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“You need six months to get a BDR team really to drive ROI value… that’s a hard pill to swallow,” says Taylor Thomson, Head of Finance at performance branding agency WITHIN.
His patient approach to business development runs counter to an industry obsessed with instant gratification and quarterly performance metrics.
Thomson believes that true revenue growth requires time. His philosophy reflects a clear understanding that relationship-driven sales strategies take longer to bear fruit but ultimately deliver stronger, more sustainable returns than transactional outreach focused on short-term wins.
That belief has guided his transformation of WITHIN from an agency averaging $250,000 per contract to one winning $1.8 million enterprise deals.
Why Does Taylor Thomson Believe Six Months Is the Minimum Timeline for BDR Success?
The Reality of Relationship Building
Thomson’s six-month minimum timeline is rooted in the realities of enterprise sales cycles rather than the optimistic assumptions common in corporate planning.
“You need six months to get a BDR team really to drive ROI value, to see any of the value that a BDR team is going to drive.
You need six months, nine months maybe, depending on your sales cycle,” he explained during a podcast interview.
He notes that complex deals require patience, as enterprise buyers often involve multiple stakeholders and lengthy evaluation processes that cannot be rushed.
His framework sets realistic expectations and encourages leadership teams to invest in relationship-building activities that yield sustainable growth.
Thomson credits part of this patience to his academic background in political science, which taught him how coalitions and trust develop over time through consistent value demonstration rather than quick transactions.
That lesson has carried into his approach to business development and organizational leadership.
Building Organizational Patience
For Thomson, the real challenge is not just the sales cycle itself but the organization’s ability to wait.
“If your leadership is saying you’re going to invest money and not see anything for nine months, that’s a hard pill to swallow,” he acknowledged. Yet he argues that leadership patience is essential for cultivating relationship-focused teams.
Too often, executives impose short-term performance targets that force BDRs to optimize for speed rather than quality.
Thomson’s success generating $7.6 million in incremental revenue through operational improvements shows that disciplined, long-term investment produces superior returns compared to reactive adjustments based on early metrics.
Organizational patience means resisting the urge to pivot strategy too soon, maintaining consistent support for teams during early development phases, and measuring progress by relationship depth rather than activity volume.
The Cost of Short-Term Thinking
Thomson’s critique of the industry is blunt. He believes quarterly review cycles and short-term reporting structures incentivize behavior that undermines genuine relationship building.
“The more marketing you get, the wider a berth you have to swing as a BDR team,” he explained. “The less your emails sound good, the less your phone calls matter.
You run out of bandwidth. You can only call and email so many people a day and it just doesn’t work quite as well.”
The pressure for immediate results often pushes teams toward mass outreach and automation that erodes authenticity.
Enterprise buyers, he points out, are increasingly immune to generic messaging. When companies measure activity rather than connection, they trade lasting trust for fleeting engagement.
Thomson’s approach favors depth over reach. By allowing his team to build meaningful relationships over time, he has achieved email open rates above 50 percent proof that personalized engagement outperforms volume-based campaigns.
A Framework for Long-Term Success
Thomson’s framework outlines multiple stages of business development: establishing awareness, demonstrating credibility, earning trust, and exploring needs before any formal evaluation occurs. Each stage requires time and consistent value delivery.
The six-month horizon gives BDRs room to understand target accounts, build multi-stakeholder relationships, and position themselves as strategic partners rather than transactional sellers.
It also helps organizations avoid the trap of constant strategy changes when early results appear slow.
His process relies on continuous engagement rather than sporadic outreach. Teams focus on learning, listening, and delivering insights that differentiate WITHIN from competitors who push for quick wins.
The Competitive Advantage of Patience
Thomson’s belief in a six-month investment period is not only a sales strategy but a form of competitive insulation. Few organizations have the patience or structure to execute it well. The payoff, however, is substantial.
By aligning business development timelines with how enterprise buyers actually make decisions, Thomson has created a sustainable advantage rooted in credibility and expertise.
Under his leadership, WITHIN achieved a 620 percent increase in average contract value and strengthened its reputation as a trusted strategic partner.
For Taylor Thomson, success in business development is not about faster cycles or higher activity counts.
It is about cultivating relationships that compound in value over time. Six months, he argues, is not a delay it is the minimum investment required for real growth.