Building up your sales pipeline can be incredibly efficient when BDRs work with account executives to find and convert leads. Having the duo co-prospect simply results in more deals being closed at a quicker pace. On the flip side, of course, establishing alignment among the sales team members can be challenging for organizations. 

In this post, we’ll look at ways to effectively balance the co-prospecting effort of your BDRs and AEs for the best results in account-based selling.

KEY 1: Clearly define BDR and AE roles. 

Assuming that BDRs qualify leads and AEs nurture and close them, each person needs to know what is expected in order to help each other and hold each other accountable. 

Perhaps you determine that BDRs need to verify the prospect’s authority and need. For example, they will verify that the prospect can sign the deal, or were at least asked to look into a product/service solution by their manager. And, the BDR can verify that there is a need for your products/services. The AE then creates a sense of urgency for the need. 

Or, perhaps their roles are simply to coordinate combined efforts without overlap. Developing parameters will help your whole sales team get focused on the right things.

KEY 2: Make sure your sales team has a single source of truth. 

When BDRs and AEs are making notes in different documents and spreadsheets or if one group is in a CRM and the other isn’t, or is in a third party sales engagement tool, it’s hard to keep track of who communicated what and when, and information and activity gets lost.

When everything is recorded in the same place, it helps everyone be on the same page and be more accountable. With Salesvue’s Salesforce-native platform, your sales team can easily keep prospect, account, and opportunity data up to date, and it’s easy for each team member to know exactly what he or she is responsible for, both staying completely in Salesforce for their daily motion. 

Having the whole team on the same platform will prevent duplicate efforts, such as calling the same prospects or contacts at the same account.

KEY 3: Give each team member a playbook for each day. 

Set up sales cadences that ensure a clear process is being followed for prospecting and maintaining consistent engagement with clients, and that there is no duplicate effort being made to the same contacts at an account. With a single easy-to-use interface in Salesvue for tasks, appointments, opportunities, and more, there’s no guessing what team members should do, or when they should do it. Also, prospects and contacts can even be prioritized based on an email score, so the AEs know which opportunities are the hottest.

Cadences can even be structured to seamlessly flow from the BDR to the AE with automation. For example, a prospecting call could be assigned to the BDR, and a follow-up email could automatically be sent from an AE. Or, if a BDR qualifies a prospect on a call, with one click they could choose a result of the call that would automatically create an Opportunity in Salesforce for the AE, along with prescribed tasks to follow to work the deal to close. 

KEY 4: Give your team members visibility into what is working and what’s not. 

Do they think they are catching a whale that is actually a catfish? Without being able to see what’s creating the most revenue, BDRs are especially prone to look at quantity over quality, resulting in AEs wasting time on deals that may not be in your sweet spot. Data doesn’t lie. So, give them easy-to-understand analytics that can show them the best performing content, the best timing, and other information that’s relevant to their particular job. 

In Salesvue, the Math of Sales™ report shows conversions generated by lead source, sales person, touchpoint, cadence, industry, or any other field from your Salesforce account, which helps your team understand which areas are the best use of time and effort to generate more revenue.

With your BDRs and AEs co-prospecting effectively, you’ll be able to grow and scale your business quicker and more efficiently. What’s more, it doesn’t have to be hard for anyone. Both your BDRs and AEs will be working in Salesforce, but they don’t have to learn any complicated steps to do it when they use Salesvue’s sales engagement platform. Find out how much easier it is to co-prospect in Salesvue by requesting a demo today.

KEY 5: Encourage team members to always assume positive intent. 

Abe Lincoln rightly said, “If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.” One way to prevent this sentiment is to be explicit about the behavior you expect from both BDRs and AEs. For example, the BDR should be able to acknowledge that an Account Executive is doing his/her best to close the deal and is not giving up too soon or labeling the prospect unqualified too early. 

And at the same time, the AE should believe that the BDR is qualifying leads and not passing unscreened prospects on to the AE. Sometimes, we all need a level-set. Reminding your team in weekly (or daily) meetings that they are all working towards the same goals presents an opportunity to clear up any misunderstandings that may have occurred.

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