Hey Kayla! What are you up to these days?

I’m Kayla and I just recently became an Account Executive from the Sales Development Representative role 2 months ago!

Congrats on the promotion to Account Executive! Though it’s the most obvious career progression, the SDR to AE promotion is not always easy. How was it for you?

An internal promotion is really hard. You don't just do well as an SDR and move up. You don't just do the bare minimum and meet the requirements. No way. You're not going to get promoted that way.

You really have to find your niche that breaks you out of what every other SDR is doing. Often I find the people that get promoted are the people that create new ways of SDRing.

For me, it was my fieldwork. That's what separated me. 

Fieldwork is prospecting in person: showing up to their office and literally knocking on the door, literally putting your foot in the door.

I didn't invent fieldwork but I took that and ran with it and I made it my own.

I didn’t start doing fieldwork with the intention of making it my niche. I had just heard other teams were doing it and I wanted to try it because honestly, I'm just not a person that likes to sit at a desk all day. I wanted to get out and meet people and do things and travel. That's what I like to do. 

When I started, it wasn't the most successful thing. But with time I got my process down. There's a lot to organize before and during and after the follow up game is huge (that's where I got most of my wins). Even though fieldwork sounds really simple, there are a lot of little tricks to get that face time and to just break through the noise.

I didn't really realize how big of an impact it was making on my pipeline until I mentioned to my team that my fieldwork had been my most effective channel. My manager just said: “Kayla, do you realize that you're the first person that's ever said fieldwork is your most effective channel?”

So I leaned into that in my interviews for AE promotion. A lot of other people can say “oh yeah, I'm comfortable with field work.” But for me, it was like, no, that's my thing. That's my niche. I spearheaded the rest of the country to do it and I led enablement sessions for the rest of the team. I got 30 opportunities from field work alone. I loved breaking through the noise and meeting people in person instead of just sitting at my desk and doing cold calls and emails all day.

In a competitive space, I think what set me apart was going outside the list of status quo SDR responsibilities and the enthusiasm for sales that I developed through fieldwork. 

What else do you recommend to other SDRs trying to get promoted? 

At least at larger orgs you definitely want to get to know the hiring managers before your interview. If you can get the introductions and the familiarity step out of the way, you can just focus on your interviewing and your skills.

I reached out to all potential AE managers over Slack and just asked for a 15 minute coffee chat.

They do these kinds of calls with SDRs all the time so I just kept it very light just to show that I'm a person, show them a bit about personal Kayla and share with them what I’m about because at the end of the day, sales is about relationships. Helping hiring managers see you as just the person you are helps them visualize you on their team.

I also asked questions like: “What's your management style?” “What's your team like?” “What's your team culture like?” And it's also important to sync with people on the team to get their take.

But generally, internal AE managers know you don’t know everything you need to know to be an AE yet and that’s ok. That's to be expected.