The Takeover with Tim and Cindy

The Sales Hiring Playbook: How to Choose Between BDRs, SDRs, or Lead Gen Agencies

• Tim and Cindy Dodd • Episode 89

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Do you have the right key players and partners in your corner to supercharge your sales & revenue? Find out whether a Business Development Rep (BDR), Sales Development Rep (SDR), or outsourced lead gen is the best move for your sales growth!

In this episode, we break down the key differences between these roles, the pros and cons of each approach, and how to determine the best sales strategy for your company. Whether you're looking to scale outbound prospecting, convert more inbound leads, or streamline your sales process, we’ll help you cut through the confusion and make an informed decision.

By the end of this episode, you'll have a clear framework to choose the right strategy and avoid costly mistakes.

Key Topics + Chapter Markers:

[00:00] Introduction – Why your sales structure matters
[00:54] What’s the difference between a BDR, SDR, and outsourced lead generation?
[02:50] The role of a Business Development Rep (BDR) – Pros & cons
[08:07] How a Sales Development Rep (SDR) improves inbound conversion
[14:55] Do you have enough inbound leads to justify hiring an SDR?
[18:04] Why outsourcing lead generation can be a game-changer
[26:54] Common pitfalls when hiring sales reps & how to avoid them
[31:09] What most businesses get wrong about sales hiring
[40:25] Which model is best for your business?

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About The Hosts:

  • Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy: Instagram

About PEMA.io:

  • PEMA.io is a Inc 5000 Outbound Marketing Agency specializing in Enterprise Sales & Appointment Setting. With over 7-years and 1,000+ clients served in the industry, PEMA is the leading agency for cold outreach appointments & systems. Learn more about PEMA.io here: www.pema.io/discover

00:00

This is definitely a more sophisticated role. If you want somebody really good in the seat. But our goal here with describing some of these pros and cons is for you to make the best informed decision for your company, but also to be wise and smart about not just any end to end salesperson can fall the seat and do a really good job. If you don't already have a super dialed in system, you're not going to hire a BDR and have it fixed, right? Just hiring even a really experienced BDR is not going to all of a sudden


00:29

bring magic to the table. One of the critical components of finding great BDRs or great appointment setters was not the appointment setter themselves. It was essentially the process that the company used to allow that appointment setter to generate those leads. Welcome to The Takeover with Tim and Cindy, where we show you how to dominate every area of life and business. Let's get winning.


00:54

Scaling your lead flow and your sales team, there's a lot of options out there, whether building a team in-house, Hunter, Closer, BDRs, SDRs, or outsourcing your lead generation. Today we're gonna walk through the pros and cons of each one so you can kind of determine where your business is at, which one of these or all of them that you should use for your company. How about we start with the definitions, right? Because I think we hear BDR, SDR, salesperson, account executive, there's so many different terms that are used with regards to building out your sales team.


01:24

Let's start off with defining each one. Specifically, let's start off with BDR, also known as a business development representative. What is that role? There's business development representative is somebody who goes out, they're an outbound. They make cold calls, they hit the ground, they might do LinkedIn or email or whatever. They're going out, they're actively going out to bring in new leads and set meetings for your account executives or your sales team. This can also be known as like a simple like appointment setter, right? So this person is the one that is


01:53

setting appointments for the sales team, whether it's through outbound calling, it could be through email, it could be through LinkedIn, just different options, but think of this person going out to find your ideal leads and ideal prospects. What about a sales development representative or an SDR? So an SDR is somebody who's taking the inbound. So say you have 500, 800, 1,000, 2,000 leads flowing through your website right now or through your sales funnel, and there's spillage, there's...


02:22

phone numbers that you got from inbound interest for your service that did not convert into a sales meeting or a sales qualified meeting. And these sales development reps are taking current traffic, current flow you already have, the spillage, and essentially turning that into meetings for your sales team or SQLs as they say. Okay, so BDR is more so outbound, SDR is inbound. How about an end to end salesperson, also known as a hunter closer?


02:50

The unicorn of salespeople. And everybody wants. Everybody wants the hunter-closer where they're going to go out, they're going to hunt, they're going to get the business, they're going to bring it in, they're going to kill it, and they're going to do the full end-to-end hunter-closer. That is somebody who's going to essentially be an appointment center, an expert appointment center BDR, business development, right? And they're an expert at


03:14

do you know closing the deal cycle, whether it's a transactional one or two call close, or you have a full complex sale cycle where it's you know six months, nine months, you know year, two years to close. They're gonna have to be an expert in both of those. So when you think about end to end, we're talking about the entire sales process from generating the leads, all the way up until vetting them and closing them, which is what that some people call it an account executive, right, or an end to end salesperson hunter closer.


