Stop Sending SDRs to Do a Marketer’s Job: The Case for MDRs

Brandi Starr [00:00:34]:
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to another episode of Revenue Rehab. I am your host, Brandi Starr, and today it's just me. So you get the strategist take raw, unfiltered and straight to the point. There's a lot of noise out there for revenue leaders. Ideas that are too generalized or not actionable or just flawless, flat out wrong. So in these star led episodes, I make sense of it all, challenging common approaches and giving you strategies that you can actually use. And so a few weeks ago, I attended an event that gave some startling statistics around how many leads are generated but don't go anywhere. And it raised a red flag for me.

Brandi Starr [00:01:24]:
And so imagine spending a million dollars to generate leads only to watch 60% of them disappear into a black hole. That's not a marketing problem, it's a structure problem. Because we keep throwing SDRs and BDRs at leads that need attention, not sales pressure. And here's the kicker. Your buyers don't actually want to talk to sales reps. In fact, 66% of buyers said that they don't feel that AES add any value. And given that the statistic now says that only 5% of the buying journey happens with a salesperson, it raises the question, who is helping them make sense of all of the noise? Who's guiding them through the middle of the funnel? And in my opinion, if you don't have marketing development reps, the answer is no one. So we've got overwhelmed buyers, misused resources, and a revenue funnel full of friction.

Brandi Starr [00:02:31]:
But how do we fix this? That's what today's episode is about. This is the case for MDRs, the roles that most companies don't have but absolutely need to stop the bleeding between marketing and sales. So if we haven't met before, again, I am Brandi Starr, author, speaker and middle of Funnel strategist and CEO, COO of Tegrita. I help B2B companies optimize the middle of their funnel to drive scalable, predictable growth. Okay, so I've said my piece. Let's really break this down now. So the first question I have for myself is why should you as a revenue leader stop ignoring this problem right now? And it what I am seeing. So working with a lot of different companies that marketing is able to generate qualified leads.

Brandi Starr [00:03:31]:
And by qualified, again if you've not heard my episode on the MQL is not dead. When I say qualified I mean whatever marketing and sales has agreed is a qualified lead and and is ready to engage with sales. We are getting these enough where we are seeing engagement that is indicative of the fact that the organization is likely in a buying cycle. Sales is ready to close, but the buyers are kind of stuck. And so there's a lot that happens in the middle of the funnel. And given now that statistics are saying 95% of the buying journey is happening before they get to sales, that means that middle has gotten increasingly larger. And so to a certain point we can leverage nurtures and automations but there comes to a point where automations has done its job or the automations have done its job. But the buying organization is not quite ready to engage with sales and the buyer is still likely going through the process of building their internal buying case.

Brandi Starr [00:04:45]:
They are overwhelmed, confused, looking for validation. You know, they're, they're trying to figure it out on their own. And what most companies are doing is they send in the SDRs to chase them with a demo request or some other sales oriented action that they're really not ready for. And so this is a middle of funnel failure and there's no one that's really accountable for it. And marketing development reps or MDRs is not a new idea. They've been around for quite some time. However, having worked with you know, hundreds of companies over the years, they are missing from most org charts. And I feel that there is a much greater need for marketing development reps now as opposed to in the past.

Brandi Starr [00:05:43]:
And so this isn't a trend, it is really a role built for strategic nurture designed to guide engaged but not yet ready to buy buyers to help them get through the process. And these are not reps that are out making cold calls. They are not quota chasing, they have high empathy. They are insight driven resources who can help to advance the deal before sales sets starts, you know, before sales steps in. And this is something that we are seeing as being extremely valuable because I forget the statistic but there was a, a significant 60 something, 70 something percent of buyers who indicated they would be willing to have a conversation with someone who is not in sales. And that gave me an alarm to say there's a big gap here because buyers want help but they don't want to talk to sales. And so if we think about what is happening is marketing is passing leads to SDRs and BDRs and that simply isn't the right role. SDRs are chasing meetings and demos.

Brandi Starr [00:07:05]:
MDRs have the opportunity to build momentum. We think about it. SDRs are trained for speed, not complexity. They are dialing for dollars. They are rewarded for val for volume and not nuance. And when you put them in a nurture role, this is where everyone loses because they are engaging too soon. Buyers feel rushed, AES get junk because the SDR was able to get them to take a demo. Marketing gets blamed because they're saying the leads are trash.

