Overview
You're an SDR at Cognism booking demos for AEs who sell B2B contact data and sales intelligence to sales and marketing teams. You spend your day calling into directors and VPs of Sales/Marketing, trying to get them interested in replacing or supplementing ZoomInfo, Apollo, or manual prospecting. You work from The Shard in London on a team that's actively hiring and has a track record of promoting SDRs to AE.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Pure SDR - prospecting and qualifying only |
| Sales Motion | Outbound-heavy with some inbound |
| Deal Complexity | Consultative (selling to sales teams) |
| Sales Cycle | N/A - you book meetings, AEs close |
| Deal Size | N/A - you're not carrying quota on revenue |
| Quota (est.) | 12-15 qualified meetings/week, ~50-60/month |
Company Context
Stage: Growth stage (467 employees, established product)
Size: 467 employees
Growth: Actively hiring multiple SDRs and recently promoted 4 SDRs to AE, suggesting strong growth and real career progression
Market Position: Challenger in the B2B data space - competing against ZoomInfo (the 800lb gorilla), Apollo, Lusha, and others. They differentiate on GDPR compliance and European data quality.
GTM Reality
Pipeline Sources:
- 20-30% Inbound - website trials, content downloads, event leads (varies by quality)
- 70-80% Outbound - cold calling, LinkedIn outreach, email sequences to targeted accounts
- Some referrals from existing customers
SDR/AE Structure: Dedicated SDR team feeding a pool of AEs. You'll likely support 2-3 AEs.
SE Support: Minimal at the SDR stage - you're qualifying and handing off to AEs who run demos.
Competitive Landscape
Main Competitors: ZoomInfo (dominant player), Apollo.io (freemium competitor), Lusha, LinkedIn Sales Navigator
How They Differentiate: GDPR-compliant data with strong European coverage, "Diamond Data" verified mobile numbers, fresher contact data than competitors
Common Objections: "We already use ZoomInfo", "We have LinkedIn Sales Nav", "Your data can't be better than what we have", price concerns
Win Themes: Better EU data coverage, verified mobile numbers that actually connect, compliance for regulated industries, data freshness
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Cold Calling (40%) | Email/LinkedIn (30%) | Meeting Prep/Research (15%) | Internal Syncs (15%)
Key Activities
- Cold Calling: 50-70 dials per day to sales directors, VPs of Sales, RevOps leaders. You're trying to get past gatekeepers and get 2-3 minutes to pitch a demo. Most calls go to voicemail or get rejected.
- Sequencing: Building and managing email/LinkedIn sequences in Outreach or Salesloft. You're personalizing first touches, following up on cold calls, and trying to get responses. Open rates are decent but reply rates are low (2-4%).
- Qualifying Inbound: When marketing passes you a lead, you call within 5 minutes to qualify if they're real or tire-kickers. Many inbound leads are students, people who want free data, or very small companies.
- Account Research: Before calling target accounts, you research their tech stack, current data provider, team size, and find angles for why they'd switch. This is where curiosity matters - lazy research kills conversion.
- Internal Meetings: Daily standups, weekly 1-on-1s with Luke, deal reviews where you hand off meetings to AEs and learn what stuck or flopped.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- Most of your calls don't connect. When they do, most people already have a data provider and aren't looking to switch. You hear "we're all set" 20+ times per day.
- The product category is crowded and prospects are fatigued. They've been pitched by ZoomInfo, Apollo, and 5 other vendors already.
- Not all your booked meetings show up. AEs will tell you if you booked bad meetings, and that feedback stings early on.
- It's repetitive - you're having similar conversations hundreds of times per month, getting rejected most of the time.
- You're measured on meetings booked AND on meeting quality. Booking 15 meetings that go nowhere doesn't count.
What Success Looks Like
- Consistently hitting 12-15 qualified meetings per week (50-60/month)
- 60%+ of your meetings show up and progress past first call with the AE
- Getting promoted to AE within 12-18 months (4 recent promotions suggest this is real)
- Building a repeatable prospecting process that doesn't rely on luck
Who You're Selling To
Primary Buyers:
- Directors and VPs of Sales (mid-market and enterprise companies)
- Heads of Sales Development / Revenue Operations
- Marketing leaders who need ABM data
What They Care About:
- Data accuracy - they're burned by bad contact info from previous vendors
- Mobile numbers that actually connect (not switchboards)
- GDPR compliance if they sell into Europe
- Integration with their existing tech stack (Salesforce, Outreach, etc.)
- Cost vs. ZoomInfo (they want comparable quality for less money)
Requirements
- No prior SDR experience required, but any B2B cold calling or prospecting experience helps
- Thick skin for rejection - you'll hear "no" 50+ times per day
- Curiosity about why prospects use certain tools and what frustrates them
- Coachability - Luke explicitly values people who take feedback and iterate
- Proactive personality - the post mentions candidates who stood out stayed in touch throughout hiring
- Willingness to work from The Shard office in London (not remote)
- Comfortable with high-activity metrics (calls, emails, meetings booked)