I'm rethinking BDRs

The "channel" isn't broken, the playbook is

“Hi Sam. I saw you lead marketing at Loxo. I specialize in providing leads to companies just like yours. Could we meet to discuss our innovative approach to generating high-quality leads for you?”

I get countless emails + DMs like the above every day. I bet you do too. And this is why we’re seeing more and more posts and articles online about how “BDRs” or “outbound” is dying.

Here’s the thing: it isn’t dying. There is NOTHING wrong with the channel, but EVERYTHING is wrong with the standard playbook used.

First, a quick lesson from the lead gen > demand gen shift in marketing

We’ve seen a shift in the past handful of years with many B2B paid marketing strategies as they moved from the traditional “lead gen” playbook over to a more modern “demand gen” playbook.

Was paid marketing broken? No. But the playbook being used was. All of the “leads” being generated weren’t converting to pipeline, let alone revenue.

So marketers stopped running as many direct response ads driving cold prospects to a demo request page. They stopped running lead gen ads that captured a prospect’s information and immediately sent them to a sales rep for a conversation.

Instead, we’ve embraced the concept of dark social and what strong brand marketing can achieve for you. We stopped looking to attribution platforms to see the impact of our efforts show up under “paid social,” “paid search,” or to specific social media platforms and understood that they would be showing up now as “organic” or “direct” as they came back to our site when they were ready to research more. And for those who were able to stick with it + have leadership trust them, the results have proven out in their favor. Record quarters for pipeline generation + won revenue, despite lead numbers being “lower”.

Translating this to BDRs

BDRs are currently going through the same thing marketing went through ~5 years ago. Activity volume goes up more and more every year, but the results are either staying the same, or in some cases, getting worse.

Why?

Because the current BDR playbook is broken. Like the lead gen playbook of marketing, we’re trying to force prospects prematurely (and often, too aggressively) into the funnel.

Instead, here’s how I’m rethinking them…

BDRs as part of the GTM ecosystem

BDRs are a channel in the go-to-market (GTM) ecosystem. Instead of viewing them as a silo in some awkward middle ground between sales and marketing, they should be used in a manner like how marketing has adopted a demand gen approach.

In marketing, there are multiple channels: paid search, paid social, SEO, referrals, partners, etc., the list goes on. So I’m rethinking BDRs as if they were another one of the channels I oversee.

And I’ll tell you what, this has really got my head spinning with ideas and changes on how to make them more impactful.

Let me share a few examples of when BDRs do + don’t work well to help get the point across:

Cold outreach

Don’t: give them a list of 100 new accounts every month to dial/email/DM away at, hoping that they can get 5% of them to finally cave in to taking a demo

Do: give them a list of 100 accounts and tell them that over the course of the next quarter, they are to develop a relationship with each of them

Remember: BDR stands for business development representative. Those relationships + being able to become a trusted advisor are why prospects will choose to go with you, not the fact that you have now slapped “AI” on your product.

PLG and sales-assisted growth

Don’t: give them a list of every prospect that signs up for your free product and assume that they are ready to buy

Do: loop them into other efforts targeting this group. Marketing is likely sending a “welcome” or “training” sequence to each new signup to help teach them how to use the product and get them to adopt it. Product likely has datapoints around which signups are using the product, and which features specifically.

Tip: Allow the BDRs to see this information so they can be more strategic and consultative with their outreach. This way they reach out to the signups actually using the product AND can be consultative in what they speak to based on what the signups are, and aren’t, using within the product currently.

Lastly, lose the attribution obsession

Like marketing, we have to lose the obsession on attributing every BDR activity back to BDRs. Embrace the “dark social” type mentality with this group so that they can align better to how today’s market actually researches and buys products.

This means that you’ll probably see BDR activities lead to improved “Organic Search” and “Direct” attribution results because when the prospect is ready to start the sales process, they may just come straight to the website and submit the demo request form. That is ok!

This past week, we had two examples of this occurring that spurred this newsletter that looked exactly like this:

Justin is one of our BDRs who is absolutely KILLING it lately. He’s adapted his approach to become more helpful + consultative. He’s not forcing prospects into the funnel early. He’s meeting them where they are, providing helpful resources along the way, and saying things like “hey, when you’re ready, just head to our website + fill out the form.” He recognizes that not everyone is in the market today. He recognizes that prospects are in annual or multi-year contracts. He recognizes that even if they aren’t, they need to wait for things like budget or resource approvals. But once the prospect was finally ready, you can see they came back to us ready to move forward.

This is the way forward. I don’t have extensive data on this yet, but I’m 100% bullish on this approach. See you back here next year with a part 2, detailed recap of this approach 😉

---

One LinkedIn post I bookmarked this week

Between the newly infamous Simone Biles/Jordan Chiles bowing to gold medal winner Rebeca Andrade photo + this post from Morgan J Ingram, I’m hoping this trend of cheering on + supporting others continues to take root.

I can’t speak for everyone, but I know I’m tired of constantly seeing only depressing/angering items being shown on the news or in social media feeds, so this post from Morgan was MORE than a breath of fresh air.

Whether it’s a mentor, friend, family member, or simply someone who’s inspired or motivated you in some way, send them a quick text/DM to say thank you. It’ll make both of your days + hopefully start a trend of paying it forward to others.

---

One podcast episode I enjoyed this week

As I shared last week, I had a fun 11+ hour drive ahead of me, so last week I got to cash in on a bunch of podcast episodes I’d been stashing up to listen to. Of all of the ones I listened to, this one ended up my favorite.

For those of you who follow me, it comes as no surprise that it’s a health-oriented podcast episode (health is the other interest of mine outside B2B - check out my #fridayhealththoughts on LinkedIn every Friday). And this episode took place between one of my favorite podcast hosts, Shane Parrish, and one of the leading nutrition + health experts in the world. The reason I especially enjoy Dr. Rhonda Patrick’s content is because she views things holistically first, not prescriptive/symptomatic first. She looks into overall health practices and how everything interplays: diet, exercise, genetics, environment, etc., and often finds that problems or improvements are nested within those, not some new pill or “fad”.

All in all, a great listen + I guarantee you’ll come away with some insights and behaviors to start improving your health immediately.

And for anyone interested, here’s the playlist I add to each week with some of my favorite podcast episodes:

---

See you next Saturday,
Sam