SDR Team Lead

Overview

You're building sunday's SDR function from the ground up in Atlanta. You'll hire and manage the first SDR team, design the outbound playbook for reaching restaurant decision-makers, and set up all the infrastructure (sequences, call scripts, reporting dashboards) needed to generate pipeline for AEs. This isn't managing an existing team—you're creating the entire motion.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Series B+ (269 employees, European expansion into US)

Size: 269 employees globally, early US GTM build-out

Growth: Hiring US CRO and now SDR leadership signals serious US expansion investment

Market Position: Challenger in restaurant payment tech—competing against traditional POS-integrated payments and newer QR code/tableside solutions

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 90%+ Outbound initially - cold calling restaurant owners/GMs, LinkedIn outreach to multi-location operators
• 10% Inbound - limited US brand awareness currently, mostly EU traction
• Partnerships TBD - potential POS integration partners, restaurant groups

SDR/AE Structure: You're building the SDR team from scratch; likely 2-4 SDRs initially feeding into small AE team

SE Support: Unknown—payment tech demos may be AE-led or have solutions engineering support for technical integrations

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Traditional POS payment systems (Toast, Square), QR code ordering platforms, tableside payment terminals

How They Differentiate: Unified payment platform across all service styles (QR code, handheld, digital bill) vs. point solutions

Common Objections: "We already have payments through our POS", "Another vendor to manage", "Integration complexity", "Switching costs"

Win Themes: Time savings (12 min/table claim), increased tips for servers, Google review generation, flexibility across service models

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Hiring/Training (30%) | Playbook Building (25%) | Coaching/QA (25%) | Reporting/Strategy (20%)

Key Activities

• Hiring Your Team: Sourcing, interviewing, and hiring 2-4 SDRs in first 6 months. Writing job descriptions, running interviews, making offers. Restaurant tech experience is rare so you're likely hiring on hustle and coachability.
• Building Outbound Playbooks: Writing call scripts for different restaurant segments (QSR vs. fine dining), creating email sequences, defining what a "qualified meeting" means, testing messaging. You're figuring out which pain points resonate.
• Hands-On Prospecting (Initially): Making calls yourself to test scripts, booking meetings to prove the motion works before scaling the team. You need to know what works before you can teach it.
• Managing Performance: Daily pipeline reviews, listening to call recordings, coaching on objection handling, adjusting targets. Figuring out realistic meeting quotas when you don't have historical data.
• Systems Setup: Implementing/configuring Outreach or Salesloft, building dashboards in Salesforce/HubSpot, defining lead routing to AEs, setting up reporting for the CRO.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Restaurant owners are notoriously hard to reach—they're on the floor during service hours and don't answer unknown numbers. Lots of calls go to voicemail.
• You're building playbooks with no historical data—testing messaging, figuring out ideal customer profile, adjusting on the fly without benchmarks.
• Limited US brand recognition means you're doing a lot of education on "who is sunday?" before getting to value prop. European success stories don't always translate.
• Restaurant tech is sticky—convincing operators to switch payment providers means overcoming integration headaches and switching costs.
• You'll likely be player-coach initially, managing people while still carrying your own prospecting load until the team scales.

What Success Looks Like

• Hire 2-4 productive SDRs within first 6 months who consistently hit 8-12 qualified meetings per month each
• Create repeatable outbound playbooks (scripts, sequences, call guides) that new hires can execute within 30 days
• Build reporting infrastructure that shows meeting-to-opportunity conversion rates and helps optimize top-of-funnel
• Establish team culture and coaching rhythm that retains SDRs (restaurant outreach is grindy—people burn out)

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• Restaurant owners (independent, small chains)
• General Managers with P&L authority
• Multi-unit operators / restaurant group executives

What They Care About:

• Table turn time (speed = revenue in restaurants)
• Staff efficiency and tip income (server satisfaction)
• Customer experience and reviews
• Payment processing costs and reconciliation simplicity
• Integration with existing POS without operational disruption

Requirements

• 2+ years SDR experience with at least 1 year in outbound-heavy role, or current top-performing SDR ready for management
• Track record building or scaling outbound motion (writing sequences, testing messaging, improving conversion rates)
• Experience hiring and coaching sales reps strongly preferred
• Restaurant tech or SMB/mid-market sales background is a major plus (understanding restaurant operations and buying cycles)
• Comfortable with ambiguity—you're defining the playbook, not executing someone else's
• Based in Atlanta ideally (NYC or Chicago considered)
• Willing to be hands-on initially—this isn't just managing, you'll be prospecting to prove the model