Only 7 per cent say outsourced SDRs worked for them. Here is what the rest got wrong.

The number gets quoted at us in most first calls, and it deserves to be: in a SaaStr poll of more than 1,200 SaaS leaders, 7 per cent said outsourced SDRs had really worked for them, 26 per cent said sort of, and the rest said no. If you are weighing this up, that is the base rate, and you should hold whoever you talk to - us included - against it.

Having run this for years on other people’s markets, we think the failures cluster. Six causes cover nearly all of them. Three belong to the agency and three to the client, and the second three are the ones nobody talks about.

On the agency’s side

1. They sold a list and called it a function.

   Contact data plus a sequencing tool plus a junior rep is not sales development; it is spam with a salary. The tell is that nobody can show you the board before the first dial, because there is no board - there is a filter.

2. Nobody was listening to the calls.

   A rep on their own does not get better, they get habits. If the agency cannot name the manager who reviews calls and how often, the coaching is not happening, and the results in month three will look exactly like month one.

3. They were measured on the wrong thing.

   Meetings booked is a number that can be made. Meetings held, with a person who fits the criteria you agreed, is the number that matters. Agencies paid on the first produce the first.

On the client’s side

1. There was no brief.

   The agency was pointed at "SaaS companies" or "the mid-market" and left to it. Outbound works from a reason to call; a segment is not a reason. The engagements that work start with a page that says who, why now, and what a good meeting looks like.

2. It was stopped in week three.

   Week three is when the first list has been worked, nobody has replied, and the pipeline report still says nought. It is also the week the replies start arriving, because the fourth and fifth touches land then. A lot of engagements are cancelled two weeks before they would have worked.

3. Nobody was ready to take the meetings.

   The diary filled and the closers were busy, or junior, or on holiday, or unconvinced the meetings were real. A meeting held late, by the wrong person, with no follow-up is scored as a bad meeting, and the agency gets the blame for a handover that never happened.

What the ones that worked did differently

Look at the engagements on this site. GP Triage gave us a market with three different buyers in it and the room to learn which of them mattered before the script was fixed. NeverBland gave us a service line, then another, then another, and stayed close enough to the work - CEO, COO and marketing director all in contact - to re-aim it as their priorities moved. HG Technology gave us a clear line on who counted as a buyer, and let qualification hold it. In each case the client did their half: a brief, patience through the first month, and a person in the diary.

And in each case our half was the same: a rep who had done it before, a manager on the calls, a board you could argue with, and one cadence across every channel, run on a platform built for it.

How to be in the 7 per cent

• Ask to see the board before you sign, and refuse anyone who cannot show you one.
• Ask who listens to the calls. Get a name.
• Write the brief yourself: who, why now, what a good meeting is, who takes it.
• Agree to be measured on held, qualified meetings, and agree what qualified means in writing.
• Give it a quarter. Judge month one on activity and conversation rate, not on pipeline.
• Put the meetings in a closer’s diary before the first one is booked, not after.

Sources: The poll is Jason Lemkin’s, "Only 7% of you have really gotten outsourced SDRs to work", SaaStr, 2023, 1,200+ respondents.