Book Review: The Sales Development Playbook

Whether you call it inside sales, business development, or sales development, this is a critical role for revenue growth.

Released just last month, I highly recommend anyone in leadership for sales or inside sales read The Sales Development Playbook by Trish Bertuzzi. Specifically, the book is written for:

  • Executives and Executive Sponsors
  • VPs of Sales
  • Sales Development Veterans
  • Newly promoted Sales Development Managers

I’d like to add a few more to the list of folks who should read this:

  • HR, Recruiters, and Trainers – As Trish points out in Chapter 3, recruiting is one of the six essential elements to sales development success.
  • Senior Marketers – Sales Development has a close relationship to marketing and marketing leaders can learn better how to align and support sales development.

An expert in sales development spanning 30 years, author Trish Bertuzzi covers the whole gamut of the life of a rep in this book from hiring through promotions along the career path. The Sales Development Playbook is organized into 6 parts:

STRATEGY- Part 1 shares a framework for thinking about how to align your sales development model with your specific market dynamics and buyer’s journey.

SPECIALIZATION – Part 2 presents stories of innovative companies applying new thinking. You’ll learn about segmenting your prospect universe, specializing roles, and how it all comes together.

RECRUITING – Part 3 shares a roadmap for hiring with urgency and attracting top talent: recruiting tactics, compensation, and a bulletproof hiring process.

RETENTION – Part 4 goes deep on the stuff that never seems to get enough consideration: engaging, developing, and motivating people.

EXECUTION – Part 5 switches gears and present strategies and examples for onboarding, crafting buyer-based messaging, and designing effective outreach.

LEADERSHIP – Part 6 gives actionable advice on what it takes to lead sales development today: setting quota, measuring what matters, and acceleration technologies.

Especially here in San Diego I see a lot of companies struggling with the recruiting piece of this.  That’s one of the reasons that I partnered with a recruiter to help my clients with that critical first step. I see a lot of companies are having a hard time attracting the talent they need for this role that’s really growing in popularity among San Diego’s B2B tech and biotech population.

Trish spends a lot of time on the topic of specialization in roles and that’s valuable advice that I have not seen covered in other guides. Many companies look at the SDR role as a catch all for both inbound (lead qualification) and outbound (research and prospecting outreach).  Trish relies not only her own experience but has researched dozens of companies to identify how role specialization works best for revenue acceleration.

There is a lot of good tactical and practical advice in The Sales Development Playbook, even all the way down to cadence planning and whether leaving voice mail is effective or not.

I highly recommend it! Get your copy on Amazon today!

About the author: Kathleen Glass is president of the San Diego Chapter of the AA-ISP and founder of Oinkodomeo, a sales and marketing agency.  Join the San Diego AA-ISP LinkedIn Group for more best practices tips and to learn about local meeting dates and times. 

The AA-ISP (American Association of Inside Sales Professionals www.aa-isp.org ) is an International association dedicated exclusively to advancing the profession of Inside Sales.  AA-ISP’s mission is to help Inside Sales Representatives and Leaders to leverage association information and resources through published content, local community chapters, national conferences, career development, and an Inside Sales Accreditation program.