## Warm Outbound / How to use BDRs ### BDRs are a CHANNEL within the GTM ecosystem. We stopped using the transactional lead gen playbook with them + adopted a long-term "demand gen" approach with them, and magic has happened 🪄 Let me share a few examples of when BDRs do + don’t work well to help get the point across: Cold outreach Don’t: give them a list of 100 new accounts every month to dial/email/DM away at, hoping that they can get 5% of them to finally cave in to taking a demo Do: give them a list of 100 accounts and tell them that over the course of the next quarter, they are to develop a relationship with each of them Remember: BDR stands for business *development* representative. Those relationships + being able to become a trusted advisor are why prospects will choose to go with you, not the fact that you have now slapped “AI” on your product. PLG and sales-assisted growth Don’t: give them a list of every prospect that signs up for your free product and assume that they are ready to buy Do: loop them into other efforts targeting this group. Marketing is likely sending a “welcome” or “training” sequence to each new signup to help teach them how to use the product and get them to adopt it. Product likely has datapoints around which signups are using the product, and which features specifically. Tip: Allow the BDRs to see this information so they can be more strategic and consultative with their outreach. This way they reach out to the signups actually using the product AND can be consultative in what they speak to based on what the signups are, and aren’t, using within the product currently. Lastly, lose the attribution obsession Like marketing, we have to lose the obsession on attributing every BDR activity back to BDRs. Embrace the “dark social” type mentality with this group so that they can align better to how today’s market actually researches and buys products. This means that you’ll probably see BDR activities lead to improved “Organic Search” and “Direct” attribution results because when the prospect is ready to start the sales process, they may just come straight to the website and submit the demo request form. That is ok! This past week, we had two examples of this occurring where a demo request came in and in the self-reported attribution, the prospect explicitly named the BDR who'd been in contact with them Our BDR approach is being helpful + consultative, not forcing prospects into the funnel early. They meet prospects where they are, provide helpful resources along the way, and say things like “hey, when you’re ready, just head to our website + fill out the form.” They recognize that not everyone is in the market today They recognize that prospects are in annual or multi-year contracts They recognize that even if they aren’t, they need to wait approvals But once the prospect is finally ready, they come back to us ready to move forward