Outbound SDR

Overview

You spend most of your day making cold calls to sales leaders, recruiters, and ops executives who might need ZoomInfo's contact database and sales intelligence platform. You're using ZoomInfo to prospect for ZoomInfo, which means you're essentially demonstrating the product while using it. Your goal is to book 12-15 qualified discovery calls per month for Account Executives.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Public company (NASDAQ: ZI)

Size: 4,349 employees

Growth: Mature SaaS company with established product-market fit. Hiring SDRs consistently as they expand market coverage.

Market Position: Market leader in B2B contact data and sales intelligence. Competes in a crowded space with Apollo, Cognism, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and others. Well-known brand, but faces pricing objections and data accuracy concerns.

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 90% Outbound - You're building your own lists from ZoomInfo, cold calling, and running cadences
• 10% Inbound - Occasional hand-raisers from marketing, but most of your meetings come from your own prospecting

SDR/AE Structure: You book meetings, AEs run them. Clear handoff. You don't sit in on discovery calls unless it's for training.

SE Support: AEs handle demos themselves - the product is fairly straightforward to demonstrate.

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Apollo.io (free tier makes it hard to compete), LinkedIn Sales Navigator (already in their stack), Cognism (GDPR-compliant alternative), Lusha, Seamless.AI

How They Differentiate: Larger database, more data points per contact, intent data integration, organizational charts, technographics. Premium positioning.

Common Objections:

• "We already use LinkedIn Sales Navigator"
• "Your pricing is too high compared to Apollo"
• "We tried ZoomInfo before and the data was outdated"
• "We're cutting tech stack spend right now"

Win Themes: Data accuracy and depth, integration with Salesforce/Outreach, intent signals, scoops (hiring/funding triggers)

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Cold Calling (50%) | Email/LinkedIn (25%) | Admin/CRM (15%) | Team Meetings (10%)

Key Activities

• Cold Calling (60-80 dials/day): You're calling sales directors, VPs of Sales, recruiters, marketing ops people. Most don't answer. You leave 30-40 voicemails per day. When someone picks up, you have about 15 seconds to get them interested before they hang up or say they're busy.
• Email Cadences: You're enrolled in multi-touch sequences through Outreach or Salesloft. You personalize the first email, but emails 2-5 are mostly templated. Response rates are low (1-3%).
• LinkedIn Outreach: Connection requests and InMails to prospects who didn't answer your call. Most don't respond, but it's part of the cadence.
• CRM Hygiene: Logging calls, updating disposition codes in Salesforce, tracking no-shows. If you don't log it correctly, it doesn't count toward quota.
• List Building: Using ZoomInfo to build target account lists. You're segmenting by industry, company size, tech stack, intent signals, hiring patterns.
• Call Review & Coaching: Weekly 1:1s with your manager where they listen to recorded calls and critique your talk track, objection handling, and tonality.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• You get hung up on constantly. Most days you'll talk to 5-10 actual humans out of 70+ dials. Rejection is the default state.
• A lot of prospects already know ZoomInfo and have an opinion - either they used it and left, or they think it's too expensive. You're not introducing a new concept.
• Qualified meeting standards are strict. If the AE shows up and the prospect isn't a real opportunity, it doesn't count toward your quota and you might lose credit.
• In-office requirement means you're in a loud room with 30 other SDRs all calling at once. It's high-energy but can be exhausting.
• Gatekeepers are tough. Executive assistants screen aggressively, especially for sales tools.
• Your success depends heavily on territory assignment. If you get a saturated territory or low-quality accounts, you're grinding harder for the same quota.

What Success Looks Like

• Booking 12-15 qualified meetings per month consistently
• 50+ connects per week (actual conversations)
• 60-80 dials per day logged in CRM
• Show rate of 70%+ (prospects actually showing up to the meetings you book)
• Getting promoted to AE within 12-18 months if you hit quota consistently

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• VP/Director of Sales (500+ employee companies)
• Sales Development leaders managing SDR teams
• Recruiters and Talent Acquisition leaders (using ZoomInfo for sourcing)
• RevOps/Sales Ops professionals

What They Care About:

• Data accuracy - they've been burned by bad data before
• Integration with their existing stack (Salesforce, Outreach, Salesloft, HubSpot)
• Cost vs. value - they're comparing you to cheaper alternatives
• Ease of use for their team
• Intent data and signals that help prioritize accounts

Requirements

• Comfortable making 60-80 cold calls per day and hearing "no" constantly
• Coachable - you'll get a lot of feedback on your talk tracks and need to iterate quickly
• In-office 5 days/week in Vancouver, WA (non-negotiable)
• Competitive mindset - there are leaderboards and you'll be ranked against peers daily
• Basic understanding of B2B sales or strong desire to learn (no prior experience required)
• Ability to learn the product quickly - you're selling sales intelligence, so you need to understand how sales teams operate
• Thick skin - you'll be rejected hundreds of times per week