A Promising Startup With No Outbound and No Time to Build One.
Heave was a 10-person construction SaaS company with a 3-person sales team — a VP of Sales, and 2 Account Executives handling all demos. They had no SDRs and no outbound motion.
They knew they needed to build an outbound team to accelerate growth. But they were a lean startup with too many priorities competing for attention. They had the hunger but not the bandwidth to build a proper SDR function from scratch — sourcing candidates, running a rigorous hiring process, building an onboarding programme, and managing the ramp period all at once.
Mark stepped in to do exactly that.
The Three Gaps Holding Them Back.
No true CRM. Their Account Executives were good — but without a proper CRM, there was no visibility into outbound effort, no tracking of activity metrics, and no ability to measure or manage performance at scale.
No outbound tracking or reporting. They had no standard process for conducting, tracking, and measuring outreach. Every rep was doing it differently — which meant there was nothing to coach to, nothing to optimise, and no way to know what was working.
No compensation plan for SDRs. Before hiring anyone, they needed a comp structure that would attract high-performance candidates and reward the right behaviours — without overpaying for mediocrity.
Design. Build. Launch.
Before a single candidate was sourced, Mark built the foundation that the team would run on.
- Repeatable outbound motion with achievable activity targets
- Professional CRM implementation — proper tracking from day one
- Compensation plan designed to attract top talent and reward performance
Mark ran a character-driven search and selection process that identified the right people — not just the available ones.
- 100+ candidates sourced across three rounds of interviews
- 3 SDRs selected — each chosen for coachability, hunger and drive
- Full process completed in 4 weeks
An on-site onboarding programme built to get reps productive in weeks — not months.
- Company buy-in established — reps understood the mission and culture
- Cross-functional synergy built with CS team and AEs
- Skills built around systems, value proposition, and talk tracks
- Live call blocks with observations and reviews — 3x per week for weeks 2–4
3x Revenue in 12 Months — and a $7M Series A.
First full month of calling: The team of 3 SDRs averaged booking a demo per day — and each landing 10+ meetings complete per month from a standing start. The infrastructure, the training, and the character of the hires all came together immediately.
Twelve months later: Heave had 3x growth in revenue from the start of the engagement. The outbound engine built by Mark was a primary driver of that growth.
The Capstone: Heave raised a $7M Series A. Investors backed the company based on its consistent, proven ARR growth trajectory — the growth that the SDR engine had powered.