The Sales Development Playbook: Build Repeatable Pipeline and Accelerate Growth with Inside Sales

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few years you're aware that the biggest trend in sales is the growth of inside sales and sales development roles within organizations. My company is currently revisiting our sales development strategy so Trish Bertuzzi’s new book: The Sales Development Playbook couldn’t have come at a more opportune time.What I love about this work is that it comes straight from the streets and the school of hard knocks. If you aren’t familiar with Trish Bertuzzi, she is President of The Bridge Group where they have developed hundreds of inside sales and sales development teams. Trish’s experience is evident by the many pitfalls she describes throughout the work as she outlines her recommendations. These rang especially true to me as we had fallen into several of these pitfalls already.Trish outlines six elements of sales development success in the book which are:1. Strategy2. Specialization3. Recruiting4. Retention5. Execution6. LeadershipThese are the framework for the book and Trish drills down on each of these areas in excellent detail. I was surprised how concise the entire work is. There is zero fluff – just pure actionable material. For example:The 5 Why’s – Right out of the shoot we learn the 5 why’s (Why Listen, Why Care, Why Change, Why You, Why Now) that prospects ask in the context of the buyers journey and how that affects the objectives of sales development reps (SDRs). This will help you decide where to divide the line between your SDRs and your field staff. There is no one right answer. The answer depends on your situation and objectives.Sales-Marketing Alignment – Discussion is given to the criticality of sales-marketing alignment and who it is to best manage the SDR team for best results. Further into the work she revisits this area by contrasting and discussing six areas where the skill sets differ between these two areas.Specialization – Trish gives a highly practical and pragmatic treatment of the hotly debated topic of inbound marketing vs. outbound marketing and how to specialize your company’s resources appropriately.Target Lists – Trish uses “The ABCDs” to define priority to the lists your SDRs should be calling on. These include: The A-List, Bread & Butter, Compelling Events and Dead Ends. Again she gives this her highly practical and pragmatic treatment.Team Structure – How should you structure your teams? There are pitfalls to avoid here and also more than one way to succeed depending on your situation. Trish provides some very insightful stuff here that can only come from someone who has been there in the trenches.Research – How important is it to have researched our prospective client before reaching out? How much research is enough? How much is too much? These questions are answered and then followed up with a discussion of a new potential role that may be appropriate for some companies.Recruiting – If the biggest trend in sales is the growth of inside sales and SDR positions, then the biggest challenge is recruiting this same talent. This has proven to be the top challenge in AA-ISP surveys for a few years running now. This section is just oozing with practical advice. It includes: where hiring fits in the manager’s priority stack, the value of hiring in groups, how to identify top candidates, sample interview questions, and advice on making job descriptions exciting and appealing. Discussion is given on where to source candidates and how to find experience candidates in a highly competitive market.Compensation – How much should you pay your SDRs? How much of their compensation should be base salary and how much should be variable, performance-based pay? The answers here may surprise you. I first met Trish at the InsideSales Sales Acceleration Summit in Park City a few years back and this was the question du jour for everyone in Ken Krogue’s workshop. In my opinion, the recruiting and compensation part alone is worth the investment of this book.Retention – Some practical discussion around rep tenure is provided along with some outstanding advice on how to maximize retention. This is an outstanding section for real-world managers and really showcases Trish’s experience with developing sales development teams. There is candid discussion around onboarding (there’s even a sample plan), rep development, career paths, something she calls “micro-promotions” and how to keep things fun. There is excellent content here on the value of coaching and what the return on investment is for it. Trish touches on many pitfalls here that I personally found very valuable.In the Execution part of the book Trish addresses the topic I imagine many purchasing this book will find of key interest – messaging. Here we get examples of both good and bad phone and email conversations along with scripts and some very helpful formulas. There is also some discussion of personas and how the buyer persona affects messaging for the SDR.Pre-call planning is important and Trish specifically addresses what the appropriate amount of research actually is using the “3-C”sources which are: Company, Contact, Conversation Starter. The treatment of this subject is useful because I find that reps tend to fall somewhere along the a spectrum of “over-preparer” at one extreme where they never feel they have enough research to call, to “action-Jackson” on the other extreme where they just go for it and call without any preparation whatsoever. Knowing where the bull’s eye is on research and having a practical framework to train it is extremely useful for the manager and a huge time-savings for the SDR.Execution is also the section where we discuss cadence (contact frequency) and the various channels that SDRs might use to reach out. Trish spends some time here debunking some myths about which channels are most useful using her own metrics and research. If you haven’t already determined your own ideal cadence you will find this section very valuable.The final section discusses leadership functions. This includes how to set quotas, pipeline expectations, managing handoff procedures, and measuring results. Faithful to the pragmatic theme throughout the entire work, Trish cautions managers from going metric crazy by measuring too many things. She reminds us that only a small subset of metrics are actually actionable and then places those into three categories:Activity Metrics (there are 4)Objective Metrics (there are 4)Results Metrics (there are 7)After some practical discussion she offers up an example of a dashboard that incorporates all of these. She also treats you to a link from her website where you can download the latest averages for these metrics so you can compare your own results.Trish wraps up the leadership section with a discussion of technology and sales enablement tools. These are plotted along a 2 x 2 matrix with four quadrants labeled: Toys, Tools, Burdens & Mutiny-Makers. Without naming any vendors Trish tells you from her own personal experience what technologies empirically produce the best results for SDRs.I suppose it is impossible not to compare this work to the book by Aaron Ross - Predictable Revenue. My opinion is that they are both excellent. You should get them both. Where Arron’s book tells you the strategies you should employ when creating your sales development department, Trish’s book tells you how to operationalize it.Because this book was just what I needed at just the right time I couldn’t recommend this book more highly. The whole work is just so tight. I feel like I have a complete picture now on how to succeed in our sales development department.At the moment, this information is rare and in high demand. If you manage or supervise inside sales or sales development reps you will find this book invaluable as I have.

