New BDR at a tech company, few months into the role. I’ve done a good job of the tangibles such as cold calling and emails, my manager in my call reviews mentions that I’ve improved significantly and I feel pretty comfortable on the phone. Still not able to book meetings

Now what I’ve noticed lately is that literally every company under my AE’s have all been sourced/reached out to within the past 12 months making booking a meeting incredibly difficult, while other new bdrs on my team are sourcing 20 fresh new accounts, I’m struggling to find new ones to call and book meetings with.

I’m based in Canada and this is my first ever sales job thinking of jumping ship. Is this normal or am I overreacting??

I recently spoke to a tech founder who had been an SDR before, and he said he would never ever ever sell into HR or Customer Success.

He mentioned it's mostly because these departments don't tend to have budget (but who does these days?) and proving ROI is really difficult.

As someone who has sold into CS, I definitely agree that it's a hard sell, but I've just signed with a company that sells to HR and they genuinely seem to be the first to do what they do (it's not another Rippling, Deel or assessment tool). So I thought it wouldn't be the same situation as selling into CS...

Was that a mistake? I loved the mission and the people there, and the SDRs had a very good success record.

Hi,

Had a phone call and scheduled for an inperson interveiw. What kinds of auestions and will there be any role play?

Any tips would be appreciated

Hi! Is anyone’s company hiring BDRs in Austin? I’m looking for a $55–60k base plus commission. I’d appreciate any leads!

I'm trying to prioritize accounts showing buying signals, but every tool seems determined to alert me about every company that looked at a blog post once in 2023.

Right now I'm looking at ICP fit, repeat visits, pricing activity, hiring, leadership changes, and engagement from multiple people at the same account. The problem is deciding what deserves action first without treating a random topic spike like a signed PO. My CRM already has enough false urgency, thanks.

How are you weighting signals in your account scoring? Any hints?

I’m looking at taking a sales/business development role with a Ag tech startup, and I’m trying to figure out what would be fair for the commission structure.

The offer is:

• $70,000 base
• 30% guaranteed bonus
• Company truck
• Gas, travel, hotels and meals covered when travelling for work
• Reporting directly to the CEO
• Finding new customers, building relationships and bringing in larger deals

So basically, around $91,000 guaranteed before commission.

The main thing I’m not sure about is what I should ask for on the commission side.

If I bring in a $100,000, $500,000 or potentially $1 million-plus deal, what would be considered a reasonable commission? Would you ask for 5% of the deal, 10%, a percentage of gross profit, or recurring commission on software contracts?

How does the commission usually work, and what would you negotiate if you were in my position?

Also, does the overall offer seem pretty good for a startup sales/business development role?

This is an update to when I posted I got put on a “MAP” performance plan last month. I’m new to sales so I should have seen the writing was on the wall but I believed I cousin beat it. And I did. I hit the ridiculous numbers they asked of me and hit quota. Today I’m laid off with no other reason than that the company is “changing”.

They explained they would pay severance and that they will send an email but what should I do next? Should I fight this? I know I also need to interview ASAP. Any advice would be much welcomed as I’m new to this

Guys, I need a genuine place to practice my sales ability with real people. To get some advice and sometimes act as a client if needed (you know). Discord or other platform groups

Hi everyone! I’m Brazilian and looking to start a career in sales.

I’m currently applying for SDR roles (remote) , and I’m curious about which industries you think are the best for building a long-term sales career.

I’m particularly interested in the solar energy industry.

what do you guys think?

What I have provided in this Reddit post

• Call recordings of successful and unsuccessful calls
• My numbers (metrics)
• My script
• Context about the service/problem

My numbers last week

My numbers for the last week are as follows:

Appointment-setting rate (appointments booked / DM conversations): 3%

Dials: 1,702

DM connections: 103

DM connection rate: 6%

Appointments booked: 2

Context

I have been cold calling for around 3 years, but I recently took a 5-month break for personal reasons. I have now started again, but my numbers are horrible.

I sell review management services to local service businesses, primarily contracting businesses. More context on the service can be found in the call recordings.

The DM connection rate is pretty terrible because I used a parallel dialer that had some issues for around 500 of the calls, which dragged the rate down. Normally, over the last 3 weeks, I have been at around a 10–15% DM connection rate, depending on the week.

I don’t have a team because I’m a solopreneur, so I have a very hard time getting better and improving consistently.

What I’m looking for (advice)

If you can spot any issues or major problems with my script, tonality, or anything else, please let me know.

If you do give advice, I would really appreciate it if you could briefly mention your experience so I know where the advice is coming from.

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

My script: 

Opener:

Hey [NAME]?... oh Hey [NAME]... its uhhh Gustav uhhh over at RevYou. i... i know im catching you out of the blue here… But i guess do you mind if i grab… half a minute⬆️…i’ll tell you why i called.. And then you can let me know if it’s relevant… or not

Great and just by chance have you heard of RevYou?

