Your sales development rep has a lead so hot it burns. No one wants that to slip through the cracks.

So how do you keep the transition from sales development to sales reps smooth?

Follow the best practices of organizations that already generate more revenue with a team of sales development and sales reps.

Watch for lead handoff pitfalls

Sure, you’d like to think everyone in sales sings kumbaya around the water cooler, but their relationships and the handoff can have some tricky, hidden pitfalls. Those include:

• Misalignment. Sometimes sales development reps and salespeople don’t agree on when a lead is ready for handoff, so it ends up in salespeople’s hands too soon, too late or never.
• Unfair distribution. If sales development reps are compensated on the revenue streams they find, they’re inclined to pass the most promising leads to the best closers and the less promising leads to salespeople with lower closing rates.
• Nepotism. Sales pros are human. They make friends and build relationships. They might push more leads to their professional BFFs and fewer to the colleagues they don’t know as well.
• Slips. Any handoff in business runs the risk of slipping away. One missed email, unclear message or forgotten action can hurt sales.
• Too little data. Sales development reps might have great leads, but they aren’t valuable if they reach salespeople without the proper or enough data.
• Disconnect. The move from sales development rep to salesperson can be jarring for customers who wonder why they connected with one person and another person is at their door.

Align and stay aligned

To avoid problems with misalignment, it’s important to:

• Get the entire sales team working together to define “sales qualified” – and then live by that definition. Then sales development reps can only move a lead the moment all the agreed-upon criteria is met.
  • Sales development reps also commonly use questions based on one of these frameworks:
    – BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline)
    – ANUM (Authority, Need, Urgency, Money), or
    – GPCT (Goals, Plans, Challenges, Timelines).

• Make the criteria matter. Sales development needs to ensure – at the very least – they’re talking to decision makers who have a problem that your product or service can resolve now within a reasonable budget and timeframe.

Nicolas Vandenberghe, CEO at Chili Piper, champions the ANUM approach in the sales development rep/salesperson situation because the SDR is in the position to check for Authority and Need and the salesperson can focus on creating the sense of urgency and means to find the money.

Keep the lead handoff fair

To avoid problems with unfair distribution and nepotism, try:

• The Blind Round Robin approach. Many organizations use a CRM or a simple Excel spreadsheet to align and assign leads ready for handoff as they become available to the next-up salesperson.
• Region-specific. If salespeople’s work is divided into regions, they can only get certain leads.

Keep slippage to the minimum

To avoid letting leads fall through any cracks between sales development and salespeople:

• Create and religiously follow the process for handoff. It might sound harsh, but there need to be consequences for not following protocol – because when it’s not followed leads slip. There are plenty of CRM and sales solutions that can build a near foolproof process or replace a questionable one.
• Designate a safety net. Whether it’s a person or a software alert system, someone or something needs to check the status of all leads marked as “qualified” daily.

Go big with data

To avoid sending salespeople into meetings with too little information – or overloading them with too much irrelevant information:

• Document how the qualifying criteria (whether it’s BANT, ANUM or a homemade recipe) were met and any more available details for each one.
• Add competitor details. Information on the competitors who are in the market, already have an appointment or are existing suppliers will help salespeople prepare.

Avoid the prospect disconnect

To avoid putting prospects through an awkward transfer:

• Get the timing right. Most B2B sales situations are complex. So salespeople want to make sure they’re well-informed before an initial conversation. That’s when sales development wants to ideally set up an appointment for about 24 hours after qualifying a lead. In a few situations – when a lead is hot as Hades – they want to make a warm transfer, introducing the prospect to the salesperson.
• Keep sales development involved for a short time on the first sales call. If prospects already have a rapport with the sales development rep, it can help to keep them involved for the first five or 10 minutes. But if prospects are all business – and don’t need a warm-up – salespeople want to go it alone.