03:41

would essentially do that entire process. And there's a lot of companies that do that. And it's a very old school way. I mean, a lot of companies are doing it right now very successfully. And we'll walk through the pros and cons of that. And for some companies, it's fantastic. It's a really good move. But I think a lot of people do it when they shouldn't be doing it. I think a lot of people are trying to find those unicorns and it's very hard to find somebody who's an expert at two things that are actually.


04:07

pretty different. They're pretty all very different skill sets. Being able to work a deal, get it to close, is much different than going out and prospecting it. And somebody has to not only have both these skill sets extremely well, but they're gonna be going between these two different types of roles throughout the day, which when you're task switching can get kind of complex, but some people can do it really well. Yeah, let's talk about the experience level that's needed, right? Like as operations, I'm thinking about hiring. What are the different experience levels is an account executive,


04:37

an end-to-end salesperson, are they more like a senior level role and a BDR is more of a junior entry level role? How are you thinking about the different levels with regards to hiring these people? I mean, there's definitely people that are start off as BDRs because long term they want to become, you know, an accounting executive. They want to be able to close the big deals, right? Because whoever's closest to the money is making the most money. So the BDRs, they can make a lot of money depending on the comp structure of a company, but the person who's going to make the most money is the one getting the contract signed.


05:07

for sure. So a lot of times somebody might start off as a BDR and SDR or they're assisting the account executive to do the outbound to get the meetings. And then with the goal of one day being trained well enough to be able to be an account executive. And so sometimes when you have a hunter closer that's really good at both, it's because they've worked their way through those channels. They were the BDR, they mastered that game, they got super good at it. And then they became a hunter closer.


05:33

because they were a hunter first. They were able to get the meetings first. There are two different skill sets, but that hunter-closer is generally somebody who's been through the processes of both and has really gotten great at both. Like I could be incredibly great at both. It doesn't make sense for me to be my own setter, right? Because if I'm talking to really large companies and CEOs of really large companies, it makes more sense for me to have a BDR set for me, right? But I have the skill sets for both. If I wanted to do both, I could do both very, very well.


06:02

I remember when I first started off, like just in the marketing lead generation space, people would throw around like Hunter, Closer, these terms that I had no idea what they meant. So if anybody's listening and you don't know Hunter Closer terminology, Hunter is somebody that's just going out and prospecting, right? Finding leads, generating leads. The Closer is the one that is signing the contract or moving the person through the sales process to get them to a signed contract. So.


06:25

I don't want that to go over anybody's head because it definitely went over mine before I started in this industry. So just understanding the dynamics between Hunter and close up, essentially that end to end salesperson is doing both parts of the equation. They're hunting, finding new deals as well as closing. And I want to really dive into the pros and cons of each, because for your business, it may look very different, right? Whether you are at a stage, whether your goals require you to have a BDR.


06:53

an SDR or an end-to-end salesperson. So Tim, let's talk about the pros and cons of each and a little bit more into the details of the makeup of these roles. Let's start off at the BDR or the business development rep. What are some of the pros? Yeah, the pros of a business development rep is that if you have a really good lead generation appointment setting process already built,


07:16

you can essentially replicate that process by hiring somebody who's good at following a process. They're good at following an SOP. Now, hey, do X amount of reach outs on LinkedIn, or X amount of calls, or X amount of emails, using this script, this process, you have very clear KPIs, you know, 150 calls a day, or X amount of out bounds a day using this message. If you already have your KPIs and processes in place,


07:42

fantastic way just to double down, triple down, and essentially scale what's already working. So if you already have something working, it's a very smart thing to get more BDRs, 100%. Yeah, this person's just like solely focused on generating pipeline. Think about leads, they're going out, calling, emailing, LinkedIn, like all the things just to get appointments on the calendar and essentially fill the sales team's pipeline. Yep.


08:07

and they're not closing deals. So if this week they're not gonna be busy working a deal and like, oh, I couldn't develop business, a BDR is gonna keep the pipeline consistently having new meetings coming in. There's gonna be ups and downs and holidays and different stuff like that. But their sole job is they're either being successful in their role, meaning they're getting the meetings, they're doing the activities, which produces the outcomes, or they're not doing the activities or not producing the outcomes. Both those are just.


08:33

They're very clear and defined metrics that are very easy to track and very easy to diagnose if they're not working, right? Yeah, that's so good. And I think another pro is that part of what you're saying is it allows the closer or the salesperson that's gonna sign the contract or get people across the finish line, it allows them to focus solely on converting deals. Yes, yes. Right? Like this, and think about it from a entire team perspective, if everybody's focused on their role, the business development rep simply focuses on...