Trish has done a remarkable job in sharing her experiences along with the recommendations from other sales development leaders on what it takes to run a world class lead development team! One of the biggest benefits of this book were the numerous examples of what NOT to do and WHY.One example is when she discussed recruiting. Having a slow and ineffective hiring process could mean your company is missing out on top talent. As Jim Collin said, "Great vision without great people is irrelevant." From my experience, this is a common challenge with most companies, even for some of the ones that are market leaders in their industry. It's easy to get complacent and as a result we often forget that we still need to sell top talent on why they should work for us. This and other examples provided just as much value (if not more) as the best practices on what it takes to build and run a high performing sales development group.On the flip side, she explained the benefits of hiring reps in groups of two or more. She also recommended that first line managers and/or sponsors periodically make phone calls. I periodically make calls and it gives you a greater sense of what your SDRs deal with daily. It also keeps my phone skills sharp too!I finished reading this book in 3 days because it was so well written, engaging, and most importantly, actionable. I highly recommend this book to new SDR leaders and for veteran leaders who may have unknowingly developed some bad habits over the years. Even if your sales development team is performing well, this book will share ideas on how to go even higher!John HindsSales Development Leader

The media could not be loaded. Hi I’m Douglas Burdett, host of The Marketing Book Podcast and I’d like to tell you about the book “The Sales Development Playbook: Build Repeatable Pipeline and Accelerate Growth with Inside Sales” by Trish BertuzziIf you think marketing is struggling to keep up with the changes in the way people buy, so is sales. Sales development, as defined in this book is “a specialized role focused on the frontend of the sales process — qualifying inbound leads and/or conducting outbound prospecting — to generate sales.”Trish Bertuzzi wrote this book because of a major problem she is seeing, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of how to “do” sales development. It’s been her experience that many executives view sales development as a sort of chemical reaction: hire a team, add one part CRM to two parts leads and list, and POOF! Instant revenue.Sadly, it’s not quite that simple. A lot of the added complexity of sales development is because of two major waves that are colliding.The first wave is the exponential growth in the number of ideas, options, and solutions available for (and marketed to) your prospects. And the second wave in play concerns the growing number and diversity of people involved in purchasing decisions.The Sales Development Playbook walks you through six elements necessary for sales development success and is loaded with lots of really practical tips and tricks for modernizing, simplifying and improving your sales development. But be warned: Trish Bertuzzi does not hesitate to call BS on some popular yet misguided notions about modern marketing and sales. It’s very refreshing!And, to listen to an interview with Trish Bertuzzi about The Sales Development Playbook, visit MarketingBookPodcast.com.

I am new to the SDR role. I have been looking for ways to expedite my learning of the role. This is an excellent book if you are interested in learning about not only the day to day of an SDR and tip tricks for success, but for a comprehensive overview of the role. This included the reason for its existence as well as future aspirations for management of the role.

I love the clarity of process steps and structures that can help sales development , definitely would recommend this book to people in sales , basically everyone , everything revolves around sales in life , this is a must read book. Cannot miss it , you would not be complete for your strategies.

This deep dive into B2B business development strategy and management practices provides a useful road map and acts as a practical resource for both sales leaders, and those planning or developing their career in sales.

Básicos de las b2b. Y para productos saas súper útil.

Esse tem um gostinho especial. Foi meu primeiro livro em inglês que consegui terminar :))))Este é recomendado pro pessoal de SaaS e bem focado na área de inside sales, mais precisamente no SDR (Sales Development Representative).Trish presta consultoria a diversas empresas de tecnologia na área de inside sales, desde startups do Vale, a gigantes já consolidadas. Aqui ela ensina o que é preciso para ser e obter o máximo de aproveitamento de um time de SDR (closers/ qualificadores/ prospecção). Fluxo de cadência, modelos de e-mail, metas, enfim...Ela divide o livro em 6 partes:1- Estratégia (como criar processo; alinhando seu modelo ao seu mercado)2- Especialização (qualidade vs quantidade; inbound vs outbound, segmentando seus prospects)3 - Recrutamento (Inovando processo de contratação, contratar certo; ferramentas para escalar)4- Retenção (diferenças entre motivar e gerenciar; coaching, treinamentos; playbooks)5 - Execução (aplicando seu modelo, frameworks de voicemails e e-mails)6 - Liderança (lidere seu time, configurando metas; meça o que importa)Segundo ela, é preciso dominar estes 6 conceitos para criar um time de inside sales vencedor.Recomendo demais aos que atuam na área. Livro rápido, fácil e com dicas aplicáveis. Inclusive já estou aplicando.

So I have been doing this phone thing for 20+ years (Sales, Sales Mgt, DG, SDR) I've led teams of 5 up to 150, for $7M startups to largest Software Companies in the world. I am getting ready to go to my 11th #SDSummit and have read several of the best books out there on how to do this job. I just got done listening to Trish Bertuzzi Sales Development Playbook and IMNSHO it is not only a must read for anyone who is doing, thinking of doing or wants to do this type of job/start a team but is also an invaluable book on leadership, recruiting, executing on practically anything in business. Only one problem with audio version, you hear something and your mind starts racing about how you will implement and next thing you know you have missed the next 5 mins!! Buying copies for my entire management team. Thank you Trish! #nevertooldtolearn #sdrplaybook #MUSTREAD #mondaymorningbookclub