Business Development Representative at Thought Industries in Boston, MA, United States

Job description

• We're hiring a Business Development Representative for a hybrid, full-cycle prospecting role. You'll be assigned a territory and a set of Account Executives to partner with, and you'll be responsible for building a healthy pipeline of Sales Accepted Leads (SALs) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs), from both self-sourced outbound prospecting and inbound demand. You will not be a lead-qualification-only BDR: you own a number, and you hit it through a mix of outbound-sourced and inbound-converted SQLs.
• This is an ideal role for someone who is self-motivated and driven, wants to build the foundational skills — prospecting, discovery, objection handling, and pipeline management — needed to become a top-performing Account Executive, and either has experience on or genuinely wants to work on a smaller, high-ownership team.
• Consistently meeting/exceeding a blended SQL quota (outbound-sourced + inbound-converted)
• Meeting activity benchmarks for calls, emails, and social touches each week
• High-quality meetings → opportunity conversion rate (SQLs that actually progress into discovery and beyond)

Responsibilities

• Outbound SQLs
• Own a defined territory, working closely with your assigned AEs on account strategy and target account selection
• Research and build target account and contact lists within our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), using tools like LinkedIn, Apollo, and other prospecting/intent data sources
• Execute multi-touch outbound sequences (cold calls, personalized emails, LinkedIn/social outreach) to generate net-new sales conversations
• Personalize outreach based on account research, trigger events, buyer persona insights, and intent signals rather than relying on generic templates
• Consistently hit weekly/monthly activity KPIs (calls, emails, connects) and outbound-sourced SQL targets
• Inbound SQLs
• Respond to and qualify inbound leads (demo requests, content downloads, webinar registrants) within SLA
• Run structured discovery calls to qualify leads against ICP and buying-stage criteria (e.g. MEDDPICC)
• Convert qualified inbound and outbound conversations into SQLs — qualified conversations for your assigned AEs that move into the discovery phase of pipeline
• Pipeline & Reporting
• Maintain accurate, real-time activity and pipeline data in Salesforce (SFDC)
• Partner with Marketing on campaign follow-up, event pre/post outreach, and lead-source feedback
• Partner with assigned AEs on territory strategy and account-based outbound plays
• Occasionally represent Thought Industries at sponsored events, webinars, and field marketing activities to drive attendance and generate on-site pipeline

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience
• 2+ years of B2B SaaS sales, sales development, or related experience
• Demonstrated success with proactive outbound prospecting (cold calling and cold emailing), not just inbound follow-up
• Self-motivated and driven. Coachable to handle rejection and iterate on messaging and approach
• Strong verbal and written communication skills; comfortable running discovery/qualification over phone/video
• Working knowledge of Salesforce and Google Workspace
• Familiarity with Gong, LinkedIn, Apollo, and other intent-based prospecting tools is a plus
• Experience selling into the Learning Technology space or to customer education/training buyers
• Experience with account-based prospecting or target account selling

Skills

Required

• Self-motivated and driven
• Working knowledge of Salesforce
• Working knowledge of Google Workspace

Preferred

• Familiarity with Gong
• Familiarity with LinkedIn
• Familiarity with Apollo