While you may have an amazing Business Development Representative (BDR) team, it’s no secret the job can be rough. So make your BDRs’ lives a little easier with a few helpful sales tools? We asked BDRs from B2B companies what their favorite tools to use are, and why.
Why use sales tools?
BDRs are crucial to B2B organizations because they help create new business opportunities. When equipped with sales enablement tools, BDRs can be more efficient and impactful in targeting and engaging the accounts that matter most.
The hardest part of closing any deal is finding it
Lars Nilsson
Any tool you select will become a part of your larger MarTech stack. When choosing a sales enablement tool, consider what integrations it supports. Many BDR tools like Salesloft or Outreach, integrate into ABM platforms. This can help to create efficiencies across platforms and ensure your demand generation and sales teams are aligned around the same shared data.
The sales enablement tool you select should allow your BDR/SDR teams to:
- Build account lists
- Qualify high-fit accounts
- Engage leads
- Book demos
- Stay organized
When we asked BDRs from the B2B sales landscape what their favorite tools were, we noticed some trends and fan favorites. Here are a few tools you might want to consider for your own BDR team.
Sales engagement tools
Brandon Baker – Senior Sales Development Representative, Sendoso
Favorite tool: Outreach
“I like this tool because it’s pretty versatile. I can organize my day in the way I choose. It’s essential to have all my data in an organized manner. Also, this tool is great for email campaigns, adding tasks, recording calls, and adding snippets.”
How does this tool make your job easier?
“It’s a tool to use to help write emails, calls, and build sequences to help drive responses and book meetings. Being able to create tasks. For example, writing notes after a cold call so I don’t have to listen to the call. Or adding a website link. Adding snippets is huge to make it easier to send cold emails efficiently. It also includes a LI tab you can click on quickly to do research on a prospect.”
Any advice to other BDRs on how to crush it in the sales game?
“Stay organized and consistent. Have an idea of how many calls, emails, and sequences you need to achieve your goals. Atrium is another tool to determine that. There will be highs and lows but consistency will prevail.”
Brady McBride – Senior Business Development Representative, Foundry
Favorite tool: Salesloft
“I take advantage of being able to see engagement for each contact that has received prior outreach (whether it’s from me, another BDR, or even an AE). Between the opens, clicks, and replies… it’s a great way to gauge a prospect’s interest. If a contact has a previous reply, I like to track it and piggyback off the previous conversation. A lot of times it will be with an AE and they’ll say something along the lines of “let’s reconnect next year” and by the time I’m reaching out to them, sometimes the timing lines up. Also, when sending daily emails it’s great to track prospects that have opened your email multiple times, or clicked a link more than once. It usually means that person has an interest or they forwarded the email to the rest of their team.”
How does this tool make your job easier?
“It’s easier to engage in conversation and avoid “cold” outreach when you reference previous conversations they had with our team or previous engagement in general. It allows me to develop a smoother connection with the prospect. A level of trust is established, and it’s a quick way to show the person you did your research around what they’re looking for.”
Any advice to other BDRs on how to crush it in the sales game?
“Be authentic and find your voice. It’s easy for prospects to tell if you’re faking it (whether it’s over the phone or email), so be yourself and I think most people are willing to hear you out.”
Business intelligence tools
John Howard – Account Development Representative, MongoDB
Favorite tool: Tableau
“Provides analytics insights that give reps information critical to both managing existing customer success and identifying new areas of business to prospect into. The alerts on product usage, new backend users to reach out to, purchasing patterns, and price scaling are extremely helpful. I evaluate the activity by account and then sync w/ my account manager(s) to strategize from there.”
How does this tool make your job easier?
“It’s helped me find a lot of low-hanging fruit and also develop existing partnerships that MongoDB has in the public sector. Helps to supplement one of the most time-consuming aspects of prospecting – which is finding ideal customer profiles.”
Any advice to other BDRs on how to crush it in the sales game?
“Focus on the quality of your activity. Sales managers often evaluate BDR/SDRs by the number of calls made or emails sent. This creates an environment where quantity is made the incentive and this can cause the quality of your outreach to be watered down in the process. The right message to the right person will always deliver more long-term success than throwing whatever you can at the wall and hoping something sticks.”
Email tools
Alex Ponce – Sales Development Representative, Postal.io
Favorite tool: Lavender
“I tend to overcomplicate emails. This helps me write great emails in real-time.”
