COVID-19, the great resignation, inflation, 425 bps in rate hikes from the Fed, 450K jobs added, and 135K laid off. Tech sales has certainly been challenged since 2020.   In some ways, more has changed in the last two years than in the previous ten. In our just released 2023 SDR Metrics & Compensation Report, we analyze the shifts in sales development over this period. Which trends have accelerated? Which strategies have withered? We dig into areas like motion, model, ramp, tenure, attrition, activity, compensation, tech stack, and front-line leadership. About the Participants This is ..read more

Today we launch our 2022-23 SDR motions, metrics, and compensation research. This is our 9th iteration of this project since 2007. This edition is more streamlined than prior years and will take ~5 minutes to complete. If you lead a Sales Development group, please participate.  We've redesigned this year’s survey based on your feedback to dig into how things are changing. But, equally importantly, we want to focus in on what outperformance looks like in this environment.  Two quick points of housekeeping: This survey covers SDRs, not AE (we've concluded our AE research until 2023) Y ..read more

Today we launch our 2021 Account Executive motions, metrics, and compensation research. This is our 9th iteration of this project since 2007. This edition is more streamlined than prior years and will take ~5 minutes to complete. If you lead an AE group, please participate.  We've redesigned this year’s survey based on your feedback to dig into how things are changing. But, equally importantly, we want to focus in on what outperformance looks like in this environment.  Two quick points of housekeeping: This survey covers Account Executive, not SDRs (we've concluded our SDR research ..read more

We’ve been closely following the B2B tech hiring market over the last twelve months. And with the Bureau Labor Statistics releasing the new Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary (JOLTS) last week, I thought now was a good time to take stock. Compared to the trough (mid 2020) things are massively improved. But compared to the peak (late 2019) we aren’t yet fully recovered. Here are four things I’m seeing:  1) Layoffs are well behind us Back in May 2020, I looked at 200 funded B2B SaaS companies and found: Hiring freezes roared into April and turned to layoffs by May By the middle of Q2 ..read more

For obvious reasons, 2020 will be remembered for COVID-19. While some implications already seem apparent (hanging out slacking on teamed zooms, remote work, inside selling), many will take time to become perceptible. It’s been said 1,000 times but remains true. The pandemic accelerated many pre-existing trends.   In our just released 2021 SDR Metrics & Compensation Report, we analyze the shifts in sales development over recent years and which trends have accelerated. We dig into areas like motion, model, ramp, promotions, attrition, activity, comp, tech stack, and front-line leadershi ..read more

I saw an interesting LinkedIn post from Tito Bohrt the other day. He wrote: Promotions from SDR to AE have slowed down in 2020…. The question is how to you prevent SDR burnout?   I think Tito’s intuition is spot on, but I wondered how much and where the slow down is occurring.  So, I ran some numbers. I started by identifying 14 SaaS companies who: Have 150+ total employees Have SDRs (or ADRs, BDRs, etc.) Promote SDR into AE roles I ended up with a list of 200 US-based reps who started as SDRs in 2017, 2018, or 2019. 2020 hires won’t yet have the tenure to be captured, so I ex ..read more

After much delay (and many pings asking when we're launching), today we launch our 2020 Sales Development research. This is our 8th iteration of this project. This edition is more streamlined than prior years and will take ~5 minutes to complete. If you lead an ADR/BDR/SDR group, please participate.  We had originally planned to launch this round in April. And then...Covid. My original thinking was to punt till 2021. But the volume of inbound emails asking for the timing of our new edition convinced me to reconsider. We have redesigned this year’s survey (ever so slightly) to help determi ..read more

Last week, Trish and I did an event with Sam Jacobs of Revenue Collective. We discussed our recent research on sellers' appetites, attitudes, and apprehensions about returning to in-person work. You can access the full 45-minute recording (which I highly recommend) or . For those of you who want the Reader’s Digest | tl;dr version, we shot a 10-minute Bridge Group Client Brief hitting highlights.                                         11:18       ..read more

LinkedIn has been hard lately. I’m sure you are seeing the same thing - post after post from friends and colleagues about layoffs. While the impact has been enormous in people terms, the scale has been hard to gauge. Are we over the hump? Is the snowball still rolling downhill?  So I decided to do some research. I built a list of 200 B2B SaaS companies that: Had 100+ employees Took venture funding since 2018 and Are HQ’d in the US or Canada   I then used the amazing crowdsourced resources of layoff.fyi’s tracker and Candor’s hiring/freezing/layoff data to track which companies are ..read more

What a year April 2020 was. Record breaking unemployment news, record setting fiscal and monetary reaction, positive (?), and ever-changing epidemiological models make it hard to trust the ground underfoot. We wanted to quantify the evolving impact on the B2B tech space so together with RevOps Squared, we surveyed 110+ revenue leaders. We asked: What actions they have already taken Future actions they are considering and Their outlook for the remainder of calendar 2020   Finding 1: Roughly 30% of leaders report reducing the number of AEs (Note this data is as of April 24th) The median r ..read more