Stop the Handoff Chasm: Evolving SDRs into Mid-Funnel Co-Pilots
Tom brings a rich background having built teams globally and worked in GTM consulting. At Climate-X (an early Series A company selling into enterprise banks with 12+ month sales cycles), they faced two core challenges:
Lack of Mid-Market/SMB AE Roles: Without a traditional internal stepping-stone role, SDRs lacked career progression paths into strategic AE roles, leading to staff churn.
Top-of-Funnels Drop-off: Enterprise bank deals require heavy early-stage relationship building and multi-threading. When BDRs handed leads off to AEs (who naturally prioritize closing low-hanging fruit), effort dropped, and leads went cold.
To solve this, Tom created the Commercial Associate function. Moving past traditional top-of-funnel activity, Commercial Associates co-pilot deals deep into the mid-funnel (handling technical business reviews, multi-threading, expansion, and account planning). This session focuses on how creating this hybrid role improves deal velocity, retains top talent, and creates better alignment across enterprise cycles.