SpendLab

BDR Leader (Interim)

SDR Leaders of USA

Co-Founder

SDR Leaders of EMEA

SDR Leaders of EMEA is an invite only community whose goal is to make SDR Leaders in EMEA the best in the world.

Founder

SDR Leaders of APAC

Noble

Advisor

Yess 🏈

Skaled Consulting

Senior Sales Consultant

Saleswise: Top of Funnel Consultancy

GTMfund

GTMfund Member

Clay

Cooking up some trigger firing, AI and automation content.

Claymaker

Founder @ SDR Leaders of EMEA | I help early-stage technical founders grow their revenue

I build communities and products that help go-to-market teams thrive.

As founder of SDR Leaders of USA & EMEA, I’ve grown a global community of 8,000+ SDR Leaders, RevOps leaders, and GTM operators across EMEA and North America. We host masterclasses, playbook sessions and in-person meetups.  All focused on elevating the role of the SDR leader from pipeline manager to GTM talent architect.

Prior to this, I worked across high-growth SaaS environments (Snowflake, Infoblox and Solace), helping build scalable sales development engines from the ground up.

💬 If you're growing a sales team, rethinking your GTM motion, or exploring the future of SDRs in an AI world, I’d love to connect!

📆 Schedule a chat: https://calendly.com/daveewilkins/saleswise-introduction
📲 Text me: +31619785357
📧 Email:david@sdr-leader.com

SDR is the hardest job in sales 


Most people have no idea how much noise SDRs push through just to get a single “yes.”

📞 First contact? Total strangers.
📩 Inbox? Buried in junk.
🙅‍♂️ Rejection? 99% of the time.

But SDRs…

Build trust in seconds

Read intent between the lines

Stay sharp after 20 “no’s” before lunch

You’re not order takers.
You are the first impression.
You open the first door to the deal.
And you show up: every. single. day.

What’s your #1 tip for cutting through the noise?

David Wilkins

The SDR Leader Guy | Building the #1 Community for SDR Leaders | Founder, Events + Playbooks + AI

Who should you follow on LinkedIn as an SDR Leader?

Who do you learn from? 

These are the people I learn from daily, and you should too:

How to be an amazing SDR Leader
Catherine Olivier
Andrea Onuigbo 
Mafalda Johannsen
Nirvanna Lildharrie
Florin Tatulea
Anna Bella 🇭🇺
Dale Thorn
Tito Bohrt 🧪🧫 - Sales Mad Scientist
Dan Raj
Vandana Agarwal Nik
Ami Mullenger ☁

How to optimise the Tech Stack you have in place
Kingsley Hall
Jordan Crawford 
Remington Rawlings
Brendan Short (The Signal)
Luciana Juarez
Marina Ghilchik 🥾
James Donaldson
💡Dave Breshears

Revenue Operations 
Ashleigh Early
Ivan Heneghan

Content creation for you and your reps 
Matthew Putnam 🔵
Dariia Gerasymova 🧚🏻‍♀️ 
Andy Laws
👨‍🍳 Elric Legloire
Chris Ritson
•Stuart Moss•
Maryna Nikitchuk
Morgan J Ingram

Hiring SDRs
Sophie Allen 
Aaron Hawthorne
Elaine Tyler 
Bas Oostenbrink - Saas Sales Recruitment

The SDR consulting and fractional leadership life
Sara Storm
Ranjit Mudher

The 2025 State of EMEA Sales Development Survey by SDR Leaders of EMEA is out NOW!

The key takeaways from the survey:

 1️⃣ 55.9% of respondents increased SDR headcount, disproving the “SDR is dead” narrative. Organisations are doubling down on SDRs as critical revenue drivers.

 2️⃣ Full in-office work (4+ days/week) correlates with lower quota attainment. Hybrid setups (2–3 days/week) show the strongest performance balance.

 3️⃣ AI adoption among SDR teams has surged:  13.7% now use AI SDRs, and nearly 30% are exploring implementation. Yet, there’s no clear link between AI use and higher quota attainment, highlighting the need for better enablement rather than just tool adoption.

