Last updated
February 3, 2024

Top 11 Tools You Should Use To Empower Your SDR (sales development representatives) Team

We’re all very much aware of the fact that having a strong outbound engine owned by stellar SDR team is paramount to the success of every B2B SaaS company nowadays, but what are the tools that your SDR team should be using and how those will help them feel empowered, grow their career path, and help your company exceed quotas on a regular basis?

Today we’ll demonstrate what TOP tools your SDR team should be using, what areas on your team you should be always looking to improve, and why it is so important to keep your SDR team morale high especially in times of uncertainty.

Unlike other teams within the wider organization, your SDR team are the ones who are on the frontline, they are the real fighters that are not afraid to roll up their sleeves and get the job done.

They spend hours trying to reach out to your ideal customers, via email, phone, DM’s on LInkedIn/Twitter, and in some occasions even via mail post, video messages, and live chat on your website.

But the most important thing on their list should be: How to create meaningful, long lasting, and genuine relationships with your ideal customers and not just how they book more meetings for the sales team.

With that in mind, let’s take a deep dive into what tools your SDR team should be using and how those will help you hit revenue goals faster and better.

Empowering your SDR team is a work in progress

It is for sure a work in progress, simply since each has different skills, they come from a different background, and their ramping time varies from one to another.

So, how do you keep empowering your SDR team? What are the things you should do to make sure everyone on the team is fully onboarded and aligned with the team goals and business goals?

Stellar onboarding process

The success of your SDR team members starts with a stellar onboarding process.
The better and more personalized and tailored to their goals the process will be the more success they will have and will also experience a shorter than usual ramping time.

So, how should you go about this?

Try creating an onboarding doc with clear guidelines, tasks to focus on in their first few days, people they should meet, systems they should get to know, and of course the Sales person / Account manager they will be working with moving forward.

Shadowing superstars

This might be the most crucial factor when onboarding and developing your next SDR superstars. As a leader you must make sure they have what is also known as a ‘Buddy’ a successful team member that they can consult with, ask questions, inherit their best processes, and most importantly – learning from!

By having someone they can have conversations with, learn from their experience and mirror in a way, their road to success will be much faster, and your work as a leader will be much more productive and appreciated by both the upper management and your team.

Tech stack workshop

Having your new SDR hire aligned on all the different tech stacks you’re using in your organization is a MUST HAVE. but what will be the best way to go about that?
Workshop, yeah that’s right!
Make it a habit, once a month gather all tech leaders from both your team and other teams like Marketing Ops, Sales Ops, and Revenue Ops to discuss the different tools you guys are using at your organization, share best practices, and define what’s the best way to insure the digital adoption for them.

Key areas to improve on your SDR team

Each SDR team has its strengths and weaknesses, but what we have found after years of working with many B2B SaaS companies is that there are some common things that are considered as weaknesses for all SDR teams.

Research

This one might be the most painful area when it comes to SDR teams, simply since if they’re not conducting a thorough research about your ICPs and are not personalizing their message and specifically tailor it to the person they reach out to, their success rate will be much lower.

As a leader, you must make sure that your SDR team is following a standard process when it comes to how they do the research before reaching out to prospects, a generic message won’t work, it never did actually!

Personalization at scale

Personalization is the second most common challenge many SDR teams are facing.

Of course, there are many tools that can help you get personalized with your outreach, but there’s a limit for that too.
Conducting the research, put a bit more effort about what’s most painful to your ICP, and show them that you really made an effort to study their brand, their pains, and personal career path will help you stand out from the competition and get more response, even if it’s a NO, at least you’re not being ghosted!

Variety of outreach channels

The third challenge for SDR teams but a very important one, is how well they’re utilizing the different communication channels they have available.
Be it video, social platforms, sales engagement platform, live chat, email, or instant messaging channels like WhatsApp or Messenger your SDR team should know where your prospects lives and what is their preferred channel to communicate.

First touch creativity

The first touch is the most critical one when it comes to SDR outreach, it is the ONLY chance you get to impress the person on the other side, but what’s more? The person on the other side probably never heard about you or your company, that’s what makes it even harder to get their attention and even more to get a proper response. That being said, being creative with your message, showing you conducted a thorough research, picked the right channel, and personalized your message – these are the things that will help you stand out from the competition, get more responses, and exceed your quotas on a regular basis.

Product knowledge

We often hear that SDRs could not answer product or technical questions and that this makes the buyers feel frustrated and to lose interest in the company’s offer.

How can you improve that?

Ask your SDRs to attend the company’s product sessions, ask them to join the product channel on Slack to get relevant updates, ask them to carefully read the monthly company newsletter, and most important ask them to listen to Customer Success calls, where they can find true pains and realize how those are being treated.

