🎙️Transcript: What SDR Job Descriptions Are Really Telling You
"What SDR Job Descriptions Are Really Telling You"
May 9, 2015
Summary
In this instructional video, Ralph Barsi, Vice President of Field Operations at Achievers, provides comprehensive guidance for candidates looking to break into technology sales through sales development representative roles.
Ralph decodes what SDR job descriptions are truly seeking beyond the posted requirements, revealing that hiring managers evaluate three core areas: potential for growth, proof of repeatable contributions, and culture fit.
He analyzes patterns from 50 SDR job postings to identify timeless qualities employers consistently seek, including professionalism, energy and self-drive, organization, exceptional communication skills, and genuine passion for the industry.
Ralph emphasizes that the current market heavily favors candidates, with inside sales growing at 300% compared to traditional field sales, and SaaS companies experiencing 2-3X year-over-year growth.
Throughout the presentation, he provides specific tactics for demonstrating value in interviews, from crafting compelling LinkedIn profiles to asking strategic open-ended questions, while stressing that candidates must match their unique capabilities with company visions to succeed in landing and excelling in SDR roles.
BIG Takeaways
Hiring Managers Evaluate Three Core Areas Beyond Job Descriptions
While job postings list requirements and responsibilities, hiring managers actually assess three fundamental qualities: your potential to become an account executive within one to two years, proof of repeatable contributions through quantifiable past performance, and whether you fit the company culture.
Understanding these unwritten evaluation criteria allows candidates to prepare compelling responses that address what interviewers truly care about rather than just reciting resume bullet points.
Demonstrate Potential by Articulating Clear Career Goals
Hiring managers don't want SDRs to stay in the role long term. They seek candidates who will produce value quickly, then advance through the talent pipeline to make room for new hires.
Explicitly state your goals in interviews with phrases like "I am here to become an account executive in X amount of time. Here's how I plan on doing it." This clarity demonstrates ambition, self-awareness, and alignment with how successful SDR organizations operate.
Prove Repeatable Contributions Using Any Experience
Even without prior sales experience, you can demonstrate performance patterns from paper routes, fundraising campaigns, construction work, or any previous role.
Quantify your contributions: number of papers delivered, client base growth from season to season, ranking among peers, additional services provided. The formula is simple: show how you brought something from X to Y in a given timeframe. This evidence of consistent execution matters more than the specific domain.
Culture Fit Starts the Moment You Walk Through the Door
First impressions establish culture fit before you speak a word. Make eye contact, smile genuinely, offer a firm handshake, and demonstrate enthusiasm immediately.
Position yourself as someone who lifts spirits rather than drains energy from the room. Remember that your attitude translates directly through phone conversations with prospects, so hiring managers assess whether your presence energizes or depletes others from the very first interaction.
Timeless SDR Qualities Trump Trendy Skills
Analysis of 50 SDR job descriptions reveals consistent patterns in what companies seek: professionalism and tact, energy and self-drive, strong organizational capabilities, exceptional verbal and written communication, and authentic passion for the industry.
These fundamental qualities never go out of style regardless of technology changes or market shifts. Prepare to demonstrate each quality through specific examples rather than abstract claims.
Your Digital Presence Is Part of Your Interview
Hiring managers will research you on LinkedIn before and after meeting you. Ensure your profile includes a professional headshot (not a silhouette), a compelling headline and summary, and a detailed skills section that showcases strengths from any capacity you've worked.
Whether you waited tables, worked construction, or raced cars, articulate how that experience developed energy, self-drive, and hustle. Your digital presence should reinforce rather than contradict your interview performance.
Passion Must Be Demonstrable Through Action
Genuine passion for an industry requires evidence beyond verbal claims. If you're interviewing to sell employee engagement software, have you joined relevant associations, participated in LinkedIn groups, or consumed industry content?
When asked what magazines you subscribe to or what content you consume, your answer should reflect authentic interest in the company's domain. Research the company thoroughly using YouTube, company websites, and industry resources before the interview to demonstrate invested curiosity rather than opportunistic interest.
Transcript
Ralph Barsi (00:00):
Hi, this is Ralph Barsi. I'm the Vice President of Field Operations at Achievers. I oversee a number of business functions, including sales development. Today, I want to talk to you about what sales development job descriptions are really telling you. It is such an exciting time right now to break into technology sales. If you are one of those people trying to break in, you will likely start as a sales development rep or an SDR. Some companies call this role a business development rep or a lead development rep. It's all the same thing. It is a function that works at the very top of the sales funnel and it's primarily responsible for putting gas in the engine, and that is driving revenue opportunities into the pipeline. So look, companies are hiring right now in droves. You can visit Google, you can visit the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals.
