So, you’ve decided you want to hire your own team of Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) for your scale-up but don’t know where to start. That’s fair enough because it’s not that easy. You can’t just put out a recruitment ad and expect everyone who applies to be a real winner. What you can do though is maximise your chances of having the right kind of people apply. The first thing you need to consider therefore is what you want your SDR to be doing. You see there’s not just one kind of SDR. If you want them to take a multi-pronged prospecting approach then that’s who you need to be speaking to. You don’t want to be attracting people who only do one type of prospecting. Also, another difference between SDRs is there are those who only want to work as an SDR for a year or two before looking for a promotion to a Business Development Manager role and those who have realised that they like being an SRD, they’re good at it, so why not try to make a career of it? 

Discourage the wrong type of people

So, this means that when you get round to writing your recruitment ad, you’ll know exactly who you’re targeting. That’s really important too because you will not only want to attract good candidates, but your ad must also actively discourage the wrong type of people from applying.  You can do this in your ad by doing such as not asking for a cover letter – good candidates will apply with one anyway. You can also eliminate certain types of candidate by being very honest. If the job requires a minimum number, put it in the ad. It will help to eliminate some people. 

Do your homework

By now, the CVs should have come in and you have to evaluate who you’re going to call for interview. If you can create a checklist from your recruitment requirements and cross reference it with the application, this should be a relatively easy task. You can’t do that with the interview though and you will have to do your homework. To conduct an effective interview you may want take notes on the candidates CV and have it to hand for reference, you’ll also want to prepare your questions in advance and check the candidate’s answers with what they wrote in their application. After that, give the candidate a score based on a metric you’ve decided on beforehand and see if it’s enough to get them to the second round. Continue this process until there’s only one person left.       

There is another way

There is another way though. If you were to use Aexus’ SDR as a Service, you’d get SDRs that are local to the area you’re scaling to, whether that’s in Europe, the Americas or the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. On top of this, they speak the local language and understand the culture as well as the business nuances of the market. What’s more, because they work in the market every day, they are armed with a list of contacts which means they can rapidly identify genuine prospects for your product or service. Also, with no long term contracts, you have the flexibility to scale up or down as you wish and should you want to terminate the service, there are no lengthy exit clauses. Lastly, something that’s genuinely genius about this approach is that if you wanted to, you could use Aexus’ SDRaaS (Sales Development Representative as a Service) to test the market’s appetite for your product or service without you ever even having to set foot in the new territory.

If you’d like to find out more about SDR as a Service, get in touch. We’re always happy to jump on a call.