Overview
You identify and reach out to decision-makers at accounting firms to generate qualified meetings for AEs. You're targeting a specific list of Top 150 firms plus mid-market practices, doing research on each firm's size, service mix, and pain points. Most of your prospecting is through LinkedIn, email, and warm introductions - cold calling partners is less effective in this industry.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Outbound SDR with some inbound follow-up |
| Sales Motion | Outbound-heavy (70%) with inbound lead qualification (30%) |
| Deal Complexity | N/A - you're booking meetings, not closing deals |
| Sales Cycle | N/A - your job is top-of-funnel |
| Deal Size | N/A |
| Quota (est.) | 15-20 qualified meetings/month |
Company Context
Stage: Series C equivalent ($1.15B valuation, $100M raise from Accel/GV)
Size: 1,453 employees
Growth: Expanding from Top 25 firms (30% penetration) to Top 150 and mid-market
Market Position: Category leader - you have strong proof points to reference
GTM Reality
Pipeline Sources:
- 70% Outbound - you're building lists of target firms, researching decision-makers, and running personalized outreach sequences
- 30% Inbound - qualifying demo requests and content downloads from the website, responding to people who engage with LinkedIn posts or industry content
SDR/AE Structure: You feed qualified meetings to AEs. You're measured on meeting quality, not just volume - AEs will push back if you book junk.
Target Accounts: Top 150 accounting firms + mid-market practices (20-200 person firms). This is a finite, well-defined universe.
Competitive Landscape
Main Competitors: Traditional workflow software providers, emerging AI point solutions, internal "we'll build it" sentiment
How They Differentiate: Production-grade AI agents used by Top 25 firms, end-to-end workbook completion (not just data entry)
Your Angle in Outreach: Social proof (30% of Top 25), concrete use cases (business tax workbooks end-to-end), addressing busy season pain
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Research (25%) | Outreach (40%) | Follow-up (20%) | Internal/Meetings (15%)
Key Activities
- Researching target firms: Looking up firm size, service offerings, recent news (acquisitions, new partners, growth announcements), and identifying the right contacts. You need to understand if they do tax, audit, CAS, or all three.
- Personalized outreach: Sending LinkedIn messages and emails to managing partners, COOs, and operations directors. Generic templates don't work with this audience - you need to reference their firm specifically and speak to relevant pain points.
- Qualifying inbound interest: Responding to demo requests and content downloads quickly, asking discovery questions to understand if they're a real opportunity (firm size, use cases, timeline) before passing to an AE.
- Multi-touch sequences: Following up 5-7 times across LinkedIn, email, and sometimes phone. Partners are busy and often don't respond to the first 2-3 touches. Persistence matters, but you need to stay professional and relevant.
- Working with AEs on account strategy: Collaborating on target accounts - who to reach out to, what angle to use, whether there's a warm intro path through existing customers or investors.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- Low response rates: Partners are busy, skeptical of sales outreach, and get pitched constantly. You'll send 100+ messages to book 15-20 meetings. Rejection is constant.
- Learning curve: You need to quickly learn accounting firm structures, terminology (CAS, busy season, realization rates), and pain points to have credible conversations. It's not intuitive if you don't come from the industry.
- Long follow-up cycles: Even interested prospects take weeks to respond. You're constantly juggling follow-ups across dozens of sequences. CRM hygiene matters.
- Meeting quality pressure: AEs will push back if you book meetings with people who can't buy or aren't actually interested. You need good qualification skills, which take time to develop.
- Finite target market: You're prospecting into a defined list of ~500-1000 firms. You can't just endlessly add new accounts - you need to be strategic and persistent with the accounts that matter.
What Success Looks Like
- Booking 15-20 qualified meetings per month that AEs actually want to take
- Building a pipeline of engaged prospects (responded but not ready to meet yet) that converts over time
- Getting positive feedback from AEs on meeting quality and preparation
- Developing firm-specific messaging that resonates better than generic templates
Who You're Reaching Out To
Primary Targets:
- Managing Partners (economic buyer, but hard to reach directly)
- COO/Director of Operations (most responsive, feels the pain)
- IT/Technology Directors (gatekeeper, less ideal first contact)
- Tax/Audit Partners (influencer, often skeptical)
What They Care About:
- Busy season survival: Tax season (Jan-April) is chaos. Can this actually help?
- Staff shortage pain: Can't hire enough qualified accountants. Need leverage.
- Proof it works: Don't want to hear about AI potential - want to see it working at firms like theirs.
- Not wasting time: They get pitched constantly. Your outreach needs to be relevant and credible immediately.
Requirements
- 0-2 years SDR/BDR experience (or strong first sales role)
- Comfortable with high-volume outreach and low response rates - you need resilience
- Strong written communication skills - most of your prospecting is email/LinkedIn
- Quick learner who can pick up industry terminology and speak credibly about accounting workflows
- Organized and disciplined with CRM/sequences - you're managing hundreds of prospects
- Coachable and metrics-driven - you'll get feedback on messaging and need to iterate quickly
- Comfortable in a high-performance environment ("intense people who want to build at the frontier")