True sales hunters love finding new deals almost as much as they love closing them. The problem is the journey to find enough potential deals to keep the pipeline heavy requires a very different skill set not to mention a different mindset. Beyond referrals (that’s great!), the process takes time and resources when it comes to creating sales opportunities. We’ve come up with a few reasons why creating a Business Development role is critical to your growth efforts.
Lack of time and resources
Turning leads into sales opportunities is an entire sales cycle in itself.
- It takes an average of 12 calls to connect with a prospect via a direct number
- 18 calls to connect with a prospect without a direct number
- It takes an average of 6 one to one personalized emails to a verified email address to get a response
- It takes an average 3 connections to schedule a qualified meeting
This means an average of 75 calls and 40 emails to schedule 1 meeting – Do you want your quota-carrying sales reps to spend all day prospecting or closing sales opportunities?
Relationship networks are not enough
Most quota-carrying sales reps need to hunt for new timely opportunities as much as they spend nurturing warm prospects in their relationship network. Further, the average quota contribution from a relationship network is only 10% on average. This means 90% of the quota needs to be filled through other sales channels.
The sole purpose of a Business Development Rep is to maximize timely opportunities through heavy prospecting and qualification.
Differentiating skill sets mean better conversions
Creating a sales opportunity takes significant time and effort as we mentioned above. The time spent creating sales opportunities is vastly different than the time spent converting sales opportunities into customers. Put simply – selling the value of a meeting vs selling the value of solution. There are different objections, marketing tools, and activity metrics altogether.
Companies that use BDR’s convert 40% of the leads into sales opportunities compared to companies that pass leads directly to quota carrying sales reps have only a 5% conversion.
Eliminate the 80/20 growth problem
Sales professionals know half of the time they spend with prospects is wasted. The problem is they don’t know which half. BDR’s minimize waste for sales professionals through advanced qualification processes. 80% of sales reps at companies with BDR’s hit quota compared to 40% of sales reps without a strong lead qualification process.
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