Top tools you should use to empower your SDR team

Now that we have a better understanding on what are the common challenges SDR teams are facing and how to tackle those, let’s find out what are the TOP tools your SDR team should be using and why?

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

To kick off this list we decided to showcase why the LInkedIn sales navigator is probably one of the most important tools for your SDR team.


LinkedIn Sales Navigator is one of the most popular tools and can help your SDR team find a ton of qualified leads and research based on certain filtering like: company name, role, company size, and many other filters that can really help your SDRs find and target the right people.

Vidyard

Video is all over and it’s growing massively. Vidyard is probably the most popular video tool for virtual selling. Your SDRs can easily record and send videos that add a personal touch at all stages of the sales cycle–from prospecting to proposals. And by utilizing the power of Vidyard they can get more responses, book more calls, and hit their quotas on a regular basis.

SalesLoft

Salesloft is a popular sales engagement platform that lets your SDRs quickly follow up on prospects via email, build their own personalized email cadences, and make sure that no opportunity to engage with relevant prospects is missed.

Outreach

Another Sales Engagement Platform, just like Salesloft but with some different features.

Outreach helps SDR teams manage their workflows, gain actionable insights, and navigate the increasingly complex buying process all in real-time.

SimilarWeb

We all know that SimilarWeb is mainly used by Marketers to gain competitors insights and evaluate different market opportunities, But here’s how SDRs should use it to gain competitive advantage in their space:

Your SDRs can see your prospects top traffic sources, broken down into six major categories, including referring sites, social traffic, and top search keywords, so in case you’re selling any tool that can help them your SDRs can use this data to perfectly pitch your prospects with your solutions.

G2 Buyer Intent

Nothing’s better than having real time insights from G2 software comparison website about how to compare your product and when. That way your SDR team can stay relevant and on point when reaching out to prospects who are more likely to buy your product since they already look for it!

With G2 Buyer intent you can easily set up real-time alerts and build holistic programs to drive pipeline and help your SDR team engage at the right time.

Lusha

Lusha is the ultimate tool for SDR prospecting and getting real business data about specific prospects, companies, and much more!

With Lusha’s powerful data enrichment tool your SDR team can easily find contact details, such as email addresses and phone numbers. With the Lusha Chrome extension, they will be able to find contact information through social network profiles, mostly LInkedIn.

ZoomInfo

ZoomInfo is used by SDR teams to optimize their lead generation efforts by providing them access to a vast business contact database and numerous sales intelligence and prospecting tools.

Drift

“Drift Bot” works as a concierge for your company when users arrive at your company’s website. Its goal is to make sure these people are routed to the right person in case their request is too complex for the Bot to handle. It will be routed to the next available SDR and provide a personalized and more human experience in real-time!

Chili Piper

Chili Piper helps SDR teams automatically schedule appointments with leads coming from your website. Instantly turn inbound leads into qualified meetings, and make everyone’s life much easier – both the prospect who doesn’t need to go through so many touch points till they schedule the call and the SDR that don’t need to send multiple emails and ask for the meeting to be scheduled.

Aircall

Aircall is the cloud-based call center and phone system used by thousands of SDR teams across the globe. Their voice platform integrates seamlessly with popular productivity and helpdesk tools. Aircall was built to make phone communication easy to manage – accessible, transparent, and collaborative.

Find the potential for career growth

Every SDR team member comes from a different background and are always looking to grow their career, and they are usually looking to develop their career being Account Executives, Sales Professionals, or in some other cases Marketing Managers.

Your continuous work will be to make sure they are following their desired career path and always have clarity when it comes to what’s up for them next.

The median tenure for SDR role is 1.4 yrs, a very short time frame if you ask anyone in Marketing or Sales where the median tenure is around 3 yrs time.

Since the SDR median tenure is so short your job is to make sure that if you spot the potential in them for other positions within the company is to encourage them to know that and always keep this conversation alive so they will also have something to expect and grow their career within the company.

Under the hood

As the SDR role keeps evolving with time we also hear many industry leaders talking about the fact that this crucial role might come to an end and that SDRs will no longer be needed as the era of scheduling and automated tools is already here.

However, having a strong SDR team is still the number one growth lever for any B2B SaaS company out there and will probably still be in the next few years.

The importance of having a strong SDR team is not in question, but the main challenge many B2B SaaS companies are facing is how to maintain the strong momentum and always find creative ways to empower their teams.

We’re hoping that this piece has brought some clarity for your as a leader in the SDR space and that you got more ideas on which tools you should be using to empower your team.