Business Development Rep Retention
By Glance Technology
Last week we released an in depth case study covering the details of work we did with RevGen. If anyone missed that post and wants to read the scope of recruiting, click HERE.
In this post we are going to add to the case study and discuss how we improved BDR rep retention (and thus, lowered the overall total cost of recruiting for RevGen’s sales team).
The average retention of BDR hires in q1 2017 at RevGen was 29%.
In q2 it was 58%.
To simplify this — For every 10 hires, RevGen was only retaining 3. Now, just 3 months later they retain double the amount. Nothing changed in the actual job opportunity. So what happened?
A few events lead to the change in retention.
In my experience reps do not want to stay a BDR for the rest of their lives. Reps understand becoming a BDR on the way to being a VP of Sales is par for the course.
The increased uptick in offer acceptance rate and employee retention is a direct effect of the training RevGen offers, and how the company has communicated the long term value of that training.
Lets be clear. EVERY company speaks highly of their training program but very few have external validation to back the claims up. RevGen is the exception to this.
In 3 months the training and professional development offered pumps out top producing BDR’s at companies like Citrix, Dude Solutions and Bandwidth.
Traditional recruiting teaches you to source candidates via LinkedIn Boolean Search and work your network for qualified candidates with experience. RevGen tackles this problem a little differently.
While other companies and recruiters are fighting over the few BDRs available, RevGen is manufacturing a pipeline of training graduates to fill this void with 2x the efficiency as q1.
The brilliance is in the model. As for profit coding schools around the United States have started to collapse it seems as if their business model was wrong from Day 1.
Companies like RevGen who offer the same kind of transformative career development and do so by providing the candidate a job are going to win long term.
How big they win is a derivative of the quality of training, and how well the quality of the training can be communicated to candidates.
The value RevGen offers, over other companies in Raleigh, is the quality of the training and communicating this throughout the hiring process has given the team an edge.
When other companies are hiring their 10th BDR and hoping he/she hits the ground running RevGen has hired and developed over 500 in the last 3 years.
Framing talent discussions around RevGen as an investment in a candidates career has correlated to an incredible uptick in retention.
Candidates now come to RevGen eager to LEARN sales.
Most walk in the door having already viewed the online sales training (full training of what BDRs learn is available for free on the RevGen YouTube channel).
This has reduced ramp time and we are eager to watch what the ROI to the business will be 6 months down the road.
We are data driven so I will refrain from speculating on the result. Expect a future blog post about this.
Looking back on the last 3 months of work I attribute the 2x retention rates to the training available online and the effective communication with candidates around RevGen being an investment in their future.
Thanks for reading :). If you enjoyed it, hit the heart button below. Would mean a lot to me and helps others see the story.
