A Day In The Life: Sales Development Representative

My name is Fabian Oseguera and I’m a Sales Development Representative (SDR) at HG Insights.

It’s very interesting to see where HG is going. I can’t believe how fast we’re growing and how there’s something cool happening every week. Just seeing all the things on the horizon, all the things we can do, who knows where HG could be in the next year. Compared to the competitors, just seeing where we are in the market as the pioneers of Technology Intelligence, I feel like I got on the HG Insights rocketship at the perfect time.

But first, a little more about me.

“Trying to figure it out no matter how…”

I grew up in Sonoma, California, with a background in agriculture. My father worked in vineyards and was a small business owner, and he taught me how to work hard to accomplish goals.

After school, I wanted to experience a different side of the world. No one in my family had attended college, so I decided to be the first. Moving away from home grew me as a person, and it was definitely a fun challenge. It was also something that made my family proud.

I went to school not knowing what I wanted to do, so I kept it super broad and studied communications at UCSB (University of California, Santa Barbara). By casting a wide net I learned a lot about a lot of different things, something that would definitely come to help me in my role as an SDR. So I completed the Technology Management Program, which taught entrepreneurship skills in tech. It was super fast-paced and I was always moving quickly and doing something, which also trained me to be an SDR.

After college, I looked around at a lot of opportunities. I wanted a career with big potential at a high-growth company.

So I interviewed at all the local tech companies and no one sounded or looked super motivated about their job — the conversations were not very motivating. I felt like they were reading off a script.

But when I spoke with the team at HG Insights, they were all super fired up about the role and the company! It sounded too good to be true, and I was shocked I’d never heard about HG! Everyone I spoke with at HG felt like they could genuinely be my friend, they actually reminded me of my friends. And everyone here said it was great. The environment felt like a perfect blend of work and play, a place to grow a career and have fun along the way.

So I dove in and haven’t looked back since.

In It To Win It

The best training for my role, really, was playing sports. I was on the soccer and basketball teams in school, and it taught me a lot about cooperation and working hard. Sports taught me to be part of a team — you win as a team, you lose as a team. That’s what it’s like at HG.

As an SDR your goal is to crush your own quota, but at HG you also operate as a team. Whenever you hear someone get off a call, you ask what’s up. If they did well, you celebrate as a team. Or if it’s the opposite, you check in and make sure everything’s okay with them. Like in sports, you get a lot of small wins, and you’ve got to celebrate them! It’s the same as an SDR at HG.

And like sports, a lot of the work as an SDR is fun, like a game. Some weeks we have power hours, a blitz of calls and activities around our roles, and the winners get bonuses like YETI mugs or Patagonia backpacks and other prizes. It’s competitive, but it’s all fun—we’re still working as a team toward a common goal. Everyone is working super hard, and it’s cool to see the HG rocketship in motion!

It’s energizing and motivating, which is important because as an SDR you can sometimes be in the weeds. Together, we all find ways to be positive and help each other out.

Rise and Grind

The morning is my time to shine. All of us SDRs!

We have an SDR standup meeting at the beginning of the week when we set our weekly commits. We tell the team what we’re going to accomplish and how we’re going to get it done! Week after week we build on what we do, so we’re constantly making progress and getting better. In these meetings, we look forward and set goals, and we look backward to assess our success. It’s benchmarking, and it’s the only way to get better at what you do. It means we hold ourselves accountable to our goals, so we’re competing against ourselves.

We work the most up until lunch — we wake up and grind, check email, and prioritize our day. The morning is mostly about making calls, then in the afternoon, we plan the next day. Because we push ourselves, we want to be the best! I always want to be number one, and that makes me work harder! And our numbers speak for themselves.

Out of the Ordinary

I really like it at HG, I tell everyone who will listen.

Like I suspected in the interview, the culture is amazing. It’s important, in a job like ours, it can be challenging, if I had no one to talk to about it, it might be more difficult. But what’s also amazing is that I get to speak to interesting people every day. Whether they’re my coworkers or C-suite executives at global businesses, folks with Ivy League degrees and, occasionally, some who’ve made it without the networking opportunities given by a blue chip college, the reputation of HG unlocks the door. Speaking with them, in some cases in only a few minutes, I can introduce them to the power of HG’s Technology Intelligence and how it can deliver growth for their companies. It’s a compelling proposition and it’s rewarding for me to tell this real-life story, it’s such a rush. And even if you’re having a bad day, you book one demo and you’re having a good day right away!

HG is in a very competitive market, but as the leader in Technology Intelligence, most people want to listen!

Every day, the work I put in directly correlates to not only my success but HG’s. I work hard, something that my parents and siblings taught me the importance of. The saying “If you work hard, eventually it will pay off” really is true at HG. We get paid well, but we also get a lot of recognition. HG leaders are quick to recognize good performance — we regularly get a shout-out from VPs and EVPs. That also motivates me a lot, it makes me feel valued, and even exceptional. Even when it’s challenging, everyone here is super motivating, so why wouldn’t you want to try your best?

That’s why I joined HG. And you should too.

I’ve learned so many lessons at HG that stick with me every day: work as hard and as smart as you can, what you put in is what you put out. At HG, we live by these and the HG values.