Marketing Development Rep (MDR)

Overview

You're the person who calls every warm signal that comes in - someone filled out a form, visited a deal room, commented on a LinkedIn post, or downloaded content. Your job is to get them on the phone within minutes and either qualify them for an AE, pass intelligence to an active deal owner, or surface expansion opportunities in customer accounts. You're selling TitanX's sales acceleration platform that promises to increase connect rates from 3% to 25%.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Early-stage (likely Seed/Series A based on 44 employees)

Size: 44 employees

Growth: Actively hiring for new roles, building out go-to-market functions

Market Position: Niche player in sales acceleration/outbound calling space - competing in a crowded market of dialers, sales engagement platforms, and AI calling tools

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 60% Inbound signals - form fills, content downloads, website visits, deal room activity
• 30% Social engagement - LinkedIn post comments, shares, profile views
• 10% Customer expansion - usage spikes, support tickets, renewal proximity

SDR/AE Structure: You're the only person doing this role - it's brand new. You'll pass qualified prospects to AEs, but you're also expected to call into active opportunities and customer accounts, which is unusual for most SDR roles.

SE Support: Unknown - likely no dedicated SE at this stage

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Likely competing against sales engagement platforms (Outreach, Salesloft), dialers (Orum, ConnectAndSell), and AI calling tools

How They Differentiate: Bold claim of 25% connect rates (vs industry 3%) with a $10K guarantee if they don't hit 300% improvement

Common Objections: "We already have a dialer", "Our team won't adopt it", "Those connect rate numbers sound too good to be true"

Win Themes: Provable ROI (the $10K guarantee), dramatic improvement over current tools, testimonials of 4-5X rep productivity

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Calling (50%) | Research/Prep (20%) | CRM/Notes (15%) | Internal Sync (15%)

Key Activities

• Rapid response calling: You monitor multiple channels (Slack alerts, CRM notifications, LinkedIn) for any signal someone's engaging. When an ICP account visits the pricing page or a CFO comments on Evan's LinkedIn post, you're calling them within 5-10 minutes. You make 40-60 of these calls per day.
• Intelligence gathering on active deals: AEs will ask you to call unknown contacts who visited their deal rooms. You're trying to figure out who they are, what their role is, and whether they're a blocker or champion. You're not selling - you're gathering intel and offering to connect them with the AE.
• Customer expansion prospecting: You call customers when they show certain behaviors - usage increases, new users added, or they're near renewal. You're looking for expansion opportunities or trying to get ahead of churn risk. This is tricky because you need to know when to involve the CSM/AM.
• CRM hygiene and attribution tracking: You log every call, email, and outcome. You're building multi-touch attribution data that tracks how conversations move deals forward. This is critical because the company is trying to prove the MDR role's value and figure out who gets credit when multiple people touch an account.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• You're interrupting people constantly: Even "warm" leads don't always want a call. Someone who downloaded a whitepaper might've been researching for their boss or doing competitive intel. You'll get a lot of "I'm just looking" or "not the right time."
• Unclear ownership and stepping on toes: You're calling into active deals and customer accounts, which means you'll sometimes call someone an AE or CSM is already working. This can create friction unless coordination is really tight. The post mentions "who gets credit" is a problem they need to solve.
• Constant context-switching: One minute you're cold-calling a prospect, next you're gathering intel for an AE, then you're calling a customer about expansion. Each conversation requires different preparation and approach. It's hard to get into a rhythm.
• This role doesn't exist anywhere else: There's no playbook for this. You're building it as you go. That's exciting for some people and chaotic for others.

What Success Looks Like

• You book 15-20 qualified meetings per week for AEs from prospect signals
• You surface 5-10 pieces of actionable intelligence per week on active deals (new stakeholders, competitor mentions, timeline changes)
• You identify 3-5 customer expansion opportunities per month that CSMs/AMs convert
• Your calls-to-conversation conversion rate is above 15% (higher than typical SDR because you're calling warmer signals)

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• VPs of Sales at B2B companies with 50-500 employees
• Sales Development Leaders managing SDR/BDR teams
• Revenue Operations leaders trying to improve sales efficiency

What They Care About:

• Connect rates on outbound calling (their current rates are terrible)
• Cost per qualified meeting or cost per booked demo
• Rep productivity - can they scale revenue without hiring more headcount
• Adoption risk - will their team actually use it
• Provable ROI - they've been burned by sales tools that didn't deliver

Requirements

• Exceptional phone skills - you need to be comfortable calling executives, active deal contacts, and customers without sounding like a typical SDR
• Fast pattern recognition - you're triaging 23 different types of signals and deciding in real-time which ones warrant a call vs email vs ignore
• Emotional resilience - you'll make 200+ calls per week and most won't pick up or will brush you off
• CRM discipline - you're building attribution data that the company will use to justify this role's existence
• Coachability - this role is being invented in real-time, so you need to take feedback and iterate quickly on your approach
• 1-2 years in SDR/BDR role preferred but not required - they care more about soft skills and sales intuition than experience