10 Ways Inbound Leads Help BDRs Smash Their Quotas

Now you’re ready to grow. You’ve committed to hiring business development reps (BDRs), the people who are tasked with finding business by sheer brute force. They call, they email, they connect on LinkedIn and they’ll do anything to uncover leads and help feed your pipeline.

But did you know that there’s another way to help your BDR team drive effective, efficient and high-quality revenue generation?

Serve them people who have expressed interest in what you do. Yep, if you pair an inbound lead generation campaign with your BDR effort, you’ll see a much higher return on your investment and, more importantly, business outcomes and sales results that align with your expectations.

Here are 10 ways inbound leads help BDRs smash their quotas.

1. There’s a Predictable Stream of Leads

When BDRs hit the phones or email, there’s no real way to know for sure how many opportunities they’ll generate. Some days they might kill it, but then it might be nothing for days. There isn’t much predictability.

Inbound marketing-generated leads are a more predictable source of viable contacts. Depending on your program, you could predict that you’ll have 10 inbound leads, 100 inbound leads or 1,000 inbound leads every week. Of course, this depends on a wide variety of variables, like your investment, your specific inbound program and your website.

For example, you shouldn’t expect 100 leads a week if you’re only spending $1,000 a month on your inbound marketing program. Those results are just not aligned with the work associated with generating many leads.

2. It’s Quality Over Quantity

A rep who makes 100 phone calls/sends 100 emails a day to get two appointments, only one of which is a viable lead, is producing at a 1% conversion rate. This would result in five viable leads each week.

If an inbound campaign produces only 20 leads a week but half of them are viable opportunities, you’ve doubled your lead flow while having your BDR work on just 20 inbound leads. Inbound marketing shouldn’t be measured based on quantity but rather on quality and conversion rates.

3. They Have Some Level of Pain

When BDRs reach out to people, there’s usually no clear evidence that they want what you’re trying to sell. They might fit a profile of some demographic information, but generally, that’s it.

When an inbound lead comes in, it’s because the person took action. They are expressing some interest in what you do, what you’re selling and how you can potentially help them. They usually have some level of acute pain that causes them to act.

This is also good news for your BDRs, because now they are talking to someone who has pain, has acted on that pain and has an expressed interest in what you do. This usually translates into shorter sales cycles, fewer wasted sales cycles and higher close rates.

4. They’re Asking for the Call

If you’ve been in sales, you know there is a dramatic difference in the tone of a sales call when you’re asking them if they are interested in talking with you versus the prospect asking to speak with you because they have an interest in talking with you.

When they come to you, the power dynamic is favorable to the BDR. They can position themselves as someone who is there to help uncover the issues and potentially advise the prospect on how to solve their challenges. Now they’re helping rather than selling, and this is a big difference.

5. They’ve Done Some Homework

In most cases, people who convert on inbound campaigns have already done some homework on your company, your products or services and how you do what you do. They’ve often visited your website and perhaps read some of your content, watched a video or listened to an episode of your podcast.

These people have already started to know, like and trust you. Your marketing has helped them get to know you and provided a positive, educational experience. When they get on the phone with a BDR, they’re already engaged and connected to your business.

Now your reps don’t have to start with, “Let me tell you about my company.” Instead, they can start with, “What’s going on in your business and how can I help you?” It’s a much better starting position, and since the prospect already knows about your company, it’s highly efficient and geared to align with the exact stage of their buyer journey.

6. You Can Control the Conversation

When your prospects find you, your BDRs have a better chance to control the conversation. Good sales reps have standard questions they ask. They have a sales process framework and methodology that needs to be deployed on every call. It’s easier to do this when you have people asking to talk with you as opposed to reaching out cold to people who might not know you well or be ready to talk.

7. It’s Part of a Scalable System

Sales shouldn’t be a guessing game. Hoping you hit your sales goals isn’t a strategy. Instead, you should have a system for revenue generation, just like you have a system for hiring, purchasing, financial management and other key areas of the company.

A revenue generation system needs inbound leads, reps to follow up on those leads and ongoing sales training to keep your reps highly effective and efficient. Within each of these pillars there should be frameworks, processes and repeatable executables that ensure they all fire correctly.

Once you install the lead generation part of a revenue generation system, you’ll know exactly how many leads you need, how many leads are coming in and the quality of those leads. This should help you create a scalable, repeatable and predictable lead generation machine that feeds your reps month over month.

8. You Know Something About Them

It’s one thing to know the name and title of the person your reps are reaching out to. If you’re doing this well, you might also have some demographic information on these people.

But if your inbound marketing program is working, you’ll also know everything they did when they visited your website – what pages they visited and what they clicked on, when they clicked on your emails and what they clicked on, when they downloaded your content or watched a video, etc.

This is valuable intent data that turns lame BDR scripts into intelligent, thought-provoking and insightful dialog that gets prospects excited.  

Knowing what they’re interested in means your BDRs can start their conversations with topics that connect to your prospects’ pains, areas of interest or challenges.

Let me model this conversation:

“I noticed you looked at the website services section of our website. How is your current website performing? What areas of the site do you think could be improved? What have you done over the past few months to optimize your website?”

You want your BDRs to have conversations like this with your prospects. This gets your prospects to know, like and trust you. They feel safer with your company, and that’s how you get them to select you as the company they want to do business with.

9. You Can Deliver More Content in Context

Knowing the information your prospects need help, advice and guidance around allows you to create a remarkable experience that helps them close quickly and more frequently.

To take our modeled conversation from above and continue it, your reps can follow up like this:

“Let me send you some information that will help you think differently about how to build and optimize a new website. After you get a chance to read it, if you have any questions, just let me know. I’m happy to help you figure out how to move forward around your website project.”

“One other offer I can provide is for my website team to meet with you and talk more about what you want from your website. Once we understand your goals and objectives for the site, we can come back with the perfect set of recommendations and investment levels for your new site.”

10. It’s Not Violating Any Privacy Regulations

Finally, the regulatory environment around cold outreach is quickly becoming more challenging. In February 2024, Google and Yahoo are cracking down again on email guidelines.

It’s going to get harder to send cold emails to people you don’t know. The workarounds, the email systems that allow it and the list providers are all going to face additional scrutiny.

Did you know that spam traps are embedded in those lists you’re purchasing? People are placing fake email addresses that trigger spam alerts and notifications to spam identification services. There is no way to know that these emails are traps unless you test every email before you send it with a service like NeverBounce, and even then, it’s not 100% certain you won’t get tripped up.

If you’re relying on this type of marketing, now is the time to start building your backup plan and your inbound marketing lead generation plan so that you’re prepared if you get shut down next week, next month or next year.

The marriage of inbound leads and BDRs is one of the secrets to repeatable, scalable and predictable revenue growth. Get your program started immediately and make 2024 your best year yet.