Sales Development
How sales development qualifies leads, prospects accounts and books meetings across Salesforce, LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Outreach.
Building a target prospect list in Sales Navigator
At the start of each week, the SDR opens LinkedIn Sales Navigator, runs the team's shared Persona search filtered to the agreed ICP and ticks up to thirty leads to save into a new Sales Navigator lead list named after the current Monday's date. They then bulk-push the list into Salesforce as Lead records using Save to CRM, reassign ownership from the integration user to themselves and set Lead Status on each new record to 'New - Not Contacted'.
Researching a single account before outreach
Before adding a target account to an Outreach sequence, the SDR opens the company's Sales Navigator Account page, reads the latest News and Decision Maker shortlist, then cross-references against any existing Salesforce records. They map the buying committee onto a Salesforce note attached to the parent Account and capture one specific 'why now' trigger they will reference in the first cold email. They never proceed to outreach without writing this brief first.
Triaging a newly assigned inbound lead
When the round-robin assigns a fresh MQL to the SDR in Salesforce, they verify the prospect's identity in LinkedIn Sales Navigator before any outreach happens. They confirm the company match, sense-check the seniority of the title and grade the lead 'a', 'b' or 'c' on the custom Inbound Score field. A-grade leads get an immediate phone call attempt, b-grade leads go straight into a tailored Outreach sequence and c-grade leads are disqualified before they reach the broader pipeline.
Adding a prospect to a personalised cold email sequence
From a Salesforce lead record, the SDR clicks the Add to Outreach button, picks the sequence template that matches the prospect's persona and the account size, then opens the first step in the Outreach compose window to overwrite the placeholder with a personal hook taken straight from the prospect's recent LinkedIn activity. They never start the sequence from a blank template, the first email always references something specific the prospect themselves has said or done in public.
Sending a soft-touch LinkedIn connection request
Forty-eight hours after the first cold email step lands as Delivered, the SDR opens the prospect's LinkedIn Sales Navigator profile and sends a connection request without a note. They time the request mid-week between nine and eleven in the morning local to the prospect, never paired with a pitch, and they then log the request as a 'LinkedIn Touch' activity on the matching Salesforce lead so the multi-channel cadence is visible to any AE who picks the lead up later.
Logging a discovery call outcome
Within ten minutes of hanging up from a discovery call, the SDR opens the Salesforce lead, logs a new Activity of type 'Discovery Call' and pastes their notes structured against the team's BANT-plus-Pain template. They quote the prospect's exact words wherever a phrase would land directly in the AE's first email, set the Lead Status to reflect qualification, then click Save and Add Task to schedule the next step with a hard date before the activity closes.
Disqualifying a lead with a documented reason
Once a prospect is decided unqualified, the SDR opens the Salesforce lead, sets Lead Status to 'Closed - Disqualified', picks a structured Disqualify Reason from the picklist and adds a free-text supporting note in the prospect's own words. They then open Outreach and finish the active sequence with status 'Finished - Disqualified', not 'Out of Office', so it does not auto-resume the next month. Bad-Timing disqualifications get a follow-up task ninety days out, every other reason closes the lead without recycle.
Moving an unresponsive prospect to a break-up sequence
When an Outreach sequence reaches its final standard step with no reply, the SDR removes the prospect from the active sequence and adds them to the team's two-step Break-up sequence. The Break-up sequence sends a short 'should I close your file?' email three working days after enrolment and a final goodbye email seven days after that. The SDR also sets a Salesforce task seven days out so they remember to disqualify the lead manually if no reply lands.
Booking a demo from a positive email reply
When a prospect replies positively to an Outreach sequence step, the SDR pauses the sequence inside Outreach as the very first action, never afterwards. They then open the AE's shared calendar, find three concrete thirty-minute slots in the next seven calendar days that work for the AE and the prospect's likely working hours and reply from inside Outreach offering those three options. Once the prospect picks a slot, the SDR creates the demo invite from Salesforce's Schedule Demo quick action, attaches the AE as Lead Co-owner and updates the lead status to 'Working - Demo Scheduled'.
Converting a qualified lead and handing off to the AE
Once the demo is on the calendar and the prospect is scored as a sales-qualified lead, the SDR clicks Convert on the Salesforce lead, ticks Create Opportunity, sets the Opportunity Stage to 'Discovery' and confirms the Account Owner is the same AE attached to the demo invite. They then add themselves to the Sales Team list with role 'SDR' for credit attribution, finish the active Outreach sequence with status 'Finished - Converted to Opp' and post a structured handoff message in the Account Chatter feed tagging the AE.
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