Dangerously MisLeading: How some companies drive more pipeline without inbound SDRs

This guide has a provocative title. But unlike the clickbait so many marketing organizations traffic in, this idea is real. It has passed through the annealing fires of dozens of tests involving millions in pipeline and emerged—to the surprise of many— even stronger.

It’s an inconvenient idea, the idea that inbound SDRs may not be necessary to drive meetings. They are intrinsic to the mode of inside sales practiced by tens of thousands of businesses, and millions of reps are employed throughout the country. But, it’s a sticky concept. Once you truly consider it, you may find it difficult to unthink.

I’ve arrived at this conclusion by pursuing a slightly unrelated question: What sort of unnecessary procedural baggage do we carry with us from job to job? I can recall a time early in my career when I did what I was told because I assumed that because everyone did it that way, it must be right. How could so many people be wrong? I, like many, carried what I learned at one company to another, assuming that what worked at one place would work at another.

But these are among the most fundamental of cognitive errors. Just because something is done by successful people or organizations doesn’t mean it’s contributing to their success. What if they’re successful despite it?

At my last company, I bucked the trend and with the help of software, rebuilt our company’s an inside sales role and found we actually delivered more pipeline. For reasons this guide will explain, we were not an anomaly.

Now is a time for ideas like this. No business can afford to carry unnecessary procedural baggage into the new decade—especially if like the topic at hand, it’s actively harmful to the bottom line.