Overview
You manage 8-12 SDRs responsible for booking meetings for AE teams. Your job is to hire, onboard, coach, and performance-manage your team to hit collective meeting and SAO quotas. You're in Salesforce and call recording tools all day, reviewing activity, diagnosing problems, and running team meetings. You report to a Director or the VP of Sales Development.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Frontline Sales Manager (SDR team) |
| Sales Motion | Managing outbound prospecting team |
| Deal Complexity | Enterprise security (team books meetings for AEs) |
| Sales Cycle | N/A (management role) |
| Deal Size | N/A (management role) |
| Quota (est.) | Team quota: 120-180 meetings/month, 25-40 SAOs/month |
Company Context
Stage: Public (NSKY)
Size: 2,000+ employees
Growth: Scaling SDR organization globally under new VP. Hiring managers across regions (North America, EMEA, APAC likely). Expect high hiring volume and team growth.
Market Position: Established SASE leader competing with Zscaler and Palo Alto.
GTM Reality
Pipeline Sources:
- Your team generates pipeline via 70% outbound, 20% inbound MQL follow-up, 10% events/referrals
SDR/AE Structure: Your SDRs feed a pool of AEs. You coordinate with AE managers on lead quality and handoff process.
SE Support: Not your direct concern (SEs work with AEs post-meeting).
Competitive Landscape
Main Competitors: Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks, Cloudflare
How They Differentiate: Private cloud architecture, data protection, performance
Common Objections: Your SDRs face timing objections, existing vendors, gatekeepersāyou coach them through it.
Win Themes: Security + performance, better DLP than Zscaler
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Coaching & 1-on-1s (40%) | Hiring & Onboarding (25%) | Reporting & Forecasting (20%) | Meetings & Escalations (15%)
Key Activities
- Weekly 1-on-1s: Meet with each SDR for 30-45 minutes. Review their metrics (calls, meetings, SAOs), listen to call recordings, diagnose what's working and what's not. Give actionable feedback. Some reps need motivation, others need skill development.
- Performance Management: Track who's hitting quota and who's not. Create performance improvement plans (PIPs) for struggling reps. Occasionally you have to fire people who don't improve. It's uncomfortable but necessary.
- Hiring: Interview SDR candidates constantly (you're always hiring in a scaling org). Screen for grit, coachability, and communication skills. Coordinate with recruiting on req approvals and offer negotiations.
- Onboarding: Run or oversee onboarding for new SDRs. Get them ramped on product, talk tracks, tools (Salesforce, Outreach, ZoomInfo). Shadow their first week of calls.
- Forecasting and Reporting: Pull weekly/monthly reports on team performance. Forecast meeting and SAO attainment. Report up to your Director or VP on team health, hiring progress, and risks.
- Cross-functional Coordination: Work with AE managers on lead quality issues. Partner with Marketing on MQL volume and quality. Escalate to Sales Ops when CRM or tool issues block your team.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- Constant firefighting: Someone's always struggling. A top performer quits. A new hire isn't ramping. An AE complains about lead quality. You're solving problems all day.
- Hiring pressure: In a scaling org, you're expected to hire fast and hire well. Bad hires hurt team morale and numbers. Recruiting is a grindāmost candidates aren't good fits.
- Repetitive coaching: You'll give the same feedback hundreds of times. "Slow down on your intro." "Ask better discovery questions." "Stop pitching so early." New reps make the same mistakes. Patience wears thin.
- Limited control: You can coach and motivate, but you can't control whether prospects pick up the phone. Market conditions, product-market fit, and lead quality affect your team's successāand you get blamed when numbers slip.
- Managing up and down: Your team wants you to fight for better leads and more resources. Leadership wants better results with what you have. You're negotiating both directions.
What Success Looks Like
- Your team hits 90-100% of collective meeting and SAO quota consistently
- Attrition stays low (lose fewer than 20% of reps per year voluntarily)
- New hires ramp on time (50% quota by month 2, full quota by month 3)
- You promote 1-2 SDRs to AE or senior roles per year (proves you develop talent)
- You get promoted to Director of Sales Development or Sr. Manager within 18-24 months
Who Your Team Sells To
Your SDRs prospect:
- CISOs, VP Security, IT Directors, Security Managers
- Cloud Architects, Network Architects
Buying Criteria (you train your team on this):
- Security posture, cloud migration, compliance, user experience, budget/timing
Requirements
- 3-5 years in sales development (SDR/BDR), with 1-2 years as a team lead or manager
- Proven track record of hitting quota as an IC and managing a team to quota attainment
- Experience hiring and onboarding SDRs in a high-growth environment
- Strong coaching skillsāable to diagnose call/email issues and give actionable feedback
- Comfortable with data and reporting (Salesforce, Tableau, Excel/Sheets)
- Cybersecurity or enterprise SaaS experience preferred (need to understand technical product)
- Resilience and patienceāthis job is repetitive and high-pressure