09:01

generating pipeline, the closer simply focuses on closing deals. So I think that separation of roles is really beneficial on, you know, just the sales team side as well, because the closer can just focus on converting deals. Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, you know, like it. Love it. So good. Okay. Let's talk about cons. What are the cons of a business development rep? So there's not really cons as much as if you don't


09:30

already have a super dialed in system, you're not gonna hire a BDR and have it fixed, right? Just hiring, even a really experienced BDR is not gonna all of a sudden bring magic to the table, right, I think- Which a lot of companies think, though. A lot of people, well, this person has this many years and this much experience, and I'm hiring them to do this one thing, they should do it, like, no. You- You need to process- If you want meetings-


09:58

you have to already know how to get meetings and a BDR is essentially throwing fuel on the fire of something that's already working and running. So the cons are, if you don't already have something that's working and process is documented, then it's gonna be a challenge. Another piece is just management. The more people that you add to the team, isn't just more people that are gonna be part of payroll and all that stuff, it means more management costs. So I think that's one thing is to think of the more.


10:25

BDRs I have, if I have a team of four or five BDRs, well, that's going to be one full-time manager managing those people. And they, you know, you might at first, it might just be one or two BDRs and they're kind of adding the sales managers managing. But if you start having your sales manager managing more than four or five people, it starts to get, you know, the quality gets bloated. It gets very hard to manage people once you're past four or five. So I would say just the people management gets very complex.


10:51

And a cost that most companies, even very sophisticated companies that I talk to, they don't take into account when they're comparing costs of different options is the management and their organizational costs that happens by having to add more people, manage complexity. There's a lot of costs that's hard to calculate unless you're a very sophisticated company. So yeah, absolutely. I would say just making it, bloating the cost beyond what the SDR, what their software, what they're going to cost. You're going to have to train them.


11:20

So there's a lot more costs of going to hire on a couple of BDRs and if you hire two, which we always suggest to hire at least two at a time, hire two running for 90 days, if one of them doesn't work out, you know, that's great, you have one that works, but still you spend all that cost on training two people and only got one person. Yes, yeah, absolutely. That's something to definitely keep in mind, like how much time, effort, energy is it going to take us? Right, how much are we gonna spend in getting these people up to speed?


11:47

and consistently training them as well. It's always something to keep in mind. Any role that you're really recruiting and hiring for your business, definitely keep that in mind. I also think talking about BDRs, like appointment centers, right? People think that if I hire an appointment center, they should know how to generate appointments, but that's very far from the truth. We've trained over a thousand companies on how to like generate leads, on how to find appointment centers, vet them.


12:12

But one of the critical components of finding great BDRs or great appointment setters was not the appointment setter themselves. It was essentially the process that the company used to allow that appointment setter to generate those leads. So keeping that in mind, having the person in the seat is not enough. Your company has to have the right process to train them on how do I actually go out and generate leads for our offer, for our business specifically.


12:40

Yeah, train them, equip them, keep them accountable. KPIs. KPIs when they're not producing, be able to diagnose why they're not producing, be able to get them back on track. Yeah, there's a lot. But if you already have, you know, Tim, Cindy, we got to dial in. We're crushing it. We started building this process out in-house and we just need to get, we need to get more of what we're doing or we need to get the people that are doing it. We have hunter closers that are doing it. We need to get them just closing because they're great closers and we need people to replicate.


13:08

the appointment setting that they're doing. Fantastic move. Let's move into the pros and cons of an SDR, a sales development rep, who is mostly focused on converting inbound leads. Well, this part's not actually gonna be as long because it's gonna be very clear. If you have 800 plus leads coming into your company, phone numbers, emails, you have inbound interest that your sales development rep can reach out to, then hire an SDR.


13:37

It's simply gonna bring your marketing costs down. You're gonna get way more results from the inbound lead flow you have, whether it's from ads, whether it's from your organic. Website inquiries. Wherever that is. SEO. If you have people coming in, more people coming in than you're getting meetings for, and you see numbers and emails that are like, oh man, why aren't those converting? Well, get an SDR because the sales development right.


14:01

is going to call and contact them. Their sole job is to take all of the lead flow that's happening in your company right now and convert more of it. And again, if you already have that, but you don't have that processes for an SDR, still hire an SDR and build out the process. Because if you have the lead flow, all this is doing is this is taking all the interest and eyeballs that are already on your company right now and converting more of them into sales meetings and more of those sales meetings.


14:28

So I don't think there's a ton of pros and cons. Like if you have the flow, do it. If you don't, don't. Yeah, so good. I wanna clarify. So it's inbound leads that are coming in already, right? And this person's sole role is to contact those people that are already looking at your company, whether these leads are coming in through SEO, through you running ads, maybe you just have an amazing funnel, you have people coming in. So much money is wasted by companies.


14:55

who have a lot of inbound lead flow, but they're not doing anything about it, right? How quickly are you calling the people that send a request on your website? How quickly are you calling people if you're running ads and you have people fill out a form, how quickly are you getting back to them? So much time, effort, money is spent and wasted by not having a sales development rep to, right, contact those people that are inquiring about your company, but also to qualify. So you mentioned that qualification piece, which is so important because


15:24

If the sales development rep is sending leads to the salespeople, all they have to do is qualify those leads upfront and then send them to the closer to close the deal. So that qualification piece is so important. And depending on when you're watching and listening to this, like right now, you can do AI. AI is tricky with outbound because there's a lot of laws against robo calling, like for cold, but if you have inbound, you can set up AI callers to do the calls for you. They're pretty good.