Brandi Starr [00:07:40]:
And this is really a job that demands translation and not transaction. And so what do MDRs actually do? They step in when automation can't move the buyer forward. So we think about it. Prospects download a resource, they visit key pages, they attend a webinar, they do all of those things where in my last solo episode that I said tells you that they are not those single actions are not qualified, they're not ready. We get them into marketing, adds them into a nurture flow to help further that conversation and the account starts to show increasing intent. And so in an ideal scenario, an MDR would then be tapped to engage. And so that marketing development rep should assess what's the person trying to solve, what content have they seen. They would then personalize their outreach not to pitch, but to support the buying process.

Brandi Starr [00:08:52]:
And so a good MDR would use phrases like let me send you a checklist others have used at this stage. Would a sample business case help you build internal support? It looks like there's some interest want help bringing others into the conversation. They would work with that champion that's within the buying organization to feed them the content, the information, the knowledge, whatever they need to move that organization towards a decision. And ideally leading that organization, obviously to you they become that resource that becomes the hand holding that is not pushy, not looking for a quota that really no matter how long it takes is going to stay in support of that buying journey. And so this is where I feel like we have a key opportunity to design this role to succeed. And structure drives behavior. You've heard me say it many times, what gets measured is what gets done. And so we have to structure the role in a way that drives the desired behavior that is in support of the potential customer.

Brandi Starr [00:10:08]:
And so this role cannot be structured like a sales role. So number one, reporting MDRs the M is marketing need to report into marketing or potentially rev ops depending on how the org is structured. There's a lot of places that they could report. But the key is it is not sales compensation. Because what gets measured gets done. How we're getting paid is going to drive our behaviors. Their compensation cannot be pipeline or opportunity quota. Instead they've got to have some form of base plus bonus that is tied to middle of funnel KPIs.

Brandi Starr [00:10:51]:
And so this could be the MQL to SQL rate content influence deal acceleration, acceleration. I'm not a compensation expert, but the key here is we have to figure out the right compensation structure so that we are incenting them for the right behaviors that then lead into pipeline. Because obviously we don't want them there. Just to, you know, be a friend to the buying champion, we got to drive revenue, but we need to not have their comp directly tied to those revenue numbers. It needs to be tied to the metrics that lead into pipeline. Their goal is to progress the buyer, not pressure them. And so this is one way they can accelerate the the opportunity length. And by the time that they are ready to engage with sales, that really should drastically shorten the velocity and time to close.

Brandi Starr [00:11:50]:
And if you're thinking where do I find budget for this? Because budget is always a concern. I'm not saying that you have to add, you know, a head count of 10 tomorrow, but there's an opportunity here to try to pilot the function in one vertical for one batch of opportunities. Like there may be resources that you have internally already that may be a good fit for this kind of role and that you can pilot something to be able to show improve. In some cases this is reassigning a misused SDR with the right skill set because some, you know, there's some people that are not the dialing for dollars personality. I would definitely say a good MDR is going to have more of an account management customer success kind of vibe. And so again, there may be some people in the organization that you can leverage. This is an opportunity to improve the model before scaling. And when the model works, the budget appears.

Brandi Starr [00:12:59]:
We all know that that's how that works. When something's a high enough priority, budget can get found for it. So I know many people are probably like this sounds great, but do I really need MDRs? So let me give you some items. Number one, if you've got a complex sales cycle that requires a consultative nurture, so there's a lot of nuance. This is not, you're not selling something that's a click to buy. It really is a complex decision sale if you've got a long sales cycle with multiple stakeholders. I've seen statistics now that say the buying Committees are as large as 21 people. If you have that, you know those long sales cycles, multiple stakeholders.

Brandi Starr [00:13:47]:
If your products or services need heavy education, again, not a click to buy. If your inbound engine is generating plenty of MQLs, but you are not seeing the conversion or if your brand values, buyer experience and trust. And this is a big one because adding this type of MDR really does put the buyer experience at the forefront and positions your organization to be that trusted organization. And so if you check even just two of those boxes, you need this role like yesterday. Because this is a huge gap that I am seeing where marketing is running all the nurtures. We've worked with some clients where we've got really sophisticated middle of funnel things happening that are effective but based on the buying, the, the way that buying happens, the kinds of things that the buyer needs to consider. There are some places that no automation or AI or is going to be able to lean in and support. This is a place where we can leverage humans really effectively.

Brandi Starr [00:14:54]:
And it could be that you have a smaller or in some cases non existent SDR or BDR team. If we can be really successful with the mdrs, what do we call them is something that I've had on my mind because if I'm being honest, marketing development reps sounds like a sales role. So we need MDRs, but we need to call them something else. You know, we could call them business case advisors or solution experts or use case specialists. I don't know the right name for what we should call them, but at the end of the day, I don't care what you call them, we just need them. The, you know, we use the, the funnel because it's a very simple, simple graphic to help you understand kind of the different buckets of what's happening. But the simplified graphic of a funnel does not at all mean that the buying journey is simple. There's.

