Strategic OB Sales Development Representative

Aptiv•Boston, MA

20d•Remote

About The Position

Aptiv is a global technology company with 190,000 specialists in 46 countries, developing innovative software and hardware for autonomous driving, advanced driver-assistance systems, connected vehicles, and smart cities. We partner with almost all car manufacturers, and our solutions are present in most passenger cars today. We are enabling the transition to software-defined vehicles supported by electrified and intelligently connected architectures. The Corporate Sales team sells to decision-makers within prospective customers in the Robotics, Drones, UGV’s, Aerospace, Government & Defense OEM sectors, with a focus on our Adjacent Markets strategy. The Strategic Outbound Sales Development Representative (OB SDR) is an outbound lead generation role focused on identifying and engaging prospects to close discovery meetings that lead to business opportunities and build new customer relationships. Reporting to the Director/Manager of Sales Development, with a dotted line to the VP of Adjacent Markets, the SDR is often the first point of contact for Aptiv prospects through outbound telemarketing, emails, and social outreach. The OB SDR qualifies prospects, uncovers business priorities and challenges, and develops quality meetings for the Adjacent Markets account teams. This role is a development position for individuals aspiring for advancement within the sales organization.

Requirements

Cold calling and prospecting: Demonstrated ability to engage decision-makers through outbound calls, emails, and LinkedIn, with a track record of meeting or exceeding quotas.
Technical articulation: Ability to understand and communicate complex technical solutions, such as Aptiv’s cloud-to-edge platforms, as value to technical and non-technical stakeholders (e.g., CTOs, engineers).
CRM proficiency: Experience with sales tools like Salesforce, 6sense, LinkedIn Sales Navigator and other sales engagement tools to manage pipelines and track interactions.
Research and personalization: Skilled at researching accounts and prospects (e.g., Robotics – Boston Dynamics, Kuka, Drones – Anduril, Helsing, etc.) to tailor outreach, addressing specific pain points like edge latency or security.
Resilience and self-motivation: Comfortable handling rejection in a high-volume outbound role, maintaining a positive attitude, and driving results independently.
Collaboration: Ability to work closely with account teams and marketing to execute targeted prospecting strategies, providing feedback on campaign effectiveness.
Time management: Strong organizational skills to prioritize high-potential leads and manage a robust pipeline in a fast-paced environment.
Customer focus: Adept at building rapport, understanding client needs and retelling a customer story to build consensus about our value to the prospect (e.g., secure edge-to-cloud solutions that leverage open-source flexibility and operational efficiency to minimize cloud costs).
Resilient and Persistent: Comfortable with rejection in high-volume cold outreach, maintaining motivation to hit/exceed quotas in long enterprise sales cycles.
Curious and Quick-Learning: Eager to grasp complex solutions (e.g., Autonomy, & perception systems) and translate them into customer value for diverse industries.
Collaborative: Team-oriented, willing to sync with marketing, AEs, and product teams to refine messaging and ensure smooth lead handoffs.
Confident Communicator: Articulate and professional, able to engage C-suite and technical buyers with tailored, solution-focused pitches emphasizing security and efficiency.
Adaptable: Flexibly tailors outreach strategies to diverse enterprise prospects (e.g., Product Manager, R&D leader, or CTO vs hardware engineer), adjusting messaging to address unique industry needs and feedback.
Data-Driven: Leverages CRM analytics and intent signals to prioritize high-intent accounts, optimizing outreach for maximum meeting quality and pipeline impact.
Empathetic Listener: Actively listens to prospects’ pain points during discovery (e.g., safety concerns, cost challenges, geographic sourcing needs, & technical capability gaps), building trust to qualify leads and align solutions with client goals.
Organized and Disciplined: Manages high-volume outreach (e.g., 50-100 daily multi-channel touches), with strong time management, ensuring timely follow-ups and accurate CRM documentation for seamless team collaboration.
Results-Oriented: Consistently meets or exceeds KPIs (e.g., activities, discovery meetings, opportunities) by refining approaches to drive pipeline growth and revenue outcomes.

Nice To Haves

1-3 years of B2B sales experience: Proven success in lead generation and qualifying prospects in a professional, metrics-driven environment, ideally in the software or technology sector.
Hardware industry exposure: Familiarity with selling components, hardware, embedded systems solutions, particularly to OEM clients in robotics, Drones or defense markets.
Education: Bachelor's degree in business, marketing, computer science, or a related field, or equivalent work experience.

Responsibilities

Identify prospect’s business priorities and challenges within new, high-intent accounts, uncovering obstacles to their goals and pinpointing relevant new business opportunities.
Research key accounts and stakeholders, using sales engagement tools to deliver prompt follow-up, spark interest, and arrange deeper discovery meetings for the account executive team.
Learn and maintain in-depth knowledge of Aptiv solutions, use cases, customer stories, industry trends and competition.
Knowledge of or ability to learn Robotics & Drone/Defense OEM’s to align Aptiv solutions with industry challenges.
Consistently achieve or exceed performance goals and pipeline revenue that results in closed won opportunities for the AE team.