(00:53):
You can visit saleshacker.com. You could visit LinkedIn, and all you need to do is type in sales development representative jobs, and an enormous amount of search results will surface. People are hiring like crazy, and for you, it is a buyer's market. So it's really important to watch the signs that are coming up in these job descriptions and make sure that you are fully comprehending what a company's vision is for you in the role, and making sure that you can articulate your capabilities that you can bring to the table to meet that vision.
(01:30):
Companies are hiring like crazy right now. A statistic came out from insidesales.com not long ago, which I mentioned that said that 300% growth is being seen in inside sales as a profession versus traditional field sales. Secondly, technology and software as a service companies or SaaS companies are continuing to grow at a very steady clip. Some companies are seeing growth rates of two to three X year over year, which is phenomenal. So sales development hiring managers, when they're putting out their job description, they're looking really for three things. Number one, your potential. Number two, your proof of repeatable contributions, and number three, whether or not you're a culture fit. And the only way that you can prove out those three areas is to show up for the interview. So let's talk about how to address those three areas, because a lot of times job descriptions are not going to just spell out those three areas.
(02:26):
The first is potential. A hiring manager talking to you, while they're asking you the typical questions of an interview, they're going to be thinking to themselves, "Am I speaking to a future account executive, someone that's going to be able to carry a quota and close deals in one to two years from now?" Hiring managers, when they bring you onto a sales development team, don't want you on their team very long. They want you to produce and contribute value more than consume value so that they can move you through the talent pipeline onto another bigger, better team and a bigger, better opportunity for you in your career so that they can keep the cycle going and bring in new hires, new, fresh candidates that are going to continue to build revenue pipeline. So it's really important that when you're in the interview, you're stating your goals and you're stating your objectives.
(03:16):
And sometimes that's as simple as Mr. or Ms. Hiring Manager. I am here to become an account executive in X amount of time. Here's how I plan on doing it, proof of repeatable contributions. If this is your first sales job in the tech industry, maybe you had a paper route at some point. Talk to us about the number of papers you delivered in a given timeframe. Talk to us about the number of clients you had the first season you delivered papers and how you grew that client base into the next season and the next season. What other services did you bring to the table? If you were calling fundraising campaigns for your college or university, talk to us about the number of people that you had to speak to. How often did you go in and make phone calls? What were your phone calls like?
(04:06):
What were your conversations like? How many other people had to make phone calls to raise funds? Were there five? Were there 10? Were there 20? Where did you stack rank among those people? Those are examples of how you prove your repeatable contributions. Always remember to give examples where you can show how you brought something from X to Y in a given timeframe. Thirdly is culture fit. When you walk into the interview, you want to look at people right in the eye. You want to give them a nice smile. You want to shake their hand with a firm handshake and you want to get right to business. You want to talk about how enthusiastic you are and you want to show it. You want to be seen as the person that's going to walk into the room and lift everybody's spirits. You don't want to be the person that walks in and sucks the life right out of a room because no one's going to want to hang out with you.
(05:01):
No one's going to want to work with you. And I'll tell you right now, prospects are not going to want to talk with you on the phone because your attitude will come right across on the phone and in face-to-face conversations. You got to remember that positive attracts positive and negative attracts negative.
(05:19):
As I mentioned earlier, job descriptions will tell you precisely what companies and hiring managers need out of sales development reps. In fact, I looked at 50 companies just a month ago that are all hiring for the sales development role. I created a list. I took all the job descriptions and I analyzed the patterns. I analyzed the most common traits that these job descriptions were looking for. And it's funny, everybody's looking for the same thing. There are timeless qualities in a sales and in a sales development rep that will never go away. One is professionalism and tact. You got to keep it classy. You have to bring the best version of yourself into the interview and into the company that you eventually join. You have to dress the part. You have to act as if you're already a role or two ahead of the sales development role.
(06:21):
Or you could do the opposite. Do a little visualization exercise with me. Go ahead and close your eyes. And let's imagine ourselves just not dressing the part, not acting as if, not bringing our A game to the interview and to the company. And let's imagine ourselves just grazing on the hillside, just consuming and consuming and consuming value and not contributing anything at all. Do you think that's going to fly? It's not going to fly. So number one, be professional and use tact in your interview process. Number two, you've got to have energy. You've got to have self-drive and you have to prove how that energy works in your everyday life. In other words, you want to get to a point in sales where you are hustling so hard that you don't have to introduce yourself anymore. So how are you going to prove that hustle?
