I normally don’t read World Economic Forum reports.
But if I did, it might be about some cool new tech like blockchain or crypto currencies. It’s highly unlikely it would be the WEF’s 147-page “The Future of Jobs Report 2018”. But that’s the report I found when researching a new job function I’m recruiting for (if you’re intrigued, you can apply here), but which doesn’t really exist anywhere. Yet. It’s a Future Job.
We’re creating a brand new role to enhance our customer’s buying journey here at Drift. We’re calling it the Conversation Development Rep. The closest role might be an inbound SDR or BDR, but our role will solely focus on engaging, conversing and guiding our inbound website visitors in real-time via live chat.
First time you’ve seen that title, right?
We’ve all engaged the “chat agent” on B2C customer support teams, but up till now there’s been no well-defined role for a person who supports, and enhances, the buying process. That’s why I was struggling with the job description.
Back to the “The Future of Jobs 2018” report where I had gone for some inspiration. The report predicts which jobs are becoming redundant, and which are newly emerging. They shared a couple of interesting findings.
- On the jobs-going-redundant side, the report identified Telemarketers and Sales Agents as job profiles that are slowly becoming obsolete. No major surprise here really, because buyers rarely answer calls from anonymous phone numbers anymore, and buyers don’t need agents when they go direct to the seller’s website.
- On the new-and-emerging-jobs side: roles include Sales and Marketing Professionals which combine soft-skills with technology savviness.
At Drift, we’re creating a new way for businesses to buy from businesses, through the medium of conversations (or chat) – in fact we just posted a job description to help you hire your first Conversational Marketer here. The new way is technology-enabled, but human-to-human. Modern B2B buyers want to connect with people to get answers NOW, not later – where they are pushed through form submissions, lead scoring, lead routing and impersonal email follow-ups.
The Conversation Development Rep is dedicated to providing an exceptional experience for every customer. They engage B2B buyers the moment the buyer is ready. They navigate the buyer through the early discovery process. They create personalized experiences and build real relationships by providing support, responding to customers’ specific inquiries, and setting up meetings with the product experts.
And we’re seeing more companies jump on the CDR bandwagon all the time. Last week, I spoke to an SDR manager at a mid-sized SaaS company. They have 3 to 5 minute SLAs on connecting and chatting with people who come to their website via the most urgent channels:
- 1 (800) number
- Get a Quote
- Chat
These SLAs are almost unheard of – but thats the new expectation of the modern buyer. On the seller’s side, these conversations turn into business at much higher rates than businesses with 1-hour or 24-hour lead-follow-up SLAs, which are still normal in B2B today.
So to really hone in on the CDR role and build out a true job description, we sat down with our best sales reps, who convert website visitors to meetings, and asked them to help write it up.
