Overview
You'll manage a team of SDRs who cold call and email finance and travel managers at mid-market and enterprise companies, trying to book demos for AEs who sell Navan's all-in-one travel and expense platform. You'll spend your days coaching reps through deal cycles, sitting on calls with them, analyzing conversion metrics, and working with Travis Morgan (Director of Sales Development) on team strategy and process improvements.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | SDR Team Manager |
| Sales Motion | Primarily outbound with some inbound lead flow |
| Deal Complexity | N/A - You manage the team booking meetings |
| Sales Cycle | N/A - SDRs book demos, don't close deals |
| Deal Size | N/A - Team feeds pipeline to AEs |
| Quota (est.) | Team quota likely 100-150+ qualified meetings/month |
Company Context
Stage: Late-stage private (3,300+ employees, 10,000+ customers)
Size: 3,318 employees
Growth: Actively hiring across sales org - Travis is building out the SDR function in NYC
Market Position: Established player in corporate travel/expense management competing against SAP Concur, Brex, TripActions, and legacy systems
GTM Reality
Pipeline Sources for SDR Team:
- ~30% Inbound - Marketing generates MQLs from content, webinars, and demo requests from companies researching travel/expense solutions
- ~70% Outbound - SDRs are prospecting into target accounts, cold calling finance/travel leaders, running email sequences
- Some partner referrals from consulting firms and brokers
SDR/AE Structure: Dedicated SDR team feeds qualified meetings to AE team. SDRs don't carry deals past booking the demo.
SE Support: AEs have SE support for technical demos, but SDRs handle initial discovery calls solo.
Competitive Landscape
Main Competitors: SAP Concur (enterprise legacy), Brex (SMB/growth), TripActions/Navan's direct competitors in modern travel tech
How They Differentiate: All-in-one platform (travel + expense + payments) with 96% CSAT and 43 NPS. They emphasize user experience vs clunky legacy tools.
Common Objections: "We already use Concur", "Our travel volume doesn't justify switching", "We just renewed our contract", pricing concerns on smaller deals
Win Themes: Ease of use, employee satisfaction, cost savings through negotiated rates, unified platform vs point solutions
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Coaching/1-on-1s (40%) | Metrics/Planning (25%) | Hiring/Training (20%) | Cross-functional (15%)
Key Activities
- Live Call Coaching: Sit with reps 3-5 hours per week, listening to cold calls and discovery calls, giving real-time feedback on objection handling, qualification, and how they position the demo
- Weekly 1-on-1s: Review each rep's pipeline, conversion rates, activity levels. Dig into why their meeting-to-show rate is slipping or why they're not hitting call volume. This is where you actually coach technique.
- Sequence Optimization: Work with reps and marketing on outbound cadences - which subject lines work, what pain points resonate with CFOs vs travel managers, when to call vs email
- Forecasting & Planning: Pull reports for Travis on team pipeline coverage, rep performance trends, territory saturation. Join leadership meetings to discuss headcount needs and quota planning.
- Hiring: Screen candidates, run final round interviews, build onboarding plans. You're probably hiring 2-4 reps per quarter given growth mode.
- Cross-functional Sync: Meet with AE managers about lead quality and handoff process. Work with marketing on MQL definitions. Partner with rev ops on CRM hygiene and reporting.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- Rep Turnover: SDRs burn out or promote out fast (12-18 month average tenure). You're constantly hiring and ramping new people while trying to keep your best reps engaged.
- Activity vs Quality Tension: You're measured on meetings booked, but AEs will complain if your team books unqualified junk. You're constantly balancing volume and quality.
- Repetitive Coaching: You'll have the same conversation about "asking better discovery questions" or "not giving up after one voicemail" 100 times. Most reps improve slowly.
- Blame Game: When pipeline is thin, AEs blame SDR lead quality. When SDRs miss quota, they blame lead volume or territory assignments. You're in the middle mediating.
- Limited Promotion Path: You manage individual contributors, not other managers. Next step is probably Director of SDR or moving to AE management, which requires proving you can do both.
What Success Looks Like
- Your team consistently hits 90%+ of monthly qualified meeting quota
- Meeting-to-show rate is 70%+ (prospects actually show up to demos)
- AE team converts 25-30% of your team's meetings to opportunities
- You promote 2-3 SDRs to AE roles per year (proves you develop talent)
- New hire ramp time is 60-90 days to full productivity
Who Your Team Sells To
Primary Buyers:
- VP Finance / CFO (budget holder for expense management)
- Head of Travel / Travel Manager (user of travel booking platform)
- Procurement (gets involved on enterprise deals)
What They Care About:
- Cost savings and travel policy compliance
- Employee satisfaction (will people actually use this vs booking their own travel?)
- Reporting and visibility into spend
- Integration with their ERP/expense system
- Switching costs and migration effort from current tool
Requirements
- 2-4 years managing SDR/BDR teams (need to have done the job yourself first)
- Track record of hitting or exceeding team quota consistently
- Experience coaching reps on cold calling and outbound prospecting
- Comfortable with Salesforce, Outreach/Salesloft, Gong or similar tools
- Can analyze funnel metrics and diagnose performance issues
- Based in NYC or willing to relocate (this is an in-office role)
- SaaS experience preferred, ideally B2B selling to finance/ops buyers