Prospecting Skills for Sales Development Representatives Training Course

Course overview

Sales Development Representatives are expected to create qualified pipeline from incomplete data, crowded buyer inboxes and limited time. The role demands more than high activity levels: SDRs must identify accounts that fit the ideal customer profile, find the right buying contacts, form a credible point of view and earn a response without misrepresenting the offer. This course addresses the practical gap between being given a territory or target list and building a repeatable prospecting system that produces relevant conversations and usable opportunities.

Participants learn to translate an ideal customer profile into account-selection criteria, research companies and stakeholders efficiently, map buying groups, and prioritise prospects using fit, intent and trigger signals. They practise using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, CRM records and sales-engagement platforms to build account lists, verify contact data and organise multichannel outreach. The course develops skills in writing concise cold emails, creating call openers, handling early objections, leaving useful voicemail messages and planning follow-up sequences that add value rather than merely repeat a request for time.

Instruction combines live demonstrations, account-research drills, messaging workshops, call role plays and peer critique using realistic B2B sales scenarios. Participants receive coaching on the quality of their targeting, relevance of their messaging and clarity of their qualification questions. Each participant leaves with a territory-ready prospecting pack: an ICP scorecard, prioritised account list, stakeholder map, researched account brief, multichannel cadence and call plan that can be adapted directly for their employer’s market.

The programme suits new and developing SDRs, business development representatives and inside sales professionals who prospect into named accounts or defined segments. It is also valuable for SDR managers who need a common operating standard for research quality, outreach quality and pipeline-creation activity.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Define an ideal customer profile using firmographic, technographic, operational and buying-signal criteria
• Build a prioritised target-account list with a documented fit-and-intent scoring method
• Research companies and buying stakeholders using LinkedIn Sales Navigator, CRM data and public trigger sources
• Map buying groups by identifying likely champions, economic buyers, users, influencers and blockers
• Write persona-specific cold emails with a relevant trigger, value hypothesis and clear call to action
• Design a multichannel outreach cadence across email, phone, LinkedIn and voicemail
• Conduct a structured prospecting call using a permission-based opener, discovery questions and objection responses
• Produce a territory-ready prospecting pack containing account briefs, stakeholder maps, sequences and call plans

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Sales Development Representatives — who need a repeatable method for turning target accounts into qualified first meetings
• Business Development Representatives — who prospect into new markets, territories or named-account segments
• Inside Sales Representatives — who need stronger research and outreach discipline before handing opportunities to account executives
• Junior Account Executives — who retain responsibility for self-sourced pipeline alongside closing activity
• SDR Team Leaders — who need consistent standards for account selection, messaging and activity coaching
• Revenue Operations Analysts — who support SDR teams with prospect data, routing rules and pipeline-quality reporting

Requirements and prerequisites

This is a foundation-to-intermediate course and is suitable for participants new to structured B2B prospecting. Participants should understand the basic purpose of a CRM, the difference between a lead and an opportunity, and the products or services their organisation sells. Experience sending business email or making customer-facing calls is useful but not essential. Bring a laptop with access to your organisation’s CRM and, where available, LinkedIn Sales Navigator or a sales-engagement platform. No prior quota-carrying sales experience, advanced spreadsheet skills, paid prospect-data subscription or formal sales qualification certification is required.

Training methodology

The course is delivered through instructor-led demonstrations, short working sessions and coached practice using a realistic B2B territory. Participants inspect CRM records, use LinkedIn Sales Navigator search filters, assess account triggers and build messaging from research evidence rather than templates alone. Small groups compare account-priority decisions and critique emails against a relevance checklist. Call role plays use recorded-style scenarios and structured feedback. Each day adds a component to an individual prospecting pack, culminating in an application plan for the participant’s own segment, accounts and activity measures.

Course outline

Day 1: Prospecting foundations and target-account focus

• The SDR pipeline-creation role and quality standards for first meetings
• Ideal customer profile components: firmographics, technographics and operating conditions
• Segmentation by industry, company size, geography and use case
• Distinguishing accounts, leads, contacts and opportunities in CRM workflows
• Account-fit scoring with weighted selection criteria
• Intent, trigger and timing signals for prospecting prioritisation
• Territory planning and weekly prospecting capacity allocation

Workshop: Participants build an ICP scorecard and rank a sample territory of accounts into priority tiers with written rationale.

Day 2: Account research and stakeholder mapping

• LinkedIn Sales Navigator account and lead search filters
• Reading company websites, annual reports and job postings for business priorities
• Researching growth events, leadership changes, funding, hiring and technology triggers
• Using CRM history to identify prior engagement and existing relationships
• Contact-data verification and responsible use of public information
• Buying-group roles: champion, user, influencer, economic buyer and blocker
• Account-brief structure for concise research handover

Workshop: Participants research a named account and produce a one-page account brief with trigger evidence, stakeholder hypotheses and priority contacts.

Day 3: Relevant messaging and multichannel sequences

• Value hypotheses linking account evidence to a business problem
• Persona-based messaging for operational, financial and executive stakeholders
• Cold-email structure: subject line, relevance, proof, value and call to action
• LinkedIn connection requests and follow-up messages that avoid generic pitching
• Voicemail design and the relationship between voicemail and email follow-up
• Cadence architecture across phone, email, LinkedIn and task reminders
• Sales-engagement platform sequence fields, merge variables and quality controls

Workshop: Participants create a five-touch multichannel sequence for their researched account and receive peer feedback against a messaging rubric.

Day 4: Prospecting calls and early qualification

• Permission-based cold-call openers and reason-for-call statements
• Pattern interrupts that retain relevance without scripted manipulation
• Discovery questions for current state, impact, priority and change timing
• Active listening, note capture and concise call control
• Responding to common objections including no time, send information and already have a supplier
• Securing a next step with a clear meeting purpose and attendee agreement
• CRM call logging, disposition codes and qualification-note standards

Workshop: Participants complete filmed-style paired call role plays and produce call notes, an agreed next-step email and a CRM disposition.

Day 5: Execution management and territory application

• Daily and weekly activity planning by account tier and channel
• Leading and lagging measures: connects, replies, conversations, meetings and conversion rates
• Diagnosing weak results in list quality, message relevance, cadence or call execution
• A/B testing subject lines, calls to action and value hypotheses
• CRM hygiene rules for account ownership, next actions and research notes
• Account executive handover criteria and meeting-quality feedback loops
• Personal 30-day prospecting experiment and manager coaching plan

Workshop: Participants assemble and present their complete prospecting pack, then create a 30-day execution plan with measurable activity and conversion targets.

Tools & standards covered

Salesforce Sales Cloud, HubSpot CRM, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Outreach

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions