“I tell my BDRs when the good times to call are, but don’t limit yourself. Call whenever you want. Call on the weekends, call at 6 a.m. or call at 6 p.m. Just make your calls.”

It’s with that core belief in mind that Stankus, who leads the team of global BDRs at Acquia, instituted phone call targets for the team. Since the inception of the outbound sales org at Acquia – a team which Stankus started, gave up when transferred to run other divisions and eventually given back – the BDRs had drifted away from making regular calls. Email prospecting had taken over and phone calls were viewed as a waste of time.

But without regular time talking to prospects, many of whom are c-suite executives, how does a BDR, fresh out of school, learn to have effective conversations with leads? How does a BDR build a well-rounded sales toolkit that will carry them into their next role, and beyond?

“I used to walk through the BDR team in those days and it was like a library. I would ask the people running the team ‘why aren’t people making phone calls?’” says Stankus.

“Eventually, we instituted a target number of calls each week, per BDR. And, we taught our BDRs how to have effective calls. We told them, ‘this is what it takes to be successful.’ And the team got wrapped around making calls. They realized they can get people on the phone, and have a conversation that can lead to enough interest to book a discovery call. That’s how the thing started to snowball.”