Business Development Representative

Business Development Representative

Thought Industries is the leading Customer Education & Learning Intelligence platform, helping the world's most innovative companies turn learning into measurable business outcomes. We're a smaller, fast-moving team — every rep here gets real ownership, visibility into how the business runs, and direct access to leadership, rather than getting lost in a large, siloed org.

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.

What You'll Do

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

Qualifications

Required:

• 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

Preferred:

• 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

Success Looks Like

• 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)

Additional Information

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines. 

The annual base salary for this role is $60,000 - $65,000 with annual commission eligibility of $30,000.

Thought Industries does not discriminate in employment opportunities or practices on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, or any other characteristic protected by law. Employment decisions at Thought Industries are based on merit, qualifications, and abilities.