French-speaking SDR

Overview

You cold call and email French companies to book demos for Glean's AI-powered workplace search platform. You're targeting IT leaders and knowledge management teams at mid-to-large enterprises in France, Belgium, and French-speaking Switzerland. You work in the London office under an EMEA sales leader, partnering with AEs who close the deals.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Late-stage venture (Series D equivalent, 1,495 employees)

Size: ~1,500 employees globally, expanding EMEA presence

Growth: Building out London office as EMEA hub, hiring native speakers for localized outbound

Market Position: Challenger in enterprise AI/search space competing against Microsoft, Google Workspace search, and point solutions

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 70% Outbound - your job is building lists, cold calling, and sequencing
• 20% Inbound - some web leads and content downloads, usually lower quality
• 10% Referrals/Partners - occasional customer intros

SDR/AE Structure: Dedicated SDR team feeding multiple AEs. You don't close deals—just qualify and book.

SE Support: SEs handle technical demos after you hand off the meeting.

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Microsoft Search, Google Workspace, Coveo, Sinequa, internal knowledge base tools

How They Differentiate: AI-powered semantic search across all enterprise tools (not just documents)

Common Objections: "We already have search in our tools," "Too expensive," "We'll wait for Microsoft to build this"

Win Themes: Works across all apps (Slack, Drive, Salesforce, etc.), AI understands context not just keywords, proven ROI on knowledge worker time savings

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

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

Key Activities

• Cold Calling: 50-70 calls per day to CIOs, IT Directors, and Heads of Knowledge Management at French enterprises. Most don't answer. You're trying to have 5-10 real conversations daily.
• Email Sequences: Build and personalize cadences for target accounts. Write in French, reference company-specific pain points (mergers, rapid growth, tool sprawl).
• List Building: Research French companies with 500+ employees, identify the right contacts, build account-specific hooks (recent funding, acquisitions, digital transformation initiatives).
• Meeting Qualification: When you get interest, you need to confirm budget authority, timeline, and pain severity before passing to an AE. Bad handoffs hurt your credibility.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Most calls go to voicemail. Email response rates are 1-3%. You'll hear "not interested" 40+ times per day.
• French business culture can be formal and hierarchical—getting past gatekeepers takes persistence and research.
• The product is enterprise software with a 6-9 month sales cycle, so prospects often say "call me next quarter."
• You're measured on meetings booked, but AEs reject ~30% of your handoffs as "not qualified," which creates tension.
• Repetitive work: same pitch, same objections, same process every day.

What Success Looks Like

• 15-20 qualified meetings per month that AEs accept and run with
• 50%+ of your meetings convert to real opportunities (AE creates opp in Salesforce)
• Building a French account list where you're having repeat conversations over 3-6 months

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• CIOs and IT Directors at 1,000+ employee French companies
• Heads of Digital Workplace or Knowledge Management

What They Care About:

• Employees wasting time searching for information across fragmented tools
• Knowledge loss from remote/hybrid work and employee turnover
• Consolidating licenses and reducing tool sprawl
• ROI proof (time saved per employee, faster onboarding)

Requirements

• Native or fluent French speaker (you'll be calling France-based decision makers)
• Comfortable making 50+ cold calls per day to senior executives
• 1-2 years sales experience preferred but not required (they'll train the SDR motion)
• Based in London (this is an office role, not remote)
• Willingness to work some early mornings to catch French prospects before lunch