Overview
You're prospecting into financial institutions, crypto native companies, and corporate treasury teams to book demos for AEs selling Utila's digital asset wallet infrastructure. You spend most of your day doing account research, cold calling, and email outreach to directors and VPs who manage digital asset operations. This is outbound-heavy work targeting a technical, skeptical audience in a crowded fraud prevention market.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Outbound BDR |
| Sales Motion | Outbound-heavy (70-80%) |
| Deal Complexity | Consultative (long buyer education cycle) |
| Sales Cycle | N/A (you hand off at demo) |
| Deal Size | N/A (BDR doesn't own close) |
| Quota (est.) | 15-20 qualified meetings/month |
Company Context
Stage: Series A ($40M raised)
Size: Unknown (startup scale, likely 50-150 employees)
Growth: Actively hiring for sales team, Head of Sales running aggressive networking strategy
Market Position: Challenger in institutional crypto infrastructure - competing against established banking tech and newer crypto-native solutions
GTM Reality
Pipeline Sources:
- 70-80% Outbound - cold calling, LinkedIn outreach, email sequences to targeted accounts
- 15-20% Inbound - event leads, referrals from Josh's extensive network, website demos
- 5-10% Partners - introductions through crypto exchanges, banking partners
SDR/AE Structure: Dedicated BDRs feeding qualified meetings to AEs (you're building this motion)
SE Support: Likely have technical resources for complex demos given infrastructure product
Competitive Landscape
Main Competitors: Traditional banking infrastructure providers, crypto-native custody solutions (Fireblocks, BitGo), internal build options for large institutions
How They Differentiate: Enterprise-grade infrastructure for stablecoin and crypto operations - bridging traditional finance and digital assets
Common Objections: "We built this internally", "Too early for us", "Worried about regulatory uncertainty", "Already using [competitor]"
Win Themes: Institutional-grade security, compliance features, faster time-to-market than building in-house
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Research/List Building (25%) | Cold Calling (35%) | Email/LinkedIn (25%) | Follow-up (15%)
Key Activities
- Account Research: Spend 1-2 hours daily identifying which banks, fintechs, and crypto companies are launching digital asset programs. Read funding announcements, job postings, and LinkedIn activity to find buying signals.
- Cold Calling: Make 50-70 calls per day to directors/VPs in treasury, digital asset operations, or fintech product teams. Most won't pick up. You're trying to have 8-12 actual conversations per day.
- Personalized Outreach: Send 30-40 targeted emails daily and LinkedIn connection requests with custom messages about their digital asset strategy. Response rates are low (2-5%) because everyone's pitching crypto infrastructure.
- Demo Qualification: When someone actually responds, you need to figure out if they have budget authority, timeline, and actual use case - or if they're just researching. Book 15-20 qualified meetings per month to hit quota.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- Crypto market volatility impacts buying cycles - when the market crashes, digital asset projects get deprioritized or killed entirely
- Long education cycles - many prospects are still figuring out if they even need digital asset infrastructure, so you're doing a lot of early-stage education just to get interest
- Hard to reach decision makers - treasury and operations executives are busy and don't take cold calls. You'll leave a lot of voicemails and send a lot of follow-ups
- Technical product - you need to understand wallet infrastructure, custody models, and blockchain tech well enough to have credible conversations
- Crowded market - prospects are getting hit by multiple vendors, so your outreach competes with lots of noise
What Success Looks Like
- Consistently booking 15-20 qualified meetings per month (3-4 per week)
- 30%+ of your meetings convert to opportunities for the AE team
- Building a pipeline of engaged prospects who aren't ready now but will be in 2-3 quarters
Who You're Selling To
Primary Buyers:
- VP/Director of Treasury Operations at banks and fintechs
- Head of Digital Assets or Crypto Product at financial institutions
- Chief Technology Officer or VP Engineering at crypto-native companies
What They Care About:
- Regulatory compliance - they need infrastructure that meets banking regulations and compliance requirements
- Security and custody - institutional-grade security is non-negotiable when handling client assets
- Speed to market - they're evaluating build vs buy and want to move fast
- Integration complexity - how hard is it to integrate with their existing systems and workflows
Requirements
- 1-2 years in sales or business development (ideally in fintech, SaaS, or financial services)
- Comfortable making 50+ cold calls per day and handling rejection
- Genuine interest in crypto/web3 and ability to learn technical concepts quickly
- Strong written communication for personalized email sequences
- Self-starter who can research accounts and build targeted lists without hand-holding
- Thick skin for market volatility - crypto winters mean slower pipelines