How to find and do an SDR job you love
Being in the right company is the most important driver of your career long-term.
Today's newsletter takes about 3 minutes to read.
The company you work for is the most important thing to enjoy the job we do but also to speed up your career.
Why?
You can be the best at your job but if you are not in the environment.
You won’t love what you are doing.
I worked for a toxic company, I enjoyed the SDR job but never loved it and never had the opportunity to grow there.
I quit this company.
In 2020, I joined Chili Piper as an SDR, a company that loves and supports the SDR function.
I got promoted 5x times in less than 2 years.
Also, a lot of SDRs apply to 500 companies at the same time.
And you shouldn’t do that.
You should have a list of 10 companies you want to work for based on the criteria I will share today.
To find the company where you will love your job.
Here’re 3 categories you can use to find the company that can help you to do an SDR job you love:
Company
Get on a team and a company that’s growing
You’ll grow with the company.
Set yourself up for success by getting on the right team where you can learn, build connections, and have opportunities to get promoted or work on exciting projects.
Stage
Is the company venture capital-backed vs bootstrapped?
It’s important to think about that because, in my 2nd SDR job, I joined a bootstrapped company.
Covid happened, and 3 big customers churned.
I knew we didn’t have money in the bank to anticipate that.
So I looked for another job and got hired at Chili Piper.
If VC backed: What’s the stage of the company? Seed, Series A, Series B, Series C?
Go on Crunchbase to find out what's the last funding round of the company.
Pre-series A: the product is still in development and the sales team is not growing, yet.
Series B and beyond: you have product market fit, and they are growing the sales team.
Founders
Is it their first company or the 5th company?
Checking at the previous experience or companies of your founders gives you an idea.
Do they have sales experience? Having founders who get sales makes a big difference when a company is scaling a sales team.
DEI
That’s something I didn’t think about before joining Chili Piper and more and more companies have DEI programs.
Working with so many talented people from different backgrounds, genders, nationalities, etc.
We get unique perspectives and ideas that I never thought about, so it helps me grow and get more open-minded.
Marketing
Is the company investing in the brand? Do you have strong support from the marketing team?
Working for a company with strong support from marketing is a game changer when you are an SDR. If your prospects, already know your brand or product before reaching out to them, it makes it easier to start conversations.
Go on LinkedIn and check the number of followers on their LinkedIn page
Check the LinkedIn page of the company, and if they have 5k+ followers, that’s a good start.
Check if the employees are also on LinkedIn.
Culture
Go on Glassdoor to read employees' reviews.
Talk to actual employees and former employees to get an idea of the culture.
Because LinkedIn and Glassdoor might reflect a different image of the real culture.
Are they hiring: remote? Hybrid? On-Site?
For me, this one is super important. I work remotely for the past 3 years now.
Sales culture
Leadership
When I join Chili Piper I looked at the VP of Sales and the Director of Revenue Performance to understand their way of leading teams.
Your manager
During the process, you’ll meet him or her and you need to make sure you’ll enjoy and learn from your manager. You will need to understand how your manager works, etc.
Investment in people
On their career page or in the job description, do they mention the support they will give you? Training? Coaching? If you can’t find anything, ask SDRs who are already working at the company.
Compensation
Base and commissions: on Glassdoor and Repvue you can find this information. Because some companies look great and then when you check how they
Talk to the current SDRs to know:
What’s the commission plan?
Commissions capped? Uncapped?
How many SDRs hit their goals
AKA are the goals realistic, or achievable?
How big is the SDR team
First hire? 30 SDRs?
Depending on your experience, you want to choose between a company with an SDR structure already built or where you need to build everything.
If you are just starting your sales career, join an established SDR team.
If you join as one of the first hires, it's better if you already have some experience.
Tools
If they have a good tool stack, it shows that the company invests in the team.
Product
What customers say about it
Go to G2 if you want to sell SaaS. Read G2 reviews to see what they love or hate about the product. Is the support team reactive? Are they implementing feature requests? Etc.
Product market fit
When you are working for a company that has a product market fit.
It makes the difference because the market (your prospects) is looking for a solution you are selling.
You know when you have one when the company is scaling the SDR team or based on the stage (Series B and beyond, sometimes Series A)
Personas & industry
Industry: are they selling to the government or SaaS businesses?
What’s the persona of the product? CMOs? VP of Sales? CIO? CTO? VP of HR? Dentists?
You need to know what you enjoy. Selling the government is very different than working SaaS. Same for CMOs or CTOs.
Type of sales
SMB, Mid-Market, or Enterprise - joining an SMB team will be more focused on volume, and enterprise will be on the quality of your outreach.
PLG or Sales led, or both.
Joining the right company makes you love the job and grow in your career.
The perfect company doesn't exist.
But the more checkboxes the company checks the more you’ll love the job and speed up your career.
Thanks for reading.
That's all for this Sunday. 1 simple tip for SDRs.
Quick Reminder: If you like my emails please do “add to address book” or reply.
See you next week.
Happy prospecting,
Elric
PS: Here're the 3 last issues if you miss them:
If you want to read the previous ones, you can here.
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