Getting Out of SDR Purgatory

Today at a glance 🔍️ 

• SDR purgatory —> The never-ending road to a closing role

• A way out? —> One way to break out and get into a full-cycle role

• A word to the wise —> Bet on yourself…but do it thoughtfully

SDR Purgatory

One of the biggest problems I hear from experienced SDRs is that their path to a closing role is “hazy”, “unclear”, "fluid”, or even “nonexistent”. The craziest part about this is that the reps telling me this aren’t slackers, they’re certified A-players. They are out there crushing quota quarter over quarter, mentoring young SDRs, and in some cases even closing small deals. Yet for some reason, the upward mobility within their organizations remains limited. In some ways I get it. If you are a sales leader and you have a rep who is reliably bringing your AE’s high-quality leads why would you want to risk upsetting the balance? You can go out and hire an AE who already has proven closing abilities while keeping your top-tier SDR right where he/she is booking meetings. It’s not crazy logic. However, for an SDR who has been patiently doing the grunt work with their head down month over month, quarter over quarter, this feels like absolute madness. You’ve paid your dues! It’s time to get into the closing seat you were promised!

What To Do About It

So if you’re an SDR in this position; what do you do? To answer this question, I’m going to take a step back for a moment to tell a story. In 2007 a company called Justin.tv was founded. The idea behind Justin.tv was a live-streaming platform that people could use to broadcast anything from personal vlogs to cooking shows. Unfortunately for Justin.tv, the live-streaming space though not nearly as crowded as today, was still fairly saturated and the company struggled to gain significant traction. However, as they analyzed the company’s performance the founders of Justin.tv realized something; there was one sub-segment where the number of streams was showing significant growth: gaming. So, seeing the outsized traffic the founders decided to spin off the gaming section into a separate site under the name Twitch.tv. 3 years later, Twitch.tv was bought by Amazon for $1 billion. So what does this gross oversimplification of Twitch’s founding story have to do with being stuck in SDR purgatory? Well, the point is that sometimes being successful doesn’t mean changing your skillset. It means changing your environment. Justin.tv had great fundamentals but it didn’t move up because it was an undifferentiated offering living in an already crowded space. On the other hand, Twitch took off because unlike Justin.tv it was in an unsaturated space, and as a result it was able to shine bright and be truly appreciated for what it offered.

In my opinion, the same lesson applies to people. If you’re a high-performing, ambitious SDR in a larger org, it can be hard to stand out and get promoted even if you’re doing everything right! Conversely, if you take that same skillset to an organization that is still establishing its sales motion (like an early-stage startup) the script will flip. The founding team won’t just see you as another rep; instead, you’ll be viewed as one of the resident experts in sales (we see this happen a lot at TopSDRs). Yes, you’ll still need to grind (in all likelihood even more than you had to before), and yes the bar for quality will be WAY higher, but the path to a closing role will almost definitely be shorter and far less hazy.

Choose Thoughtfully

To be clear, moving to a sales position at an early-stage startup should not be viewed as a magic button. These organizations are incredibly intense, fast-moving, and risky. Most startups fail and there are plenty of CEOs who are not ready to give SDRs closing responsibilities. Making a move to a small company is only something I would recommend to people who want to take a bet on themselves and are ready to take on a lot of responsibility with far less structure than they’re probably used to. Most people won’t fall into this bucket and that’s okay. For those of you who do, make sure you do your due diligence on any founder/market/product, etc. before you take the leap. If you can, try working with the business part-time before you go all in. As always, if you have any questions or want to talk about a move to a startup feel free to reach out to me directly [email protected]