Jason Lemkin: belief

Transcript context

…Okay, great. And SDR is, generally, although I wish it wasn't, it is generally an entry level position, often fresh out of school, generally paid on the order of 60K to 80K, OTE and SaaS and US-based SaaS, and their job is to email for dollars, dial for dollars, and in many cases, to screen, to screen inbound leads. It's entry level, and their job is to pass on a lead to a sales executive, an account executive, an AE. Not all companies have SDRs. It's a longer topic, but pretty much all the best teams have some type of SDR function now because we've learned we want to specialize. We want openers opening and we want closers closing, so that's the rough idea. SDRs are openers in some cases, and account executives are the more seasoned folks closing. And it varies, compensation from account executives that are US-based could be anywhere from like 90K to 200K, depending on, that's with base and bonus split at 50/50, depending on whether they're hunting tiny deals or big ones. That's the way an account executive works. And I think what doesn't happen today ... Those are the acronyms, SDR and AE. I think people can figure out VP of Sales, that's vice president of sales. I think a thing that's gone on in the industry that founders expect now because there's so much discussion of it on LinkedIn and social media, but I haven't found work, is that an account executive will magically be full stack. They will do outbound themselves, they'll go use ZoomInfo and Apollo and develop a list themselves, they'll manage that outbound list themselves. If they don't have enough inbound, in their free time, you know what they'll do, Lenny, in their free time? They'll just do more outbound. You know what sales reps do in their free time? Today, they sell real estate or courses. If you want a tip, for founders, I know you want this full stack AE, and they do exist when they're micromanaged in certain high performance sales organizations, but they don't exist in real life. They're specialized. Most AEs, they want to be closers, they want to be handed a lead, a contact me, a lead. They want to work the lead and close the lead, and you hire some SDRs to help generate more demand. Those are the basic acronyms. What's hard for most founders, here's the tough part, most founders have enough stamina to manage a couple of these AEs, these account executives, these folks who work the leads. Most founders do not have the stamina to manage 10 kids fresh out of college that need to be micromanaged on an hourly basis to call leads. Very, very few founders themselves can manage a team of SDRs, but if you can, it's like a superpower. That was really helpful. I did not know what exactly these terms represented, and when you're hiring those first two reps, they should be at the account executive level.…

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