15:52

They're not great for a sophisticated audience at the time of this recording, but I mean, I could wake up tomorrow and boom, they're dialed in. Right, you know what I mean? So I think SDRs, they're not gonna be around for long, just simply because AI is gonna replace any inbound interest, so long as there's not weird laws that come up, which sort of very well could be. You're gonna be able to have AI kind of take care of a lot of that stuff, which is way more efficient, because if you get a lead at 1 a.m., while your team's sleeping.


16:19

It doesn't matter. You're going to get an immediate response. Speed to lead is super important with SDRs. You got an interest that comes in. That interest, the second after that interest was shown, it starts to decline. The law of thermodynamics. It's going to get worse and worse and worse interest. Speed to lead with your SDRs is critical and critical. If you have an SDR, you need speed to lead. An AI can just, whatever. You set the timing.


16:45

wait three seconds and call, you know, and then send a text and then have a conversation, right? So that's something interesting to keep in mind. AI, robocallers, okay, awesome. Actually, a question on that, how many leads does a company need to have in order to justify an SDR? If you're kind of like selling smaller businesses, maybe your lifetime value is 10 to $50,000, you're probably gonna need 800, like for one.


17:10

SDR. 800 leads 800 phone numbers and emails coming in a month that you're just not converting. If your value is a lot higher, say you're in a hundred thousand half a million five million dollar deals and you have interest, well that SDR can spend more time, more energy, more focus on a smaller volume of meetings. But just kind of think standard if it's more of a transactional 10,000 $50,000 type cell, then that's.


17:38

you're gonna want about 800 leads. If you have a much higher value than 400, maybe even 200 if your client value is really high. So if you have any spillage and you think, if I can get one full-time person and their full-time job is to email, follow up, interact with these people to get a sales meeting for my team and I have enough lead flow to keep them busy full-time, then definitely hire an SDR. I think so, if you are running ads.


18:04

you're going to get a lot more out of the dollars that you spend in your advertising if you have an SDR. So keep that in mind, right? You can actually lower your client acquisition cost and boost your conversions by having an SDR in place if you are running ads, if you're doing paid media, keep that in mind as a critical point because that's important. You know what's funny? I'm just gonna throw a comment in here. There's a very well-known AI Robo Calling Company and it's they set people up for AI.


18:32

Robo callers for inbound funnels. But guess what? Do you think they use that for their own company? Do they not? They have real setters on their team because at least at the time of this recording, real setters are just gonna produce better if the processes are set up. If you don't have any processes set up, of course a Robo caller is gonna do a little bit better, but that two second gap at the time of this recording or the one that gap just makes it so, but that was a funny comment. So.


18:58

At the time of this recording, a lot of even the AI color teams are using real setters. So keep that in mind. The bigger revenue ones are, yeah. That's funny. All right, let's go into the end-to-end salesperson or hunter closer. What are some of the pros and cons? So a legit hunter closer, because there's going to be a million hunter closers just, they don't even know, because they don't know anything different. But like,


19:25

Good One is going to already be making a ton of money right now, and you are going to have to steal them away from an opportunity that's already making them a lot of money and convince them to move to your company. Now, how do you do that? Well, if you already have a good hunter-closer on your team, maybe, you know, we have some clients that are, like, they were the founders for hunter-closers, they're still in the cells, and they're, I mean, they're doing a ton of revenue. They're still in that seat, yes. And they're still in it, they're still doing the cells.


19:54

But they brought in other hunter closers to replicate what they were doing. You see, so if you have a hunter closer on your team or you're a founder led sales, which, I mean, when we were at the Inc 5000 event, and you know, the fastest growing private companies in the world, and the biggest company there was like a $12 billion company, and they asked the founders, hey, if you're a founder and you're still part of the sales team and you're still doing sales, stand up. It's like 70% of the room stood up. So that's a good thing.


20:23

If it's a founder that's still doing that and has it down, you bring in somebody else, you can train them, you can groom them, you can replicate them. I don't know if you're allowed to say that word grooming anymore. Sorry. I didn't mean it in the bad way. I mean it like the old way we used to say where you're like a good corporate, but I know that's kind of a bad word now. I didn't mean it the bad way. You're grooming them. But if you can train them, absolutely. If you're willing to invest, it takes a lot of time because you got to make them an expert BDR.


20:53

business filament and then an expert salesperson. Either you steal somebody, you say, hey look, I'm already closing. If you replicate even half of what I'm doing, you're gonna make way more money than the company you're at and the future opportunity of where we're going is this. Awesome, but don't expect to go hire a regular account executive or I'm an Indian salesperson, the last company and of course the resume is gonna look good but it's gonna be very hard to find a true, true hunter-closer. They're already making.


