Step 1 (week 1): the profile, the criteria, the protected list, the baseline
Write the ideal customer profile the SDR Digital FTE will research against, the qualification criteria it will score inbound leads on with their evidence sources, and the protected account list: named accounts, existing customers, and any prospect a rep is actively working, none of which ever receive automated outreach. Record the baseline: rep hours per week on research and CRM, qualified opportunities per week, and the share of opportunities with a current next step.
The protected list matters most. It is what makes the later promotion of cold outreach safe, because the class that is promoted can never reach an account that matters.
Step 2 (week 1–2): connect the CRM with scoped permissions and write the remit
Connect the CRM with a dedicated token that can read records, propose changes, and log activity, but not delete or merge without approval. Any enrichment source is connected the same way on its own line. Write the remit: owns research, first-touch and follow-up drafts, inbound qualification, and hygiene proposals; escalates every reply, every named account, and anything about pricing or terms; never quotes a price, negotiates, or contacts a protected account.
Set the qualification criteria in Targets so that qualified pipeline created is the role's contract from day one.
Step 3 (weeks 2–4): review drafts and qualifications with evidence, all gated
Outreach drafts arrive with the research attached; approve or send back with a reason. Qualified leads arrive with the scorecard, evidence per criterion, and the CRM history, routed to a rep with a summary; reps send back a specific criterion with a reason where they disagree. Hygiene proposals arrive grouped by rep: stage corrections with the logged activity, duplicate merges with the matching fields, field fills from public sources.
Keep everything at Level 0 through the first cycle. Read the send-back reasons weekly: phrasing the team always edits becomes a Brand Brain rule, a criterion always corrected becomes a rewritten criterion.
- Outreach: draft with research, gated
- Qualification: evidence per criterion, routed with a summary
- Hygiene: proposals by rep, confirmed in seconds
- Replies: to the rep, always
Step 4 (first review, day ~30): tune, and promote nothing yet
At the first monthly review, read the FTE's report against targets, the approval rate per class with reasons, and usage. Tune the criteria and the remit. Do not promote outreach yet; one cycle including setup is not a record. Consider promoting public-source field fills in the CRM, which are low-risk and easily reversed, if their record is clean.
Write the review note with the three decisions and the reasons.
Step 5 (weeks 5–8): the second cycle and the reps' rhythm
In the second cycle the reps' rhythm settles: they confirm hygiene proposals in a minute each morning, they start conversations from qualified leads with the research in hand, and they read replies the FTE routed to them with the thread attached. The manager's approval time falls as the remit absorbs the first cycle's reasons. Watch the forecast: stages that match logged activity are the first visible result of hygiene.
The pipeline diagnostic mission is worth running once in this cycle, asking why pipeline moved, to see ranked hypotheses from the CRM's own data.
Step 6 (second review, day ~60): the outreach decision
At the second review, compare against the baseline: selling hours recovered per rep, qualified pipeline created, share of opportunities with a current next step. Then decide whether cold first-touch outreach to prospects outside the protected list has earned autonomy: a long clean run of unchanged approvals, within bounds such as cold prospects only, no reply threads, no named accounts. Promote or deliberately do not, and log it.
Replies, named accounts, existing customers, and pricing never climb, and the protected list is reviewed at every review because accounts change.
What does done look like at day 60?
Done is a CRM whose stages match reality, a qualification step that runs when leads arrive at any hour with evidence a rep can challenge, an outreach class that either earned its promotion from the record or was kept gated for a stated reason, and a baseline comparison in selling hours and qualified pipeline read from Targets. The sales leader spent minutes a day on approvals and an hour a week with the reps' send-back reasons.
What it is not is an autonomous sales machine. Every conversation, every negotiation, and every price is still a rep's, with better preparation and a cleaner pipeline behind them.