Sales Development Representative

Are you ready to be a part of an organization that is transforming the $130B travel industry?

Tern is looking for a high-output Sales Development Representative who is genuinely excited to be on the phones. This is a volume role with a craft component — you'll need both. We're building an outbound motion from scratch in a vertical market where most agencies have never been sold to, which means the opportunity is enormous and the work is real.

We've grown to 10,000+ travel advisors on the platform. Now we're going after the agencies that run them, and we need someone who can open doors at scale.

A few things you should know before applying:

This role has a clear performance standard: 80 dials per day, 10 demos set per week. That's not a stretch goal. It's the baseline. If that number excites you, read on. If it gives you pause, this probably isn't the right fit right now.

That said, SDR at Tern isn't just a dialing job. You'll develop genuine expertise in how travel agencies operate, what breaks down operationally in their day-to-day, and why Tern solves it better than anything else on the market. The reps who hit their numbers here do it because they actually know what they're talking about, not because they're reading from a script.

You'll work directly alongside our AE team, you'll have real ownership over your outreach strategy, and what you build here will shape how Tern grows for years.

Compensation: $60,000 base salary plus variable compensation, with an OTE of $80,000. Variable is paid per qualified demo set at $45 per qualified demo, so hitting your weekly target of 10 demos puts you squarely on track. There's no cap — if you set more, you earn more.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Hit 80 dials per day and set 10 qualified demos per week, consistently

• Prospect and qualify small and mid-sized travel agencies through outbound phone, email, and social outreach

• Build genuine fluency in the travel agency landscape: tool stacks, pain points, GMV, how agencies grow and where they get stuck

• Qualify inbound leads quickly and pass them to AEs with clean context and a clear handoff

• Book discovery calls and demos that AEs actually want to run: solid qualification, no surprises

• Keep HubSpot airtight: every touchpoint logged, every lead status current, no cracks

• Use AI tools to research accounts, personalize outreach at scale, and iterate on messaging. We expect you to push what's possible here, not just use templates

• Share what you're hearing in the field (patterns, objections, language that resonates) to help sharpen our ICP, messaging, and product direction

• Support conference and event outreach, including pre-event targeting and post-event follow-up

WHO YOU ARE

• You're a phone-first person. Email and social are part of the mix, but you pick up the phone without hesitation and you're good at it.

• You treat rejection as data. Outbound is a numbers game and a craft. You understand both, and a tough morning doesn't knock you off your cadence.

• You hold yourself to your own standard. You don't need someone checking your activity dashboard to know whether you had a good day.

• You're organized enough that leads don't fall through the cracks and AEs trust your handoffs

• You move fast and iterate. You'd rather test a new message and learn than workshop it for a week.

• You want to grow into an AE role and you understand that volume, craft, and product knowledge are what get you there

BONUS POINTS

• Experience in travel as an advisor, agency employee, or just someone who genuinely knows the industry

• Prior SDR or outbound sales experience, especially in SaaS

• Familiarity with HubSpot or similar CRM

• Experience with AI-assisted outreach or sales automation tools

WHAT WE VALUE @ TERN

🌱 We’re always leveling up.

Whether you’re deepening your craft, learning from a teammate, or embracing a new challenge, growth is core to our identity.

🧭 We act with optimistic agency.

We take initiative, seek clarity, and move forward, even when the path isn’t obvious. Through every peak and valley, we lead with curiosity, laughter, kindness, and resolve.

💪 We expect operational excellence.

We ship value to our users every single week. We believe that compounding habits lead to sustainable productivity, consistency, and mutual trust.

Operating Principles:

👂 We deeply understand our users.

At every level of the organization, we obsess about understanding those we serve and the industry we operate in.

➕ We embrace the power of and, and not now.

We challenge trade-offs by asking better questions. We break hard problems into small pieces and tackle them with intention. We also know to make the hard call to say “not right now.”

📣 We speak up and move forward.

Everyone at Tern has a voice and a responsibility to use it. We invite healthy tension, share dissenting views early, and challenge each other with curiosity, not ego.

🏃 We move fast and sweat the details.

Velocity matters and relentless progress beats perfection every time. But speed isn’t chaos: we stay aligned, own our outcomes, and care deeply about quality.

🤣 We take the work seriously, but not ourselves.

We hire kind, driven people who elevate the room. If you’ve got a big ego or take yourself too seriously, you won’t last.

WHY JOIN TERN?

• Meaningful equity in a venture-backed startup

• Join a high-performing team with a track record of growing startups from zero to multi-billion dollar valuations

• Be part of a mission-driven company transforming the travel planning space

• A direct path to Account Executive for the right performer

Tern is committed to building a team that represents people from many different backgrounds and life experiences, reflecting our worldview coinciding with the users and customers we serve across the world. We prefer that you apply, so think of our postings as the start of the conversation. Take the chance — you may be a wonderful add to our Tern team, even if you don’t fully match every requirement on the job description.