Overview
You cold outreach VPs of Operations, Supply Chain Directors, and CFOs at mid-market and enterprise companies to book discovery meetings for Account Executives. You're prospecting into CPG, food & beverage, manufacturing, and distribution companies that likely use legacy ERPs or cobbled-together systems. Most aren't actively looking to switch - you're trying to surface latent pain.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Outbound BDR (meeting setter) |
| Sales Motion | Outbound-heavy (90%+ cold outreach) |
| Deal Complexity | N/A (you're booking meetings, not closing) |
| Sales Cycle | N/A |
| Deal Size | N/A |
| Quota (est.) | 15-20 qualified meetings per month |
Company Context
Stage: Series B/C (123 employees, scaling from 40 to 200 seats)
Size: 123 employees
Growth: Rapid expansion phase - BDR team likely growing fast as they build sales engine
Market Position: Challenger in crowded space - you're competing for attention with established ERP vendors and status quo
GTM Reality
Pipeline Sources:
- 90% Cold outbound - you're building lists and reaching out cold via calls, emails, LinkedIn
- 10% Inbound follow-up - warm leads from website, content downloads (but most aren't qualified)
SDR/AE Structure: You book meetings, AEs take it from there. Your success = their pipeline.
SE Support: Not involved at BDR stage
Competitive Landscape
Main Competitors: NetSuite, SAP, Microsoft Dynamics, Acumatica - but your real competitor is "do nothing" (they'll stick with current system even if it's painful)
How They Differentiate: Modern, no-code alternative that launches in months vs years
Common Objections: "We just implemented [current ERP]", "Send me info" (brush-off), "Not interested", "Call back next year", gatekeepers blocking you
Win Themes: If they mention pain with current system (slow, rigid, expensive customizations, poor UX), you have an opening
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Cold Calling (50%) | Email/LinkedIn Outreach (30%) | Research/Admin (20%)
Key Activities
- Cold Calling: Make 60-80 calls per day to VPs of Operations, Supply Chain Directors, CFOs. Most go to voicemail. You're trying to get past gatekeepers and get 30 seconds to explain why they should care. Goal is 3-5 meaningful conversations per day.
- Email Sequences: Send 50-100 personalized emails daily across multiple sequences. You're researching companies (funding, growth, recent news) to customize messaging. Response rates are 2-5% if you're doing it well.
- LinkedIn Outreach: Connection requests and InMails to prospects. Engage with their content to get on their radar. Most don't respond, but it's part of the multichannel approach.
- List Building: Use ZoomInfo, LinkedIn Sales Nav, and company websites to build lists of target accounts and contacts. You're looking for companies with operational complexity (multi-channel, inventory management challenges, manual processes).
- Qualification & Handoff: When you get interest, qualify them (company size, current systems, pain points, timeline, budget) before booking with AE. Bad meetings = AEs won't trust your pipeline.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- Rejection is constant - 95%+ of your outreach gets no response. Most calls go to voicemail, most emails are ignored or deleted.
- You're interrupting people with something they're not looking for. ERP replacement is a major project, not an impulse buy. Most prospects will say "not now" even if they have pain.
- Gatekeepers block you from decision-makers. You'll hear "send an email" or "they're not available" constantly.
- Message fatigue - prospects get hit up by dozens of software vendors. You need to stand out while being respectful of their time.
- Quota pressure - if you're not booking 15-20 meetings/month, you'll feel it. Some months are harder than others (holidays, end of quarter, summer).
- AEs will push back if meeting quality is low. You need to qualify properly or they'll stop taking your meetings.
What Success Looks Like
- Book 15-20 qualified meetings per month consistently
- 3-5% email response rate and 5-7% connect rate on calls
- 70%+ of meetings you book show up and are truly qualified
- Graduate to AE role within 12-18 months if you hit targets
Who You're Selling To
Primary Targets:
- VP/Director of Operations (feels pain of current systems daily)
- VP Supply Chain (deals with inventory, order management complexity)
- CFO (cares about operational efficiency and cost)
- CIO (technical buyer, but harder to reach cold)
What They Care About:
- Current pain points: slow processes, manual workarounds, poor visibility into operations, expensive consultants for system changes
- Time and risk of switching systems (they've been burned before)
- Whether this is a priority vs 100 other things on their plate
Requirements
- Comfortable with high-volume cold calling (60-80 dials/day)
- Resilient - you'll get rejected 95% of the time and need to keep going
- Curiosity to research companies and personalize outreach (generic templates don't work)
- Coachable - willing to iterate on messaging and take feedback from AEs
- Goal-oriented - you're measured on meetings booked, not activity for activity's sake
- 0-2 years experience (entry role, but quota pressure is real)