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How to cold email for a sales or business development job

A sales manager reads your email the way a buyer reads a cold email, so the email is your first sample. Keep it short, lead with a number against a target, and ask for one small next step.

Updated

What sales posts ask for

Titles include business development executive (BDE), sales development representative (SDR), business development representative (BDR), inside sales and account executive (AE). The posts ask for:

  • Targets: calls a day, meetings booked, revenue closed, and whether you have hit targets before.
  • Inside or field: inside sales works over phone, email and video; field sales means travel, and some posts ask for a two-wheeler and a licence.
  • Languages: English plus Hindi or the language of the territory.
  • A CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho) and, for SDR roles, outreach on LinkedIn and email.
  • A market: India, or the US, UK or Middle East, which often means night or early shifts.
  • Pay as fixed plus incentives, sometimes stated as on-target earnings (OTE).

Your proof as a fresher

Freshers who sell well have usually sold something already. Lead with whichever you have:

  • Sponsorship you raised for a college fest or club: how many companies you approached, how many said yes, and the amount.
  • A sales internship with a target: what it was, and what you reached.
  • Tickets, memberships or products you sold, with a count.
  • Anything you sold on your own: a small business, a freelance service, resale.
  • The languages you speak, if the post names a territory.

Your proof if you are switching in

From retail, hospitality, a call centre, edtech counselling, real estate or teaching, you have numbers. Lead with them:

  • Your target and your achievement over the last few months or quarters.
  • Your rank in the team, if it was good.
  • Conversion: from calls or walk-ins to sales.
  • The size and kind of customer: individuals, shops or companies. B2B roles want to know whether you have sold to businesses.
  • Why the move, in one line, if it isn’t obvious: “I want to sell to businesses, over longer cycles.”

Your proof in two sentences

Sentence one: what you sold, to whom, against what target. Sentence two: your result, and the one thing you did that got it.

Fresher

I led sponsorship for my college’s technical fest and wrote to 140 local and national companies. Eleven signed on, for Rs 4.2 lakh in all, twice what the fest had raised the year before.

Switching from retail

As a store executive at an electronics showroom I sold against a monthly target of Rs 8 lakh and met it in 10 of the last 12 months. My best months came from customers I followed up with on WhatsApp after they left without buying.

Both are made-up examples. The numbers in yours must be your own, and ones you can explain in an interview.

An example email

Vikram, a sales manager at a B2B SaaS company that sells to clinics, posts for SDRs with 1 to 3 years in any sales role. Ayesha has two years as an admissions counsellor at an edtech company. This is the whole email.

To
vikram@cliniqa.example
Subject
Sales Development Representative: Ayesha Siddiqui, 2 years in inside sales

Hi Vikram,

I saw your post for SDRs at Cliniqa. I have spent two years in inside sales as an admissions counsellor at an edtech company, and I want to move to selling to businesses.

My monthly target was 12 enrolments, and over the last six months I averaged 15, second in a team of 20. Most of the difference came from one habit: calling parents back within ten minutes of their child’s demo class ending, while it was still fresh.

Clinic owners are busy buyers, much like the parents I sold to, and I’d like to learn B2B sales on a product they use every day. My resume is attached. Could we speak for ten minutes this week?

Ayesha Siddiqui
+91 98xxx xxxxx
linkedin.com/in/ayeshasiddiqui-example

A made-up example: Ayesha, Vikram and Cliniqa are fictional. Every claim in the email comes from Ayesha’s own resume.

What makes it work:

  • It is short and ends with a specific ask: what a sales manager hopes to see in a rep’s own email.
  • Target, achievement and rank: the numbers sales managers look for first.
  • One habit explains the result, so it reads as skill, not luck.
  • The move from selling to parents to selling to businesses is named, not hidden.

The subject line

The role, your name, and your selling experience in a few words.

  • Sales Development Representative: Ayesha Siddiqui, 2 years in inside sales
  • BDE (Fresher): Harsh Patel, MBA 2026, raised fest sponsorship
  • Account Executive: Lakshmi Menon, 4 years selling SaaS to small businesses

Avoid subjects like “Job application” or “Resume”. The person who posted may have several openings, and the role first tells them which one.

Mistakes to avoid

  • “I have excellent communication skills.” Your email is the evidence: make it short and clear.
  • No numbers. A sales email without a target and a result is easy to skip.
  • Vague words over a hard quarter. Lead with your good months, and be ready to talk about the rest.
  • Asking about fixed pay versus incentives in the first email. That comes once they are interested.
  • Ignoring the shift or the territory. Night shifts for a US market, or field travel, are worth checking before you write.
  • Posts that ask you to pay a “registration fee” or a deposit, or offer only commission with no company named. Skip them.

And the ones that hurt in every role: a guessed address, a generic resume, and an email longer than a phone screen. More in how to email a recruiter about a LinkedIn hiring post.

Where sales posts appear

  • LinkedIn posts by sales managers, founders and recruiters at SaaS, fintech and edtech companies.
  • Company job boards on Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby, under sales or revenue.
  • Telegram and WhatsApp job groups, where many sales openings are forwarded. Check the company before you write.
  • Agency recruiters building sales teams for clients: fine to answer, and expect them to ask before sharing your resume.

A LinkedIn post search to start from (search Posts, sorted by Latest):

Sales posts in two cities

(sales OR BDE OR SDR OR "inside sales") ("share your resume" OR "send your resume") (Mumbai OR Pune)

5 of 5 ORs and ANDs

This one uses all five ORs. To add a third city, drop a role word. LinkedIn finds nothing at all once a search has more than five ORs and ANDs: see how to find hiring posts on LinkedIn. If there is no reply in about a week, follow up once.

Guides for other roles

All of them, with what to lead with for each: cold email by role.