Sales Development Representative (SDR)

Overview

You reach out to developers, security engineers, and product managers at B2B software companies to book qualified demos for Account Executives. You're pitching Descope's CIAM platform - a no-code identity and authentication solution that competes with Auth0, Okta, and other established players. Most of your day is cold outbound since this is a technical product in a crowded category.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Growth stage (101 employees, actively hiring)

Size: 101 employees

Growth: Building out SDR team, expansion mode

Market Position: Challenger in crowded CIAM space against Auth0/Okta

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 20-30% Inbound - some free trial sign-ups and website demo requests from developers researching alternatives
• 70-80% Outbound - cold prospecting via phone, email, LinkedIn to developers and security teams
• 5-10% Community/referrals - from developer communities and existing customer referrals

SDR/AE Structure: Dedicated SDRs book for AE team

SE Support: AEs have SE support for demos (you don't present technical content)

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: Auth0 (now Okta), Firebase Auth, AWS Cognito, custom-built solutions

How They Differentiate: No-code workflows, faster implementation (days vs months), flexibility to augment existing systems

Common Objections: "We already have Auth0", "Our devs built this in-house", "Not worth ripping out what works", "Migration sounds painful"

Win Themes: Speed to implement, no vendor lock-in, modern workflow approach vs legacy code

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Cold Calling (40%) | Email/LinkedIn (30%) | Research/List Building (20%) | Internal Meetings (10%)

Key Activities

• Cold Calling: 50-70 calls per day to developers, engineering managers, and CISOs at B2B software companies. Most don't answer. You're trying to catch them between meetings to pitch a 15-minute demo.
• Email Sequences: Writing and sending personalized emails referencing their tech stack, security requirements, or recent funding. Open rates are low because developers ignore sales emails.
• LinkedIn Outreach: Connecting with and messaging technical buyers. Response rates are better than email but still single-digit percentages.
• List Building: Using tools like ZoomInfo and LinkedIn Sales Nav to identify companies that fit the profile (B2B SaaS, 50+ employees, likely using authentication solutions). Time-consuming but necessary.
• Demo Qualification: When someone responds, you jump on a quick call to confirm they're technical enough, have budget authority or influence, and are actually evaluating alternatives - not just researching.
• CRM Hygiene: Logging every call, email, and interaction in Salesforce or HubSpot. Management tracks activity metrics closely.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• Most developers don't take sales calls and ignore cold outreach. You hear "not interested" or get ghosted constantly. Rejection is daily.
• The market is saturated - almost everyone already has Auth0, Okta, or something else that works. You're asking them to consider switching, which is a tough sell.
• Technical buyers are skeptical of sales reps. You need to sound somewhat technical without being able to answer deep product questions (that's the SE's job).
• Your quota is tied to meetings that the AE qualifies - sometimes they'll disqualify meetings you worked hard to book because the prospect wasn't senior enough or the use case didn't fit.
• Activity metrics are tracked heavily: calls per day, emails sent, meetings booked. You're measured on volume and conversion rates.

What Success Looks Like

• Booking 15-20 qualified meetings per month that AEs accept and show up to
• 1-2% connect rate on cold calls, 3-5% email response rate
• Learning enough about CIAM to have credible conversations with developers and security teams
• Getting promoted to AE or moving to a closing role within 12-18 months if you hit quota

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• Engineering Managers and VPs at B2B SaaS companies (100-1000 employees)
• Security Engineers and CISOs concerned about auth vulnerabilities
• Product Managers dealing with authentication friction in user onboarding

What They Care About:

• Speed and ease of implementation (they don't want a 6-month integration)
• Security and compliance (SOC 2, GDPR, preventing account takeover)
• Developer experience (simple SDKs, good docs, not a black box)
• Flexibility to customize auth flows without redeploying code
• Migration path from current solution without breaking everything

Requirements

• 1-2 years in SDR/BDR role OR strong hunger to break into tech sales (this is an entry point)
• Comfortable cold calling technical buyers who don't want to talk to you
• Ability to learn enough about identity/authentication to sound credible (you don't need to be a developer but should understand basics)
• Resilience to rejection - most of your outreach goes nowhere
• Strong work ethic to hit 50-70 calls per day plus email/LinkedIn volume
• Coachable and willing to iterate on messaging based on what's working