 4️⃣ 13.7% of companies now employ GTM Engineers; technical enablers who integrate AI and automation into sales workflows, improving SDR efficiency and data insight.

Get more insights here 👇 
https://lnkd.in/eyXjGVq8

Thank you so much to Commsor 🦕 for supporting our community and giving us the opportunity to produce such an important survey!

A special special thank you Marina Ghilchik has done an incredible job in taking survey and creating a great package, thank you so much for everything you do for SDR Leaders of EMEA

This week I hit 15,000 Followers! 🥰 

So, I want to #payitforward

This LinkedIn community has been so amazingly supportive. 

People I don’t even know have reached out to me offering:

💡 to meet and share job searching tips 

👩‍💻 freelance work

🤝 introductions to connections 

👯‍♀️ networking conversations 

And more!

If you are #opentowork, #jobsearching, or launching a new product and want to network, please reach out! 

If you see this post and we’re not connected, send me an invite and let me know if I can be a resource for you!

Community is at the heart of SDR Leaders of USA

SDR Leaders have found new connections, roles and like-minded peers during our meet-ups, but they want to meet with these people on a more regular occasion; to share what's working, to share the issues they are facing and to connect with friendly faces in an incredibly stressful role.

That's why we are proud to announce the launch of SDR Leaders of USA chapters!

I'm happy to introduce you to our first Chapter leaders:

North Carolina: Nirvanna Lildharrie and Nicole Osborne (Brann)
Atlanta: Ashley Boone, Leonard Matlock
Dallas: Colton Davis
Seattle: Evan Nissenbaum
SDR Leaders of Canada: Elijah Awoke, Jonathan Tjoandi, Ahmed Abdel-Raouf, Saad Khan
San Francisco: Sara Zeljković

We are planning regular happy hours, coffee mornings and connections in each of our chapters. Reach out to them to learn how you can be involved.

Austin 👏 

Thank you for coming out for the first SDR Leaders of USA in ATX!

The insights and advice given around:
+ Hiring profiles
+ How to optimise prospecting
+ How to reduce the time of curating sequences

Shows that SDR Leaders are embracing AI to create more productive, and effective sales development teams.

Feels like we are in a good place as a function!

Thank you to Melanie Smith and Nooks for supporting our evening. Nooks have been with SDR Leaders of USA since day one and we can thank them enough for their support of the SDR Leadership community.

As a visionary Global Go-to-Market Leader, I excel in defining and executing market-dominating strategies.

My passion lies in making an impact at forward-thinking Series A to Pre-IPO organisations and moving them into their next growth phase. I specialise in constructing world-class account-based sales development organizations and nurturing talent for future leadership. 

My journey at trailblazing tech firms like Snowflake and Infoblox has been marked by generating a staggering $750m+ qualified pipeline, amplifying SDR win rates by 25%, and steering 30+ SDRs towards advanced roles. Beyond numbers, 

My approach is not just about scaling fast but scaling smart, aligning people, processes, and technology to create a seamless, high-velocity sales engine.

If you're poised to redefine the boundaries of your business growth, let's connect and explore how we can turn aspirations into tangible success.

Sales Development @ Nooks

Nooks

Alexis Ward

Hill I will die on:

The BDR role is not dead

Whoever says this is selling you something that isnt worth squat

But its going to evolve, and we need to prepare for what that looks like.

Thats exactly what we spoke about on Head of Sales Diary, with Iryna Begma!

Iryna is such a great host and the conversation flowed.

Let me know what you think

Check it out: https://lnkd.in/eN7upBhw

54% of SDR leaders in EMEA have hired more SDRs in the last 12 months.

So much for the SDR role dying..

That’s one insight we are seeing from our SDR Leaders of EMEA 2025 State of EMEA Sales Development survey!

This is your last chance to have you voice heard.

Last year's survey provided EMEA with its first-ever insights into salaries, tech stack and how teams are measuring performance.

