Great team and getting better
Pros
Overall, the SDR role has been a wonderful experience. I came into this job with a wide variety of experiences from college, and a bit of sales knowledge, but am leaving with a much better understanding of the talent space and sales. Favorite part: The team and individuals themselves. Every single person that is on the SDR team fits in with the culture, both in work ethic and personality. I have a relationship with each one of my teammates that allows for new insights, perspectives, and multiple ways to think about our prospects/tactics to make our numbers. I always feel supported, and that I can ask any of my teammates for help. Work life balance has become a lot better, and the unlimited PTO is a main reason why I would love to stay with this company for a while. The work itself: It definitely can be a grind. I think its pretty hard for any sales development role not to be. But managers are getting better at creating games, and rewarding high call/email volume. Development: A bit of a struggle towards the end. We do trainings every Tuesday, and when I started a year ago, I thought they were pretty spot on. I think the growth of the team has prevented this area of personal development as a lot of these trainings have been a bit basic and repetitive. Since a lot of individuals in the SDR role are newly out of college, I think it would have been helpful to use these trainings to discuss different roles in and out of the sales department, professional development skills (articles/sales blogs), or even hear from other managers and leaders within the company. Learning about Sandler practices, sales tactics and news about whats happening in other industries that could help us prospect smarter.
Cons
What to take away: With a lot of new hires came a definite change in team camaraderie and culture. Doubling in team size meant new managers, trainings changing, and more individual tasks. It can be easy to show up, do work and check out, which I know isn’t Glassdoor’s culture, but making sure to do team bonding activities as an SDR group regularly may be helpful to keep morale high in a repetitive role. Promotion timelines were not originally set when I joined and individuals have been promoted between 9 and 14 months, which is a pretty wide gap. Good news is that procedures like quota, qualification, and promotion guidelines (if anything happens when you are hitting above your number consistently) are becoming more solidified/clearer expectations.