Brandi Starr [00:15:54]:
I can't remember if it was Gartner or Forrester, but they talk about the messy middle. And if we look at it, the top of the funnel is really small. The bottom of the funnel is really small. That middle of the funnel is huge and it's messy. There's a lot that is happening. And so how we effectively orchestrate what's happening in the middle, it's not just email. Email is, you know, a key channel that we leverage in the middle. But it's so much more than email and it has to be buyer centric.

Brandi Starr [00:16:27]:
And this is why I feel really passionate about the fact that we really need more marketing development reps that are supporting that middle of the funnel that are not measured specifically on pipeline or given a quota, that are able to lean in and build trust, create that positive buying experience. Being someone that is valuable for our champions and stakeholders to talk to with no pressure then puts us in the place that we are the number one choice because we've helped them build the business case, we've helped them to define the requirements. And so for those people that have really simple sales cycles, you know your SaaS click to buy, you know, one of those like straightforward is what it is. The MDR is likely not the way to go. But there's so many companies and most of the clients that we work with that have those long and complex sales cycles with very diverse buying committees. Because like for example, a cmo, a CFO and a director of marketing operations are thinking completely different about whatever the solution is, whether it's a technology consultancy, a, you know, anything like even, even the smallest things, whatever it is, they are going to think about those differently. The if it's tech, the user of the tech is going to think about that differently. There are so many different stakeholders involved that, that never make it into our marketing automation platform because you're not having a CFO downloading a white paper and giving you their, their email address if it's a marketing purchase or you know, if it's a IT purchase.

Brandi Starr [00:18:17]:
So there's a lot of the buying committee that's never actually going to get into our nurtures or see all of the information. So we have to think about the fact that our middle of funnel has to be primarily self serve in a lot of ways we've got to make sure that that middle of funnel content is available for the buying committee. And we really need to give our buyers a resource that is there for them to help lead them to a decision with the goal of that decision being us, but making sure that it's a valuable experience in general. And this is where I feel that the marketing development reps, or what has historically been called an MDR really can help to solve that problem and to create that truly customer centric buying journey to give the organization more visibility into what's happening in the buyer organizations. Because that's kind of the other piece of this. When we have MDRs very similar to how customer success is a wealth of information about what's happening with the customer. MDRs can be that same level of wealth of information about what's happening with prospects. What questions are they asking? What resources are they looking for? What Are they telling that MDR to help them through that process then allows you to take all of that information and build a better journey to define your content strategy.

Brandi Starr [00:19:47]:
And this is one of those things where we talk about that middle of the funnel, being able to inform the top and the bottom, being able to have these MDR reps and having that human resource that you can leverage in the middle of the funnel is truly a game changer. And so I would love to have more conversations with you. If you have mdrs, definitely leave me a comment and tell me how you're leveraging them. I'd love to get you on the podcast to talk about a case study of of how you've effectively leveraged them. If you're considering this, I've got so many more ideas, would love to let you pick my brain on it. So definitely let's talk some more. And so I at this point I've said my piece and so let, let's, you know, I I want to make sure that you walk away with a takeaway. So let me make sure to leave you with something you can actually use.

Brandi Starr [00:20:47]:
And so the question I ask myself is what's the single most important mindset shift leaders need to make about this issue? And this is not an original statement, so disclaimer the buying journey has changed. The old playbooks no longer work and we really have to start thinking differently about that middle of the funnel because that is where most of the journey is happening and there's not enough attention given there. Like so many people focus on how do we attract people to us, which is great, it's important. And then you have sales that is focused on closing things. But there is a huge gap in the middle for organizations that have complex sales cycles that you've got to mentally shift to not thinking so much about the top or the bottom and thinking about the 80 to 90% of the buying journey that happens in the middle and how do we give our buyers what they need to self serve and be able to build the business case internally and wrangle the ever growing buying committee. So that's the most important mindset shift. If you've enjoyed this episode, let's keep the conversation going. Definitely.

Brandi Starr [00:22:05]:
Follow me on LinkedIn @Brandi Starr, where I break down more revenue strategies and challenge the status quo. And you know, of course my goal is to build revenue engines that actually work. And so if you're tired of best practices that don't move the needle, let's talk. You can learn more about Tegrita at Tegrita.com. but that is all for today. See you next time on Revenue Rehab.