How should SDR performance be measured given the incentive to game meeting counts?

Lori Jimenez · Aug 2, 2023

To stop SDRs from gaming meeting counts you need both a qualification framework and incentives tied to sales stage progression after handoff

Stage progression by the seller who takes over is a vote of quality proving the opportunity was real rather than a box checked on a dashboard

Scope: framework can be BANT or similar

27:18 20Sales: Why The Founder Has To Be The One To Create The Sales Playbook, When To Hire Your First Rep, Why Junior is Better Than Senior, How to Manage Sales Rep Compensation, How To Onboard New Sales Reps and more with Lori Jimenez, CRO @ WorkRamp

Carlos Delatorre · Jan 24, 2025

Sales leaders should not over-obsess on meetings booked as the PG goal; the metric to obsess over is whether qualified pipeline comes out of it

Meetings booked is the easiest thing to track but a rep can do good PG and still get one or zero meetings in an unlucky week or on a tough account

34:03 20Sales: Why Every Sales Rep Should Do Pipeline Generation & How to Teach Them | Verticalised Sales Playbooks: When and How | How the Best Sales Reps and Leaders Structure Their Time with Carlos Delatorre, CRO @ Harness

Harry Stebbings · Aug 2, 2023 · hedged

Discovery can be manipulated to align to the output desired for the goal — e.g. if the goal is leads generated, discovery leans toward approving leads

26:56 Goal metrics bias the qualification itself

Sam Blond · Apr 12, 2024

SDRs should be compensated on revenue rather than opportunity creation, and should be told which accounts and personas to target rather than choosing themselves

AEs outperformed because they had intuition for which accounts would convert and spend more; prescribing accounts/personas by known conversion rates and paying on revenue closed the quality gap and eventually let SDRs out-source AEs

41:56 Comp sdrs on revenue and prescribe target accounts

Ashley Kelly · Jun 7, 2024

Comping SDRs directly on revenue rarely works; it only fits highly transactional, short-cycle, consumption-based businesses, not typical longer-cycle ARR SaaS

In ARR SaaS deal cycles are long and SDRs aren't in the role long enough, so they need more transactional, monthly goals like stage-two opportunities

26:25 Revenue comp only fits short cycle transactional businesses