Enterprise Business Development Representative - Dallas

Overview

You're cold calling and emailing marketing leaders at global enterprise companies to book discovery meetings for Account Executives. You're selling Semrush—a well-known SEO and marketing analytics platform—into organizations that likely already use some marketing tech stack. Your job is to get past gatekeepers, navigate complex org charts, and convince busy marketing leaders to take a 30-minute call.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Mature/Public-stage (established SaaS company)

Size: 1,000+ employees globally

Growth: Scaling enterprise segment aggressively, hiring BDRs in multiple markets

Market Position: Leader in SEO/marketing analytics space, competing with Ahrefs, Moz, Google Analytics, and broader martech platforms

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 70-80% Outbound - You're building your own lists, doing account research, cold calling, and running email sequences
• 15-20% Inbound - Some marketing-qualified leads from webinars, content, free trials, but the good ones go to mid-market/commercial BDRs
• 5-10% Referrals/Existing customer expansions

SDR/AE Structure: You feed meetings to dedicated Enterprise AEs. Clear handoff once meeting is qualified.

SE Support: AEs have SE support for technical demos, you don't interact with SEs much.

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Ahrefs (SEO-focused), Moz (smaller player), Google Analytics/Google Marketing Platform (free/enterprise), Similarweb (competitive intelligence), broader marketing platforms (HubSpot, Marketo, Adobe)

How They Differentiate: Semrush is all-in-one (SEO, PPC, content, competitive research) vs point solutions. Brand recognition in the SEO/marketing world.

Common Objections: "We already use Google Analytics and Ahrefs," "We have too many tools," "Not a priority right now," "Budget is frozen," gatekeepers blocking access to decision-makers

Win Themes: Comprehensive platform (replaces 3-4 tools), competitive intelligence features, content marketing workflow tools, strong brand in SEO community

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Prospecting/Calling (50%) | Email/LinkedIn Outreach (25%) | Research/List Building (15%) | Internal Meetings/Admin (10%)

Key Activities

• Cold Calling: 50-70 dials per day to Directors/VPs of Marketing, Heads of Digital, CMOs at Fortune 1000 companies. You're leaving voicemails, getting hung up on, and occasionally getting someone to engage. Your goal is to pitch a 15-30 minute discovery call with an AE.
• Email Sequences: Running multi-touch email campaigns (6-10 emails over 3-4 weeks). You're personalizing subject lines and first sentences based on company news, tech stack, competitor intel. Most don't reply.
• Account Research: Pulling lists from ZoomInfo/LinkedIn Sales Nav, researching org charts, identifying the right marketing leaders, reading press releases and LinkedIn posts to find relevant hooks. This is tedious but necessary.
• Meeting Qualification: When you get interest, you're asking discovery questions to determine if it's a real opportunity (budget, authority, need, timeline). If it's qualified, you book it for an AE. If not, you're back to prospecting.
• Internal Syncs: Daily standups, weekly pipeline reviews with your manager, AE handoff calls to brief them on the account. You'll also be coached on call recordings.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• High rejection volume: You'll make 200-300 dials per week. Most won't pick up. Of those who do, most will say "not interested" within 10 seconds. You need thick skin.
• Enterprise complexity: You're trying to reach senior leaders at massive companies. They have assistants, don't answer their phones, and get 100+ sales emails per day. Finding the right person and breaking through is difficult.
• Meeting quality pressure: Not all meetings are equal. AEs will push back if you're booking unqualified meetings with people who don't have budget or authority. You'll feel caught between hitting meeting numbers and keeping AEs happy.
• Repetitive grind: The actual day-to-day is repetitive. You're saying similar things on 50 calls per day, sending similar emails, and dealing with the same objections over and over.

What Success Looks Like

• Hitting 15-25 qualified meetings per month (likely weighted toward 20+)
• AEs converting 30-40% of your meetings to opportunities (this is how you prove meeting quality)
• Fast follow-up: You respond to inbound interest within 5 minutes and keep prospects warm until the AE meeting
• Promotion path: Top performers move to AE roles within 12-18 months, but you need to consistently hit quota and show you understand the sales process

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• VP/Director of Marketing (enterprise companies, $500M+ revenue)
• Head of Digital Marketing / SEO
• CMO (at smaller enterprises or as a secondary contact)

What They Care About:

• Consolidating tools: They have 15+ martech tools and want to reduce vendor sprawl and cost
• Competitive intelligence: Understanding what competitors are doing in SEO, PPC, content
• ROI proof: They need to justify martech spend to CFO/procurement, so they want case studies and clear ROI stories
• Enterprise features: SSO, user management, API access, security/compliance for large teams

Requirements

• 1-2 years of outbound BDR/SDR experience in B2B SaaS (ideally selling to marketing/sales leaders)
• Comfortable making 50-70+ cold calls per day and handling rejection
• Experience prospecting into enterprise accounts (navigating complex orgs, multi-threading)
• Familiarity with sales tools: Salesforce, Outreach/Salesloft, ZoomInfo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator
• Ability to articulate value quickly and qualify leads effectively
• Hybrid schedule (in Dallas office 2-3 days/week)
• Coachable mindset and willingness to iterate based on feedback and call reviews