​Brittany Sterling is one of the best product marketers in the cybersecurity space. She also has a dark secret. She started her career as an SDR. I asked her a few questions about it.

Most SDRs aspire to grow into more senior sales roles. Do you think more of them should consider a marketing career path?

As an SDR, your interactions with marketing can be surface-level. There are more roles and disciplines than you may realize. You don't see a lot of the moving parts happening in the background every day to execute a successful marketing strategy.​

It's worth learning a bit more about all those pieces to see if they interest you. Even if they ultimately don't, the knowledge will better equip you to ask for (and get) the marketing support you need as you advance in your sales career. Asking for a whitepaper to be turned around in a week is not only unlikely to happen, it simply existing is not going to move the needle when it comes to pipeline. There is a whole lot else that also needs to happen to get relevant eyeballs looking at any piece of content and even more to get them further engaged.

Are there aspects of your early-career stint as an SDR that have made you a better product marketer?

It made me realize people respond much better to casual tone/language and appreciate brevity. It really can be a struggle both as an SDR and a company to get someone's attention. Anything you can do to make someone more likely to engage and get your most important point across while you still have them is a win.

Playing a bit of a reverse Uno card on my first answer... it also benefits all marketers to learn about SDR and sales activities and understand the terminology and processes they use. It makes aligning marketing objectives to sales goals much easier. Which, in turn, can make conversations and meetings between the two disciplines more productive.

What advice would you give to an SDR considering a jump to marketing?

Marketing is much less structured and sometimes comes with a lot more chaos than you're used to experiencing day-to-day in an SDR role. Roles themselves can be a lot less defined, too, especially at smaller companies. Be fully prepared to improvise and roll with (and take a few) punches. At the same time, you'll also need to learn to prioritize and keep an eye on the bigger goals like completing key projects. Finding a good tool or methodology that keeps you organized and on the right path but isn't a time sink can be a journey but one that will pay off. I swear by Todoist.com. #notsponsored

Additionally, there is typically a lot less training (expect none). Pretty much everything I picked up was through project-based learning or self-education from YouTube, articles, and the occasional product documentation deep dive. But, when you turn in a decent piece of copy or solve a CRM or marketing automation issue you've been wrestling with, it can be satisfying to have figured it out all on your own.

Thanks for the insights, Brittany!

-Doug

​Brittany Sterling is one of the best product marketers in the cybersecurity space. She also has a dark secret. She started her career as an SDR. I asked her a few questions about it.

Most SDRs aspire to grow into more senior sales roles. Do you think more of them should consider a marketing career path?

As an SDR, your interactions with marketing can be surface-level. There are more roles and disciplines than you may realize. You don't see a lot of the moving parts happening in the background every day to execute a successful marketing strategy.​

It's worth learning a bit more about all those pieces to see if they interest you. Even if they ultimately don't, the knowledge will better equip you to ask for (and get) the marketing support you need as you advance in your sales career. Asking for a whitepaper to be turned around in a week is not only unlikely to happen, it simply existing is not going to move the needle when it comes to pipeline. There is a whole lot else that also needs to happen to get relevant eyeballs looking at any piece of content and even more to get them further engaged.

Are there aspects of your early-career stint as an SDR that have made you a better product marketer?

It made me realize people respond much better to casual tone/language and appreciate brevity. It really can be a struggle both as an SDR and a company to get someone's attention. Anything you can do to make someone more likely to engage and get your most important point across while you still have them is a win.

Playing a bit of a reverse Uno card on my first answer... it also benefits all marketers to learn about SDR and sales activities and understand the terminology and processes they use. It makes aligning marketing objectives to sales goals much easier. Which, in turn, can make conversations and meetings between the two disciplines more productive.

What advice would you give to an SDR considering a jump to marketing?

Marketing is much less structured and sometimes comes with a lot more chaos than you're used to experiencing day-to-day in an SDR role. Roles themselves can be a lot less defined, too, especially at smaller companies. Be fully prepared to improvise and roll with (and take a few) punches. At the same time, you'll also need to learn to prioritize and keep an eye on the bigger goals like completing key projects. Finding a good tool or methodology that keeps you organized and on the right path but isn't a time sink can be a journey but one that will pay off. I swear by Todoist.com. #notsponsored

Additionally, there is typically a lot less training (expect none). Pretty much everything I picked up was through project-based learning or self-education from YouTube, articles, and the occasional product documentation deep dive. But, when you turn in a decent piece of copy or solve a CRM or marketing automation issue you've been wrestling with, it can be satisfying to have figured it out all on your own.

Thanks for the insights, Brittany!

-Doug