6 SDR Career Path Options
As a Sales Development Representative (SDR), you have the opportunity to pursue a variety of career paths. With the right combination of experience, skills, and ambition, you can move up the ladder and become successful in whichever direction you choose. In this blog post, we’ll explore six potential career paths for SDRs.
Option 1: Move Up the Ladder into an Account Executive Role
The most common career path for an SDR is to move up into an account executive role. This is where you’ll start to close your own deals and truly own the sales process.
As you gain more experience and prove your worth to your employer, you’ll be able to take on more responsibility with bigger accounts and increase your earning potential.
For salaries and more information regarding compensation on Account Executive roles, we encourage you to check out RepVue.
Option 2: Move into an SDR Manager Position
Another common path for an SDR is to move into management. This is a great next step for anybody that wants more responsibility and the challenge of leading a team. SDR Managers are responsible for building out their team, training, optimizing processes, and managing the overall success of the team.
If you had success as an SDR and also have the ability to work well with people, then consider looking into an SDR manager role.
Option 3: Transition Into a Different Role in Sales
If you’re looking for a change of pace, you may want to consider transitioning into a different type of role in sales. This could mean becoming something like a Sales Operations Manager, Sales Engineer (pre-sales) or Account Manager (post-sales). Each of these roles requires different skillsets and offer unique opportunities for growth.
Sales Operations is a role that helps to manage the systems that sales teams use on a daily basis. As companies grow, these systems can become increasingly complex and difficult to maintain. That’s why so many companies need sales operations experts. If this is interesting to you, a good starting point is to look into getting Salesforce Certified.
Pre-sales positions such as Sales Engineer oftentimes require more technical knowledge and insight into implementation. Not all companies have sales engineers, and the ones that do are typically more complex solutions providers. Take a look at a few Sales Engineers on LinkedIn and see what type of skills they possess.
Post-sales positions like account management require strong relationship-building skills and the ability to communicate ROI for upselling purposes - skills that SDRs already possess.
Option 4: Move Into Marketing
Another option is to move into a marketing role. As an SDR, you already have experience working with prospects and customers to understand their needs. This makes it easier to transition into marketing roles such as content creation or social media management, where you can use your knowledge of customer needs to create effective campaigns that drive revenue.
Option 5: Become an Entrepreneur
If you’re looking for something more challenging and rewarding, why not become an entrepreneur? With the right combination of skills and ambition, it’s possible to start your own business in sales or marketing—or even branch out into other areas such as consulting or software development. The possibilities are endless!
Option 6: Sales Enablement
Finally, if you’re interested in helping your fellow salespeople be more successful, consider looking into sales enablement roles. As companies explore how to make sales teams more effective and drive higher ROI, they’ll be looking for workers with previous sales experience who are capable of bringing these functions to life.
Conclusion
As an SDR, there are plenty of opportunities available if you’re willing to put in the work and take advantage of them! Whether it’s moving up within your current company, transitioning into a different role in sales, becoming an entrepreneur—or any combination thereof—there are plenty of paths available for ambitious SDRs who are looking to take their careers to the next level!
To make your life a bit easier, we used LinkedIn Sales Navigator and did a search. We searched for people that had a past job title of "sales development representative" to see what role they hold now. Here are a few of the roles we see:
Account Executive
Account Manager
SDR Manager
Customer Success Manager
Sales Operations Manager
Marketing Coordinator
Sales Enablement Coordinator
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