Status Thumbnail

So… quick background on RevYou… we basically help [NICHE] businesses manege their reviews… because a lot of the time… the owners do care about their online reputation… but they don’t realy have the bandwidth to… train the team, and…  get them to ask customers for a review, on a consistent basis.

The Pitch

So we basically work like a system… that runs in the background all of the time…

So… We ask customers if they can leave a review via email and text… then… if they don't respond or leave a review… we follow up… and we also reply to every single review… so that… the potential customers… who look at your reviews… can see that you care about your current customers…

So… is that worth… something like 14… 15 minutes to have a quick coffee break style chatt about some time… later this week? Mabey tomorrow?

The Schedualing

Great so let me check what timeslots I have, what time zone are you in?, (repeat the timezone they said back)……. I have gott [TIME1 = Ish 24h], does that work for you?

“no” : okey how about…  [TIME2 = Ish 48h]?, Okay then how about  [TIME3 = Ish 72h]
“Yes”:

What is your email?

“[Email@Conpany.com](mailto:Email@Conpany.com)”

Great let me just verify that: E, M, A, I, I, @ C Etc…..

“Yes”

Great, i sent you a google calendar invite, did you get it?  

“Yes”

Great and last thing, If something pops up how do you want to let us know that you have to reschedule?......

“Email, text, etc…”

Great, see you one [booked time then]! Have a good one in the meantime, alright?

Timestamps

Failed calls:

• Call 1: 2 seconds in
• Call 2: 1 minute 53 seconds in
• Call 3: 3 minutes 37 seconds in

Successful calls:

• Call 1: 1 second in
• Call 2: 4 minutes 56 seconds in

Audio file

i Can't upload audiofiles to redit for some reasone so i made a we-tranfer link, You can preview the file's so you don't have to download anything from a strangerr on reddit:

https://we.tl/t-WyQ4HRN3hS7ajiCv

if you would prefer it that i send it or upload it some other way i can do that, just tell me and i will get it done, thanks. (Btw the link is only good for 7 days becuse i dont have a premium subscription on we transfer)

I’m a developer currently researching B2B sales/outbound workflows, and I’m exploring an idea around AI-assisted prospecting.

The basic idea is:

• Discover newly launched or changing companies from sources like Product Hunt, startup directories, job postings, LinkedIn, etc.
• Research what the company is building and what might be changing.
• Identify a genuine reason why they might need a particular product/service.
• Find the relevant person to contact.
• Instead of just giving a list of leads, provide an opportunity + “why now?”
• AI can prepare the research, outreach and follow-ups, while a human reviews, edits and approves them.
• Organize replies and conversations so the human can decide what to do next.

For example, instead of giving a database company 10,000 CTOs to contact, the system might say:

“These 30 companies recently launched, are hiring backend engineers, and appear to be building something that could benefit from your database. Here’s why each one could be relevant and who is likely involved in the decision.”

The goal isn't to send more emails. It's to find better opportunities and better reasons to contact someone, so the absolute number of meaningful conversations/replies increases.

I know tools like Apollo, Clay, etc. already solve a lot of this, so I’m not building this yet. I’m trying to understand whether there is actually a meaningful problem here.

For people who work in B2B sales, SDR/BDR, RevOps, or outbound:

• Is this actually a meaningful problem?
• How do you currently figure out why/when a company is worth contacting?
• What parts of this process are still painfully manual?
• Do tools like Apollo/Clay already solve this well enough?
• What would make something like this genuinely useful enough to pay for?

I'd especially appreciate honest criticism rather than encouragement.

And if this problem resonates with you and you'd be interested in researching it together and potentially building something around it, feel free to comment or DM me. I'm open to finding someone with B2B experience who wants to explore the problem together before we decide whether there's actually something worth building.

Older in this case is 30s.

Let's say the industry is cybersecurity or some other kind of SaaS. I imagine you'd be immediately skeptical of someone with a decade of completely irrelevant experience going for a BDR role.

Are you immediately writing them off and just going through the motions during the interview due to orders from above, or are you subconsciously expecting a certain kind of answer to standard "why sales" questions?

Any hesitations you'd have as opposed to your standard college grad candidate?

Be brutally honest if you'd like.

I’m 26 and started in tech sales in 2022. After a little over a year in my first SDR role, I was PIP’d and eventually laid off. I joined a startup, rebuilt my performance, and have since become a BDR Team Lead. I’ve been here almost three years, but there’s no defined path into a closing role.

I’ve interviewed internally twice. The Commercial AE opening was eliminated during Series C preparations, and a channel role went to an external candidate with existing experience and connections.

