Topic 2 — Sales roles and the sales org

Goal: Understand the sales roles and how a sales team is structured.

Lesson 2.1 — The seat you'll actually start in

It's Dario Vance's first week at Brightwheel Freight, the startup whose software helps mid-size trucking companies plan smarter routes and burn less fuel. His manager drops a list of forty trucking firms on his desk and says, "Your job is to get the right people at these companies to take a thirty-minute call." Nobody asks Dario to close anything. Nobody hands him a contract to sign. His whole world this quarter is getting the meeting.

That seat has a name. Dario is an SDR — a Sales Development Representative. (You'll also hear BDR, Business Development Representative; more on the difference in a minute.) The SDR works the top of the funnel: finding companies that might be a fit, starting conversations, qualifying whether there's a real opportunity, and booking meetings for the people who close. It's the most common front door into tech sales, and it's almost certainly where you'll start.

The thing to hold onto is what the job is for. An SDR opens opportunities. They don't close them.

An SDR's win isn't a signed deal. It's a booked meeting with the right person who actually shows up.

Dario books eight meetings in his first month. None of them are sales yet — they're doors he pried open for someone else to walk through. That's the role working exactly as designed.

Lesson 2.2 — SDR or BDR? The inbound/outbound split

A trucking company fills out the "request a demo" form on Brightwheel's website. The next morning, a cold-call list of carriers who've never heard of Brightwheel lands in Dario's queue. Same rep, two very different starting points — and that contrast is the whole SDR-vs-BDR distinction.

When the lead came to you — a demo request, a downloaded guide, a webinar signup — that's inbound, and the rep who works it is usually called an SDR. Marketing already created a spark of interest; the SDR's job is to qualify it and route the good ones onward. When you go out and start cold — researching a company, sending the first email to someone who's never heard of you — that's outbound, and that rep is often called a BDR. Outbound is harder and slower; a BDR might work a strategic account for weeks before anyone replies.

That's the textbook split: SDR = inbound, BDR = outbound. Here's the honest footnote, though. Most companies use the two titles interchangeably. At Brightwheel, Dario's title is "SDR" but he does both inbound and outbound every day. So learn the distinction, because interviewers love it — but don't be thrown when a job ad calls the exact same job by the other name.

Lesson 2.3 — The Account Executive: the closer

Renske Bauer joins Dario's eighth meeting of the month. He made the introduction, confirmed the prospect was a real fit, and handed it over. From here, it's her deal.

Renske is a Senior Account Executive — an AE — the closer. The AE takes a qualified opportunity and runs it all the way to a signed contract: discovery (digging into what the customer actually needs), the demo, handling objections, negotiating terms, and the close itself. We spend whole topics on each of those moves later. What matters now is the shape of the job: the AE owns the deal from "interested" to "signed."

And the AE owns a quota — a revenue target they're on the hook to hit each quarter. That single fact reorganizes the whole role. An SDR is measured in meetings booked; an AE is measured in dollars closed. Miss quota two quarters running and it's a problem; beat it and the commission is real money. That pressure is also why the pay jumps so much at this level.

Watch the handoff itself, because it's the hinge of the whole topic. Dario doesn't just toss Renske a name. He briefs her: which company, who the contact is, what pain they mentioned, why they're a fit. A clean handoff means Renske walks in already knowing the story. A sloppy one — a name and nothing else — and the deal stalls before it starts. Same two people, wildly different outcome, depending on the quality of that one pass.

Lesson 2.4 — The SDR → AE ladder

Six months in, Dario's hitting his meeting targets and starts wondering out loud to his manager: when do I get to be Renske?

His manager, Owen Driscoll — the Sales Manager who runs the SDR team, sets quota, and coaches Dario — gives him the real answer. SDR → AE is the classic tech sales ladder, and the promotion is earned, not waited out. The pattern across the industry: you become an AE after consistently hitting your SDR targets, usually around four straight quarters of making quota, which lands most people at roughly 12 to 18 months in the seat. Get promoted too early and you're far more likely to wash out as an AE; the time in the SDR chair is where you learn the fundamentals that make closing possible.

Why grind for it? Because earning potential jumps hard at AE. The promotion commonly comes with a fifty-percent-or-more bump in total earnings, because you go from booking meetings to owning revenue. Owen's advice to Dario is blunt and worth stealing: hit quota four quarters running, ask Renske to let you shadow her discovery calls, and make your ambition explicit with your manager so you're top of mind when a seat opens. Beyond AE, the ladder keeps climbing — senior AE, team lead, then sales management like Owen's own job.

Lesson 2.5 — The wider org: who else is on the field

Dario closes a mental loop after a few months: a sale isn't just SDR-then-AE. A handful of other people make the team work, and knowing them tells you who you'll lean on and where you might grow.

• Sales Engineer / Solutions Engineer (SE) — the technical teammate. When a prospect asks a deep question — will this integrate with our existing fleet-tracking system? — Renske doesn't fumble it. She brings in Priscilla Aoki, Brightwheel's SE, who joins technical demos and answers the hard product questions so the AE can focus on the deal. The SE supports; the AE still owns the close.
• Account Manager (AM) / Customer Success Manager (CSM) — these roles take over after the sale. Sales wins the customer; the AM/CSM keep and grow them through renewals and expansion. When the trucking company's contract comes up for renewal next year, or they want to add more trucks to their plan, that's an AM/CSM's job, not Renske's.
• Sales management (Manager / Director / VP) — Owen and his bosses. They coach the team, set strategy and quotas, and own the team's overall number. The higher you climb, the more your job is making other reps succeed.
• RevOps (Revenue Operations) — the behind-the-scenes engine. RevOps supplies the tools, process, and data — the CRM, the dashboards, the reports — so everyone else can sell efficiently. You rarely see them on a call, but they built the machine you're working inside.

Sales wins the customer. AM and CSM keep and grow them. Same customer, two different jobs, handed off at the signature.

Here's the picture all five lessons have been building toward. The org runs as one pipeline: SDRs open → AEs close → AM/CSM grow, with SEs and RevOps supporting the whole way. Each role passes the customer cleanly to the next, and those handoffs are what keep deals moving instead of dying in the gaps.

Worked example — One carrier, the whole pipeline

A regional carrier comes through Brightwheel's pipeline, and you can watch every role light up in sequence.

Dario (SDR) works the account from a cold list. After three emails and a call, he reaches Marcus Thorne, the carrier's Operations Director, who admits fuel costs are eating their margins. Dario qualifies it — real pain, real budget, right person — and books a meeting. He briefs Renske with the full story: who Marcus is, what hurts, why they fit.

Renske (AE) runs discovery with Marcus, learns their routes are planned on spreadsheets, and books a demo. When Marcus asks whether Brightwheel can pull live data from their existing GPS units, Renske brings in Priscilla (SE), who walks Marcus through the integration and clears the technical doubt. Marcus becomes Renske's champion inside the carrier, pushing the deal with his own leadership. Renske handles the pricing objection, negotiates a two-year term, and closes.

Now the handoff flips. An AM/CSM takes over: onboards Marcus's dispatchers, makes sure they actually use the routing tool, and a year later expands the contract when the carrier adds trucks. Owen coached the whole effort and counts the closed deal toward his team's number. And RevOps? Every stage above was tracked in the CRM they built, so Owen could see exactly where the deal was the whole time.

One customer. Six roles. Each one opened, advanced, or grew the deal and passed it cleanly to the next. That is the sales org, working as designed.