Jason M. LemkinCEO, SaaStr · Co-Founder of SaaStr AI, SaaStr Fund, Adobe Sign

Increasing SDR Productivity: Tips for Ramp Time and Manager Ratios

18 Jan 2024 · 1 min

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A short excerpt from a YouTube video (Jason M. Lemkin, Jan 18, 2024) discussing strategies to improve Sales Development Representative (SDR) productivity. The speakers emphasize reducing ramp time and keeping a conservative manager-to-SDR ratio to enable effective day-to-day coaching—specifically recommending roughly 8 SDRs per manager—and warn against very large spans (anecdote: one manager had 35 SDRs at Zenefits).

Questions this video answers

About 8 SDRs to 1 manager.

The speaker recalled having 35 SDRs at Zenefits.

Chapters

And then as you do start to bring on more SDRs, you start thinking about the ramp time, how long does it actually take to ramp a rep and get them up to productivity and then how do you improve that? And then the other piece I would say is the manager to SDR ratio I think is super, super important. So as you start to scale your team, I remember at Zenefits at one point I think I had 35 SDRs. So don't do that. And that really helps from like a day to day coaching perspective. Especially in this like remote environment when managers have a little bit more bandwidth to help coach their reps day in and day out, you're going to see their production increase and so keep around like the 8 SDRs to 1 manager ratio today.
Really insightful. The story that comes to mind that in hindsight seems just like an obvious and silly mistake and it reinforces your TAM points.