BDRs: Help is On the Way! Save Time (And Yourself) with These Four Tips

Outbound lead generation is a grind. And the life of a business development rep, (BDR,) is chalked full of calls, emails, research, and follow up. It is more often than not that tasks gets lost in the shuffle. 4 PM rolls around, and BDRs are scrambling to check off every last item on their to-do list. This begs the question: How do you avoid losing time in your day?

Here are four ways that you can avoid being “that guy:”

Only. Handle. It. Once. Save yourself time by completing a task in it’s entirety only once. Rather than completing a task at random, handle it once and move on to your next item on the to-do list. If there are items that are looming overhead, put them as events in your outlook calendar with pop-up reminders at the time of the event. When the reminder comes up on your screen,  dive into the project and do not stop until it is 100% complete. (This will keep you from continuously putting it off!) If the task involves any type of research on a lead, make sure to log all of the information for future reference. Trust me, it will be much easier to pull up the data in salesforce.com than it will be to start from scratch.

Searching for duplicates is a given before picking up the phone and making a dial. For starters, you will avoid that awkwardness when a lead tells you they are already talking to your colleagues. As an added bonus, you will save yourself time by not calling people who may have already been vetted by other

members of your team. De-duping leads is a quick and painless process, which if done consistently will save outbound lead generation teams a good amount of time.

Your fellow Facebook and G-Chat friends may not like it, but when call time comes around, turn off all social media outlets. While we are a fan of breaks, and believe that BDRs should reward themselves periodically with a visit to their website of choice, it is important to  focus in during call times. In a recent portfolio poll, we learned that for 70% of our BDRs it takes 4-6 hours to complete 50 calls. On average, it should only take 2-4. Regardless of multitasking or social distractions, it is our advice to turn off everything when making dials.

Set internal SLA’s for your team as it pertains to email. Going “dark” includes turning off Outlook, and in turn the whole team needs to be onboard with slower response times during  key calling hours. Use priority email stamps, chat features, or “code red” alerts for emails that need immediate attention. All other emails can be sent during the “reactive” periods of your day.