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The Sales Development Playbook - A Book About Building Better Inside Sales Teams

The Sales Development Playbook Review

Book Description:

Raise your hand if your company needs more new customers.

I suspect your hand is (figuratively) up. This book is about not just growth, but high-growth, explosive-growth, the kind of growth that weather satellites can see from space. The success of any business-to-business company is directly linked to how effectively they acquire new pipeline. To skyrocket growth, sales development is the answer.

This book encapsulates author Trish Bertuzzi’s three decades of practical, hands-on experience. It presents six elements for building new pipeline and accelerating revenue growth with inside sales.

  1. Strategy offers a framework for aligning your sales development model with your specific market and buyer's journey.
  2. Specialization presents stories of new thinking. You'll learn about segmenting your prospect universe, specializing roles, and how it all comes together.
  3. Recruiting offers a roadmap for hiring with urgency. Tactics, compensation, and a bullet-proof hiring process are presented in great detail.
  4. Retention goes deep on the stuff that never seems to get enough consideration: engaging, developing, and motivating people. 
  5. Execution switches gears and presents examples and tactics for onboarding, crafting buyer-based messaging, and designing effective outreach cadence.
  6. And, finally, Leadership, gives actionable advice on what it takes to lead sales development today. There's a lot to learn about quota setting, measuring what matters, and acceleration technologies, so those are covered in depth.
As Ken Krogue (President of InsideSales.com) writes in the Foreword, “This is the playbook for how to succeed today. After reading this book, I know it will help you succeed, help your company grow, and change our industry.”

My Top Takeaways:

  • Many organizations, because of the need for a better salesforce with so many consumers making decisions online prior to their first conversation with a sales rep, would benefit from moving away from BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) and towards PACT (Pain, Authority, Consequence, Target Profile).
  • More and more successful organizations are transitioning from full-cycle BDRs (Business Development Representative) to teams with AEs (Account Executive) who specialize in closing and growing business and SDRs (Sales Development Representative) who are dedicated to prospecting and setting sales meetings.
  • SDRs need to be assigned as inbound and outbound instead of allowing everyone to work with both types of leads. When SDRs begin to receive inbound leads they are much less likely to go after the more difficult outbound prospects.
  • Sales organizations need to understand and be built around their ICP (Ideal Customer Profile). Potential prospects fall into one of four categories, easily understood using the ABCD tiers. A-Listers who are dream clients that could make your quarter, Bread & Butter who represent your sweet spot and should represent the majority of your efforts, Compelling Events who didn't use to be ideal but recently had a major change that shook up their priorities to align better with your ICP, and Dead Ends who may need your product/service but for some reason just refuse to buy.
  • When planning hiring needs it's important to understand that a typical SDR can handle between 200 and 300 leads a month when fully trained. 
  • Consider hiring or assigning someone to be a Lead Researcher. They are responsible for ensuring SDRs are working with good data. Having correct titles, email addresses, phone numbers, etc. can significantly improve their productivity. They can also keep an eye out for compelling events that might make prospects worth reaching out to and help build lists for RDRs to work from.
  • Hiring A-Players is one of the most important elements of growing a successful business. If you don't have time, find it. This is NOT something that can be pushed to the side and needs to be treated with urgency. Consider hiring in groups to simplify the process.
  • Write better job descriptions. You need to sell the sizzle and be less focused on the steak. If your job posting is boring, redundant, looks like everyone else's, or is overly wordy you are unlikely to attract top talent.
  • Don't overlook Glassdoor. Job candidates ofter check Glassdoor, and if it's boring or negative they are significantly less likely to accept your office. Make sure your profile is complete, you have plenty of pictures, and of course, you have plenty of solid reviews.
    • Kennected, where I serve as the Chief Revenue Officer, is a startup with around 100 employees and Glassdoor has helped bring in multiple stars to our organization that wouldn't have given us a second look otherwise. We include a link to our Glassdoor profile in all of our job postings (View HERE).
  • From application to offer letter should take 10 days or less. If your process takes too long you will lose good people.
  • People are looking for organizations where they can find career progression and promote based on achievement instead of tenure.

'The 52 Book' Review Rating:

Final Thoughts:

The Sales Development Playbook is packed full of helpful insights, examples, strategies, and ideas for growing your inside sales team. Trish Bertuzzi covers hiring, training, management, compensation, promotions, and everything in-between. There's a reason so many hard-hitters have praised this book, including Mark Roberge (HubSpot CRO), Kyle Porter (SalesLoft CEO), and Bob Perkins (Founder and Chairman of AA-ISP).

At Kennected, we made immediate improvements based on what we learned while reading The Sales Development Playbook. Some of the changes were small, like uploading more pictures to our Glassdoor profile, while others were as far-reaching as changing our hiring process and making our SDR team specialized for inbound vs outbound focus. We even went back and gave our job postings an immediate facelift based on insights she shared.

So with that level of praise, why did I rate it as Highly Recommended instead of Life-Changing? One simple reason - The Sales Acceleration Formula by Mark Roberge (Review available HERE). The Sales Development Playbook is one of the top books I've read about building and managing a successful sales organization, but if you are only going to read one book (which is crazy talk) then I strongly suggest picking up The Sales Acceleration Formula instead.

It's important to note that this book was written in 2016 and while her prospecting suggestions were great five years ago they are a little outdated today. If you want more timely prospecting insights I recommend checking out either the Kennected Blog, Sandler Blog, or following a respected sales leader on LinkedIn.

Have you read The Sales Development Playbook, and if so, what are your thoughts? 

Do you love learning and want to hear about future books?

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Also, I am always on the prowl for my next great book. What life-changing books have you read recently? I'm excited to see your comments below.


You can reach out to David Inman at: david@kennected.io 
You can also connect with him on LinkedIn at: 
Location: Indianapolis, IN, USA

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