Sales Development Representative (SDR)

Overview

You're prospecting into higher education institutions to book demos for Meadow Pre, a pre-collections solution that helps colleges recover past-due student balances. You'll be calling and emailing bursar offices, student accounts teams, and enrollment management leaders to set qualified meetings for AEs. The product addresses a real pain point (students with holds on their accounts can't re-enroll), but you're selling into bureaucratic institutions with long decision cycles.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Early-stage (57 employees, likely Series A or bootstrapped based on size)

Size: 57 employees

Growth: Hiring for their Pre product specifically, which suggests expansion into the pre-collections market

Market Position: Niche player in higher ed fintech - competing against legacy systems and manual processes, not huge SaaS competitors

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 90% Outbound - You're building your own list of target schools and cold calling/emailing into them
• 10% Inbound - Some conference leads or referrals from existing customers, but don't expect much

SDR/AE Structure: You're setting meetings for AEs who close the deals. This is pure prospecting.

SE Support: Unlikely given company size - AEs probably run their own demos

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Legacy student information systems (Ellucian, Workday Student), in-house collections processes, other collections agencies

How They Differentiate: "Student-friendly" approach to pre-collections (vs aggressive third-party collectors), purpose-built for higher ed

Common Objections: "We handle this in-house," "We already have a collections partner," "We don't have budget," "We need to go through procurement" (which takes 6-12 months)

Win Themes: Better student experience, higher recovery rates, less staff work for bursar teams

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Prospecting (60%) | Meeting Prep/Follow-up (20%) | Internal Meetings (20%)

Key Activities

• Cold calling bursar offices: You're making 50-70 calls per day to student accounts teams. Most calls go to voicemail or get transferred around. You're trying to reach the director of student accounts or bursar, but you'll talk to whoever picks up first to find the right person.
• Email sequences: You're running multi-touch campaigns to target lists. Higher ed people get a lot of vendor emails, so response rates are low. You're testing subject lines about student retention, outstanding balances, and reducing staff workload.
• List building and research: You're researching schools to understand their size, student demographics, and likely pain points. You're looking for signals like high Pell Grant populations or retention challenges that indicate they'd benefit from better pre-collections.
• Qualifying and scheduling: When someone responds, you're asking questions about their current process, volume of past-due accounts, and who else needs to be involved. You're trying to book 30-minute intro calls with the right stakeholders present.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Higher ed moves slowly - people take weeks to respond, need to check with committees, and have limited budgets. You'll hear "email me some information" constantly and then they won't reply.
• The buying window is narrow - most schools only evaluate new vendors during specific times of year (often tied to budget cycles). You might reach someone interested but they can't do anything until next fiscal year.
• Limited TAM - there are only ~4,000 degree-granting colleges in the US, and many are too small to afford software solutions. You'll burn through your addressable market faster than in other SDR roles.
• Gatekeepers and phone trees - calling into universities means navigating switchboards, voicemails, and people who don't know what "pre-collections" means. It's frustrating.
• Quota pressure in a slow-moving market - you need to hit meeting numbers even though your prospects don't move fast. This creates tension between quantity and quality.

What Success Looks Like

• Booking 15-25 qualified meetings per month (likely mix of intro calls and demos)
• 30-40% of your meetings show up and advance to next stage
• You build expertise in the higher ed vertical and understand how bursar offices actually work

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• Director of Student Accounts / Bursar (mid-level administrator)
• VP of Enrollment Management or Student Financial Services (senior leader who controls budget)

What They Care About:

• Helping students resolve holds so they can re-enroll (retention is a huge metric for them)
• Reducing staff time spent chasing small balances
• Improving recovery rates on past-due accounts without damaging student relationships
• Compliance with regulations around collections practices
• Budget constraints - higher ed is notoriously budget-conscious

Requirements

• Strong phone presence - you need to sound credible when calling into professional offices
• Writing skills - your emails need to be clear and professional for an academic audience
• Persistence - this is a grind-it-out role with lots of rejection and slow responses
• Coachability - small team means you'll get direct feedback and need to adapt quickly
• Comfort with ambiguity - early-stage startup selling into a traditional industry means figuring things out as you go