Key Coaching and Enablement Strategies for Up-leveling Sales Development Reps

Insights from Anaplan's VP of Sales Development Sadie Beckius

The biggest challenges most companies face are people problems. Top performing ICs are promoted into management roles, but lack the skills to turn their own excellence into a force multiplier.

Why? learning how to coach and enable teams is hard. People have different levels of excitement, different skills, different personal experiences.

Gaps in leadership prevent effective feedback and the hard conversations that it takes to grow a team.

Will Falkenborg (Champify's SDR Lead) recently sat down with Sadie Beckius, VP of Sales Development at Anaplan to ask: how do you coach your sdr team to build a world class.

What Sadie is doing is working. In addition to building rich career paths for her team, has promoted over 10% of her 300+ into manager roles, and is already pacing towards a record breaking year in one of the toughest environments for outbound teams ever.

Here's her advice on building and growing a world class Sales Development team:

• Prioritize authenticity in sales interactions
• Adopt a situational leadership approach to tailor your management style
• Focus on continuous skill development across various areas

Building a coachable sales development team

Sadie outlined the three qualifications that ideal candidates possess: Perseverance, Composure, and Adaptability. Hard skills and competencies are essential, but these traits set top performers apart. You also have to know your tangible requirements - skills like time management. (Get more tips on hiring for strong prospectors here).

Implementing the Situational Leadership: an framework for identifying different coaching tactics for your SDR team

Beckius strongly advocated for the situational leadership framework in hiring, development, and coaching. So many mistakes in communication and growth occur because you and your team are not on the same page, not speaking the same language. When it comes to the situational leadership framework for coaching, he explained:

"This model aligns team perspectives and fosters effective communication. It's crucial to establish a common language within the team to avoid misalignment."

Beckius outlined a four-level approach (D1-D4) to skill development within the situational leadership framework. She noted there are two critical factors to identify your starting point for enablement: competency and commitment, and don't sleep on commitment: "Individual commitment and drive are critical factors in achieving proficiency in any given area."

The four levels are: 

• D1 - Low competence, high commitment
• D2 - Low competence, low commitment
• D3 - High competence, variable/low commitment
• D4 - High competence, High commitment

The Skill/Will Coaching Framework

Another framework to level set  conversations is the skill/will framework. These both start the conversation so both you and your sales development rep start an enablement conversation from the same starting point.

Once you've identified the correct level for your SDRs you can apply a different leadership approach in your coaching. For each situation (which is likely different for different skills) you then can identify whether you need to be Directive - how detailed you are in your instructions and Supportive - continuous check-ins to monitor progress.

• D1 - High directive, low supportive
• D2 - High directive, high supportive
• D3 - Low directive, high supportive
• D4 - Low directive, low supportive

Tips on applying the skill/will coaching framework

Tip 1: High Skill / High Will should be your best reps. Rather than spending your time with the bottom/middle of the pack -- figure out how to get more output from these people (biggest upside).

‍Tip 2: Spending time with High Will / Low Skill reps is almost always a good use of time.

‍Tip 3: If someone is in Low Skill / Low Will and not showing signs of changing quickly -- you likely have a hard decision to make. Act on this and faster than feels humanly comfortable.

Enabling your SDR team on a concrete skill like time management

Boosting rep productivity hinges on understanding individual skill levels and providing targeted support.  If you're focused on enabling your team on a tangible skill like time management you should start by

1. Assess each rep's current abilities
2. Align tasks with skill levels
3. Offer direct, personalized guidance

Here's an example of what different enablement strategies might look like. Sadie walks us through different coach exercises she might do depending on her sales development rep's current level

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Effective Enablement and Coaching Strategies for Managers

Once you have a framework, you still have to provide enablement. Beckius advises teams to break down enablement into bite-sized, sub 30-minute sessions to foster actionable habits. Shorter attention spans, remote work, and often entry-level employees doesn't mesh well with long one-time enablement sessions. Instead, focus on:

• Delivering digestible information
• Promoting behavior change
• Continuous learning

Five micro-sessions in one week is oven more effective than mastering multiple skills in one one hour long enablement session. She's not the only one who feels this way. Steve Traveglini, founder at Winrate and former CRO of Linksquares shares his approach to microsessions: "We'd focus on cold call openers or cold email openers...We'd teach them how to develop that skill of being able to write custom copy from scratch that has taste and style, which I still think has an edge over some of the AI stuff today... We would hand the reigns to a different person each time so it's not just the same broken record, same person every single time."

Scaling this kind of enablement can be hard. Some advice here includes - having level based enablement sessions, using technology to make sure people are attentive and learning by watching peoples faces instead of slides, and spend your time coaching session to the D1 to bring everyone along for the ride.

Sales development leaders often need to be "the CEO and CRO of an organization- the chief reminding officer and the chief execution officer"

Wrapping Up

By combining tailored coaching with effective enablement strategies, SDR teams can unlock their full potential. Implementing these approaches ensures that sales development reps are both supported and empowered to excel in today’s competitive sales landscape. Remember:

• Tailor your coaching based on each reps current situation
• Foster continuous learning
• Empower all team members

You don't have to have a manager title to be a leader.

And for more tips on building a building an outbound culture check out our guide with tips from leaders at Miro, Gong, Orum, and Harness here.