Welcome back to the Seldon Team Spotlight, where we give you an inside look at the talented individuals that are a part of the Seldon team. Today, our Talent Partner, Ben Thomas interviewed our Business Development Representative, Kaitlin Hourihane.

She chats about the AI conference opportunities she’s had and is excited about going to in the future–The MLOps World conference happens to align with her birthday coming soon! Learn about what a day in her life as a BDR is like and why she loves being a part of such a tight-knit team.

Check out the interview below!

Introduction & Background

Can you briefly describe your role and responsibilities?

I’m a BDR at Seldon currently working within the marketing team officially but also working closely with our sales team too. I work primarily on generating net new business opportunities for the sales team, through a variety of different methods such as cold calling potential clients & prospects, email, and LinkedIn.

In terms of what I actually do, it’s a mixture of outbound and inbound activity, running discovery calls with people interested in our products and then writing up reports and scheduling demonstrations for our account executives & solution engineers. On top of that I also help with onboarding and enabling our new hires too!

How did you get into being a BDR?

To be completely honest, I didn’t leave university thinking that I would fall into a career in sales, I didn’t even really know what a BDR was! It was only when I graduated and had to start thinking about what I’m good at, which is talking to people, that one of my friends suggested I looked into whether I would want to go down the BDR route. So, I started looking into BDR roles and thinking about this role as a good career path for myself.

What was it that interested you about working at Seldon?

The Seldon team is a small but really impressive organisation (working with amazing brands) such as PayPal & Audi.

The chance to make a huge impact, not only through sourcing new opportunities for the business, but also around helping to set up new process’s within the BDR world such as new Salesloft cadences. 

Career potential, as you work collaboratively across functions within the commercial team, you are exposed other peoples roles & how they operate in their day to day role. I found that everyone is really open to teaching you more about their role, whether its Abie explaining the process around lead gen or Georgia our head of revenue operations teaching me how to create and pull large amounts of data through reports – there is so much opportunity.

The Day to Day of being a BDR at Seldon 

What does a typical day look like for you at work?

To be honest, there is not really a typical day as a BDR, I really think every day is different. That’s actually one of the reasons that I love working at Seldon. I guess a typical day would usually start by checking if whether any inbound leads have been assigned to me over the past day.

Then I usually split my day into sections, for example an hour of cold calling, a hour of sending targeted emails to ideal prospects and an hour spent on LinkedIn too. We aim to have two discovery calls a day with potential customers, in addition to then making sure we set aside some time for admin. So, writing up opportunity reports, doing handover sessions with the sales team and then of course building and researching new accounts to add into outbound campaigns.

What does the team structure look like?

I think the BDR team structure is quite an interesting one. There is an EMEA and a USA BDR team. We all report into our BDR Manager & the VP of Marketing. However, we also often bridge the gap between marketing and sales and work closely with the Account executives team and our director of Sales, so we collaborate across the commercial teams constantly.

What are the key technologies or tools you work with in your role?

CRM systems such as Salesforce, Sales enablement tools such as Salesloft, Prospecting tools such as Sales Nav, Lusha & Zoominfo.

How does the BDR department collaborate with other teams or departments to address challenges?

The BDR function is extremely collaborative. We are constantly speaking across teams, whether it is working with our content marketing manager to write new messaging, or working with our events marketing manager on how we are going to get the community excited about an upcoming webinar/ event, or working with our solutions engineers to answer questions from prospects. 

Making An Impact

How do you stay up-to-date with the latest trends and advancements in your field and how does this translate into your role?

Linkedin is a really good place for learning, whether it’s prospecting tips from sales leaders or articles being published by my network on the advancement of Generative AI & LLMOps, I think its a great tool I use to stay informed & updated!

This would then translate into my role by trying out the new tips on how to effectively cold call, myself and my colleague Isobel actually did this last week, writing a new script and assessing how it compared to what we had been saying previously. 

The information about market trends, such as Gen AI & LLM’s also helps me to make my messaging super engaging and relevant for prospects, of course with the hope that they respond and are interested in learning more about our products!

Can you tell us what you’re most proud of from your work at Seldon?

I think as a BDR, for me my proudest moments have been when my opportunities have closed won and have turned into ARR for Seldon. This really highlights the impact and importance of the role, you really feel as though you’ve made an impact.

Aside from this, lots of personal achievements such as the first time I booked an intro call through a cold call, and achieving 200% of my target in march this financial year.

Culture & Values At Seldon 

What do you enjoy most about working at Seldon?

I enjoy the level of autonomy in creating messaging & ways to outreach and the real sense of what it means to be a team, we all win together but we also all stick together through the not so great times too!

Do you have the opportunity to go to any AI industry conferences/events to represent Seldon?

Yes! We sponsor lots of events such as the AI Summit and the AI in FSI Conference in the UK. We are also flying out to the USA this autumn to the Generative AI summit in Atlanta and MLOps world in Texas!

The BDRs play a big role in these events, going out & building relationships with key stakeholders to spark their interest in Seldon. For example, we went to the Generative AI summit back in May and spent time networking with stakeholders which led to our team creating a number of opportunities with large enterprise customers in the automotive industry.

What is your advice for someone interested in joining the Seldon team?

If you are interested in joining Seldon, you should absolutely apply to our open roles. I think often it can be quite daunting joining a company that is based around deep tech. However, I joined with no technical experience or knowledge around AI/ML but I really think for a BDR role, if you’re a self motivated person who finds tech interesting, thats all you need.

Get to know

What keeps you motivated at work?

I would say I am quite a naturally self motivated person, but as with any target orientated role, there are naturally times when things aren’t going the way you’d planned, it might be half way through the month and you are really below your target which can be stressful.

For me, I stay motivated through working with the people around me. We are really lucky at Seldon to have a close knit team who really wants one another to be successful and we are all working towards the same goal. We often bounce ideas of eachother and you never really feel like you are on your own.

Want to join Kaitlin and the marketing team? Check out some of our open opportunities here. Plus, if you’re curious about the BDR role at Seldon, you can find the full interview on YouTube for more insights.