SDR Manager - Strategic Accounts

Overview

You manage a team of SDRs who prospect into strategic accounts (typically 1,000+ employees) for Rippling's all-in-one HR, IT, payroll, and finance platform. You're coaching reps on how to penetrate complex organizations, building account strategies with AEs, and working with Marketing on targeted campaigns. This isn't a volume-based SDR org—your team is focused on quality meetings with multiple stakeholders at each target account.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Late-stage, well-funded (6,800+ employees)

Size: 6,843 employees

Growth: Rapidly expanding, particularly into enterprise segment

Market Position: Aggressive challenger to Workday, ADP, and other legacy HR/payroll platforms. Known for bundling HR + IT management, which is a differentiator but also means reps have to sell to multiple departments.

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 20% Inbound - Some leads from product-led growth and marketing, but not the primary source for strategic accounts
• 75% Outbound - Account-based prospecting into named target accounts, multi-touch sequences
• 5% Referrals/Partners

SDR/AE Structure: SDRs set meetings for dedicated Strategic AEs. Your team likely has 5-8 reps feeding a specific segment of AEs.

SE Support: Shared SE pool supports AEs once meetings are set.

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Workday, ADP, UKG, BambooHR (mid-market), plus point solutions like Gusto, Paylocity

How They Differentiate: Rippling combines HR + IT management in one platform. They can manage employee devices, software access, and HR data from a single system. This is powerful but means you're often selling to both CHRO and CIO orgs.

Common Objections: "We already have Workday", "That's too much change at once", "Our IT team uses different tools", pricing concerns on large deployments

Win Themes: Integration/automation (reduce duplicate systems), speed of deployment, modern UX vs legacy tools

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Coaching/1-on-1s (35%) | Account Planning (25%) | Cross-functional (20%) | Admin/Reporting (20%)

Key Activities

• Daily coaching sessions: Reviewing call recordings, helping reps refine messaging for specific personas (HR, IT, Finance), working through blockers on how to reach decision-makers
• Account strategy meetings: Sitting with AEs to map out target accounts—identifying all the stakeholders, planning multi-threaded outreach, deciding which marketing plays to activate
• Pipeline reviews: Weekly deep-dives on each rep's pipeline, conversion rates from connection to meeting, meeting quality scores from AEs, and forecasting
• Cross-functional coordination: Weekly syncs with Marketing on target account campaigns, with Sales leadership on headcount/territory planning, with enablement on training gaps
• Hiring and onboarding: Depending on team growth, you'll spend chunks of time interviewing, onboarding new SDRs, and ramping them on the strategic sales motion

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Strategic SDR work is slower: Your reps aren't making 80 calls a day. They're doing deep research, coordinating with AEs, and trying to get multiple people at the same company engaged. It's hard to keep urgency high when cycles are longer.
• Quality vs quantity tension: AEs will complain that meetings aren't qualified enough. Sales leadership will want more volume. You're constantly balancing both.
• Multi-threading is messy: Getting to HR, IT, and Finance stakeholders at the same account means more coordination, more no-shows, and more deals that stall because one department isn't bought in.
• Rippling is still building enterprise credibility: You're selling against Workday and ADP who have deep relationships and proven scale. Your reps will hear "we're not ripping out Workday" a lot.
• Internal politics: Strategic accounts mean lots of stakeholders internally too—AEs, Marketing, Sales leadership all have opinions on how to work accounts. You're the orchestrator.

What Success Looks Like

• Your team consistently hits qualified meeting goals (likely 10-15 per rep per month for strategic accounts)
• AEs accept 80%+ of meetings as qualified and progress them to discovery
• You develop reps who get promoted to AE or other SDR leadership roles
• You build repeatable playbooks for breaking into complex accounts in your ICP

Who You're Managing For

Your Team:

• 5-8 SDRs, likely mix of experience levels (some newer, some seasoned)
• They're focused on fewer, bigger accounts vs traditional high-volume SDRs

Your Stakeholders:

• Strategic AEs who expect high-quality, multi-threaded meetings
• Sales leadership tracking pipeline creation and team performance
• Marketing partners coordinating ABM campaigns
• Enablement and recruiting as you hire and develop talent

Requirements

• 2-4+ years SDR management experience, ideally in enterprise B2B SaaS
• You've managed strategic/ABM-focused SDR teams before (not just high-volume transactional)
• Strong coaching ability—can listen to calls, diagnose issues, and help reps improve
• Comfortable with cross-functional collaboration and navigating matrixed organizations
• Based in San Francisco (role is in-office)
• Experience with Rippling's category (HR tech, payroll, IT management) is a plus but not required