Should inbound and outbound BDRs be separate teams in future?
In this post I want to touch on a common question as SaaS leaders set up their go-to-market teams.
Should your BDR/SDR team be set up to handle inbound and outbound prospecting with different teams, and will the prevailing thinking change as AI picks up more of the outbound SDR’s role?
Why do BDRs have inbound and outbound teams?
Many SaaS companies have set inbound and outbound teams up separately because they require different skills.
Outbound (typically called an SDR): requires account research, account prioritisation, copywriting, telephone prospecting, social selling, handling rejection, and managing your outbound call/email blocks
Inbound (typically called an MDR): requires quick response, question answering, event follow up - but not the outbound sales muscle.
Inbound teams typically report into the marketing function and follow a career path into product marketing, customer success or enablement,
Whereas outbound teams typically report into sales and develop their career with a promotion into their first AE role.
Is inbound blending with outbound?
The inbound/outbound structure works if you assume that it is binary - a customer can either come in through one channel or another - but not both.
In the past that was often the case.
But there is a transformation underway in the way customers buy.
Buyers are now so well connected to their peers, their partners and their colleagues across their business and they will to do most of their research and buying process independently of vendors.
They do this in what tech vendor 6Sense refers to as the dark funnel.
Private Slack communities, G2 product reviews, networking dinners and WhatsApp recommendations.
Everything below the line is the dark funnel
Imagine, an HR manager has been busy doing their independent research for a new applicant tracking system in a private Slack community.
An email pop ups on the CHRO’s inbox from an outbound SDR and is forwarded on to the manager doing the research.
It reminds them to watch the on-demand webinar they registered for after which they click the “contact me” button.
Inbound or outbound?
Two teams now claiming this as their lead.
Hours are wasted as the outbound SDR builds an audit trail of their emails to show that it was their ‘campaign’ that triggered the opportunity.
Is this what we want?
Does this help the buyer?
Before Human Contact and After Human Contact
When considering whether you should have separate inbound and outbound teams (or SDR teams at all) I go back to first principles - what are we trying to achieve here?
We want our sellers (Account Executives) to have as many conversations with high quality opportunities as possible.
AEs would be the most effective prospectors due to their experience, credibility, product and industry knowledge, but we created SDR teams to pick up the inefficient work leading up to the human contact.
I like to think of Before Human Contact (BHC) and After Human Contact (AHC)
Do we need a human to do the manual work before human contact?
If the goal is to deliver hot conversations to the AE then how would we approach that now - given the advances in technology?
How does AI change the role of outbound?
The end goal of both outbound and inbound teams is the same: to have a conversation with a human, qualify the lead and pass to an Account Executive to develop the value with the buyer.
The main difference is how the teams get to that human conversation.
Inbound are calling into a ‘warm’ contact that has requested a call.
Outbound have to initiate the conversation by providing a relevant offer at the right time to the right person.
This has traditionally required a lot of manual research, in-efficient outreach and rejection.
AI is now picking up so much of this manual work:
Account list building based on firmographic and technographic triggers
Contact list building based on roles and social activity
List prioritisation based on intent triggers
Web-scraping for job openings, press-releases and financial reports
Contact enrichment using LinkedIn for relevance and personalisation
Personalised email outreach
Personalised social outreach
Personalised telephone outreach
Navigating IVRs, reception desks and voicemails
The rise of the digital SDR
2024 is going to see more companies looking at outbound in a different way.
Instead of placing the responsibility for outbound on our most junior reps, we’ll see more senior Revenue Operations roles crafting outbound campaigns at scale.
Developing lists
Enriching contacts
Crafting personalised offers
Copywriting relevant emails
Sending campaigns
I think of a military drone pilot in contrast to a frontline soldier.
A much more sophisticated way of delivering human to human conversations to your AEs.
In this model do we still need an inbound and an outbound team? Or a single human SDR role to field inbound and develop outbound leads created via the digital SDR.
A lot of innovation will happen in outbound strategies this year - this transformation is just getting started.
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