My face when I hear sales leaders say..

My face when I hear sales leaders say:

“We don’t want our AEs to outbound, their time is too valuable.”

Here are 3 reasons why this thinking is dangerous:

⛔️ 1) Entitled Culture

Self-sourcing will always be a must. The SDR : AE ratio in your sales org will never be perfect. Marketing can ebb and flow.

And if you plan on moving up-market—execs don't fill out demo request forms. You must proactively start conversations.

Building a self-sourcing culture from scratch is WAY harder than turning up the dial when you need to.

Don't allow a "my pipeline isn't my responsibility" mindset.

⛔️ 2) Missing opportunities with execs

I love SDRs. I've worked with and trained dozens of top-notch SDRs.

But here's the thing: most SDRs haven't spoken much with execs. They're not as equipped to engage a senior exec if they happen to catch them on a phone call.

AEs have had more of those conversations. They have more business acumen and experience.

They'll be much more effective at engaging execs and landing meetings.

⛔️ 3) AE sourced pipeline is usually better

This is almost always the case with my clients.

AE self-sourced pipeline has:

-Higher win rates

- Shorter sales cycles

- Larger deal sizes

Have ops run a report on this. If any of the above is true for your sales org, all the more reason why self-sourcing should be encouraged.

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AEs don't need to self-source 100% of their pipeline. And I agree that the majority of their time should be spent selling. But they should know how to self-source at-least a third of it.

Agree or disagree?