Business Development Representative (BDR)

Overview

You're the first point of contact for Platinum Cubed, cold outreaching to VP Operations, VP Sales, Revenue Operations Directors, and IT leaders at companies that use or need Salesforce. You're not selling software—you're selling $50K-250K+ consulting engagements for Salesforce implementation, optimization, and AI integration. Your job is to get them on the phone with a senior consultant.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Bootstrapped/Self-funded (no VC backing mentioned)

Size: 19 employees

Growth: Actively hiring for sales roles, which suggests they're looking to scale pipeline generation

Market Position: Small boutique in a crowded Salesforce consulting space competing against hundreds of implementation partners plus big firms like Accenture and Deloitte on the high end

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 100% Outbound - You're building lists, cold calling, sending LinkedIn messages, and running email cadences. No inbound marketing engine mentioned.
• Referrals exist but aren't systematic pipeline for you to work

BDR/AE Structure: You book meetings, consultants (likely founders/senior staff) take discovery calls and close deals. No traditional AE layer mentioned—this is a consulting model where senior folks close.

SE Support: The consultants you're booking for ARE the technical experts. No separate SE team.

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Hundreds of Salesforce implementation partners (from solo consultants to firms like Slalom, Deloitte, Accenture), plus Salesforce's own professional services team

How They Differentiate: Boutique size (more personalized), AI integration focus (adding generative AI to Salesforce), process design expertise (not just technical implementation)

Common Objections:

• "We already have a Salesforce partner"
• "We handle this internally"
• "Not the right time / no budget allocated"
• "Can you send information?" (the brush-off)

Win Themes: When they win, it's usually because prospects are frustrated with current partner, need specialized AI/automation expertise, or want a more collaborative/educational approach than big firm staff augmentation

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Cold Calling (40%) | Email/LinkedIn Outreach (30%) | Research & List Building (20%) | Internal Meetings (10%)

Key Activities

• Cold Calling: 50-70 dials per day to VP/Director-level contacts. You're trying to get past gatekeepers at mid-market companies or reach direct lines. Most calls go to voicemail. You leave messages knowing they probably won't call back.
• List Building & Research: Finding companies that use Salesforce (or should), identifying the right contacts, researching pain points from LinkedIn posts, job listings, tech stack data. This is tedious but critical—bad lists mean wasted calls.
• Multi-Channel Sequences: Running 6-8 touch sequences (call, email, LinkedIn, call, email, video) over 2-3 weeks per prospect. You're managing hundreds of prospects across different sequence stages in a CRM.
• Meeting Qualification & Handoff: When someone agrees to meet, you're asking qualification questions (Salesforce usage, pain points, budget authority, timeline) and scheduling with consultants. If you book unqualified meetings, you'll hear about it.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Low connect rates: You'll make 50-70 calls to get 2-3 conversations. Most people don't answer. The ones who do often aren't interested.
• Selling an "invisible" service: You're not demoing software. You're trying to get someone interested in a conversation about improving their Salesforce setup—which they may not think they need.
• Long prospect education cycles: Many prospects don't know what a Salesforce consultant does or why they'd pay $150K for implementation work. You're doing a lot of education just to get a maybe.
• No inbound crutch: There's no flow of warm leads to work. Every opportunity you create comes from your outbound hustle. If you don't prospect, nothing happens.
• Gatekeepers at larger accounts: Getting to a VP of Sales or Director of RevOps means going through EAs, dealing with voicemail jail, and getting ignored on LinkedIn.

What Success Looks Like

• Booking 8-12 qualified discovery meetings per month that consultants actually want to take
• 2-3 of those meetings turning into active sales opportunities (consultants will tell you which ones progress)
• Maintaining 50+ active prospects in your sequences at all times
• Getting better at pattern recognition—learning which companies/titles/pain points actually convert

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• VP/Director of Revenue Operations (companies scaling sales ops)
• VP of Sales (looking to optimize pipeline/forecasting)
• VP/Director of IT/Technology (larger companies with IT-led buying)
• Chief Operating Officers (at smaller companies where they own systems)

What They Care About:

• Salesforce isn't delivering ROI / too clunky / team doesn't use it properly
• Need automation to scale without hiring more ops people
• Want AI capabilities integrated (topical right now)
• Bad data quality, forecasting issues, reporting gaps
• Considering a Salesforce migration or major overhaul
• Previous implementation partner didn't deliver / stopped responding

Requirements

• Comfortable making 50-70+ cold calls per day with high rejection rates
• Ability to have business conversations with senior ops/sales leaders (not reading scripts)
• Research skills to identify good-fit accounts and personalize outreach
• Resilience—most prospects ignore you, hang up, or say no
• Coachability—this is likely your first or second sales role, you'll need to learn fast
• CRM discipline (probably Salesforce) to track all activity and pipeline
• Curiosity about how companies use Salesforce and where they struggle (you need to sound credible)