I write this with the preface that I was not a perfect employee and made some mistakes. But I was well-respected and had no HR record.
I took the SDR role under the promise in my interview that if I met all the requirements for promotion I would have an opportunity to transfer further in the Marketing department . Throughout the course of the 1 year role obligation (WAY to long to be an outbound SDR), I achieved every requirement necessary and was a top performer on the team. When I became promotable I was told there are no higher level Marketing positions in the Dallas office. So I was misled from day 1 and used for department/company production for a year. I made it clear in my interview and throughout my tenure my only intention to continue my Marketing career. To be fair, I was offered promotions to other departments. None of them were in my career path so I declined.
The SDR role is atrocious. It's a vertical market and limited prospects. The department has been calling on the same prospects for years and AppFolio created a terrible sales tactic reputation. We were consistently reassigned accounts that were called way too many times in the past. I was instructed to even call accounts/contacts again that had previous call notes that said "Never contact me again", "Do not contact" and even people who unsubscribed from Marketing emails "to see if things changed". I was yelled at by prospects, pleaded with to stop calling, cussed out and hung up on countless times for continuing to call these accounts.
Inbound leads are a joke and veil of secrecy covers them. It was obvious the SDR team at corporate was fed more leads than our satellite office. We had to fight for a "put back" system when we were assigned garbage leads. Once we got a system, it would take management a week to approve and there was no transparency if we actually were placed back on top of the round robin.
SDR management is the most extreme passive-aggressive micro-managers I’ve ever worked for. They made a brutal job even more unbearable. It is a glorified cold-calling call center. They're obsessed with KPIs (primarily outbound calls), constantly monitoring the dashboards and would Gchat you if you're not on pace or didn’t hit your KPIs for 1 day. Even if your production (meetings set & SQLs created) were at or above quota you would be hounded. Further, if you were in trouble or they needed to talk to you they would sneak up behind your desk and say this incredibly annoying saying “Got a sec?”.
In addition, management was the worsts leaders I’ve ever had. In my entire tenure I maybe saw them call a prospect 5 times. They had no respect from the team because of this. The Sales managers on the other hand led by example and were constantly on calls and demos with prospects. SDR management would always show these ridiculous motivational videos, give these corny speeches, and have the cheesiest sayings and emails. We also had WAAAAY too many meetings/huddles for an SDR team. 1 every morning and afternoon which we would usually play these 3rd grader games. We’d even have random end of day huddles if that wasn’t enough. We were treated like children. If you were 10 minutes late from lunch you got a scolding. If you were gone from your desk “too long” they would come find you.
There were LOTS of broken promises that included:
*Monthly team outings. We had maybe 5 in my 14 months
*Misquoted monthly bonus amounts - We requested they be written into our comp
plan to prevent this, but was told they “may change monthly” and would be too difficult.
*Constantly changing and unclear promotion requirements
*We were encouraged to give department feedback, but it was used against you
The pay is atrocious for the job and bearing the manager. You start at $18/hr. Per Glassdoor, the average starting salary for an SDR in Dallas is $22/hr.
To sum it up, in my 14 months there 18 SDRs either quit (14) or got fired (4) and only 3 were promoted. Says it all!
If you want to work for a great company apply at AppFolio. Just not as an SDR unless you’re looking for a miserable, dead-end entry level cold-calling job!
