A Day in the Life of an SDR

8:00am — You arrive at office, coffee in hand. After a few exchanges as jovial as can be expected for the hour, you power up your computer, log into Salesforce and begin responding to emails.

8:03am — It’s your lucky day! A prospect responded to your email, saying they’d like to meet with your sales rep. You’ve had a passionate relationship with this prospect’s voicemail for the past three months, so the meeting is particularly vindicating. You send a calendar invite to the prospect and your sales rep and log the meeting in the CRM. This day will be okay.

You’ve had a passionate relationship with this prospect’s voicemail for the past three months, so the meeting is particularly vindicating.

8:15am — You pull up the list of follow-up calls from yesterday and begin your dials. Most went to voicemail, but one prospect wanted more information. Undeterred, you compile the white papers and send them over.

9:07am — Shake off a bad call and get your second cup of coffee for the day. You earned it.

9:18am — Time to reach out to cold prospects. You put on your game face and begin to set the phone ablaze with the speed of your dialing.

10:29am — Company has “Uptown Funk” as hold music. Score.

11:18am — Finally, after several voicemails and emails, you get a C-level prospect at the company of your client’s dreams on the phone. Heart racing, you deliver the pitch. He has questions, and you do your best to answer them, armed with extensive product knowledge and a host of key differentiators. Once the prospect has put you through the gauntlet, he concedes that he might want to meet, but is on his cell phone right now. You secure a follow-up call for the next day and note it on your calendar and your CRM. These are the nurturing moments SDR dreams are made of.

These are the nurturing moments SDR dreams are made of.

12:00pm — Lunch break! A calming walk through the neighborhood surrounding your office is in order after the adrenaline-pumping prospecting of this morning.

1:00pm — In order to avoid the mental fatigue that comes with life as an SDR, your firm has you working on two projects simultaneously. After lunch, it’s secondary project time.

1:04pm — You catch up on emails then fire up LinkedIn. Your primary project has a straightforward, clean database to call into, but your secondary is in a trickier industry with high turnover rates. Some digging is often necessary to find the right contact. You begin with the American office of an Asian company your client is salivating over. The operator informs you the contact has left the company, so the data excavation begins.

1:07pm — LinkedIn search was fruitless. You start to get creative.

1:11pm — You find yourself looking at government shipping records from 2014. You find a phone number.

1:13pm — After a reverse phone lookup, the name appears! You take a moment to pump your fist then get to dialing. This time, you’re connected to a voicemail. You draft a quick email and shoot it off as well. Victory is within your reach.

2:54pm — You take a break from the dizzying cycle of digging and dialing to hop on the conference bridge for a meeting you set last week. You contemplate FreeConferencePro’s switch from pan flute to classical guitar hold music.

You contemplate FreeConferencePro’s switch from pan flute to classical guitar hold music.

2:57pm — Your sales rep hops on the line. You offer a few quips about the conversations you’ve had that day then fill them in on the meeting that’s about to take place.

3:01pm — The prospect hasn’t shown up for the 3pm call. With quivering fingers, you dial in the prospect’s number into your phone, ready to call at the strike of 3:05.

3:03pm — Lucky for you and your quota, the prospect hops on the line. You chat for a moment and introduce your sales rep as the subject matter expert who will take the call from there. The two strike up a conversation about the product and you quietly back off the call. You update the CRM then smile. Your work here is done.

3:30pm — Back to your primary project. As it is 1:30 on the west coast, it’s prime California calling time. Silicon Valley, get ready.

4:01pm — You’re shut down hard by a VP of Infrastructure, but the smackdown doesn’t stop you. You politely obtain a follow-up date and update the CRM. You’ll do better next time.

4:48pm — A CRM record for a Chief Information Officer that you’ve never touched before scrolls across your screen. He’s in San Francisco, so why not give him a call? The impossible happens: He picks up his direct line on the second ring. The sound of blood rushing fills your ears. Game on. You pitch the product, and after presenting only a few minor objections, the prospect agrees to a meeting. You shoot over a calendar invite while relief washes over you. Quota is yours this month. You chat a bit longer to get some great discovery information and hang up the call.

The sound of blood rushing fills your ears. Game on.

5:07pm — Yes, you had to stay late to update the CRM and go over your meetings with your director, but it was worth it. You stumble home, exhausted but ready to conquer another day of SDR-ing.