If you haven’t caught up on the Account-Based Sales Development (ABSD) movement, get yourself a good primer. You’re probably excited about the possibilities, but curious how this new way of prospecting will affect your current sales development team. And understandably — as major changes to sales prospecting and outreach efforts must be carefully and thoughtfully implemented.
Thankfully, the potential positive benefits of giving ABSD a try far outweighs any negatives. One of the core tenets is a turn from focusing quantitatively on time management and production efficiency, to actually focusing on target, quality accounts that matter and are aligned with your business goals. This focus on quality allows your SDR team to climb off the hamster wheel and dig into their target accounts’ business — and in turn understand it better.
Here are five ways that this new focus on quality will help boost your sales team’s morale:
Morale Booster 1: Break the cycle.
Even consistently high performing sales development reps get bored. Boredom can not only be a nuisance, but can actually be destructive. It slowly saps motivation and can actually hurt performance in the long run. The shift to ABSD slows your sales development reps down from their almost mechanical cadence, and injects elements of critical thinking that keep them learning and thriving.
Morale Booster 2: Provide a sense of ownership.
People love to own stuff. In ABSD, when you give a rep an account to own, they want to nurture and care for that account. If they don’t, it will be readily apparent over the next few sprints. And when you own something, you take better care of it. What happened the last time you rented a car? You probably drove it like it was a NASCAR, and you’re not alone. Assign your reps specific accounts, and watch them treat them like their own.
Morale Booster 3: Instill a healthy listening and learning mentality.
Sales development reps talk a lot. Get them to start listening to learn more about that specific company’s challenges. Rather than being focused on getting answers that lead to boosted intro call numbers, reps can now focus on interacting with contacts at targeted accounts and learning about that account’s specific challenges — and how they operate.
Morale Booster 4: Clear a path to promotion.
Driving success and growth in target accounts pushes the dial forward for the entire business. Rather than generating opportunities non-targeted accounts, your reps can now focus on delivering highly valued opportunities–highly valued opportunities that every account executive will fight for!
Morale Booster 5: Jumpstart account management skills.
Sales development reps that thrive in ABSD teams will have already gained valuable skills researching, learning, and prospecting within individual account. These skills will translate directly to the account executive role, where upselling and growing accounts is just as important as bringing in new business.
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Use these morale boosters when proposing the transition to Account-Based Sales Development. Explain them to your sales development team or teammates to help them understand the possibilities ahead of them.
Think we missed anything? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.