Business Development Representative (BDR)

Overview

You spend your day identifying accounting firms that could benefit from tax workflow automation, then cold calling and emailing partners, practice managers, and tax directors to get them on a demo. You're not closing deals—you're booking qualified meetings for AEs and dealing with a lot of gatekeepers, voicemails, and people who don't respond.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Early-stage (53 employees, likely Series A or bootstrapped)

Size: Small team, GTM is just now expanding

Growth: Actively hiring front-line sales roles, moving fast per the post

Market Position: Category challenger—selling AI automation to a traditional, tech-hesitant industry (accounting firms)

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 80-90% Outbound - You're building lists, doing cold calls, sending sequences
• 10-20% Inbound - Some website inquiries from firms who found them via search/content, but limited
• Minimal referrals at this stage

SDR/AE Structure: Dedicated BDRs hand off to AEs (this is that structure being built)

SE Support: Likely minimal—AEs probably run their own demos at this stage

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Other tax workflow tools, document management systems, and the status quo (firms doing everything manually in Excel/email)

How They Differentiate: AI-powered form vision and automation—less manual data entry than traditional tools

Common Objections: "We already have a system," "Our process works fine," "Too expensive," "We're too small/too busy for a change right now"

Win Themes: Time savings during tax season, reduced manual work, better client experience, white-labeled platform

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Prospecting (60%) | Qualifying/Booking (25%) | Internal/Admin (15%)

Key Activities

• Cold Calling: 50-80 calls per day to accounting firm decision-makers. Most go to voicemail. You're trying to catch partners between client meetings or at the end of the day. Expect lots of "we're in tax season, call back in May" or "send me an email."
• Email Outreach: Writing and sending personalized emails to firms in your territory. You're explaining AI tax automation to people who may not be tech-savvy. Most don't respond, some auto-reply with "not interested," a few actually engage.
• List Building: Researching accounting firms (size, specialties, tech stack clues from their website), finding the right contacts on LinkedIn, scraping firm directories, building out your daily call list.
• Qualification Conversations: When someone actually responds, you're asking about their current tax workflow, pain points, firm size, and whether they're even in a position to buy software. Then handing off to AE if qualified.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Accountants are busy and don't always pick up the phone, especially during tax season (Jan-April). You'll leave a lot of voicemails.
• You're selling AI/automation to a traditional profession that's often resistant to change. Many firms still use paper and manual processes.
• Response rates are low—you'll send 100 emails to get 5 replies, and most of those won't convert to meetings.
• This is repetitive work: call, email, call, email, CRM updates, repeat. The grind is real.
• Small company means scrappier tools/data—you're not getting perfectly enriched lead lists handed to you.

What Success Looks Like

• Consistently booking 15-25 qualified meetings per month that show up and meet ICP criteria
• High connect rates on calls (getting live conversations, not just voicemails)
• Strong show rates (meetings you book actually happen)
• Quick ramp time—hitting quota within 60-90 days

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• Managing Partners at small-to-mid-size accounting firms (5-50 employees)
• Tax Practice Directors/Managers at larger firms
• Firm Administrators who manage operations

What They Care About:

• Saving time during tax season when staff is stretched thin
• Reducing errors from manual data entry
• Improving client experience (less back-and-forth asking for documents)
• Cost—firms are cost-conscious, especially smaller ones
• Implementation burden—they don't have IT teams and worry about complexity

Requirements

• High energy and comfort with rejection—you'll hear "no" or get ignored way more than you hear "yes"
• Coachability—this is an in-office role in Austin with daily coaching and team learning
• Strong phone presence—you need to sound confident and knowledgeable even if you're new to sales
• Curiosity about the accounting/tax space—you'll need to learn enough to have credible conversations
• Willingness to grind—this is high-volume outbound work, not sexy inbound leads
• Must be in Austin or willing to relocate—this is explicitly an in-office role