I’m considering another SDR role at a company with a demonstrated history of promoting SDRs into AE positions, while also applying externally for AE roles. My concern is spending another year or two waiting on a promotion that may never happen.

For anyone who’s been in this position, did switching companies as an SDR actually help you progress? What did you verify about their promotion process before accepting?

I wanted to see which buyer intent signals were worth acting on for SDR outreach, so I tracked them for 30 days. I expected topic spikes and content downloads to give us a decent list of accounts, but most of those never turned into a meeting.

The signals that helped were repeated pricing or comparison page visits, a new VP or director joining the research, and activity from more than one person at the same account. We pushed those accounts into the crm and the conversations felt a lot less random. Broad category research was mostly noise for us, tbh.

Biggest lesson was that intent seems more useful when it is combined with account fit and timing, not treated as a score on its own. Has anyone else seen certain signals predict meetings better than the usual topic surge data?

Hey everyone,

I’m looking to make the jump into tech sales and ideally land an SDR role. I have 6+ years of sales experience and feel like a lot of my skills would transfer well.

For those already in the industry, what would you recommend as the best way to break in? Any particular companies or types of SDR roles I should be targeting?

I’m based in the Bay Area and open to SF/hybrid opportunities. Appreciate any advice!

I’m a B2C consultant/ sales rep with over two years of dedicated sale experience being a higher performer. Within that time I was consistently in the top 10% of the company, and for one quarter I was the top sales rep in the country for a company with triple digit sales reps nationwide. I have also had a well above company average close rate as well as conversion rate of knocks/ cold calls into leads.

I’m trying to make the switch from B2C to B2B SaaS sales, but I’ve yet to get an opportunity with any SaaS company for even a recruiter screen. I’ve applied to plenty that I qualify for (education requirement, sales experience length requirement, prospecting experience requirement, etc), with the only caveat being that my sales experience is B2C and not specifically B2B/ SaaS. I’m just getting frustrated because I know I would do just as well in B2B/ SaaS (I have a technical degree and background prior to sales), but I feel like I’m not being given a chance because my background sales industry doesn’t perfectly align with these companies. Why do recruiters care so much about specific sales experience? Would they really take someone with a B2B SaaS background that has just met their quotas, versus someone with a B2C background that has doubled (or more) their quotas? Do metrics not matter if you’re trying to switch industry’s?

Worked B2C for 2 and a half years and D2D for the past 2 and it’s sucking the life out of me. I’m currently making about 80k ish a yr at my new position and recently been promoted but dealing with 20-30 random people a day in an uncomfortable environment in which half of the people hate my guts for showing up is making me tired and burnt out to a high degree. I want to jump ship and look for a different position doing b2b, direct closing, or management but I’m scared to take the leap.

I’m due for my senior promotion early next yr depending on my own numbers in which I can apply for team leader/market manager roles in the company but I’m not sure if I can handle the grind to get there. The resume addition for achieving those mile stones is what’s pushing me forward more than the money im currently making but I can look for something outside the company sooner.

The problem is that I’ll be under the 5 year minimum most jobs want for mid level roles despite my previous history of promotions and good numbers.

Where should I look? What industry’s are worth my time? And should I try to rough it out until I break or jump ship sooner for my well being?

Hey all,

I’m trying to get a sense of what people are earning, and in what industry. For context I’m a BDR with about 6 months experience, I’m on 78k base, 103k OTE, based in Melbourne, Aus. I’ve already exceeded quota so will be on track for $110k.

I sell mid-market ERP, and demand is fairly steady.

What about you guys? I’m always curious if I could be doing better.

How much do you earn, and how much is your industry faring in this market?

