Sales

“IF” – Simple Criteria for SDRs to Pre-Qualify Meetings for Your Account Executives

An SDR (Sales Development Rep, the junior sales role whose job is to help set up meetings/calls for the $ARR quota-carrying reps) – aka BDR – needs to decide if the lead can qualify as a good first call for an AE (Account Executive, the quota-carrying sales rep). This is important because you don’t want to schedule unqualified meetings or have too many meetings that are not good because this wastes a lot of very limited and costly time.

Several years ago, I came up with what I think as a very simple and highly applicable criteria called “IF”. Basically, if you run a sales team, you want to ensure your SDRs know “IF” a prospect truly qualifies to go forward and be passed on to an AE.

Do you know IF this is a good meeting (sometimes you may refer to these as a “Demo” call) for an AE?

  • Interest
    • Do they have interest in learning more?
    • Are they curious about what we have to offer?
    • Is the interest to get to a “Go Live” date with a solution in the next 60-90 days ?
  • Fit
    • Is it a right Ideal Company Profile?
      • Company Size
    • Is it a right Target Buyer Persona?
      • Title
      • Role

That’s it. I’d say this simple IF would work for 80% of B2B SaaS companies who have an SDR/BDR model that helps scheduled meetings for AEs.

Note 1:  If you just want as many meetings as possible, maybe you will take anyone regardless of the fit.  But the problem is that this will be a very high cost (in turn, high CAC) and AEs will waste a lot of time.  At the very least you should have this basic criteria.

Note 2: If you want a more strict way of qualifying because you have too many leads and too many calls for AEs and your pipeline is filled to the brim, then you can add a P to IF and make it PIF.  This means you would only pass and schedule these calls to AEs only if you qualify that there is Pain (P) as well as Interest (I) in continuing to learn about your solution, and a Fit (F) as an account and a decision making or at least a prospect who is an influencer.  In that case your qualification is “PIF”.

What else? How is your SDR team qualifying your prospects before they pass them on and schedule the sales call for AEs?