21:20

If they are a good hunter closer, they're already making a lot of money. They are not looking at your job on indeed. The opportunity with your company has to be so much bigger, right? And you have to hunt them. Yes, and they're gonna be asking you like, okay, what are your current close rates? What are your current reps doing? Like you have to have your process so dialed in that they can see the potential of what is possible for them if they follow the specific process. So this is definitely a more sophisticated role.


21:49

if you want somebody really good in the seat. But our goal here with describing some of these pros and cons is for you to make the best informed decision for your company, but also to be wise and smart about not just any end-to-end salesperson can fall the seat and do a really good job. Like there's a lot that will claim they can, but many cannot. So be mindful of that when you are recruiting for this role specifically, because I mean, the standards for success are so high with a really good end-to-end salesperson.


22:19

when you're interviewing a hunter closer and an in-sales person to really know. Hey there, we're going to be coming out with a lot of new content to help you level up in all areas of life and business. Make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you're listening so that you get immediate updates as soon as a new show is released.


22:42

Number one, they are going to be interviewing you. If it's a true hunter-closer, they're going to be interviewing you. Tell me about your company, what's your vision, where are you going, how much money are you making, how much is your current, so how much, what's the average that your team's making right now? But they're gonna be asking you how much your current team is making. The second thing is gonna be, they're already gonna be making a lot of money. Right now they're gonna be making a lot of money. And ask them that, how much are you currently making? Another, and the third question is,


23:12

What's the highest money that, I don't know if it's a third question, but the third point is to ask them the question, what's the highest amount of money you've ever made in a year? Okay, and how long have you been making that much money? So you wanna figure out how much money they're already making, how much money they've been making consistently, what's their comfort level? Because if you're bringing them, say what you would call a $400,000 a year opportunity, and the most that they've ever made is 150 or $200,000.


23:38

Mentally, there might be a really big block for them to actually make that big of a jump. So you need to find somebody that's already been making at least close to you. Doesn't have to be making what you're offering. You need a little bit of an expanding there for them. But they have to have made at least 60, 70% of what your opportunity is gonna be. So your opportunity is that big neck stretch for them, but it's not too much of a stretch that, I've seen people come in that weren't, the most they were making is $10,000 or $11,000 a month.


24:07

They had the skills, but they didn't have the mindset to get to that $20,000. That next level. Yeah, what are some of the cons of hiring an end-to-end salesperson, even just how to think about that role? There's a lot more complexity to, one person has to be an expert at multiple roles. So you're managing one person on all of the BDR things. How many calls did you do? How many out bounds did you do? How many, whatever, you gotta have those numbers.


24:35

and then you gotta be like, what was your success rate on those? Okay, but now you gotta also track all the numbers and their close rate. Okay, so for all the calls that showed up, how many of those went to strategy call, went to strategy development, went to proposal negotiation, went to, you know. So you're managing, one person has to be able to manage a lot. And I'll tell you right now, some of the best salespeople are the best at just more narrow focus. Operational people, a lot of times can be very good at managing multiple things, project managers.


25:05

But to have one person to manage a lot, that person has to have a lot of skill sets and to be able to manage a lot without getting overwhelmed and you have to manage a lot of them. So it can be a lot for a person. Now, if, I will just caveat that with, if these deals are worth a ton and your market's really small, so say you have a very small market, like we've had people reach out to us at Pima that we've turned away because they say there's only about 5,000 people.


25:32

in our entire addressable market, which is their deals are $5 million deals, so that's fine, but in that case, you would want to hunt it closer because they're just so, they're just slowly building those relationships. But if you have a bigger market and you're looking to scale big and fast, by having one person, it just takes too much time and operational resources to get that person trained and managed and equipped, and then guess what happens if they leave? You just lost a setter.


26:00

are a BDR and a closer. Yeah, that's definitely a con is it's a higher risk if the person either doesn't perform or if that person leaves. Because now you're missing two parts of the business, right? Which is why many companies will separate that. They'll have a BDR or an SDR, and then they'll have a closer. So that person is, right, simply focused on disclosing the deals, signing the contracts, and the other person is focused.


26:26

simply on generating leads, I think there is benefits to separating those two. Of course, like you decide what's best for your company, but just keeping that in mind, if you have an end to end sales person, the risk is so much higher. If that person doesn't perform or if they leave, I mean, that's like your whole sales process that's pretty much in that person's hands. And then you just go good to somebody else. And then they leave. So keep that in mind. Think about yourself, like think about yourself when you are narrowly focused.


26:54

on one thing, just imagine that the only thing that you are focused on at your company is just setting meetings. You're gonna get really good at that. You're gonna get really good at setting meetings. And then let's switch that and say, what if your only role at your company, like literally the only role was, you had meetings set up for you, you showed up, you had your calendar full, I got great meetings. My only thing to do at this company is become a master at running discovery call, you know, setting up the proposal, running the deals, running the pipelines.