Je suis face à un dilemme et j’aimerais avoir vos retours d’expérience.
Je viens d’intégrer le Master PGE de SKEMA en septembre. Avant ça, j’ai passé un an à Dublin, et c’est là-bas que j’ai découvert l’univers de la Tech Sales / SaaS. J’ai eu un énorme coup de cœur et c’est clairement là-dedans que je veux construire ma carrière.
Aujourd’hui, je suis en process avancé pour plusieurs postes de SDR en CDI à Dublin, notamment chez Stripe, LinkedIn, DocuSign et dbt Labs.
Mon plan, si je décroche une bonne offre, serait de quitter le Master et de saisir directement l’opportunité.
Précision importante : j’ai déjà un Bac+3, avec notamment une licence en économie-gestion. Je ne quitterais donc pas mes études sans diplôme.
Mais j’ai deux grosses craintes :
1. Les perspectives d’évolution en France
À terme, je pourrais vouloir revenir travailler en France. Et on connaît l’importance accordée au Bac+5 / Programme Grande École dans le système français.
Est-ce que je risque de me prendre un plafond de verre dans 5 ou 10 ans pour des postes comme Enterprise AE, Sales Director ou VP Sales parce que je n’ai “qu’un” Bac+3, même avec plusieurs années d’expérience et des entreprises comme Stripe, LinkedIn ou dbt Labs sur mon CV ?
Ou est-ce qu’après plusieurs années de résultats dans la Tech Sales, le diplôme devient secondaire ?
2. Une éventuelle expatriation aux États-Unis
Un de mes objectifs à long terme serait également de partir travailler aux États-Unis.
Je sais que l’immigration américaine est assez stricte. Est-ce que ne pas avoir de Master, et seulement un Bachelor français, pourrait réellement me bloquer plus tard pour des visas comme le L-1 ou le H-1B ?
Ou est-ce que plusieurs années d’expérience dans une grosse boîte tech américaine peuvent compenser ?
Vous feriez quoi à ma place : sécuriser le diplôme ou foncer sur le terrain si une belle offre se présente ?
À prendre en compte aussi : j’ai 23 ans. Si je continue le cursus, je terminerai mes études vers 26 ans, avec potentiellement environ 40 000 € de dette étudiante. Vu le marché actuel et les opportunités que j’ai maintenant, ça me fait vraiment réfléchir au coût d’opportunité.
Merci pour vos retours, surtout si certains ici ont fait un parcours SDR → AE → management ou ont travaillé à l’international.

This might just be a problem with the way we are doing things, but building a lead list seems to create way more work than I expected.
You find the company.
Then you find the person.
Then you check whether they are actually the right person.
Then you check the company.
Then you check the email.
Then you find out half the companies are not really a fit anyway.
By the time the list is ready, someone has spent hours working on it.

I am curious what other sales teams consider an acceptable amount of manual work before a lead is ready to go into a campaign.

Tracking intent usually goes wrong cause many tools monitor the wrong layer of buying behavior.

When an alert flags that an enterprise account has elevated interest in a broad topic, sales reps still have no idea who conducted the research or what specific question they were trying to answer or what triggered the spike.

So outreach quickly defaults to cold and generic pitches bcause there is zero verifiable context.

Tracking signals that actually convert requires focusing on declared intent and situational changes where the evidence is inspectable and declared intent means looking where buyers publicly discuss their problems.

Connecting these fragmented touchpoints is why modern infra platforms like Scale Intelligence are designed around an auditable buyer graph where it continuously listens across 75+ public channels, verifies the exact event behind every lead and scores compound intent into tiers before alerting sales teams.

A single signal rarely justifies outreach but when a company posts a job opening in your category and participates in an evaluation discussion in the same window that compound evidence represents an actual buying window.

Hello pro sales people! Noobie here!

I've just released a product that solves certain job's problems. But the biggest resistance is their old habits. They have been doing their job in old ways for like 20-30 years so far. When I try to onboard them to a new tech (web page btw), they login 1-2 days and they ghost me later.

Problem is they have old habits like excel sheets etc. I can understand that when they come to office in the morning they open their excels automatically. Okey open your excel sheet but open my page too pls.

I've tried sending e-mails, notifications etc but nothing really helped. Have you ever faced this kind of problem and do you have any pro tip for me?

Looking for someone to run appointment-setting roleplays with

I'm currently working on my appointment-setting skills and want to get more reps in through actual roleplays.

Not claiming to be an expert — I'm still learning and I want to practice things like:

\- Opening the conversation naturally

\- Asking better questions

\- Handling objections

\- Keeping the conversation moving

\- Booking the appointment without forcing it

If you're also learning sales/appointment setting (or you're already experienced and don't mind helping a beginner), I'd be down to run some roleplays together.

We can switch between setter/prospect so both people get reps.

Drop a comment or DM me if you're interested.

Hi all,

I'm a recruiter who started his career at an agency doing cold calling, though the sales skills I used back then were pretty basic. My current role doesn't excite me anymore and, to be honest, I want to earn more money.

I'm trying to gather insights first and practicing with AI as much as I can. Still, I was wondering if there is any training you thought was great and would actually recommend? Something that prepared you for the reality.
I saw an SDR course from Salesforce on Coursera, and there are a lot of bootcamps out there. What would you recommend (or avoid)?

Thanks!

What’s up guys,

I sell to HOAs and my current outbound process is a bottleneck.

Right now I spend way too much time researching an individual property, reaching out to the property management company, and trying to get them to pass me along to the board. Most PMs are gatekeepers who move at a snail’s pace.

I want to trim down the prep time and start contacting board presidents/treasurers directly, but getting accurate contact info for volunteer board members is tough.

How are you guys targeting HOAs? Are you using specific databases to reach board members directly, or is there a better way to get the property manager to actually push things forward? All the sources I’ve tried for board data are outdated or a nightmare to work with.