AOP planning for next year for the entire GTM team, and we’re running into a roadblock with demand gen for cross-sell growth that I’m hoping some of you could help lend some opinions on. We currently have a robust 1:1 BDR to Sales Territory model where each territory has a Junior and Senior AE focused strictly on new logos. We’ve identified a huge missed potential this year cross selling intoour existing customer accounts because we relied on CSM’s who are nurturers to step out of their comfort zone and have sales conversations with customers. Our response is to build a CS growth team specifically for cross-selling additional products into our customer base. The challenge is: who handles demand gen for that team? Do we have a separate set of BDR’s for them? Do we rely on that team to generate their leads from an incredible high volume of accounts? What happens when they’re neck deep in sales demos and contract discussion, who is performing outbound motions? I’d love to hear if anyone else here has set something up like this, and if so what was your DG solution? Please don’t DM me trying to sell some AI BDR model, I’m bot in the market for that right now.
IMO: Ideal scenario is yes, build a CSDR team (or whatever acronym lol). I've seen this play out though and it's awesome.
Mike C. would you set it up any differently compared to a normal BDR team? Or just a like for like? It’s obviously more difficult to drive demand gen with cold outreach versus warm customer leads, so I want to make sure I incentivize the cold NB BDR team a little differently without playing down the immense importance of this CSBDR team.
I've seen it done all sorts of ways. My vote for your specific case would be to have:
Higher overall salary percentage than trad SDR
Higher overall OTE than trad SDR
Stronger overall profile than trad SDR
Incentivize attributed pipeline numbers while also maintaining holding them to weekly/monthly SQLs/bookings.
This role will be pedestaled. It'll be the role everyone wants, but only the best to get.
Absolutely! I personally did this motion in a pretty big way (not stemming from CS but close enough). Happy to chat whenever. www.linkedin.com/in/mikecubberly
We’ve actually helped a few SaaS orgs solve this exact problem while structuring their cross-sell GTM and expansion motions. In short, most teams end up overloading CSMs or spinning up new BDR pods when they could instead design a scalable demand gen layer (partner-led or campaign-driven) that supports the CS Growth team without breaking the model. Would love to connect. We’ve been deeply involved in this space lately with a few GTM organisations. Here’s my LinkedIn if you’d like to connect: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rahul-elango-088841313/
For the outbound motions it’s always a good idea to automate so that the process is in place while the team is busy or neck-deep with demos etc. Absolutely a good idea to set up BDRs for demand gen inbound and outbound while automation is in place to a decent extent to support them while letting them do what they do best ‘closing’. This teams will then feed quality leads to the CS team who in turn can take their existing relationships forward with customers for faster closures. Incentivising the BDRs on quality leads over quantity is always a good idea to keep them motivated.
Hey Devin M., I've been part of a team that's identified this exact problem and worked through a system change to solve it. Quick summary here - drop me a note if you want any more specifics of how we did it.
Problem stems from hiring renewals-only CS, or the team having a culture of renewals-only. Culture change can have a huge impact.
Can you better incentivise or coach your CSMs to cross-sell? Are there CSMs on the market with skills more adapted to cross-sell as well as renewals?
We didn't go out and hire a brand new team of BDRs off the bat - I'm guessing you don't want to either as it's an expensive solution for a hypothesis you've not tested
Start by identifying a small-ish number of target upsell accounts across your portfolio - the ones you think are the most low-hanging fruit. 10-20% of total client base to test.
Pick your BDRs that have the best soft skills and relationship building abilities - you don't want your best new business hunters charging in and potentially overstepping the mark and/or damaging existing relationships
Assign the clients to your BDRs and have them jointly write a cross-sell plan with your CSM that will fit seamlessly with the existing account plan your CSM has for that client
Get the CSM to introduce the BDRs to your key stakeholders at each account
Be open with your stakeholders at each account - tell them you think your solution could help elsewhere in the business & that's what the BDR is helping with
BDRs should also have identified other contacts within the business they can target on a cold basis & be reaching out directly
Test it for 1-2 quarters to see what traction you get
Be careful with how you're incentivising these BDRs - you obviously want the cross-sell but you can't have the same commission structures as the BDRs will have for new business as it'll skew things & might make the other BDRs unhappy. Think about offering bonuses for cross-sell to start, and run another incentive for the cold-only BDRs at the same time so everyone has chance to earn.
Once you've tested for a few quarters you'll be able to see what does & doesn't work and tweak
You might also want to prioritise a cross-sell focussed CSM for your next hire in that team and see results from them
Solutions we found was to have a specific cross-sell BDR team working with CSMs and a specific new business BDR team (however this will depend on the size of your teams & your internal priorities) as well as segmenting accounts to those with cross-sell opportunity and those you've identified as having minimum expansion potential & assigning CSMs with different skillsets to each
Hope this makes sense!
I’ve seen this happen a lot, spreading goals always sounds efficient but usually kills accountability. Specialists outperform every time.
