Sales Development never ends…
Remember when you were in High School sitting in Earth Science class and you thought,“Why am I learning this?..I will never use this in real life!”. Well it was true. Personally, I haven’t needed to know the difference between sedimentary and metamorphic rocks at all in my lifetime!
The skill of sales development is not one of those situations. Everything you are learning today to become a phenomenal SDR, you’re going to use the rest of your sales career.
Some professional athletes are called Journeymen. High quality athletes that bounce around from team to team, I am definitely a Journeymen Salesperson. I liken myself to the Ryan Fitzpatrick of sales, pretty good – sometimes even pro bowl caliber, but never sustainable for long periods of time.
Anytime I started “another career” in sales, I was always able to make a big splash early because of decent business development skills. But I’d quickly build my book of business and get bored with nothing left to accomplish.
At the end of a quick and not fun VoIP Managed Services career, I took a job as a full-time SDR. Turned out I was a great fit for Sales Development.
What I loved most was every day was a new challenge. I was only as good as my last sale and I loved the challenge of resetting the clock every month and starting all over again.
Then life threw me a curveball.
I got a chance to become an Account Executive for a Srixon/Cleveland Golf; as a avid/obsessed/terrible golfer, I jumped at the opportunity. I actually begged.
3 hours of training later, we were off to the races.
SDR 101 on Srixon: We’d send out an email, they’d open it. We’d call and make the sale and we did that over and over again and quickly started outselling some of the outside reps.
The “never give up” SDR mentality kept us on the prospect until they jumped through hoops to become a customer.
I recently slayed the greatest White Buffalo, 158 touches to the sale. It ended up being a $3600 sale – that’s a lot of golf balls! In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been so obsessed with this prospect but the challenge was there and now that he’s in, he can rebuy, rebuy, rebuy.
I would have never been as successful as I was if I didn’t have the Sales Development skills I learned first. Now I have a big book of business and I still hunt everyday day; I will never stop hunting.
I only tell you this whole story for one reason, no matter what you do in sales for the rest of your sales career, the skills you are learning today as an SDR will stay with you forever. Once you learn to hit a baseball, you never forget.
-Denny Mazur-
Denny “Fitzpatrick” Mazur has been with Inside Sales Team for two years and Srixon/Cleveland for just over a year. His sales career has spanned many industries and is happy to have found a home at IST! When not crushing the phones, he enjoys playing golf, watching his hometown teams lose, and most importantly spending time with his daughter, the coolest kid on the planet!
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