Sales Development Representative

Overview

You identify and reach out to companies spending heavily on AWS, GCP, or Azure, trying to book qualified discovery meetings for Account Executives. Your targets are VPs of Engineering, FinOps Directors, and IT leaders at companies with 200+ employees and visible cloud infrastructure. You're doing mostly outbound prospecting - cold calls, email sequences, and LinkedIn outreach.

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Growth stage (678 employees)

Size: 678 employees

Growth: Expanding SDR team alongside AE hiring

Market Position: Established FinOps platform competing in crowded cloud optimization space

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 70% Cold outbound - you're building lists of target accounts and reaching out cold
• 20% Inbound lead follow-up - MQLs from webinars, content downloads, website demo requests
• 10% Re-engagement - old leads, past event attendees, stale opportunities

SDR/AE Structure: Each AE has 1-2 dedicated SDRs feeding them pipeline

SE Support: Not applicable for SDR role

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: You're competing for attention against dozens of cloud infrastructure vendors, monitoring tools, security platforms, and other FinOps solutions all targeting the same engineering leaders

How They Differentiate: Multi-cloud platform (not just AWS or GCP), AI-driven optimization that includes performance/reliability, automated remediation vs just recommendations

Common Objections:

• "We already use AWS Cost Explorer"
• "Not a priority right now"
• "Send me information" (brush-off)
• "Talk to [someone else on team]" (runaround)

Win Themes: Fast ROI proof (analyzing their cloud bill), multi-cloud pain points, engineering time savings

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Cold Calling (35%) | Email/LinkedIn (30%) | Research (20%) | Internal (15%)

Key Activities

• Building target account lists: You're using ZoomInfo, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and Crunchbase to find companies with engineering teams of 50+, recent funding, or job postings for cloud engineers. You're looking for signals they have meaningful cloud spend worth optimizing.

• Cold calling engineering and finance leaders: You make 50-70 calls per day to VPs of Engineering, Directors of Infrastructure, and FinOps leads. Most don't answer. When they do, you have 15-30 seconds to explain why they should care about yet another cloud optimization tool. Expect 1-2 connects per hour of dialing.

• Running email and LinkedIn sequences: You're sending personalized emails (8-10 touch cadence over 3 weeks) and LinkedIn connection requests with notes. Response rates are typically 2-4% on cold outreach. You're competing with 50+ other vendors in their inbox.

• Qualifying inbound leads: When marketing generates a demo request or content download, you call within 5 minutes to qualify fit (cloud spend level, decision-making authority, timeline). Many are tire-kickers, students, or competitors researching.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• High rejection volume: You hear "not interested," get hung up on, and face gatekeepers daily. Most days you make 60+ attempts to book 0-1 meetings. It's a numbers game and requires thick skin.

• Technical qualification challenges: You need to quickly understand if a prospect has meaningful cloud spend, whether they're on AWS/GCP/Azure, and if they have a FinOps function or it's ad-hoc. Many prospects don't know their own cloud spend or who owns optimization.

• Crowded buyer inbox: Engineering leaders get hit by 10+ vendors daily. You're competing for attention against monitoring tools (Datadog, New Relic), security platforms, infrastructure tools, and other FinOps vendors. Standing out is hard.

What Success Looks Like

• Booking 15-20 qualified meetings per month that show up and are legitimate opportunities
• Converting 10-15% of meetings to accepted AE opportunities (not all meetings qualify)
• Maintaining 50+ daily activities (calls, emails, LinkedIn touches)
• Building pipeline that eventually closes - success is measured on AE conversions, not just meeting volume

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• VP/Director of Engineering or Infrastructure
• FinOps Director/Manager (at larger orgs)
• IT Directors managing cloud operations
• CTOs at mid-market companies (200-1000 employees)

What They Care About:

• Whether you understand their specific cloud pain (multi-cloud chaos, runaway costs, lack of team accountability)
• Fast time-to-value - they don't want a 6-month implementation
• Not wasting their time - they take a lot of vendor calls that go nowhere

Requirements

• 0-2 years in sales or SDR role (this is often an entry point)
• Comfort with high-volume cold calling (50-70 calls/day)
• Ability to quickly learn technical concepts (cloud infrastructure, FinOps) without being an engineer
• Resilience through rejection - most outreach gets ignored or rejected
• Discipline to hit daily activity metrics even when motivation is low
• Coachability - willingness to iterate messaging and tactics based on manager feedback