How does this tool make your job easier?
“This tool helps me get a higher response rate, as well as keep track of writing time and improves my response rate.”
Any advice to other BDRs on how to crush it in the sales game?
“JUST HIT SEND”
Karan Kumar – Business Development Representative, Foundry
Favorite tool: Vidyard
“Brings the life back into prospecting! I use this tool to add a personable touch to my outreach. When I want to communicate a lot to my reader, I find video is better at getting my point across than a long email.”
How does this tool make your job easier?
“I’ve found that a well-personalized Vidyard helps with engagement and increases response rates vs a traditional email. Since so many BDRs are always sending emails, this tool and ease of use allows me to quickly create a 1:1 personalized experience for my reader. In return, I’ve found that people are quite surprised and impressed by this approach to prospecting.”
Any advice to other BDRs on how to crush it in the sales game?
“Don’t stop being creative!”
Social selling tools
Will Smith – Account Executive, Virtru
Favorite tool: LinkedIn
“LinkedIn allows you to find ideal contacts and create tailored pitches. You can pick up things that might be outside of their business to bring up during a cold call/email. “Hey, by the way, I saw you’re a Purdue grad, class of 86′. I grew up watching the boilermakers play hoops. Have you been back lately to visit?”
How does this make your job easier?
“LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to see what the prospect has done in the past/outside of work success that you can compliment them on/relate to. LinkedIn helped me schedule numerous meetings.”
Any advice to other BDRs on how to crush it in the sales game?
“It’s all about the next play, collaborate with your colleagues, and have fun with it.”
Michelle Hussain – Business Development Team Lead, Foundry
Favorite tool: LinkedIn SalesNavigator
“I like that it’s directly off LinkedIn so it mirrors a prospect’s profile. Almost all of the marketers we want to speak to are active on LinkedIn and keep their profiles up to date which helps us know about promotions, job changes, etc. That allows us to personalize our outreach at the right time! I can do a search at scale based on specific criteria matching a prospect – geography, seniority, industry, etc. SalesNavigator makes it easy to find the right companies and contacts to prospect to that meet our ICP. The accuracy is better than other platforms I’ve used.”
Productivity tools
Vinnie Nicotra – Business Development Representative, Foundry
Favorite tool: CopyLess
“It’s my favorite tool because it saves me time doing many of the tasks in my day-to-day job.
I use this tool to:
- copy a series of information and paste it into different cells in spreadsheets
- copy the body and subject line of drafted emails, and paste them within the correct fields
- paste text with the formatting of my choosing or without formatting, etc.”
How does this tool make your job easier?
“Having a tool that improves the copy & paste function helps me be a more successful BDR by allowing me to spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time on my other tasks throughout the day. Constantly switching between web pages and tabs isn’t just a waste of time; it’s also mind-numbing. Although this tool doesn’t eliminate every reason for switching back and forth between pages, not having to do it as much anymore makes my life easier.”
Any advice to other BDRs on how to crush it in the sales game?
“I’m new to the BDR world, but I think prioritization and time management are the keys to success in almost every career you can have. So, looking for the tools that will help you become more efficient in your job seems like a great place to start.”
CRM tools
Kyle Reing – Business Development Representative, Foundry
Favorite tool: Salesforce
“This is my favorite tool since you are able to see the intent data of the specific company you are researching. I use this tool to help with personalizing emails to target the lead with what they had been researching and create opportunities.”
How does this tool make your job easier?
“Salesforce improves my targeting in emails, and truly makes researching for me easier.”
Any advice to other BDRs on how to crush it in the sales game?
“Always stay on top of your main people who seem to be engaging with your emails.”
Conclusion
There are many tools out there that can help BDRs in their role: whether it’s productivity tools that help you complete tasks more efficiently, intent data tools that can help identify the best hot accounts to reach out to, or prospecting tools that help you reach your target at scale.
Want to equip your business development team to succeed? First, equip your team with the tools necessary to be successful. Audit what your team has, what they might need (maybe a few of the tools above will prove to be a winner among your BDR/SDRs!), and how each tool integrates with your sales and marketing tech stack as a whole.
Looking for new solutions or building out your tech stack? Outreach, Salesloft, Salesforce, and many more tools integrate with ABM platforms, making for a cohesive martech stack.
Chat with an ABM expert to see if ABM can help complete your sales and marketing tech stack.
