Overview
You're prospecting into mid-market and enterprise accounts to generate qualified demos for Glean's AI-powered workplace search platform. You'll spend most of your day making cold calls, sending sequences, and doing account research to find the right buyers who care about making internal knowledge findable. You report to Emily's SDR team in NYC and work hybrid (3-4 days in office).
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Outbound SDR |
| Sales Motion | Outbound-heavy with some inbound from product-led growth |
| Deal Complexity | Consultative (selling to IT + business stakeholders) |
| Sales Cycle | N/A (you book meetings, not close deals) |
| Deal Size | N/A (SDR role) |
| Quota (est.) | 15-20 qualified meetings/month |
Company Context
Stage: Late-stage/Growth (1495 employees)
Size: ~1,500 employees
Growth: Aggressively hiring SDRs across NYC and EMEA (London), expanding multilingual team
Market Position: Competing in crowded AI/enterprise search space - likely up against Google Workspace search, Microsoft's tools, and other AI knowledge management platforms
GTM Reality
Pipeline Sources:
- 30% Inbound - Some warm leads from website, content downloads, maybe free trial users at larger orgs
- 65% Outbound - Cold calling into target accounts, LinkedIn outreach, email sequences
- 5% Referrals/Events - Conference follow-up, customer referrals
SDR/AE Structure: Dedicated SDR team feeding meetings to AEs (you're on Emily's team)
SE Support: Likely involved in demos after you book them, but not in your prospecting
Competitive Landscape
Main Competitors: Google Workspace search, Microsoft Viva/SharePoint search, other AI knowledge tools, established enterprise search vendors
How They Differentiate: AI-powered unified search across all work apps (likely Slack, Docs, email, etc.) - emphasis on "AI" is key selling point
Common Objections: "We already have search built into our tools," "How is this different from ChatGPT Enterprise?", "Security concerns with AI accessing everything," pricing questions
Win Themes: Time saved finding information, AI understands context better than keyword search, works across all tools in one place
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Cold Calling (40%) | Sequences/Email (25%) | Research (20%) | Internal/Admin (15%)
Key Activities
- Cold Calling: 50-70 dials/day to IT leaders, CIOs, heads of business ops at companies with 500+ employees. Most calls go to voicemail. You're trying to catch people between meetings.
- Email Sequences: Running 6-8 touch cadences through Outreach or Salesloft. Writing personalized first lines about their tech stack or recent company news. Most don't respond.
- Account Research: Identifying which companies use the right tools (Google Workspace, Slack, etc.), finding right contacts on LinkedIn/ZoomInfo, figuring out pain points from Glassdoor reviews or earnings calls.
- Meeting Handoff: Documenting what you learned on calls, briefing AEs on qualified opps, sitting in on first demos to learn, dealing with no-shows and rescheduling.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- Most prospects don't see search as a problem worth solving - you're creating demand, not responding to it. Lots of "we're all set" rejections.
- The AI hype cycle means everyone's getting pitched AI tools. You're competing for attention with 10 other "AI will transform your workflow" messages.
- Hybrid means 3-4 days in office - you're on the phones in an open floor plan with other SDRs. It's loud and you'll hear everyone's calls.
- Quota pressure is real. If you have a bad week of connects, you're scrambling to make up meetings. Emily will be tracking your activity metrics daily.
- "Qualified" meetings get rejected by AEs if the buyer isn't senior enough or doesn't have budget, which doesn't count toward your number.
What Success Looks Like
- Hitting 15-20 qualified meetings/month consistently (probably ~50 cold calls/meeting booked)
- 30-40% of your meetings show up and advance to next stage
- Getting promoted to AE or closing role after 12-18 months if you perform
Who You're Selling To
Primary Buyers:
- CIOs, VPs of IT, Heads of IT Operations (technical buyer)
- COOs, Heads of Business Operations, Chief of Staff (business buyer)
What They Care About:
- Employee productivity and time wasted searching for information
- ROI on existing SaaS stack (are we using all these tools effectively?)
- Security and compliance with AI tools accessing company data
- Integration complexity and IT lift to deploy
- Actual adoption rates (will employees use another tool?)
Requirements
- Comfort making 50+ cold calls per day and handling rejection
- Able to learn technical concepts quickly (you're selling AI/search to IT buyers)
- Strong verbal and written communication - you need to sound credible to senior buyers
- Coachable and able to take feedback on call quality, messaging
- Willing to work hybrid 3-4 days/week in NYC office
- Hunger to hit quota and competitive drive (you'll be stack-ranked against team)
- Prior SDR experience helpful but not required if you're tenacious