We are neck deep writing the 2014 edition of our BDR / SDR metrics and compensation report. This year we had 200+ valid responses and roughly 160 of those shared compensation data. A huge thank you to all who participated! 

Since 2007, we've reported SDR compensation as a national average. Every year, you've asked for more specifics (how about our region, our price point, our hiring profile, etc.).

Well, I finally have something to share.

This year, we isolated 6 variables that impact compensation. The result is our new BDR Compensation Calculator. See a sample 'output' below.

 
My friend and sales trainer extraordinaire, John Barrows, has a great line:

Wow. There’s an obvious problem here.

Companies need a pipeline of sales candidates; while many Universities are producing graduates who’ve never seen the word ‘sales’ on the curriculum. Full disclosure: my degree in 19^th century Russian literature left me unprepared for Day 1 at my first sales job.

Moving towards a solution

I recently met David McFarlane with the Entrepreneurship Center at UMass Boston. David has 25+ years in B2B with time as VP, Alliances, COO and most recently co-founder and CEO. He now serves as Director and Entrepreneur in Residence for the EC.

We had a good chat about ‘the state of sales education’ and David shared two ways that UMass Boston is addressing the problem.

 
Continuing our annual tradition, I've rounded up the very best of our writing and thinking from the past 12 months. So with a big thank you to our readers, new and old, here's the best of what we shared in 2013.

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A couple of emails hit my inbox last week back-to-back.

The first was from Glassdoor, Best Places to Work 2014, announcing their 6th annual employee choice awards. The second was from Craig Ferrara of AG Salesworks, 7 Things I Want My Inside Sales Team To Know For 2014.

Now, I love Glassdoor. It's the best way to get the inside dish on the Pros and Cons of working at a given company. So I wondered, what if I grabbed a bunch of those reviews and compared them to Craig’s list?

Experiment time!

Here is the process I used:

• Logged into Glassdoor and picked out the B2B tech companies from the Top 50
• Drilled into Sales reviews only (inside, AEs, SDRs, etc.)
• Exported the most recent 100 reviews

I got busy parsing and found something pretty interesting.