“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” – Albert Einstein
Tonight I went on a 3 mile run in the dead heat of a Georgia June night. Being the last week of the month I couldn’t help but think about what needed be done these next few days in order to hit quota. I started thinking about what I didn’t do a few weeks ago that may have gotten me in this situation.
Let’s start with the last week of May, which was a breeze for me. I hit quota and I spent the last 2 days doing admin work, wandering around the office, and checking ESPN more than I should have. I normally have this luxury the last few days of the month, except that I was going on a vacation the next week and would not be making calls or sending emails.
Fast forward three weeks, and all of a sudden I’m wondering why I’m having a bad week at work.
To put it in perspective, I went into Friday with three demos scheduled, and an average week is 8-10 demos scheduled going into Friday. Clearly I was struggling. Luckily, I knew what it took to get out of the slump and I kept working hard and scheduled 4 demos that day.
Just like any other sales position, being a Sales Development Rep is a numbers game. This means that SDRs will go through ebbs and flows with the job. The best SDRs know how to make the flows last longer than the ebbs and, in turn, schedule more demos. The reason they’re able to do this is because they DO NOT STOP!
Here’s what I mean- let’s say an SDR is going through a rough time and demos get harder and harder to come by. This SDR knows what hard work is, so they continue to have high activity until all of a sudden they hit a day where they schedule four demos, and they leave very happy.
The next day activity stays high and that SDR may schedule 3 demos. But it’s the following day that separates the best SDRs from the average SDRs. An average SDR will have a few more days of scheduling demos, but then their activity begins to fall. When it falls suddenly, the SDR hasn’t filled the pipeline and they will spend the next few days of high activity and no demos to show for it.
The great SDRs keep activity high even when demos seem to come with ease. They continue to call and put more leads into day 1 because they know if they do not, demos will suffer later on down the road.
Am I saying never take a small break? No, I believe it is good to step away from work for a little bit.
My point is to not neglect activity because things are going so well.
Had I kept activity high during that last week in May and continued when I returned from vacation, I would have been sitting pretty going into the last week of the month. Instead, I had to spend a week filling my pipeline and scheduling fewer demos.