Overview
You're prospecting into mid-market and enterprise companies that might need custom software development. Your job is to find CTOs, Engineering VPs, and Product leaders who have a project they can't staff internally, then get them on a call with an Account Executive. You're selling outsourced dev services in a crowded market where everyone claims to be "full-stack" and "agile."
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Outbound BDR |
| Sales Motion | Outbound-heavy with some inbound from content |
| Deal Complexity | Consultative (varies by project scope) |
| Sales Cycle | 1-3 months from first touch to contract (you own first 2 weeks) |
| Deal Size | $50K-500K+ per project |
| Quota (est.) | 15-20 qualified meetings per month |
Company Context
Stage: Bootstrapped / Profitable (89 employees, no VC funding mentioned)
Size: 89 employees
Growth: Stable dev shop, hiring for growth. 100+ products delivered, so they're not new to this.
Market Position: Mid-tier agency in a crowded space. Competing on technical breadth (React, Vue, Angular, Swift, Kotlin, Flutter) and track record, not on brand name.
GTM Reality
Pipeline Sources:
- 20% Inbound - Blog content, SEO traffic, referrals from past clients. Quality varies—lots of tire-kickers and companies with $10K budgets for $100K projects.
- 80% Outbound - You're building lists of target companies and reaching out cold. Email sequences, LinkedIn outreach, phone calls to switchboards.
SDR/AE Structure: You book meetings, AEs take discovery and proposal calls. Likely a small sales team given company size—maybe 2-3 AEs total.
SE Support: Dev team gets pulled in for technical scoping calls, but not on every early conversation.
Competitive Landscape
Main Competitors: Toptal, Upwork Enterprise, other Eastern European dev shops, offshore agencies in India/Pakistan, and internal hiring (always the default option).
How They Differentiate: 80+ devs with broad tech stack expertise. Track record of 100+ delivered products. Based in Europe (Austria/Eastern Europe) so better timezone overlap than Asia, cheaper than US/UK agencies.
Common Objections:
- "We're trying to hire internally first"
- "We've been burned by outsourcing before"
- "Your rates seem high compared to [cheaper offshore option]"
- "We need someone in our timezone / who speaks native English"
Win Themes: Speed to market (they have devs ready vs. 3-month hiring process), diverse tech expertise (don't need to hire specialists for each tech), proven delivery track record.
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Prospecting (60%) | Nurturing Active Conversations (25%) | Internal (15%)
Key Activities
- List building: 2-3 hours/day researching companies on LinkedIn, G2, Crunchbase. Looking for funding announcements (companies that just raised need to build fast), product launches, job postings for devs (signal they're hiring and might consider outsourcing).
- Cold outreach: 50-80 emails/day, 20-30 LinkedIn connection requests, 10-20 cold calls. Most emails get ignored. Cold calling gets you gatekept or sent to voicemail. You're trying to find the 2-3 people per week who actually respond.
- Follow-up sequences: You've got 30-50 active threads at any time—people who responded once but haven't committed to a call. You're sending case studies, nudging every few days, trying to stay top-of-mind without being annoying.
- Qualifying conversations: When someone responds, you jump on a 10-15 minute call to understand their project, timeline, and budget before passing to an AE. Half of these turn out to be unqualified (no budget, no timeline, just "exploring options").
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- Most prospects are getting hit up by 10+ dev agencies per week. Your emails blend into the noise unless you find a timely angle (recent funding, job postings, product launch).
- "Not right now" is the most common response. Companies usually have 6-12 month roadmaps and aren't spontaneously starting new projects.
- You're competing against the prospect's internal hiring process. Even when they're interested, they'll often say "let me try to hire first, then I'll circle back." Most never circle back.
- Budget conversations are awkward. Eastern European dev rates ($50-80/hr) are cheaper than US agencies but more expensive than offshore. You have to sell value, not price.
What Success Looks Like
- 15-20 qualified meetings booked per month (meetings where the prospect has a real project, timeline in next 6 months, and budget above $50K)
- 30-40% of your meetings turn into proposals from AEs
- You build a pipeline of warm leads who aren't ready now but might be in Q2/Q3
Who You're Selling To
Primary Buyers:
- CTOs and VPs of Engineering at Series A-C startups (50-500 employees)
- Product leaders at e-commerce brands doing $10M+ revenue
- Digital transformation leads at traditional enterprises
What They Care About:
- Speed: Can you staff a team faster than they can hire?
- Quality: Have you built similar products before? Can they see case studies?
- Risk: What happens if the project goes sideways? How do you handle turnover?
- Cost: They're comparing you to internal hiring (fully loaded cost ~$150K/year per dev) and other agencies.
Requirements
- Comfortable with high-volume outbound prospecting (100+ touches per day)
- Some familiarity with software development concepts (you need to know what React, iOS, API integration means to have credible conversations)
- Resilience with rejection—most of your outreach gets ignored
- Research skills to find timely hooks (funding, hiring, product launches) that make your outreach relevant
- CRM hygiene (logging every interaction, keeping pipeline data clean)