Your Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) play a major role in your customers’ experience. Their ability to engage prospects and generate revenue is critical to your company’s success and reputation.
That’s why knowing what to look for when hiring a sales development representative is so important.
We recommend you find SDRs that are a good fit with your company’s management style, future expectations, and corporate culture. Also, be aware of the traits that a good SDR can bring to your team. We always ask ourselves when looking for new Freelancers:
“What are the characteristics that candidates should possess that will help them be successful and useful to our clients?”
That’s the kind of question you should also ask yourself to hire the right freelancer or employee for your team.
We want to help you identify great SDRs. Fortunately, some traits can help you to do so, and by knowing them you’ll be able to find those who are valuable additions to your organization.
But, before digging further into those qualities we must go back to the basics and clarify what’s a sales development representative.
The Job of a Sales Development Representative
SDRs differentiate themselves from other sales reps roles. While the latter is focused on closing deals and their ability to meet targets, SDRs are instead focused on moving leads through the sales pipeline emphasizing quality lead generation over closing individuals.
A great SDR shines the most when moving leads through the sales pipeline, also this is how you’ll measure their performance. That’s why they often receive quality information from their marketing team, which is responsible for qualifying and nurturing leads before introducing them to account managers or sales reps to land the sale.
So if you’re looking to add an SDR to your team, these are the qualities you should be looking for when hiring:
7 Traits of a Great Sales Development Representative
Passion
Being an SDR is not an easy job. They have to deal with rejection daily and that can turn out to be highly draining.
To find a successful SDR you need to look for a person with passion for the product and great sales drive. Without this, the SDR will fail when the job gets tough. We recommend you follow our steps, and in the interview ask the candidate what they know about the product and why they want to sell it.
If they’re not sure or don’t have a satisfactory answer, it’d be best to look for another candidate.
Respect
Respect is the cornerstone of success on the sales floor.
You have to choose a person whose values align with your company’s values. Check-in with your team after the interview to see how the candidate treated them. How was their personality with the front desk, or in emails and phone calls?
Try to get to know the candidate on a personal level before hiring.
Creativity
Blindly following a process, sending out thousands of emails asking for a referral was good enough… In the early 2000s. Now, we live in a world of hyper-personalization and educated buyers. And great SDRs know how to use creativity to their advantage.
Learning how to adapt to changing landscapes and think for themselves is a MUST for modern SDRs.
Perseverance
SDRs face failure daily, even so, successful SDRs always focus on winning.
It’s how they deal with failure and their strive for success that differentiates amazing workers from the not-so-great ones. To identify these traits, ask the candidate about a time they failed and what they did because of it.
Top candidates will be honest and have a good story to tell.
Curiosity
You shouldn’t hire people who are looking for a quick buck.
Curiosity is the main factor here. Try to look for people who care about the problem your product solves, who know how to ask the right questions, and look for real solutions to your customers’ problems.
Also, try to know a bit about their interest outside of their immediate job skills. The more unique experiences or interests the SDR has, the more likely they are to connect with prospects on a personal level.
Articulate
This is not a role for someone with a low mental organization level.
Avoiding questions, rambling answers and a high amount of verbal tics are all red flags to take into account. Speaking skills indeed improve over time, but the ideal SDR should already be at an intermediate level.
Don’t misunderstand us, we are all guilty of these at some point, but the SDR’s job is not the role to develop a basic speaking ability.
You can test for this in the interview by asking the candidate to teach you about something new that they recently learned. If they can’t do this, they likely won’t be able to explain things to prospects either.
Listeners
Great SDRs listen more than they talk.
The speaking side of the SDR role is asking questions and then providing value. To do this, the candidate should show that they are a great listener. It’s easy to test for this in the interview process.
Note if they ask questions to each interviewer at each round of interviews. Skilled sales reps can discover opportunities in the different answers of various contacts.
Additionally, see if the candidate interrupts you when you answer their questions. If they do, you can be sure that they’ll do this to your prospects as well.
These are the qualities we look for in our freelancers. If you’re looking to work as a Freelancer for amazing companies all around the world make sure to check our website and reach out to us!
In the other case that you’re looking for an SDR for your team, you’ve reached the right place! Our HR outsourcing team makes sure that every one of our freelancers possesses the skills your company needs to keep improving!
Are you still unsure about contacting us?
Well, stop listening to us and check out one of our client’s commentaries on “Why hire Freelance Latin America?” We are proud of our work and our client’s success. The only thing you have to do to find the best SDR for your company is to click right here.
