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The Secret Behind Snowflake's SDR Success: The Sales Development Academy
The Secret Behind Snowflake's SDR Success: The Sales Development Academy
Learn from Lars Nilsson, VP of Global Sales Development at Snowflake.
This fireside chat will focus primarily on Snowflake's famous Sales Development Academy.
What was the most pivotal moment in Lars' career?
At the start of it all: the training and mentorship he received at Xerox Corporation as a new grad in 1988. Lars chose to start his career at a company that invested in him and developed him as a salesperson, a manager, and a leader.
This experience at Xerox inspired Lars to partner with the rest of the leadership team at Snowflake to build and perfect the perfect opportunity for today's young professional.
Say hello to Snowflake's Sales Development Academy, a global training and mentorship program investing in the very best tech sales talent across 10 cities, 7 countries, and 4 continents.
What exactly is the Snowflake Sales Development Academy?
It’s the talent pipeline for the future leadership of Snowflake and the tech industry as a whole.
The Sales Development Academy includes four weeks of intensive onboarding, fifteen months of advanced sales skill development, and continued mentorship from a management team with over one hundred years of combined Sales Development leadership experience.
Discussion topics
Lars’ time spent at Xerox and the takeaways from his experience there
The inception of Snowflake’s Sales Development Academy
What is covered in the Academy
Key Takeaways
At Snowflake’s Academy, there are many classes of SDRs. This is done to build camaraderie. Competitions are held between the classes and the contests are to hit certain targets. Healthy competition creates awareness and upticks in meeting creation. The SDR role is hard, so do what you must as a leader in order to elevate the role
For the overall development of the SDR, if in a hybrid role, they should spend the majority of the workweek in the office. This is necessary to get real-time feedback of their efforts regarding certain tasks, such as cold-calling. Being in the office also leads to better networking. SDRs learn about other roles outside of becoming AEs (Sales Engineering, Customer Success, etc.)