Sales Development Representative (SDR)

Overview

You cold call and email IT security leaders at mid-market to enterprise companies to book discovery meetings for Account Executives. You're selling into organizations that need to consolidate their security stack—replacing legacy VPNs, web gateways, and CASB point solutions with Netskope's unified SASE platform. Most prospects already have Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks, or other incumbents, so you're displacing, not introducing a new category.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Late-stage private (likely Series F+, valued in billions)

Size: 3,285 employees globally

Growth: Hiring aggressively across all SDR regions—new VP just joined to scale the function

Market Position: Leader in SASE/SSE category competing directly with Zscaler and Palo Alto Networks. Recognized by Gartner and other analysts, but selling into crowded, competitive security budgets.

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 20-25% Inbound - Some marketing leads from webinars, analyst reports, conference attendance, but quality varies. Many are early-stage research, not ready to buy.
• 70-75% Outbound - You're building lists, cold calling, and running email/LinkedIn sequences into target accounts
• 5% Partners/Referrals - Some channel partner leads, but most SDRs don't see much from this

SDR/AE Structure: Dedicated SDRs feed specific AE pods. You're paired with 2-4 AEs depending on region/segment.

SE Support: SEs join qualified meetings with AEs, but not on initial discovery calls you book.

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Zscaler (biggest head-to-head), Palo Alto Networks Prisma SASE, Cloudflare, Cisco Umbrella

How They Differentiate: Netskope claims better data protection/DLP, more granular controls, and faster performance than Zscaler. They position as "complete" SASE vs point solutions.

Common Objections: "We already have Zscaler/Palo Alto", "Not in budget this year", "Too complex to rip and replace", "Need to see POC results first"

Win Themes: Security teams consolidating tools, cloud migration projects creating budget, compliance requirements (GDPR, HIPAA), visibility gaps in current stack

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Cold Calling (40%) | Email/LinkedIn (30%) | Research/List Building (15%) | Internal Meetings (15%)

Key Activities

• Cold Calling Security Leaders: 50-70 dials per day to CISOs, IT Directors, Network Security Managers, Cloud Security Architects. Lots of gatekeepers. Most calls go to voicemail. You're trying to book 15-20 discovery calls per week.
• Email Sequences: Running multi-touch campaigns (6-8 emails over 3 weeks) to target accounts. You're competing with 50 other vendor emails in their inbox. Response rates are 1-3% if you're good.
• Account Research: Before calling into enterprise accounts, you research their tech stack (LinkedIn, job postings, news), find the right contacts, and craft a hypothesis about why they'd care about SASE consolidation.
• Internal Sync Meetings: Weekly pipeline reviews with your manager, bi-weekly with your AE pod, monthly SDR team calls. You're constantly being asked about your activity metrics (calls, connects, meetings set, show rate).

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• High rejection rate: You'll make 250-350 dials per week. Maybe 30-40 will be actual conversations. Most people say "not interested" or "email me" (then ghost). Getting through to senior security leaders is tough—they're bombarded by vendors.
• Complex security sale: Prospects don't understand SASE vs SSE vs ZTNA acronyms. You need to explain the category before you can pitch Netskope. Lots of "we're all set" from companies that don't realize their current stack has gaps.
• Long sales cycles after handoff: The AEs you support are working 6-12 month cycles with POCs, security reviews, procurement. You'll book meetings that don't close for a year. That's not your problem directly, but it means feedback is slow and credit feels distant.
• Competing with huge incumbents: Zscaler and Palo Alto have massive installed bases. You're often asking someone to rip out a solution they spent months implementing. Change management is a real barrier.

What Success Looks Like

• 12-20 qualified meetings per month (not just any meeting—AE has to accept it as legitimate opportunity)
• 60%+ meeting show rate (prospects actually show up to the calls you book)
• 30-40% of your meetings convert to "Stage 2" opportunities in the AE's pipeline within 30 days
• Top performers hit 20+ meetings/month with 70% show rates by Month 6

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• CISO / VP of Information Security (ultimate decision maker, budget owner)
• Director of IT Security / Network Security Manager (day-to-day operator, technical evaluator)
• Cloud Security Architect / Infrastructure Lead (technical gatekeeper, runs POCs)

What They Care About:

• Security posture: Are we protected against data leaks, ransomware, insider threats? Do we have visibility into cloud app usage?
• Tool consolidation: Can we replace 4-5 point solutions (VPN, SWG, CASB, firewall, SD-WAN) with one platform and reduce vendor sprawl?
• Performance: Will this slow down our remote workers or impact application performance?
• Compliance: Do we meet SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA requirements? Can we prove it in an audit?
• Cost: What's the total 3-year cost vs our current stack? (Deals are $200K-1M+, so this is a big decision)

Requirements

• 1-2 years outbound prospecting experience (B2B SaaS, preferably cybersecurity or enterprise infrastructure)
• Comfortable cold calling senior IT/security executives (director level and above)
• Coachable and metric-driven (you'll be measured on dials, connects, meetings, show rate—need to hit activity benchmarks)
• Basic understanding of enterprise IT/security landscape (you don't need to be technical, but should understand VPNs, firewalls, cloud security concepts)
• Resilience: This is a grind. Lots of rejection. Need to stay positive and keep dialing.
• Time zone flexibility: If you're on a global team, you may need to call EMEA/APAC hours depending on your territory