2025's survey, supported by Commsor 🦕 is going to be bigger and better!

It will be the most comprehensive survey that you can use, as leaders, to discuss your pay raises, discuss team sizes and discuss quotas with your leaders and C-level.

What we need from you

Please take 5-10 minutes to answer all of the survey questions: https://lnkd.in/eJux4gDq

Submissions will end TONIGHT at 6pm uk time.

We plan to publish the survey results on 1st November!

Open article: State of EMEA Sales Development 2025 by 77zb165wlcq.typeform.com

SDR's: Think youre the only people who get abuse?

Have a wonderful Sunday with your loved ones!

Heres my Halloween contribution 👻

If you're hiring SDRs, remember this:  

1. 65% of SDRs burn out within 12 months.  
2. Only 50% consistently hit quota.  
3. Most SDRs never receive proper training.  

Proper scary hey..

Here's how to fix that:  

1. Build a solid onboarding plan.  
2. Invest in long-term coaching.  
3. Align incentives with clear goals.  

You can't scale revenue with a broken foundation.  

Hiring is easy. Retention isn’t.

Meetings booked don't matter. Pipeline impact is what truly defines leadership.

I used to chase call counts and meeting stats.

Then..

We shifted my teams at Infoblox to focus on real pipeline impact.

We changed comp models. We changed what we celebrated.

Results followed.

Leaders, pipeline is the only metric that matters.

Activity stats look good in dashboards. But they don't build revenue.

True leadership means rearchitecting how you measure success.

Reward strategic impact. Not empty numbers.

Pipeline.

That’s how you elevate your team.

How are you driving pipeline impact in your org?

Never believe the following...

''Outbound is dead'' or ''SDR is dead'' 

Take a step back and look for data

SDR Leaders of EMEA, supported by Commsor 🦕, have released their State of EMEA Sales Development Survey for 2025.

Actual people leading in the role day by day.

The data?

🚀 55.9% have hired more SDRs over the last 12 months 

🤖 13% have purchased AI SDRs for their organisations, but have they seen an increase in output? Not yet.

I'll take data over vibes any day.

Check out the whole survey here: https://lnkd.in/eyXjGVq8

Not sure what i signed up for here..

Tom Boston or Ollie Whitfield didnt tell me if im going to eat kangaroo bum or anything like that..

But, doesnt that want to make you come and revel in my misfortune?

Oh, i also think there is going to be some sales stuff involved in it too.

Come and join us next week for MySalesCoach Im in Sales, Get me Out of Here!: https://lnkd.in/ed7NpVbf

Cultural isolation kills creativity. It’s the silent thief of innovation. 

SDR leaders across EMEA and North America know this pain. You feel it when your team sits oceans apart from HQ, and support feels far away. 

I saw it firsthand. North American SDR leaders run into the same wall as their European peers: distance, silos and missing community. 

YET STILL, leaders are told to push pipeline and hit numbers alone? 

That’s wild. 

Here’s the raw truth: 
• Isolation slows down new ideas 
• Silos block real learning 
• Teams lose momentum 

So instead of being part of the problem: I wanted to drive the solution. 

We built communities that cross borders, we are creating chapters to allow constant support. We invited SDR leaders to connect, share, and support each other. 

The result? Energy flows. Innovation sparks. Leaders feel seen. 

Our rituals: 
✅ Bi-weekly masterclasses (real talk, no fluff) 
✅ LinkedIn Lives with the best operators in the biz 
✅ In-person meetups (pipeline power, every time) 

You now get: 
1. Fresh playbooks from every region 
2. Support from people who get your challenges 
3. A sense of belonging, even if your HQ is 5,000 miles away 

SDR leaders are NOT meant to go it alone. You build pipeline, but you also build the future of GTM. 

Leaders need to design communities and rituals with intention. That’s how you break the silence, spark creativity, and grow together. 

If you want to join the movement, check out, SDR Leaders of USA, SDR Leaders of APAC & SDR Leaders of EMEA. 

Let’s elevate SDR leadership, together.

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