27:23

You are going to get so much better at that role, so much faster, you're going to be very, very experienced, very fast. So that expertise, if two companies are competing, let's say we have two companies, and they both have four people on the sales team. One person, one company has 400 closers, right? And they're all getting pretty good at both over time. And then I have another team and it's two setters, two BDRs, and two closers.


27:52

That team is going to be growing and getting better at their roles twice as fast, if not more, I think exponentially faster with the narrow focus. It could be three or four times. So that team is going to be getting better faster. They're going to be producing higher set rates, meaning they're gonna be getting more meetings from the activities. And the sales team is gonna be getting more closes from the meetings. So you might be getting twice the meetings, saying four people, four people. The person that is the people that are specialized,


28:20

might be getting twice the meetings, and guess what? Those closers or those account executives that are just focused on selling, they're also might be getting twice the deals from their lead flow. But that's not twice the deals, that's twice the leads and twice the close rates. So now you have four times the output of team one versus team two, right? And guess what? If one BDR leaves, put another BDR in place, do you already have a great BDR in there that can train them up and get them going? Maybe hire two BDRs so you're safe, right?


28:49

but you didn't lose half of your sales team of one person or you didn't lose so much. So I think that's a really good way to think about it. And then it just becomes, it allows your company to have more value than the individual role, right? Because that person's not leaving with the entire end to end process of your company. Yeah, absolutely. As you can see, our bias, I wouldn't say bias, our preference is towards separating the two. We work really well with clients that have that.


29:18

You know, SDR, they're looking for more appointments. And we're going to talk about outbound lead generation in a second. And then they have their closes so that we could just send them the meetings and they close and it works really well like that because of just that partnership. And as you, as Tim is mentioning, it doesn't hinder anything that the company is currently doing and allows them to have those specialized roles. So our tendency and our preference would be towards separating the two. I think it's a safer bit for your business. And then just that specialization, which.


29:48

And if somebody specializes, it's just so hard to match. Yeah, and here's the thing. Yes, we're biased, but we're in this industry because of the belief. We didn't get in this industry and then build a belief around it. I got into the outbound industry because of my belief. I'll give you an example. So when I used to run an SEO company, we were super good. And we did local SEO, I mean, cause I had a car detailing company, we got like 30 calls a day.


30:16

just from our own SEO and then we started doing it for other companies years and years and years ago. And people would always be like, well, why SEO versus something else? I'm like, the reason why I started an SEO business is because it's the best way for a local business to get business. And this is like 2015. So it was like, if you're a top three in SEO and you had good reviews, I mean, you're just flooded. You were just flooded with business. I mean, we're getting 30 calls a day for a little detailing shop. Became the best detailing shop, literally sold the company.


30:42

that business KC Detailing, look it up, it's still in business right now, number one detailing shop in Kansas City. But I would tell people this, I would say, look, if hanging door hangers was the best way to get business, I would own a door hanging company. If putting flyers on cars was the best way for your local business to get business, I would own a flyer on cars business. So it wasn't like the activity that we're biased on, it's because


31:09

It is the best road that we became the experts in this road. And so that that's why our bias is this is because we believed that it was the best pass for B2B to scale and to grow. Therefore, we developed and became the best in the outbound industry and separating the setter closer. But it's not just us. You know, can't can't a company grow on scale with 100 closers? Absolutely. Is there some great big companies? Absolutely. Fantastic. Can you do both?


31:34

Absolutely. Right. If you have a great hunter closer team, there's people that hunter closer teams that come to us and they say, hey, just bring our hunter closers more deals. And they start to transition more with their hunter closers are doing more closing and we're doing more of the setting for them. So both can work. But that's why we're biased towards it is because we believe it is the most efficient path to scale a business. And we've seen it. And you can look at a lot of billion dollar companies and see the exact same thing. Let's talk about.


32:01

outsourcing lead generation. What are some of those pros and cons and how companies should be thinking about this piece as it fits in with some of those other roles? So this is kind of like, think about the SDR, you said if you already are the BDR, if you already have a great lead process, a BDR is great because they're just, you bring a BDR in and they just replicate what you're already doing. So when I think about outsourcing lead generation, this would be great if and only if you have a great.


32:28

Sales process so if your sales process is dialed in your sales team is dialed in your account executives They're already closing you literally just hey if you give me more meetings Like you're already closing not from referrals not from word of mouth not from inbounds But you're closing reach out and you're closing those and you have a sales process Outsourcing to the right kind of company is like throwing fuel in a fire But I will caveat that with if you don't have a good sales process


32:55

a lead generation company is not going to fix that. Yes. You're just going to be scaling something that doesn't work yet. And so you got to get that process of of getting outbound or or non inbound or non network or referral meetings to actually convert. And once you have that sales process in place, yeah, it's awesome. Throwing fuel on a fire. I think a pro is think about it for your clients, right? If you're listening to this.


