Overview
You prospect into mid-market and enterprise companies to book qualified meetings for Account Executives. You're reaching out to VP/Director-level IT, Data, and Operations leaders explaining how Glean's AI search platform solves knowledge discovery problems. Most of your day is cold outreach (calls, emails, LinkedIn), researching accounts, and following up on inbound leads from content/events.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Outbound SDR (meeting generation) |
| Sales Motion | Balanced (outbound prospecting + inbound lead follow-up) |
| Deal Complexity | Qualification and discovery |
| Sales Cycle | 2-4 weeks from first touch to booked meeting |
| Deal Size | N/A (SDR role) |
| Quota (est.) | 12-15 qualified meetings held/month |
Company Context
Stage: Series D+ (late-stage, 1,474 employees)
Size: 1,474 employees
Growth: Rapid hiring, strong momentum, scaling GTM team to match product-market fit
Market Position: Category creator in AI-powered enterprise search - you're often introducing prospects to a new category, not replacing an existing vendor
GTM Reality
Pipeline Sources:
- 50% Cold Outbound - You're identifying target accounts and reaching out cold via phone, email, LinkedIn
- 30% Inbound Lead Follow-up - Marketing-generated leads from content downloads, webinars, website form fills
- 20% Warm Outreach - Following up on event attendees, referrals, or prospects who engaged with content but didn't convert
SDR/AE Structure: Dedicated SDR team with 1:4-5 SDR:AE ratio; each SDR supports a pod of AEs
SE Support: N/A for SDR role
Competitive Landscape
Main Competitors: Microsoft search tools, Guru, Coveo, internal IT builds
How They Differentiate: AI-native vs legacy keyword search, unified search across all apps
Common Objections: "We already have search", "Not a priority right now", "Send me info" (brush-off)
Win Themes: Employee productivity, knowledge silos costing time/money, AI differentiation
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Cold Outreach (50%) | Lead Follow-up (25%) | Research/Admin (25%)
Key Activities
- Cold calling IT/Data leaders: You're making 50-70 calls per day to VPs and Directors, often hitting voicemail. You're leaving voicemails, getting gatekeepers, and occasionally getting live connects where you have 30 seconds to explain why they should care about AI search.
- Email and LinkedIn sequences: You're crafting personalized outreach referencing their company's growth, tech stack, or industry challenges. You're A/B testing subject lines, follow-up cadences, and messaging angles to improve response rates.
- Qualifying inbound leads: You're calling/emailing leads who downloaded content or filled out forms. Most are tire-kickers or students, but you're digging to find the real opportunities and book meetings for the ones who fit the ICP.
- Account research: Before reaching out, you're on LinkedIn, company websites, and Crunchbase understanding their business, recent news, who reports to whom, and what trigger events might make them receptive (funding, hiring, tool consolidation).
- Objection handling: You're responding to "not interested", "send me info", and "call me next quarter" all day. You're trying to create urgency or find a different angle without being pushy.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- Most of your calls go to voicemail. Response rates are low - you might get 1-2% reply rates on cold email and 5-10% connect rates on calls.
- IT leaders are overwhelmed with vendor outreach. You're competing for attention with dozens of other tools trying to book meetings. Getting past gatekeepers or executive assistants is difficult.
- The problem you're solving (knowledge discovery) isn't always urgent. Prospects acknowledge it's a pain but don't prioritize fixing it until they hit a breaking point.
- Inbound lead quality is inconsistent. Many are students, consultants, or people who don't fit the ICP. You spend time qualifying out more leads than you qualify in.
- You're doing a lot of market education - explaining what AI search is, why it's different from existing tools, and why it matters. This makes cold outreach harder than selling replacement solutions.
- Repetitive work. You're running the same call scripts, email sequences, and objection handling frameworks repeatedly. Some weeks feel like a grind.
What Success Looks Like
- Booking 12-15 qualified meetings per month that AEs accept (prospects show up, fit ICP, have real interest)
- Maintaining 50+ active touches per day across calls, emails, and LinkedIn
- Converting 20-30% of inbound leads to meetings within 48 hours
- Building account lists and personalized sequences that generate consistent pipeline
- Graduating to AE role within 12-18 months based on performance
Who You're Selling To
Primary Prospects:
- VP/Director of IT or Enterprise Architecture
- VP/Director of Data or Knowledge Management
- Head of Operations or Business Operations
- CIO or Chief Technology Officer (for larger accounts)
What They Care About:
- Whether this is actually different from existing search tools
- Time and resources required to evaluate/implement
- Ballpark pricing and ROI
- Security and data governance implications
- Hearing from similar companies who've solved this problem
Requirements
- 0-2 years in SDR/BDR role, or strong communication skills and willingness to learn (entry-level friendly)
- High energy and resilience - comfortable with rejection and high daily activity
- Coachable and competitive - you want feedback and you want to win
- Curiosity about technology and ability to learn technical concepts quickly
- Strong written communication for email personalization
- Organized and process-driven - you can manage 100+ prospects in various stages without dropping balls