Guest Speaker Series – Gabriela Bojilova 

For this week’s guest speaker our Academy Students had the pleasure of hearing from Gabriela Bojilova who has recently made an exciting move into her new role as an account manager at Tessian.

 

The Journey

One thing that really stood out in Gabriela’s talk was the resilience and grit that she has shown in her career. She mentioned that these two skills are the most important to have when becoming an SDR. Gabriela initially started in recruitment, but quickly realized this was not what she was looking for. This prompted a move into the SDR role at Tessian where she went from an inbound SDR to outbound, to Business Development Manager (BDM), and finally into her current role as an Account Manager (AM). Quite a journey! 

 

Advice to SDRs

Gabriela’s advice to our team was eye-opening and we all came away learning something new. 

We learnt how she realized the importance of good questions from being an SDR, and how this applied to life in general. She recommends the SDR role to any graduate as a stepping stone into many career paths as it makes you more adaptable, resilient and sets up excellent foundations.  

One big challenge she faced was the fact that an SDR starts at zero every single month… any salesperson can relate to that one! Therefore, she suggested that we always build for the following month.

 

Beyond SDR

Gabriela also spoke to the team about the importance of joining an Employee Resource Group (ERG) and it was clear that this was a topic she was very passionate about. The whole team was made more aware of some of the unconscious bias we have and how to approach trying to remove some of these. She also highlighted the fact that the women’s ERG at Tessian enabled her to build internal relationships, have a lot of fun, and most importantly to have a big impact on others and the wider organization.

 

Key takeaways

• Laughing is underrated in the SDR role
• We should all raise awareness of unconscious bias’s we have
• Grit and Perseverance are the main skills of an SDR
• Working as an SDR in a startup allows you to shape the organization you are a part of.
• Always have a hotlist (your go to list of prospects you can fall back on)
• Being a founding SDR in a new team gives you some great perspective, and a lot more room for feedback.