SDR (Sales Development Representative)

Overview

You're booking meetings for Account Executives who sell teletherapy services to school districts. Your day is spent cold calling special education directors, navigating school district bureaucracy, and working through lists of target districts. You're selling access to remote speech therapists, occupational therapists, and mental health counselors for students with IEPs.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Growth stage (782 employees suggests Series C/D or profitable)

Size: 782 employees

Growth: Actively hiring SDRs suggests expansion mode

Market Position: Self-described as "leading provider" in K-12 teletherapy - established player in growing market post-COVID

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 80% Outbound - cold calling into target district lists, LinkedIn outreach to special ed directors
• 15% Inbound - districts searching for teletherapy solutions, some website leads
• 5% Referrals - existing district customers referring neighboring districts

SDR/AE Structure: You book, AEs close. Clean handoff after qualified meeting.

SE Support: Clinical specialists may join discovery calls, but you won't work with them directly.

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: PresenceLearning, Stepping Stones Group, local therapy agencies in each region

How They Differentiate: "Leading provider" suggests scale, network of therapists, reliability

Common Objections: "We have in-person therapists," "Budget is tight," "We're locked in a contract," "I need to talk to the board"

Win Themes: Therapist shortage (hard to hire locally), flexibility, compliance with IEP requirements

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

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

Key Activities

• Cold calling district offices: 60-80 dials per day. You call the main district line, ask for special education director or student services, get transferred around. Most calls go to voicemail. You're trying to catch someone live between 8-10am or 1-3pm before they're in meetings.
• Email sequencing: Following up calls with emails explaining teletherapy services. Open rates are low because district emails are flooded. Subject lines mentioning "IEP compliance" or "therapist staffing" perform better.
• Account research: Looking up district websites to understand their special ed programs, checking if they mention therapy staffing needs, finding the right contact's email format, checking LinkedIn for directors.
• Qualifying conversations: When you get someone live, asking about their current therapy setup, caseload, staffing challenges, timeline for making changes. Trying to determine if they have budget authority and an actual need vs. just taking info.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Gatekeepers and bureaucracy: School district phone systems are nightmares. Receptionists don't transfer you. People are in meetings or "with students" constantly. Decision-makers are often in IEP meetings for hours.
• Long decision cycles: Even after you book the meeting, districts move slowly. Your AE's deal might take 6-9 months to close, so you won't see results of your work quickly.
• Repetitive grind: You're calling similar personas with similar pain points every day. The first 100 calls are learning, the next 1000 are execution.
• Timing dependency: Budget cycles matter - districts plan annually. If you call in April when budgets are set, you're waiting until next fiscal year.
• High rejection rate: Most districts already have something in place or aren't actively looking. You're interrupting busy people.

What Success Looks Like

• Booking 4-6 qualified meetings per week that show up and engage
• AEs accepting 80%+ of your meetings as truly qualified (real need, right person, actual timeline)
• Building a rhythm where you know which districts to call when based on their budget cycles

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• Special Education Directors (district-level)
• Directors of Student Services
• Assistant Superintendents (in smaller districts)

What They Care About:

• Can you actually provide qualified, licensed therapists (they've been burned by staffing agencies)
• Compliance with IEP mandates - they're legally required to provide services
• Cost per session vs. hiring full-time staff
• Therapist retention - they don't want to keep switching providers mid-year
• Technology that works for K-12 students (COPPA compliant, easy for kids to use)

Requirements

• Comfortable making 60-80 cold calls per day with high rejection rates
• Ability to navigate complex organizations (school districts have layers)
• Research skills to understand education jargon (IEP, FAPE, IDEA, 504 plans)
• Resilience - deals close slowly in education, you won't see immediate gratification
• Coachable - this is likely your first sales role
• Mission alignment helps - you'll talk to people serving kids with disabilities daily