Sales Development Representative

Are you ready to power the World's connections?

If you don't think you meet all of the criteria below but are still interested in the job, please apply. Nobody checks every box - we're looking for candidates that are particularly strong in a few areas, and have some interest and capabilities in others.

About the role:

At Kong, our Sales Development team works closely with our partners in both Sales and Marketing to build fanatical customer enthusiasm around Kong. Sales Development reps are responsible for identifying and qualifying new opportunities for our sales organization. We view our Sales Development program as the best way to turbocharge a long and successful career in sales and view our Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) as the next wave of Account Executives at Kong.

To aid in this endeavor, we invest heavily in the training and development of our team. This includes a 2-week long sales bootcamp, weekly 1-1 mentorship, and global virtual group trainings. By joining our team, you are making an investment in yourself that will accelerate the rest of your sales career.

Our SDRs gain an understanding of our product, community, who we sell to, why they care, and what makes us relevant. They learn how to generate a pipeline quickly and effectively as well as how to achieve a good discovery and qualification. The team is a crucial resource for sales teams across Kong to get great talent from. This helps us scale our teams, as well as ensure that we have a culture of meritocracy.

Being an SDR, is often a first step to jump-starting a career in sales. At Kong, we have a culture that celebrates diversity, fosters growth and enablement, and ensures that we provide our SDRs with the tools and the confidence that they need to grow their careers.

The SDR leadership team has a true understanding of where each SDR is at in their personal development process, and mentors and enables them to ensure that they have the means and opportunity to be considered for their next role. At Kong, we truly believe that if you want to earn your MBA in sales, this is the place to be. As a leadership team, we spend an exorbitant amount of time working in the trenches with our teams to help them fine hone their business and sales acumen and ramp them to productivity, success, and greater roles.

• Why should you want to work at Kong?
• Market Opportunity - We are on a quest to build a $10b+ software company over the next few years and need YOUR help!
• APIs are driving innovation across every industry!
• Strong VC team, Series D, strong year over year revenue growth!
• Technical Leadership - We are recognized as the leader in innovation in the connectivity space.
• Marco, our CTO/co-founder - "We are the Cisco of L4 and L7" - CUBE Conversation, March 2021
• We are the leading innovator in the connectivity space!
• Amazing Team & Culture - Come be a "Konger" and find out what we mean.
• Great Place to Work Certified in 2020 & 2021
• Kong employees discuss our culture at our 2020 Company Kickoff
• Building Great Products - Learn why the world's largest companies love our tech!
• Kong Named a Leader in the 2020 Gartner Magic Quadrant
• Over 250m+ downloads of our open source API gateway! Over 40k+ stars on Github between Kong API and Kong Insomnia!
• What you'll be doing: Your First 90 Days
• By the end of month 1, you will:
• Have met your new team and had fun playing with some new tools
• Become a part of the wider Kong family
• Have had a successful sales bootcamp training
• Have a good understanding of what makes Kong's product offerings so special
• Understand how our Account Development, Marketing and Account Executive teams all work together
• By the end of month 2, you will:
• Be comfortable talking to clients on the phone about Kong
• Have worked with our Account Executive team on your first opportunity
• Have shadowed a ton of calls and practiced several role plays
• Started delivering your ramp quota
• By the end of month 3, you will:
• Know our sales funnel inside and out, and feel confident to add value to our sales org
• Show clear delivery of our sales methodologies
• Provide insights to both our Sales Development and marketing organizations to help us to continue to iterate and improve
• Deliver against your ramp quota

Role Overview & Key Responsibilities:

• Work with the Sales team to develop and inbound and outbound campaigns from idea-generation through to qualified call
• Develop strong sales and product knowledgeInteract with IT and business decision makers via telephone, video, LinkedIn and email
• Update lead and prospect activity in Salesforce to ensure effective lead management
• Set qualified introductory meetings for the Sales team
• Nurture early phase opportunities for future pipeline potential
• Exceed monthly and quarterly opportunity quota
• Build strong relationships with our marketing team and Account Executives, where we pull together to maximize the win for our businessInvest in your self-development, focusing on the skills and attributes that will make you successful in your core role and get you set for future success
• And any additional tasks required by manager

What you'll bring:

• 1-2+ years of strong sales or customer-facing experience
• A self-starter with a track record of hitting and exceeding goals
• A 'hunter' mentality - comfortable prospecting, cold-calling, and following up on incoming leads and strong desire to win
• Ability and willingness to learn, react to and share lessons learned across the organisation
• Open to feedback and can apply to your daily workflow
• Outstanding communication skills including both phone and written communication as well as active listening
• Extraordinary character with an incredible drive for success, high work ethic, curious by nature, and obsessed with smashing sales goals
• Validated time leadership skills and ability to work independently and through coaching
• Desire to work in a driven and fast-paced environment
• Passionate about cutting-edge technology with the aptitude to learn new and exciting IT software products, as well as, understand business critical solutions quickly
• Fluency in English and Bahasa (Indonesia)

What is a Konger?

We are a group of makers, thinkers, and doers focused on helping today's developers build tomorrow's technology. Our teams work on the bleeding edge of API innovation to provide our users with a central nervous system for data and services.

We put design at the heart of everything we do, and we're relentlessly focused on creating beautiful experiences for our customers. That's why technology companies, major banks, e-commerce innovators, and government agencies put Kong in front of their most important web applications.

We believe in the power of Open Source and everything it stands for. That's why developers around the world enthusiastically contribute on top of our open-source platform.

We are passionate about solving challenges that will fundamentally shape the future of technology, and we're looking for the right people to join us on our mission. If you believe in taking ownership of your work, making an impact, and having fun along the way, we would love to talk to you.

Kong Core Values:

• Be Inclusive. We work together from anywhere to achieve our common goals. Our differences make us stronger.
• Be Authentic. We are genuine, principled and confident without arrogance. Show respect and kindness, especially in tough moments.
• Be Relentlessly Resourceful. We work with purpose, obsession and grit. It takes muscle to do hard things and doing hard things build muscle.
• Be Customer Obsessed. We care. Customers are everything, we put them at the center of everything you do. We are all empowered to make an impact.
• Be Curious. We value ideas over hierarchy. Never accept the status quo. We make bold bets, fail, and learn everyday. There is always a way.
• Be an Owner. We are drivers not passengers and own the quality and outcomes of our work.

About Kong:

Kong creates software and managed services that connect APIs and microservices natively across and within clouds, Kubernetes, data centers and more using intelligent automation. Built on an open source core, Kong's service connectivity platform enables digital innovation by allowing organizations to reliably and securely manage the full lifecycle of APIs and services for modern architectures, including microservices, serverless and service mesh. By providing developer teams with unprecedented architectural freedom, Kong accelerates innovation cycles, increases productivity, and seamlessly bridges legacy and modern systems and applications. For more information about Kong, please visit konghq.com or follow @thekonginc on Twitter.