(07:15):
Well, since you may not have had a sales position prior to this one, a hiring manager is going to look you up. In addition to looking at your resume, they're going to check you out on LinkedIn. So let's take a look at your LinkedIn profile. Do you have a professional headshot? Do you have a headshot at all or do you have the silhouette of yourself? Do you have a compelling headline? Do you have a compelling summary? Do you have a compelling list of skills that you've brought to the table in whatever capacity you've worked in? It does not matter if you've waited tables. It doesn't matter if you were in construction. It does not matter if you raced fast cars. Doesn't matter what it is. What did you show in that capacity that brought energy, self-drive, and hustle to the table? That's what sales development and sales hiring managers are looking for.
(08:08):
To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift. If you're going to get hired, you're going to get hired for unique gifts that only you can bring to the table. That means you have to show those unique gifts and those unique strengths from the get-go, from the outset, and that is in the interview process on the phone with an interviewer or recruiter or in front of the hiring manager, and then obviously from day one, all the way through the remainder of your time in that role. Okay? Energy and self-drive is absolutely critical. Number three, hiring managers are looking for people who are very organized. When you are in sales development, it is as if you are atop a flight control tower at an airport. There are planes coming in in the form of inbound leads and there are planes going out in the form of outbound prospecting into target accounts.
(09:02):
You at the helm in the flight control tower have to be able to orchestrate the incoming flights and the outgoing flights. And you have to do it with precision and you have to do it efficiently. And the only way you're going to do that is to set order before there is confusion. You do that by being organized. Talk to the hiring manager in the interview about how you leverage Evernote, how you use Google Drive, how you frame up your week or your month or your quarter. Actually print out or show the hiring manager your calendar on how you manage your day, because they're looking for someone who has their act together from soup to nuts. They don't want to bring somebody in. They will certainly invest time in onboarding you and training you on the company culture, on the offering, on the people that buy from your company, but they don't want to walk you through every single day.
(10:00):
How you're going to come in in the morning, what time you're going to be there, what time you're going to leave. So you're going to have to exhibit how you're already doing that in your everyday life. Another timeless quality is exceptional communication skills. You have to nail verbal and written communication skills. Best way to demonstrate that is face to face in the interview. You have to talk concisely. You have to show examples. You have to have the self-awareness to know when it's time to be quiet and when to listen and when it's time to ask questions. And when you ask those questions, refrain from yes, no questions. Instead, ask open-ended questions. Tell me about the candidates that have been interviewing these last several weeks. How has the process gone? How have they fared against how I've done today in our conversation? What are you looking for in those reps?
(10:53):
Talk to me about the reps on the floor today. Who are the best reps? What qualities have they exhibited in this role? What has gotten them to the next level? How fast has it taken or how slow has it taken for them to get there? Those are open-ended questions. All of those put together equal the final most common trait, which is passion. You have to really care about what it is you're about to set course on. If you want to be in sales development, selling employee engagement software, then what are you doing today to immerse yourself in that world? Have you already joined specific associations? Have you already jumped onto relative and relevant LinkedIn groups? Have you contributed in those groups? Do you have any proof of that? I walked into an interview once for a company whose industry I didn't really have too much interest in, but I really wanted this sales job.
(11:48):
And the hiring manager, one of the first questions he asked me was, "Talk to me, Ralph, about what magazines you subscribe to." And I told him about Rolling Stone because I was a drummer. I talked to him about Spin Magazine. I talked to him about Time and Men's Health. Not one of those magazines had anything to do with what his business was. It had nothing to do about what his customer's business was. So then and there, I showed that I didn't really have a true, genuine passion for what I would have sold for his company. So think about that kind of stuff when you're walking into a new company, really research them. It is 2015 as you are probably watching this video and technology is ridiculous right now with what it can enable you to do. We have YouTube. We have company websites. We have a lot of offerings out there that push relevant information and intelligence to you if you're looking for it.
(12:45):
What you seek is seeking you. So you got to make sure that you're seeking the right types of opportunities that fit the capabilities you can bring to the table. If you are interested in breaking into technology sales, you're likely going to be an SDR. So make sure that you Google all the companies that you actually have a passion for, that do what you want to do, that sell what you see yourself selling. Try to match your capabilities with their vision and you're going to nail this. Okay? When you read a job description, read it thoroughly, read it in its entirety. Look for all the signs. Look for the timeless qualities that these companies are asking for and look for the required responsibilities that they will have of you in this role and make sure that you are prepared to discuss them. Opportunities are everywhere. What you seek is seeking you.
(13:41):
So it's about you taking action and being prepared to give your perfect effort in the interview and obviously in the role so that you can move upward, onward and share your unique gifts and strengths with our industry. Go get them.