SDR (Sales Development Representative)

Overview

You're an SDR at Glean prospecting into mid-market and enterprise companies to book meetings about their AI work assistant platform. You'll be cold calling executives and doing email/LinkedIn outreach, explaining what AI-powered enterprise search and knowledge management actually means. This is category creation work - most prospects don't wake up thinking they need this.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Series D+ (1,475 employees - well-funded, scaling fast)

Size: 1,475 employees

Growth: Aggressively hiring SDRs (looking for 7 right now). Recent leadership promotions suggest they're investing heavily in the SDR org.

Market Position: Category creator in AI-powered enterprise search/knowledge management. Fighting to establish the category before competitors lock in market share.

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 20-30% Inbound - Some brand awareness from AI buzz, but you're not getting a flood of warm leads
• 70-80% Outbound - Cold calling, email sequences, LinkedIn outreach to target accounts
• Partner/Referrals exist but probably minimal at SDR level

SDR/AE Structure: Dedicated SDR team feeding AEs. Emily Patchell runs a high-performing East Coast SDR team. You'll be assigned accounts and expected to work them systematically.

SE Support: Likely yes for demo stage, but SDRs don't typically work with SEs

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Microsoft 365 Copilot, Google Workspace AI features, other enterprise AI search platforms, traditional knowledge management tools

How They Differentiate: Positioning as purpose-built AI work assistant vs. feature add-ons from big tech. Cross-platform search/knowledge graph is likely the angle.

Common Objections:

• "We already have Microsoft/Google"
• "What's the ROI on this?"
• "We're not ready for AI yet"
• Security/compliance concerns with AI accessing company data

Win Themes: Unified search across all company knowledge, AI that understands company context, productivity gains from finding information faster

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Cold Calling (40%) | Email/LinkedIn Outreach (30%) | Research/List Building (15%) | Internal Meetings (15%)

Key Activities

• Cold Calling: 50-70 dials per day to directors and VPs (IT, Operations, CIO office). Most don't pick up. When they do, you have 15 seconds to explain why AI-powered search matters before they bail.
• Multi-touch Sequences: Running 6-10 touch email/LinkedIn campaigns. Writing personalized messages about how their company could use better knowledge management. Most get ignored.
• Account Research: Spending time figuring out who at each target company cares about employee productivity, information access, or AI adoption. Reading their LinkedIn, checking if they've posted about AI.
• Meeting Qualification: When you get someone interested, you're on a 15-minute discovery call figuring out if they have budget, authority, and an actual problem. Then you hand off to an AE.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• You're selling a category most people don't know exists yet. Tons of education needed just to get a meeting. "We use Google/Microsoft" is a conversation killer.
• Cold calling into enterprises means lots of gatekeepers and voicemails. Phone skills matter here.
• AI hype is everywhere, so you're competing with noise. Prospects are tired of AI pitches.
• Your success depends on AEs closing your meetings. If they're bad or deals stall for 6 months, you don't see the results of your work.
• The promotion timeline sounds great (6-9 months based on the post), but that means you're grinding hard to prove yourself fast.

What Success Looks Like

• Hitting 12-20 qualified meeting quota per month consistently
• High meeting-to-opportunity conversion rate (shows you're qualifying well)
• Getting promoted to AE or SDR leadership within 9-12 months if you're a top performer
• Building pipeline that actually closes - AEs remember who sends them good leads

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• CIOs, VP IT, VP Operations (enterprise targets)
• Directors of IT, Knowledge Management leads (mid-market)
• Sometimes HR or People Ops if angle is employee productivity

What They Care About:

• Employee productivity and time wasted searching for information
• AI readiness and not falling behind on AI adoption
• Data security and compliance with AI tools
• ROI and measurable impact on workflows
• Integration with existing tech stack

Requirements

• 6-12 months SDR/BDR experience preferred, but they'll take smart college grads
• Comfortable cold calling 50+ times per day - phone skills are non-negotiable
• Can explain technical concepts simply (AI, enterprise search, knowledge graphs)
• Coachable and want to move up fast - this team promotes quickly if you perform
• Comfortable with rejection and long sales cycles (your meetings might not close for 6+ months)
• Hunger to be in leadership eventually - they're promoting SDRs to SDR management roles