Outbound Sales Development Representative (SDR)

Overview

You spend your day prospecting into companies that are hiring globally or considering it—targeting HR leaders, CFOs, and operations execs. You're selling meetings for Remote's employer of record (EOR), contractor management, and global payroll platform. Your goal is to identify companies expanding internationally and get them on the phone with an Account Executive.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Late-stage (13,500+ employees, likely Series D+ or approaching public readiness based on scale)

Size: 13,564 employees globally

Growth: Large, established player in the global employment/payroll space—competing heavily with Deel and Rippling

Market Position: Major player in a crowded, competitive market. Not the scrappy underdog anymore—they're selling against well-funded competitors with similar feature sets.

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 30-40% Inbound - Companies searching for EOR solutions, content downloads, demo requests (quality varies—some tire-kickers, some urgent needs)
• 50-60% Outbound - Cold calling, email sequences, LinkedIn outreach to companies showing hiring signals in new countries
• 10% Referrals/Partners - Some channel partnerships with accounting firms and HR consultants

SDR/AE Structure: Dedicated SDR team feeding AEs. You book meetings, qualify basic fit (company size, countries they're hiring in, urgency), then hand off to AEs who run demos and close deals.

SE Support: AEs typically run their own demos—no dedicated SE support for most deals unless it's a complex enterprise account.

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Deel (their biggest rival), Rippling (full HR suite), Oyster, Velocity Global, legacy providers like Globalization Partners

How They Differentiate: Remote positions itself as simpler and more compliant than competitors, with better global payroll accuracy and faster onboarding. They've invested heavily in their platform's UX and their own legal entity infrastructure.

Common Objections:

• "We're already using Deel/Rippling" (switching costs are real)
• "We only need this for 2-3 contractors right now" (deal too small)
• "Our finance team wants to stick with our current provider"
• Price sensitivity—this category has gotten competitive and some prospects shop on cost

Win Themes: Better compliance infrastructure, faster onboarding in tricky countries, superior payroll accuracy, and platform reliability vs smaller competitors

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Prospecting (50%) | Calls/Emails (30%) | Admin/CRM (15%) | Internal Meetings (5%)

Key Activities

• Building prospect lists: You research companies on LinkedIn, check job boards for international hiring signals, and pull lists from tools like ZoomInfo or Apollo. You're looking for companies hiring in multiple countries or showing signs of international expansion.

• Cold calling and emailing: You make 50-70 calls per day and send 30-50 personalized emails. Most calls go to voicemail. Most emails get ignored. You're trying to catch someone who's either actively evaluating EOR solutions or has a pain point you can surface (hiring delays, compliance concerns, managing contractors across borders).

• Running sequences: You load prospects into Outreach or Salesloft sequences—multi-touch campaigns over 2-3 weeks. You're A/B testing subject lines, trying different hooks (compliance risk, cost savings, speed to hire), and adjusting based on what gets replies.

• Qualifying and booking meetings: When someone responds, you hop on a quick 10-15 minute call to qualify them (company size, countries they're hiring in, timeline, budget authority). If they're a fit, you book them with an AE. If not, you either nurture them or disqualify.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Low response rates: Most of your outreach gets ignored. You'll send 200+ emails and make 300+ calls to book 15-20 qualified meetings. Rejection and silence are the norm.

• Competitive market: Many prospects are already using Deel or Rippling. You're often trying to get them to consider switching, which means overcoming inertia and switching costs. "We're happy with our current provider" is a line you'll hear constantly.

• Vague buying signals: Lots of prospects will take a meeting out of curiosity but have no real urgency. You'll book meetings where the AE discovers the company is 6-12 months away from actually buying, which doesn't help your conversion metrics.

• Internal CRM pressure: You're expected to log everything in Salesforce—calls, emails, meeting notes. If your activity numbers drop, your manager will notice. There's a lot of admin work to prove you're hitting activity benchmarks.

What Success Looks Like

• You book 15-25 qualified meetings per month that AEs actually want to take (not junk leads)
• 50-60% of your meetings show up and are genuinely interested (not just taking a generic "learn more" call)
• AEs convert 20-30% of your meetings into opportunities, meaning your qualification is solid
• You hit your daily activity metrics (50+ calls, 30+ emails) consistently without burning out

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• VP/Director of HR or People Ops (at companies hiring globally)
• CFOs or Finance Directors (concerned about payroll compliance and cost)
• Operations leaders at scaling startups (50-500 employees expanding internationally)

What They Care About:

• Compliance risk: They don't want to get fined or sued for misclassifying workers or violating local labor laws
• Speed to hire: They have open roles in other countries and need to onboard people quickly
• Cost and transparency: They want predictable pricing and no surprise fees (EOR margins can vary wildly)
• Platform simplicity: They don't want to juggle multiple tools—ideally one platform for EOR, contractors, and payroll

Requirements

• 1-2 years of SDR/BDR experience (or strong internship/entry-level sales background)
• Comfortable making 50+ cold calls per day and handling rejection
• Ability to research accounts and personalize outreach (not just blasting generic templates)
• Familiarity with Salesforce, Outreach/Salesloft, LinkedIn Sales Navigator
• Strong written communication—your emails need to be clear and compelling, not salesy fluff
• Self-motivated and metrics-driven—you'll be judged on activity and meeting quotas, not just effort
• Creativity in outreach—the hiring manager explicitly wants people who can stand out, so vanilla cold calling won't cut it