Best practices for creating a program for SDR role

[Anonymous]

We recently hired a Sales Development Rep and her first project is to start calling on cold leads.  She will be using PowerDialer to initiate the conversations and based on the responses she receives, will send Marketo emails in Sales Insight. 

We currently have 2 Engagement programs running and we will need to make sure this subset of cold leads are excluded from these programs.

Once she has finished sending emails, the leads will need to be pulled into a Keep Warm Engagement program we are setting up.

I'm trying to determine the best way to set up a program like this, which involves manual and automatic controllers, to ensure the leads are handled correctly.  Anyone have best practices or ideas on this?

Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Hi Rachel:

We have something like this, although everything is based on lead status in revenue stage. We have our leads going through the revenue stages and have SDR touches based on revenue stage. So we have an engagement program for each revenue stage. For MQLs who are getting SDR touches, we adjust the cadence of the engagement programs to account for the calls/emails from the SDR.

For the traffic director setup, everything is triggered based on when Lead Status changes. If a person expires after 24 days and moves from MQL to Recycled MQL, the trigger fires and pauses the person in the MQL engagement program and starts them in the Recycled MQL engagement program. Same with SAL, Recycled SAL, and SQL engagement programs. 

Everything is triggered off of the Lead Status changing, which is itself based on our revenue stages. So then an SDR can change the Lead Status in Salesforce and the person will go to the appropriate engagement programs. Or the automated lifecycle processing jobs can check when a Recycled MQL revives herself/himself and change the Lead Status back to MQL, then the appropriate engagement programs will be applied.

There's a bit more than I can explain regarding how all of that is set up strategically. There's a video here (9:48 is where the lead statuses start to be explained in more depth) that goes through how the Lead Status works, plus how our SDRs (err, we call them "Marketing Development Reps," or MDRs—same thing) interact in the process.

In my opinion, having the marketing based on revenue funnel is more cohesive than the usual "hot or not" lead approaches. It also allows for more efficient prioritizing of the SDR work, so the leads being touched have higher response rates and better know our company in the first place.


Does that answer your questions? I feel like I just spouted alphabet soup everywhere with all those acronyms and jargon.

Best,
Edward Unthank
Marketing Operations Specialist
Yesler