Overview
You're doing outbound prospecting for Emburse, a spend management and expense platform. Your job is to cold call CFOs, Controllers, and Finance Directors at mid-market companies (500-5000 employees) to book qualified demos for Senior AEs. You'll work from their Dallas office a few days per week, reporting to an SDR manager.
Role Snapshot
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Role Type | Outbound SDR |
| Sales Motion | Outbound-heavy (likely 70-80% cold outbound, some inbound enrichment) |
| Deal Complexity | Consultative (selling to finance leaders who need to evaluate ROI) |
| Sales Cycle | N/A (SDR hands off to AE after qualification) |
| Deal Size | N/A (SDR doesn't own the deal) |
| Quota (est.) | 15-25 SAOs per month (meetings that show up and are qualified) |
Company Context
Stage: Late-stage funded (Emburse has raised $100M+, likely Series C/D territory)
Size: 500+ employees based on typical spend management company profiles
Growth: Actively hiring across sales roles, expanding into enterprise
Market Position: Competitive space - up against Expensify, Concur, Brex, Ramp. They differentiate on breadth (AP automation + expense + card in one platform)
GTM Reality
Pipeline Sources:
- 70-80% Outbound - You're building lists from ZoomInfo/Apollo, researching companies using legacy expense systems (Concur, Expensify), cold calling and sequencing
- 20-30% Inbound - Some demo requests come in from website, content downloads, webinars that need follow-up and qualification
- Limited partner referrals
SDR/AE Structure: Dedicated SDR team feeding Senior AEs. You don't own accounts - you book it, qualify it, hand it off.
SE Support: AEs handle their own demos initially, SEs get pulled in for technical deep-dives later in cycle.
Competitive Landscape
Main Competitors: Expensify, SAP Concur, Brex, Ramp, Navan, Coupa
How They Differentiate: Full-stack spend management (AP automation + expense + corporate cards + travel) vs point solutions. Better for companies that want consolidated vendor stack.
Common Objections: "We just implemented Concur last year," "Our CFO likes Brex," "We're too small for this," "Not a priority right now."
Win Themes: Total cost of ownership vs multiple vendors, better user experience than legacy systems, modern platform that finance teams actually want to use.
What You'll Actually Do
Time Breakdown
Cold Calling (40%) | Email/LinkedIn (25%) | Research (20%) | Meetings/Admin (15%)
Key Activities
- Dial, dial, dial: 50-80 cold calls per day to finance leaders. Most go to voicemail. You're trying to catch someone between meetings who'll give you 2 minutes. Lots of gatekeepers.
- Personalized sequences: Research companies (check their website, LinkedIn, news) to write semi-custom emails. You're mentioning their current expense system, recent growth, pain points you can infer. Response rates are 2-5% if you're good.
- Qualify inbound leads: When someone fills out a demo request, you call within 5 minutes to qualify (budget, timeline, decision process, current solution). Half of inbound leads are tire-kickers or students.
- Sync with AEs: Weekly pipeline review, deal post-mortems on what qualified vs didn't, feedback loops on lead quality. AEs will tell you when your meetings suck.
The Honest Reality
What's Hard
- Rejection volume: You'll hear "not interested" 40-60 times per day. Finance leaders are busy and get hammered by sales calls. Getting someone to pick up and actually listen is the win.
- Long research cycles: To stand out, you need to personalize. That means 10-15 minutes researching each account before calling. It's tedious but necessary in this market.
- AE tension: If you pass unqualified meetings, AEs will push back and it won't count toward quota. If you're too strict on qualification, you won't hit your number. Finding that balance takes time.
- Inbound can be misleading: Demo requests sound promising but half the time it's someone checking out competitors with no intent to switch, or a junior person without budget authority.
What Success Looks Like
- Hit 18-22 SAOs per month consistently (meetings that show, meet BANT criteria, and AE accepts)
- 15-20% of your booked meetings convert to qualified opportunities in AE pipeline
- Get promoted to AE in 12-18 months if you perform
Who You're Selling To
Primary Buyers:
- CFOs at 500-2000 person companies (hard to reach, delegate to Controllers)
- Controllers and Finance Directors (day-to-day owners of expense/AP processes)
- Occasionally VPs of Finance or Finance Operations
What They Care About:
- Reducing time spent on expense report approvals and AP invoice processing
- Visibility into spend across the organization (shadow IT, rogue purchasing)
- Audit trails and compliance (SOX, financial controls)
- Month-end close speed (faster reconciliation)
- ROI on replacing existing systems (migration pain vs efficiency gains)
Requirements
- 0-2 years of SDR/BDR experience (or strong internship/customer-facing background)
- Comfortable making 50+ cold calls per day without getting demoralized
- Can research companies quickly and write personalized outreach that doesn't sound like a template
- Coachable - willing to iterate on talk tracks, objection handling, qualification criteria
- Hybrid setup works for you (Dallas office 2-3 days/week)
- Can handle quota pressure and rejection without spiraling