Overview
You sell a customer intelligence platform to B2B revenue teams. The product likely provides contact data, account intelligence, or buyer intent signals. You're talking to sales ops, rev ops, sales leaders, and marketing ops about replacing or supplementing their current data stack. Deals involve multiple stakeholders and proving ROI on data accuracy and coverage.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Full-cycle AE |
| Sales Motion | Balanced - inbound marketing leads + outbound prospecting |
| Deal Complexity | Consultative - multi-stakeholder, data accuracy evaluation |
| Sales Cycle | 1-3 months (mid-market) to 3-6 months (enterprise) |
| Deal Size | $15-75K ACV (mid-market) to $75K-300K+ (enterprise) |
| Quota (est.) | $600K-1M/year |
Company Context
Stage: Growth stage (likely Series B/C based on "leading platform" positioning)
Size: ~100-300 employees (estimate)
Growth: Multiple roles open suggests scaling GTM motion
Market Position: Established player in crowded customer data/intelligence market - competing with ZoomInfo, Apollo, Clearbit, 6sense, Bombora
Location: Santa Barbara, CA (HQ)
GTM Reality
Pipeline Sources:
- 50% Inbound - Content marketing, SEO, paid ads, free trials/freemium conversions
- 35% Outbound - Cold outreach to rev ops, sales ops, sales leaders at B2B companies
- 15% Referrals/Partnerships - Customer referrals, integration partner leads
SDR/AE Structure: Likely dedicated SDRs supporting inbound, AEs self-source some outbound
SE Support: Shared SE pool for technical deep-dives and integrations
Competitive Landscape
Main Competitors: ZoomInfo, Apollo.io, Clearbit, Cognism, Lusha, 6sense, Demandbase (depending on specific product angle)
How They Differentiate: Likely better data accuracy, specific coverage (industry/geo), unique intelligence signals, or better pricing vs ZoomInfo
Common Objections: "We already use ZoomInfo", data accuracy concerns, "How is your coverage better?", integration complexity, pricing
Win Themes: Better data quality, faster time-to-value, more actionable intelligence, easier implementation vs incumbents
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Active Deals (40%) | Prospecting (30%) | Demos (20%) | Internal (10%)
Key Activities
- Discovery Calls: You qualify inbound leads and outbound prospects on current data stack, pain points (bad data, poor coverage, high costs), and buying process. Many calls are with mid-level ops folks who don't control budget.
- Product Demos: You show data accuracy, coverage breadth, and intelligence features. You're often compared directly to ZoomInfo or Apollo. You need to handle objections on data quality in real-time.
- Multi-Stakeholder Navigation: You're bringing in sales ops, rev ops, sales leaders, and sometimes IT/security for data privacy questions. Deals stall when stakeholders don't align or when they decide to renew incumbent.
- Proof of Value: You run data samples, compare accuracy to current provider, show coverage in target accounts. This takes time and many deals die here when data doesn't meet expectations.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- Customer data space is saturated - everyone has a provider and switching costs are high (integrations, training, workflows)
- ZoomInfo dominance means you're always the challenger, fighting "good enough" inertia
- Data accuracy is subjective - every provider has gaps, buyers are skeptical of all vendors
- Long evaluation cycles because buyers want to test data thoroughly before committing
- Procurement gets involved on larger deals, slows things down, negotiates hard on pricing
- Integration requirements with CRM, MAP, sales engagement tools add complexity
What Success Looks Like
- Closing 2-3 mid-market deals ($25-50K ACV) per quarter
- Landing 1-2 larger enterprise deals ($100K+ ACV) per quarter
- Maintaining 20-25% win rate on qualified opportunities
- Building pipeline of 4-5x quota to account for slippage
Who You're Selling To
Primary Buyers:
- Sales Operations leaders and managers
- Revenue Operations (RevOps) leaders
- VP/Director of Sales (economic buyer)
- Marketing Operations for marketing use cases
- IT/Security for data privacy/compliance sign-off
What They Care About:
- Data accuracy and coverage in their target markets
- Integration with existing tech stack (Salesforce, Outreach, HubSpot, etc.)
- Pricing vs incumbent (likely paying $20-50K+ to ZoomInfo)
- Onboarding and time to value
- Data privacy and compliance (GDPR, CCPA)
- User adoption and ease of use
Requirements
- 3-5+ years selling B2B SaaS, preferably to sales/marketing/ops buyers
- Experience with data, intelligence, or rev tech tools
- Comfortable navigating multi-stakeholder enterprise sales
- Can articulate data quality and technical differentiation
- Strong discovery and objection handling skills
- Salesforce and sales engagement tool proficiency