The next member of your leadership team could well be a member of your business already. In fact, there’s a very strong chance you hired them as a Sales Development Rep.
I speak from experience, because when I look around our leadership team at memoryBlue, I can see that most of our heads of departments started out as SDRs. That’s partly because our business hires a lot of people into these roles, but it’s also because of the qualities we hire them for.
Think about the most effective reps in your organization and you’ll find them showing many of the qualities that a C-suite headhunter looks for:
- The resilience that’s essential in leadership is the daily reality for SDRs. They face rejection every day. They excel in bouncing back from it, staying calm under the pressure, channeling emotions positively and learning from experience.
- Empathy distinguishes the most successful reps. It’s the instinct of knowing when prospects want to talk about needs and solutions, and when they need to talk about something else. Name a leader that’s inspired you, and I guarantee they had this quality.
- When times are difficult, you can’t lead just by giving speeches. SDRs know this because they’ve spent their careers learning that you can’t sell by jumping straight to solutions. They earn trust by knowing when to listen, which questions to ask, and how to bring people and organizations with them.
When you build your sales organization, you’ve got the opportunity to build more than just a revenue-generating machine. You’re investing in the future of the business as well. Look for the right qualities in your reps, and your leadership pipeline will take care of itself.