33:18

people come to you because you are the expert for a certain thing and you're serving your clients with that expertise. It's the same when outsourcing your lead generation, when you partner with the right company, the right partner. It's essentially like you're tapping into their expertise for your appointment setting, for your sales needs pretty much. And they're that great partner where they can just throw you the leads and your team can essentially just close them.


33:42

They take care of a lot of the vetting, the qualifying, making sure that it's the right fit for you. And then of course, the cons are that there are a lot of bad lead generation companies out there. I think it's one of the- Mostly bad. Mostly bad, correct. Most of them are really bad. Correct. Our industry is notorious for over-promising and under-delivering. So you're thinking about a lead generation partner, you have to vet, vet, vet.


34:10

as much as you can upfront because just think about the majority of lead generation companies will over promise and under deliver. Many of them will not be able to sustain the flexibility, the scalability in your process. So keep that in mind as well as a con is that just the industry is notorious for over promising and under delivery. One thing I will say on that though is a lot of people that have been in quote unquote burns. Yes, there's a lot about it. I mean, we've, we've been, we've worked with over a thousand clients.


34:38

I've probably been on 10,000 sales calls. I've seen and heard it all, like a million horse stories. There's more money to make in lead generation than any other industry. Well, maybe there's other industries, but you know what I'm saying? Every business needs more customers and lead generation helps. Every business needs more leads. More leads, more customers, right? But most companies go to a lead generation company, hire them to get meetings when they don't have their own sales process.


35:07

So there is a mix of a lot of bad lead companies. They don't know how to get the meetings. They don't even know how to get the right type of meetings. We hear that all the time. But then there's also, if you're not already dialed in sales process, do not be outsourcing this. Yes. Until that process dialed in. But yeah, I would say everybody needs more leads for their business to grow. So of course there's a million people trying to make money. I mean, there's freaking courses on it. Hey, in 90 days, we'll teach you to become an expert lead generator.


35:37

and charge other people. So you have a whole industry that's making money off of simply selling information products or courses or coaching programs to complete like non-expert people that are in 90 days being taught how to sell companies. Here's how to become a lead generation expert and sell companies that you're the best. So essentially these 90 day programs teach you how to sell your services really well. But the delivery is not very good because you know what?


36:05

If a company could truly deliver exceptional lead generation, there's so much money to make in the execution and delivery, they wouldn't be selling courses on how to become a lead generation expert. In 90 days. In 90 days, right? Because there's way more money to make in the execution of it than just training people how to do it. So you have the blind leading the blind, as it were. You have people that are maybe okay, they got a little bit good at it, and now they're training people that aren't good at it at all, and they're going out and you have a whole market flooded with people trying to capitalize.


36:34

on making money in the lead generation space because there's just simply more money to make in this space than there is a lot of other spaces. So that's why that's the two sides of the coin though. It could be both of those. For sure. And if you are deciding that you want to hire a lead generation agency, but you don't have your sales process fully dialed in, you can do it. It's just about knowing that you are going to spend money to test. So essentially the money that you are paying that lead generation agency to send you leads.


37:03

you are essentially paying to test your sales process. So you may convert leads in that first month, you may convert leads in two months, but a lot of times it's gonna be six months to a year, because essentially what your business is doing is refining and creating a process around how do we take these leads that the Legion agency has sent us and how do we convert them into closed deals. Right, and that it can be a cycle. We've worked with some clients where it takes them six months just to nail in their sales process.


37:32

with an outbound lead generation partner. So it's okay if you decide, hey, this is the route that I wanna take for my business. I wanna keep just having a closer on our team and I wanna outsource lead generation. If you don't have that process fully dialed in yet, it's okay, just know that you are going to spend the money to test and to develop that sales process with your lead gen partner. One thing on that too is, like we've had people that are, they're doing 30, 40 million.


37:59

It was built all on just word of mouth networks. They just have a very high premium product. They get a lot of referrals. Maybe they're working for Google and then just department to department, they're getting referred from department to department or these big companies. And then they have very sizable revenue companies. So they have the money. They can afford to make that investment for the long term, but they don't have that, how do I go out and get new business, get new companies to grow and expand within?


38:28

And so those are some of the companies that we've worked with, and we set very clear expectations. Hey, it might take you six months to dial in your sales process. You're not gonna ROI. You're not gonna ROI quick. But they get it. They understand. And so the only time that a Pima will take a client on is if it's underneath very clear expectations. Like we're gonna get you the right meetings, but these are gonna be very different. There's not gonna be that trust in that you're not gonna be able to say, hey, I'm working with Bob over in X department. And he calls Bob and goes, yeah, they're doing great. Like that's not how it works. You're gonna be.


