When starting to scale a B2B sales organisation, one of the first things to put in place is an inside sales team. At Delta-v, the members of these teams are referred to as Sales Development Representatives, or SDR’s, and are responsible for generating a predictable pipeline of qualified sales opportunities.
To build a sales development team from the ground up usually takes at least six months. Once you have the team, it’ll take around another three months of ramp time before they’re fully operational.
Timeline for building an inside sales team
Hiring a sales leader = 3 months
SDR’s are generally relatively junior employees in their first or second job. To ensure their success, they need to be led by an experienced sales development leader who can build processes, train, coach and manage them.
When hiring a sales leader, it’ll take at least one month to figure out the profile that you’re looking for. After that, you’ll need to invest at least another month of recruiting and interviewing to get to the offer stage. Once the offer has been accepted, you’ll have to wait a month for your new hire to serve notice at their previous employer and start work at your company.
Read more: How much does an inside sales team cost in the UK?
Sales leader finding their feet = 1 month
Once your sales leader joins, they’ll need about a month to understand your business, develop the scorecards for hiring SDR team members, and then start hiring.
Hiring inside sales team members = 2 months
It’ll take at least one month of recruiting and interviewing to make the necessary hires to fill the slots in your inside sales team. Once offers have gone out, you’ll once again need to wait a month while the new hires serve notice.
Based on this optimistic timeline, it’ll take at least six months to have a brand new team on the ground.
Conclusion
Building an inside sales team that works is really, really hard and requires a heavy time investment. It’s even harder in places like South Africa where B2B SaaS sales is still immature, and it’s exceptionally difficult to find strong sales leaders.
At Delta-v, we use a proven methodology for building and ramping inside sales teams. Instead of six months, we aim to have a custom-built team up and running for you in 45 days
