Sales Development Representative, Lead
About The Position
Blackboard is hiring its first Sales Development Lead to build the sales development function from the ground up. This player-coach role begins as an individual contributor with a personal goal and no direct reports. The role will prospect and book meetings while designing the playbooks, tools, and processes the future team will use. As the team grows, the Lead will onboard and coach new SDRs, with a path toward Sales Development Manager. The position sits within GTM Intelligence & Operations in the Marketing organization and reports to the VP of GTM Intelligence & Operations. It works closely with Sales, Marketing, Customer Advocacy, and teams across the business to turn interest into pipeline. The successful candidate will build and test the sales development motion, document what works, and help establish a scalable function.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
- At least 3 years of B2B sales development experience, with a track record of meeting or exceeding meeting and pipeline goals.
- Experience selling into complex, multi-stakeholder buying groups.
- Evidence of building processes, such as a playbook, sequence library, or onboarding program, rather than only running existing processes.
- Informal leadership experience, such as mentoring, peer coaching, or leading a pod.
- Working fluency with Salesforce and a sales engagement platform.
- Comfort with ambiguity and building a function from zero.
- Clear written and verbal communication, and judgment about when to use each.
- Fluency in written and spoken English.
- Legally authorized to work in the country where the role is based at hire and able to maintain that authorization throughout employment; the company does not provide visa sponsorship or immigration support.
Nice To Haves
- Experience selling into education, government, or other public sector markets.
- Prior experience as an early SDR or on a newly formed team.
- Exposure to AI-assisted prospecting, intent data, or account-based motions.
- Experience partnering with marketing on campaign follow-up and inbound conversion.
Responsibilities
- Prospect into target accounts through calls, email, LinkedIn, and multi-threaded outreach.
- Qualify inbound interest and hand off sales-ready opportunities to Account Executives.
- Meet a personal goal for qualified meetings and pipeline generated.
- Keep Salesforce activity, stages, and handoff notes accurate and complete.
- Build the SDR playbook from the established ideal customer profile, including personas, messaging, sequences, and objection handling.
- Define qualification criteria and the SDR-to-AE handoff process with leadership.
- Partner with GTM Engineering on sequencing tools, routing, and reporting.
- Establish SDR metrics, dashboards, and a weekly operating cadence.
- Test and document effective approaches so they can scale to a team.
- Help define the SDR leveling framework, hiring profile, and interview process as the team grows.
- Onboard and coach new SDRs through call reviews, role plays, and pipeline reviews.
- Represent sales development in GTM planning.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
