What a year April 2020 was.

Record breaking unemployment news, record setting fiscal and monetary reaction, positive (?), and ever-changing epidemiological models make it hard to trust the ground underfoot.

We wanted to quantify the evolving impact on the B2B tech space so together with RevOps Squared, we surveyed 110+ revenue leaders. We asked:

• What actions they have already taken
• Future actions they are considering
  and
• Their outlook for the remainder of calendar 2020
   

Finding 1: Roughly 30% of leaders report reducing the number of AEs

(Note this data is as of April 24^th) The median reduction was 40% - a huge number! A further 35% report concern over possible future reductions.

I think I’m starting to understand why the phrase “may you live in interesting times” is considered a curse. 

A global health crisis, an unscripted pivot to work from home, and an accompanying economic fallout--times are certainly interesting.

If you’re like me, you're keenly interested in what this all means for outbound prospecting today and tomorrow. One of the best sources of real-time data is Chris Beall, CEO of conversations on demand company ConnectAndSell. He is (and has been for years) sharing data on dials, conversations, and meetings.

Earlier this week, he shared their “top couple hundred customers' results since mid-Feb 2020.” I’ve taken the liberty of charting out the data.

Conversation to Booked Meeting Rate

Over the past 4 days, I’ve seen a lot of amazing work from home content from the broader Sales community. I particularly want to call out GitLabs Guide to All-Remote, this post from Laura Guerra (ringDNA Sales Director), and Matt Heinz’s how to work from home (when your kids are there too).

We wanted to share a few thoughts targeted to the SDR leadership community. Note: this isn’t an all or nothing platform - you take pieces and leave others as you see fit. 

Steps you can take over the next 20 days for SDR teams working remotely
 

Step 0- close your office.
If you have not, please do it now. Social distancing is highly effective at flattening the curve. If you have 25+ people in a room and/or a large number of your reps take public transit to work, closing your office will have a huge impact on flattening the curve of infection.
 

Step0(b)- take a moment to appraise where we are….and breathe.
We’re in uncharted waters here. Many on LinkedIn are treating the situation as if a bunch of companies, by sheer coincidence, decided to adopt work from home - with little to no planning. This is a public health crisis combined with a supply-side and demand-side shock. It doesn’t seem likely that, in the near term, work will be “like before, but at home.” 

Don't forget to be kind to yourself. Sales leadership is a hard job in the best of times. Take care of yourself, your team, your family, and your community.
 

I like to spend time on the r/Sales sub over on Reddit. It gives an unfiltered and anonymous perspective on what future, current, and past SDRs are asking and advising.

Questions around compensation and timing of the Entry-level SDR to Enterprise AE path are common. So I  reviewed 236 LinkedIn profiles of current Enterprise Account Executives that also contained a stint in Sales Development.

What does the path look like?

There are as many paths to an Enterprise AE role as they are routes into Sales itself. Let’s be honest, very few kindergartners express a desire to carry an enterprise bag someday. I noted many profiles dipped in and out of the straight line career path. This includes stints as:

• SDR Team Leads
• Channel Sales Reps
• VP/Director of Sales

That being said, the most common career path looks more or less like this: