A Salespond Program
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Catch and Release gives you a structured way to evaluate a Salespond-trained SDR in real selling work, on your market, before you make a permanent hiring decision.
We will confirm fit, explain the evaluation pathway and outline the appropriate next step. No obligation and no pitch deck.
Part of
60 researchers verifying every contact
SDR is the highest churn seat in B2B sales. Put the two industry benchmarks side by side, ramp time and tenure, and the shape of the investment changes.
Benchmarks from The Bridge Group SDR Metrics & Compensation series, summarised in our SDR Motivation Report.
A CV, two interviews and a reference call. The permanent commitment is signed months before anyone sees the person prospect your market.
Recruitment fees appear as a line item. The pipeline that nobody built while the seat sat empty does not.
Your best SDR is your most promotable and most poachable asset. If comp is the only thing holding them, someone will bid higher.
Four stages over a nine month minimum engagement. You watch the work before you own the headcount.
Months nought to three. We advertise, interview and hire the candidates, and they begin the SalesPond Academy while working on live campaigns. None of that recruitment load sits with you.
Months three to six. Academy courses complete, top performers are assessed and nominated onto your campaigns. You get trained outbound on your proposition against contacts our research team has verified rather than bought.
Roughly 2,000 touch points a month per full-time resource, with four to eight SQLs and four to eight MQLs, reported through Podiem. You see the activity as it happens, not a summary at the end.
Months six to nine prepare the paperwork, systems and process. At the end of the nine months the XDR is released to you as a dedicated full time hire, by mutual agreement. The decision comes after the evidence.
“In the first full quarter since the Catch & Release program, the team were able to achieve 122% of their overall target. Not only that, but each team member also achieved their individual targets for the same period of time.”
“Throughout the whole process, SalesPond has been very flexible with us. We were able to quickly and smoothly transition the team, giving us the ability to ramp up the output much quicker than would’ve been possible otherwise.”
Alex IredaleMarketing Operations Manager, APAC, Zendesk
“I’ve taken advantage of SalesPond’s Catch and Release program, which has allowed me to build a team rapidly, with very little risk, and we’ve seen our ‘caught’ team members go on to do great things in our business. I’d highly recommend it.”
Patrick DevlinDirector, Aruba South Pacific (ANZ)
The first sales company worldwide to become a Certified Inside Sales Organization, meeting the AA-ISP standard for operational excellence in inside and digital sales.
By the time the hiring decision arrives, you have watched the work rather than the interview.
| Hiring an SDR directly | Catch and Release | |
|---|---|---|
| Decision point | Before anyone has sold anything | After you have seen months of real output |
| Evidence | CV, interviews, references | Live activity, conversations, qualified pipeline |
| Ramp pipeline | Roughly three months of building it yourself | Outbound is running from the start of the engagement |
| Training | Yours, alongside your day job | Ours, before they reach your market |
| Data | Whatever list you can buy | Contacts verified by our research team before campaign start |
| If it fails | Performance management, then recruit again | We change the resource. Your engagement continues |
Ten pages on why the highest churn seat in B2B sales churns, drawing on field research from Harvard Business Review, four decades of goal setting studies, and incentive design research. Written for the person accountable for an SDR team's output.
Read the report (PDF, 10 pages) → Available on request during the fit conversation.Doug Chung's field experiments with real sales teams found reward structure matters as much as reward size. Interim targets kept mid tier performers on pace, while capping upside actively hurt the top performers.
One of the most replicated results in organisational psychology, across hundreds of studies. The effect strengthens when a rep can see their progress in real time rather than at quarter end.
When a measure becomes a target it stops being a good measure. Reward raw activity and you get short calls that tick the box while the pipeline stays flat. This is why our assessment weights outcomes above inputs.
We would rather tell you now than three weeks into a sales process.
B2B teams with a real SDR or business development vacancy, an accountable sales owner and a defined target market. It suits companies who have decided they need the function and want to reduce the risk of getting the first hire wrong. It is not a fit for teams still working out who they sell to.
We recruit against your market and role brief rather than placing whoever is available. SDRs are assigned by language and market across our APAC coverage, then trained on your proposition, your ICP and your buyers' objections before they run a single campaign. Two people are assigned to every engagement so continuity does not rest on one individual.
Live activity and outcomes through the engagement, reported through Podiem: touch points completed, conversations held, leads qualified and accepted, and pipeline contributed. A full time resource runs to roughly 2,000 touch points a month with four to eight SQLs and four to eight MQLs. You see the same numbers we do, as they happen, rather than a summary at the end.
We change the resource and the engagement continues. That is the practical difference from a direct hire, where the same situation means performance management followed by recruiting again from zero. It is our responsibility to put the right person on your market, not yours.
At the end of the nine months. Months nought to three cover hiring and the SalesPond Academy, months three to six put the nominated XDR on your campaigns, and months six to nine prepare the HR paperwork, systems and process. The release happens after that period by mutual agreement of all parties, so taking the person in house is an option rather than an obligation.
Pricing is per SDR per month and includes both the resource and the verified contact database, plus a one off setup fee covering campaign preparation, data preparation and onboarding. Platform licences are bundled, so a second SDR costs less than the first. We will give you the actual number on the first call rather than making you request a quote.
A completed campaign brief at the start covering your offering, target market, value proposition, common objections and qualification criteria. A named person who can accept or reject leads. And a fortnightly campaign review of 15 to 30 minutes. Setup takes three to four weeks. Beyond that, the campaign is run by us.
A short conversation, not a pitch. We will ask what the role has to deliver, tell you honestly whether Catch and Release is the right shape for it, and outline what the engagement would look like if it is.
If it is not a fit, we will say so and tell you what we would do instead.
We will use these details to assess whether Catch and Release is a suitable next step.