Rob Farley, CFA

Business Development Representative

Accelerize 360

BDROutbound HeavyConsultative
Posted by Rob Farley, CFA

Overview

You prospect into financial services and retail companies to find IT and RevOps leaders who need help with their Salesforce or Snowflake implementations. Your job is to book qualified discovery meetings for AEs. Most of your day is cold calling, researching accounts, and personalizing outreach.


Role Snapshot

AspectDetails
Role TypeOutbound BDR
Sales MotionOutbound-heavy cold calling
Deal ComplexityN/A (booking meetings only)
Sales CycleN/A
Deal SizeN/A
Quota (est.)12-15 qualified meetings per month

Company Context

Stage: Established (190 employees)

Size: 192 employees

Growth: Actively hiring

Market Position: Mid-sized consultancy competing against hundreds of similar firms


GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

  • 80% Outbound - you're building the list and doing cold outreach
  • 20% Warm inbound - following up on partner referrals or website inquiries

SDR/AE Structure: You feed meetings to a team of AEs

Training/Support: Likely get some training on Salesforce/Snowflake basics and consultancy's value prop


Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Every other Salesforce and Snowflake consultancy—prospects get these calls constantly

How They Differentiate: Financial services and retail focus

Common Objections: "We already have a partner," "We handle this internally," "Not a priority right now," "Send me info" (brush off)

Win Themes: Vertical expertise and specific case studies in their industry


What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Cold Calling (50%) | Email/LinkedIn (25%) | Research (15%) | Admin (10%)

Key Activities

  • Cold calling: 60-80 dials per day to VP/Director-level IT, RevOps, and Data leaders. You're getting a lot of gatekeepers, voicemails, and "not interested" responses. You're trying to find people who have Salesforce or Snowflake but are struggling with it.
  • Account research: Looking up companies on LinkedIn, checking their tech stack on ZoomInfo or BuiltWith, finding trigger events (new funding, leadership changes, posted jobs for Salesforce roles). You need context before calling.
  • Email sequences and LinkedIn outreach: Multi-touch cadences with personalized emails. You're referencing their tech stack, recent company news, or specific pain points you think they have.
  • Meeting qualification: When you get someone interested, doing basic discovery to make sure they have budget, authority, and an actual need before passing to an AE. AEs will push back if you pass bad meetings.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

  • Cold calling senior IT leaders is tough—they're busy and get these calls all the time. Lots of gatekeepers and unreturned voicemails.
  • Services are harder to sell than software—there's no free trial or demo to hook people with. You're selling a conversation.
  • Hard to differentiate—"We do Salesforce implementations" sounds like 100 other companies. You need to find a specific angle or pain point.
  • Rejection rate is high—most calls go nowhere, most emails get ignored. You need thick skin.
  • Quota pressure—if you're not booking 3-4 meetings per week, you'll feel it

What Success Looks Like

  • Booking 12-15 qualified meetings per month that AEs accept
  • Building a consistent pipeline of target accounts in your verticals
  • Getting better at pattern matching—learning which companies and titles convert best

Who You're Selling To

Primary Targets:

  • VP/Director of IT or Engineering
  • VP/Director of Revenue Operations or Sales Operations
  • VP/Director of Data/Analytics
  • Salesforce Administrators (to get to their boss)

What They Care About:

  • Whether you understand their specific industry challenges
  • Proof you've helped similar companies
  • Not wasting their time—they need to know this call is relevant

Requirements

  • 0-2 years of sales or BDR experience (entry-level role)
  • Comfortable making 60-80 cold calls per day
  • Ability to research and personalize outreach at scale
  • Coachable and willing to follow a process
  • Basic understanding of enterprise tech (or ability to learn quickly)