Head of Sales Development

Overview

You're building Virio's sales development function from scratch - creating the repeatable system that books qualified meetings with vertical SaaS companies who need LinkedIn content marketing. The founder (Jeremy) has been doing all the prospecting himself to get to $1M ARR in 30 days, and now needs someone to turn his unscalable hustle into a scalable machine. You'll be 50% IC (booking meetings yourself) and 50% leader (hiring BDRs, building processes, running the data).

Role Snapshot

Company Context

Stage: Seed stage (23 employees, no funding data available)

Size: 23 employees

Growth: Added $1M ARR in the last 30 days according to founder

Market Position: New entrant in the done-for-you LinkedIn content space for vertical SaaS - competing against in-house content teams, freelancers, and content agencies

GTM Reality

Pipeline Sources:

• 10% Inbound - likely from founder's LinkedIn presence and word-of-mouth
• 90% Outbound - founder has been manually prospecting on LinkedIn, cold calling, and emailing
• Minimal partner/referral motion at this stage

SDR/AE Structure: You'll be the first SDR-focused hire. Founder and likely 1-2 AEs are closing deals. You'll build the BDR team (starting with 2-3 reps) to feed them pipeline.

SE Support: No SE - this is a content service, not technical software

Competitive Landscape

Main Competitors: In-house content teams, freelance LinkedIn ghostwriters, content agencies (no specific competitors identified in research)

How They Differentiate: "Content engineering" approach with AI-powered insights and dedicated content experts working 9-9-6 in SF - positioning as more sophisticated than freelancers, more scalable than in-house

Common Objections: "We can do this ourselves", "We already have a content person", "LinkedIn organic isn't a priority right now", price sensitivity

Win Themes: Time savings for founders/CMOs, better results than DIY, dedicated expert who understands their vertical

What You'll Actually Do

Time Breakdown

Prospecting IC work (40%) | Team management/hiring (30%) | Systems/reporting (30%)

Key Activities

• Prospecting alongside your team: You're making 30-50 calls/day and sending 50-100 LinkedIn messages/emails to vertical SaaS founders and CMOs. You need to model the behaviors you want your BDRs to replicate.
• Building the tech stack: Setting up your sequence tools (Outreach/Salesloft), CRM hygiene rules, call recording/coaching platforms. The founder has been running this scrappy - you're adding structure.
• Hiring and ramping BDRs: Recruiting 2-3 BDRs in SF, writing their sequences, doing daily coaching sessions. At this stage you're spending a lot of time QA'ing their calls and fixing their messaging.
• Weekly reporting to founder: Creating dashboards showing activity metrics (calls, connects, meetings booked), conversion rates, and pipeline quality. The founder will want to see the math that proves this scales.

The Honest Reality

What's Hard

• You're selling an "organic LinkedIn content service" in a noisy market - many prospects have tried and failed at LinkedIn, so you're fighting skepticism about whether it actually works
• The founder has been the face of prospecting until now, so you're taking over his playbook but won't have his personal brand leverage on LinkedIn. You'll need to find what works for your BDRs.
• You're the first sales leader hire at a 23-person startup that just hit hockey stick growth - expect things to be chaotic, processes to be missing, and lots of "figure it out" moments
• Managing BDRs in an outbound-heavy motion means dealing with rejection, burnout, and high attrition. You'll be hiring every 6-9 months as people flame out or promote up.
• The $1M/30 days number is impressive but you don't know if that's sustainable or a spike - you're being brought in to systematize it, but there's execution risk if the founder's magic doesn't transfer

What Success Looks Like

• You're booking 40-60 qualified meetings per month as a team within 6 months (10-15 per BDR)
• Your BDRs have a 2-3% connect-to-meeting rate on cold outreach (industry average is 1-2%)
• 50%+ of meetings you book turn into opportunities that go to demo/proposal stage
• You've built a repeatable hiring and onboarding process - can ramp a new BDR to quota in 60 days

Who You're Selling To

Primary Buyers:

• Founders/CEOs of vertical SaaS companies ($1-20M ARR)
• CMOs and VP Marketing at vertical SaaS companies

What They Care About:

• Lead generation results - does LinkedIn content actually drive inbound?
• Time savings - can they outsource this vs hiring in-house?
• Quality and brand fit - will the content sound like them or generic?
• Proof it works for their specific vertical (construction tech, healthcare SaaS, etc.)

Requirements

• You've built outbound SDR/BDR teams from 1-10+ reps at a B2B SaaS company that scaled from $1-100M ARR
• You're still an IC at heart - you'll personally be booking 10-15 meetings/month while managing the team
• You've lived in the trenches recently enough to know what good prospecting looks like in 2024/2025 (not just managing from spreadsheets)
• You're comfortable with the 9-9-6 intensity in SF - this is an in-office, high-output culture
• You can build systems and reporting infrastructure - you'll own the data model that shows what's working
• You're okay with founder-mode chaos at a 23-person company that's growing fast but still figuring things out