38:56

developing in a sales process. And I mean, if you're selling a higher value product, you know, if it's $100,000, a million, $5 million, it might take you six or 12 months to dial in that sales process. And that's if you're hiring an expert, you know, that's going to help train you on that process. It might take you a long time. And if you're okay with that, then absolutely do it, because there's no faster way to get that down, as if somebody's already taken care of the leads while you're dialing in the sales process. But I think a mistake people make, even very big successful companies,


39:25

is they think that just getting the leads is gonna give them more of what they already have, which is inbounds, referrals, warm. They're talking on stages and people are giving them business, but it's not gonna give you more. It's gonna give you more of something else that you're gonna have to dial in. Let's talk about how companies can make the right choice. So if you're listening to this, you're like, okay, I understand the difference between the BDR, the SDR, end-to-end salesperson, hunter-closer,


39:55

How do I now know which one to go for? What are some of those things that people need to keep in mind? Let's talk through those. If you have a dialed in lead process to get meetings that's outbound, and you can get a BDR to just do more of what you're already doing, get some BDRs, right? Absolutely. If you have a lot of lead flow coming into your business, at least 800, or if your clients are worth a lot more, maybe two or 400, if you're very, very high value clients, get an SDR.


40:25

to develop the lead flow you already have to make sure there's very little spillage, right? If you already have a team of hunter and closers and you can attract and you already have a network where you can go get high producing hunter closers, get a hunter closer. And then if you already have a proven sales process where you're just looking to throw fuel on the fire, outsource your legion. And if you have all of these, you can essentially do all of them.


40:53

I think the best thing to do is if you already have a really good BDR process and you have a really good sales team and those are separated already, scale the BDRs, scale your sales team and outsource. So it just depends on where you're at, how much capital you have to be able to do more than one thing at a time, how much human capital and financial capital you have to do more than one time. So it really just depends on the sophistication of where you're at as a company. I would say 100% if you don't have the lead thing figured out or the sales thing figured


41:24

Like it's mostly just been referrals and word of mouth. If your revenue is lower, you just gotta figure that out. I mean like we said at the Inc 5000 event, fastest growing private companies in the world, too many dollars is the smallest company, 12 billion is the biggest and everything in between. How many founders are still doing sales? 70% of the room stands up, right? So if you're a smaller business, just be okay with like, you don't think Jeff Bezos is in the room with the biggest deals, right? So I think be okay with that. If you're...


41:51

already doing a lot of revenue, but you don't have some of those developed out because the reasons we talked about, like you're getting really good referrals, department to department, and you're just growing like crazy. Invest. Invest in experts to help and really good companies to help you dial in both those pieces, both the Legion and the Celves. And then if you already have your sales process dialed in, but you don't want to build out an internal BDR, SDR team outsource. Yeah. So I think it depends on your company's stage of growth. Where is your company right now?


42:20

Right? Are you at a place where you want to scale to that next level? Are you at a place where you really need to just build in your internal processes? Are you at a place where you're just like trying to get to that next level and having an outtos partner just makes sense, figure out where you are in your stage of growth. Um, and then also thinking about like the lifetime value of your clients. Right? If your average deal size is a lot lower, you might consider just keeping it in house and really building up your process so that you can get more value for your current team.


42:48

If you have a larger average deal size or lifetime value of your clients, you can consider some of these outsourced partners because you can essentially spend more to acquire a client. Well, we're qualifying if a customer is a good fit for us. One of the things we ask is what's your lifetime value? Because if somebody's like, oh, you know, I'm selling a $20,000 program, we're probably not a fit. You know, if I'm selling a $10,000, I'm probably not a fit. Oh, if a company tells me their clients are worth at least 50 or 100,000.


43:15

Okay, we're now a fit because there's enough margin there for us to work together as a team and just to scale the company, you know? So I think that's another good point is if you're trying to, I see that had this happen all the time when people are looking to outsource or build an internal team, is their lifetime value of their customer is so low, their margins are still raised or thin that they're just trying to find the cheapest of every solution, which is.


43:41

Generally when we hear, now I've tried three lead generation companies, oh what did you spend on them? Oh they're $1,000 each, they're $5,000 a month. They're like, well what were you expecting from that? So it's like they have a Toyota budget and they're expecting Ferrari results. So I think one of the first things, if your lifetime value is low, is you need to step back and go, hey how can I get the lifetime value of my company, or my client higher? Because when you have a really high lifetime value,


44:09

you can spend a lot more money to acquire a client. You have, there's a lot more grace in your expenses to do that for sure. So those were some of the things to think about as you are considering outsourcing, potentially hiring a BDR, SDR, end-to-end salesperson for your business. Keep some of these things in mind so that you know, depending on your stage of growth, where your company is at and your average lifetime value, as well as a lot of the things that we discussed in this episode.


44:37

Keep those in mind to determine what is best for your business as you are scaling out your sales team. Maybe you are in the marketing and sales space and you need a department. These are some great things and tips to keep in mind as you are growing and scaling. We hope that this episode was helpful. And of course, we always say domination is not a destination. It's a way of life. Stay winning.