list, and a year later the team is efficiently pursuing the wrong market.” Fix before hire one. Write it with the disqualifiers, not just the fit criteria. See the ICP development workshop.

   In Sales development team structure

5. Before the first hire: no written ICP “The most expensive omission, and the easiest to miss because everyone believes they know who the customer is until three people write it down separately and disagree.” An SDR without a written ICP will invent one from whoever replies. That reverse-engineered profile then hardens into the target list, and a year later the team is efficiently pursuing the wrong market.

   In Sales development team structure

6. An SDR without a written ICP will invent one from whoever replies. That reverse-engineered profile then hardens into the target list, and a year later the team is efficiently pursuing the wrong market. “Write it with the disqualifiers, not just the fit criteria.” Hires one and two: no manager

   In Sales development team structure

7. An SDR without a written ICP will invent one from whoever replies. That reverse-engineered profile then hardens into the target list, and a year later the team is efficiently pursuing the wrong market. “Fix before hire one.” Hires one and two: no manager

   In Sales development team structure

8. “Teams building sales development for the first time hit the same problems in roughly the same order.” Before the first hire: no written ICP

   In Sales development team structure

9. “Knowing the order is most of the value, because each one is far cheaper to prevent than to fix.” Before the first hire: no written ICP

   In Sales development team structure

10. Hires one and two: no manager “It works badly and predictably: the VP has a quota, the SDRs get attention when the forecast allows, and coaching stops entirely at quarter end, which is exactly when it is needed.” Hire or appoint the manager before the third rep. Two reps can survive neglect. Three cannot, and by five the lack of coaching is showing up as churn.

    In Sales development team structure

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