Fast Decision Making as a Competitive Edge, How to Build and Scale a Sales Development Representative (SDR) Team - Tactician #0057

"In our world, 'Let's think about it' is the new 'No.' We don't have time to marinate on decisions. We're too busy grilling them, serving them up hot, and eating our competitor’s lunch.”

14/02/2024

Fast Decision Making as a Competitive Edge

Daniel Herscovici, Partner at Edison Partners, shares decision-making frameworks and strategies that have aided his success in the growth stage of business development in “Decision-Making Strategies for Growth-Stage Entrepreneurs”

• Importance of Swift Decision-Making:

  • "One of the largest contributors to failure for growth-stage businesses is slow decision making. Waiting for more information can be costly, and with limited capital, can prove crippling."

• Frameworks for Decision-Making:

  • "A few frameworks I’ve found to be exceptionally helpful are 'Reversible and Irreversible Decisions' and 'Thinking in Bets.' Personally, I find myself combining them when I am at a crossroads and face a decision. Combining these approaches provides structure while relieving risk and pressure."

• Reversible vs. Irreversible Decisions:

  • "Tech leaders, such as Jeff Bezos, have long cited a framework that can be a key ingredient in strong decision-making: the spectrum of reversibility. When faced with a challenge, this framework encourages you to position the fundamental dynamics on a spectrum of reversibility. At one end of the spectrum are Type 1 decisions: the highly consequential, nearly irreversible, immediately prioritized choices...On the other end of the spectrum are easily reversible Type 2 decisions."

• Thinking in Bets:

  • "While this initial framework is useful, the question remains - how can one make difficult, irreversible decisions more nimbly or with less risk? Many seemingly daunting decisions can be broken down into 'little bets' that, even if wrong, unlock new information that allows for further progress and the next 'little bet' to move forward."

• Decision Making as a Competitive Edge:

  • "Growth-stage companies often outpace established competitors due to their agility, ability to move quickly, and disrupt established business models. Waiting for more information can be a risk in and of itself when compared to acting decisively at 70% certainty and adjusting as needed."

How to Build and Scale a Sales Development Representative (SDR) Team

Samuel Bright, General Manager at Google Play, provides a comprehensive guide on how to effectively build and scale a Sales Development Representative (SDR) function in a SaaS company, drawing from Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and former CRO at Brex in “How to Build Out Your SDR Function in 2024 with Sam Blond, Partner at Founders Fund and Host of SaaStr CRO Confidential”

• Start by Writing the MOC document:

  • "What we really tried to do with the MOC—it stands for mission, outcome, competency. The mission is the elevator pitch. It’s the 1 or 2 lines that dictate exactly what you want this person to really deliver at a high level. The outcomes are basically 6 or 8 things that you want them to achieve in the course of the first 12 or 18 months in the job. And then the competencies are related to: what are the things this person needs to have accomplished? What are the skills that you need to have that we have evidence, therefore, they can actually achieve those outcomes?"

• Using whiteboard sessions for assessing fit:

  • "Go through a whiteboard session with an executive in an interview. Let’s actually take a real-world business situation you’re grappling with as a founder, and let’s brainstorm it together. And people just naturally, without even realizing it, start letting their guard down and start behaving like they truly are when you get into that pretend work session."

• Implementing referencing as a continuous cycle:

  • "Referencing should be almost like a continual loop. You’re interviewing, then you’re referencing, you’re interviewing, then you’re referencing. Referencing should be happening throughout a process."

• Putting negative references in context:

  • "Eventually if you call enough people, you will get a negative reference on somebody. That’s largely unavoidable. Now you get a negative reference, I think you have to evaluate, is it a state of the situation or as a trait of the individual?"

• Vetting for EQ:

  • "So when we’re talking to executives and evaluating them, it’s a lot about EQ. For example, how do you take feedback? What are the things that you’re aware of that might be your personal triggers? What do you see as your interpersonal impact in a room? What sort of balance do they have between humility and self-confidence? A lot of those things. We’re also looking at motivations: intrinsic motivations, extrinsic motivations."

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