Inside the BD team at Amplemarket: how we run outbound in 2026

Before diving in, meet three people from the team.

In this short video, Ana, João, and José Eduardo share what people misunderstand about being a BDR, the biggest mistake they see in outbound today, how AI actually helps in sales, and the one habit every BD team should steal from their team.

Most takes on outbound in 2026 are either selling you a tool or a doom loop, but our Business Development team is doing neither.

This is how the BD team at Amplemarket actually runs outbound today: how they think about intent, what they automate (and what they refuse to), the metric they optimize for, and the people doing the work.

On top of that, they run outbound around five principles: intent before volume, infrastructure before messaging, positive intent over reply rate, AI as an amplifier (not a replacement), and culture over individual heroics.

But before we dive deep into that, let’s start with the basics.

What does a BDR actually do in 2026?

A BDR (Business Development Representative) is responsible for generating qualified pipeline through outbound prospecting. In 2026, the role has evolved from sending high-volume cold emails to building targeted outbound systems that combine signal-based research, AI-assisted personalization, multichannel engagement, and disciplined follow-up.

We would say that a modern BDR is closer to a growth operator than a “cold emailer”, but if you ask most people what a BDR does, they might say something like: “send emails and book meetings.”

José Eduardo Marques, a BDR on the Amplemarket team, disagrees, sharing how “a BDR is not your typical idea of a salesperson. There is a lot of critical thinking and strategy behind what we do. It is not just the sales aspect of it, but really understanding the business, understanding the product, and how we can position it.”

The role blends market research, system building, signal analysis, messaging experimentation, and handoff strategy.

This often surprises people, and João Silva, a senior BDR who has been on the team for four years, is more direct in sharing his opinion: “a lot of people think it is just sending a bunch of emails and booking meetings, but in reality, you are learning how companies generate leads and how to build systems that help you generate a healthy pipeline.”

That word “systems” comes up a lot, and it is because outbound in 2026 is not about clever one-liners, but building systems that create predictable revenue.

None of Amplemarket’s BDRs started in sales

If you scroll through this team’s LinkedIn profiles, you will not find a clean “natural-born salesperson” arc.

You will find translators, hotel receptionists, materials chemists, real estate agents, and even youth basketball coaches.

→ Ana Ribeiro came in from translation and copywriting. With a Master’s in Multilingual Communication from Universidade do Minho, she then spent a couple of years writing for a digital agency in Braga before pivoting to outbound. She has been at Amplemarket since 2022 and now manages partnerships.

→ João Miguel Silva spent six years running front-office operations at hotels and hostels in Porto, plus a few years coaching youth basketball. Two roles that quietly teach you the same thing outbound rewards: reading intent in real time.

→ José Eduardo Marques is the closest thing the team has to a “traditional” hire. Economics grad from FEP, business operations consulting before joining, but he came into the BD team through the strategy door, not the sales floor.

→ Ana Rita Silva sold real estate to high-profile clients in Luxembourg for five years before deciding she wanted to sell something with a faster feedback loop, so she joined the BD team in January 2026.

→ Miguel Lamas spent the first decade of his career in biomedical engineering research at Coimbra (with published academic papers) and then quality control for medical devices. With backgrounds where you are trained to debug systems and listen carefully to clients, he now leads the BD team.

→ Laura Santos sold B2B services in tourism and at a tech startup before joining as a BDR in March 2026. Outside work, she volunteers with two organizations supporting homeless communities in Portugal.

The pattern here is clear: outbound today rewards systems thinking, signal awareness, and empathy, and those skills that get built in a lot of places that do not say “sales” on the door. 

How does Amplemarket’s BD team structure outbound?

For our team outbound does not start with copy. It starts with intent.

Intent before everything

Ana Ribeiro explains it best, stating how “intent is the first thing we look at. It starts with making sure we have a solid foundation at the start of the funnel. So understanding the market, understanding who we are going after, building the right lists, building the right messaging, building the right sequences. And it ends the moment a lead is not only qualified but interested. That is when we hand it over.”

What we mean by “intent” is not company size, not job title, and not generic ICP. Intent means the signals that tell us someone might actually be ready to explore our solution.

Infrastructure before messaging

Most BD teams obsess over copy, João does not.

For him, messaging comes after the infrastructure is solid. He shares that “I do not start by looking at replies. I first look at deliverability”, and that includes domain health, deliverability, and segmentation.

If your emails do not land, nothing else really matters. And on AI: “if your targeting is off and your domain health is weak, AI just helps you scale the problem faster.”

That line pretty much sums up their way of working.

How do we structure an outbound play?

While it's hard to show our exact plays, we can share the architecture every BDR on the team uses.

It comes down to four layers: a copy framework, a quality filter, a personalization model, and a cadence philosophy.

The 5-T framework

Every outbound message, email or social, manual or AI-assisted, runs through five steps.

1. Trigger

A specific, recent observation that proves you did 30 seconds of research.

“I caught your appearance on [podcast] where you mentioned the shift toward PLG.”

2. Think

Surface an unobvious challenge tied to that trigger, framed as curiosity, not assumption.

“I imagine balancing that shift while protecting your enterprise floor is a tricky needle to thread?”

3. Tell

Describe the “after state”, meaning the outcome, not feature.

“We help RevOps teams automate that monitoring so you do not lose expansion revenue during the transition.”

4. Third-party credibility

De-risk with a peer comparison or a specific metric.

“It is how we helped [customer] surface $200k in ‘leaky’ seats last quarter.”

5. Talk

A low-friction CTA is key: we sell the conversation, not the meeting.

“Open to a brief exchange of notes on how you are handling this today?”

The rule we live by: never ask for time, ask for relevance.

The triple-filter

Before any copy goes live, it has to pass three tests.

‍Filter 1: The mobile test. It’s very simple, If it looks like a wall of text on a phone, delete it. Three to five short paragraphs, max, and the CTA should appear without scrolling more than once.

Filter 2: The You-vs-Me ratio should be at least 2:1 in favor of “you/your” over “I/me.” The idea is for the prospect to be the hero of the story.

Filter 3: Delete the jargon. Write at a 6th-to-7th-grade reading level. This to yourself: If a 10-year-old cannot explain what we do after reading the email, it is too complex.

Three layers of personalization

We sort personalization into three levels of depth.

1. ‍Structural personalization is first name and company name. Table stakes, not really impressive on its own.
2. Contextual personalization proves you understand the company’s stage and trajectory, for instance funding, hiring, and expansion.
3. Insight-driven personalization is the uncopyable layer. A podcast the prospect was on, a comment they made on a peer’s post, a competitor signal. This is what bypasses the mental spam filter of senior buyers.

Most teams stop at structural and call it personalization, we however, do not.

Cadence with intent

So simply put it, every touchpoint has a job, we never “ping to check in.”

Across a roughly three-week cadence, four stages each carry distinct weight.

• (Stage 1) Awareness: prove relevance via the trigger.
• (Stage 2) Interest: de-risk with a piece of homework or peer success tied to the prospect’s specific signal.
• (Stage 3) Qualification: show the cost of inaction. What are they leaving on the table by sticking with the status quo?
• (Stage 4) Breakup: leave the door open with a low-friction, altruistic close.

Something important to remember is that spacing matters as much as content.

That said, they leave enough room between touches to let the prospect digest, a rhythm that helps you stay in mind.

What metric should outbound teams actually optimize for?

Reply rate is the metric most BD teams look at, but it’s also the metric most likely to mislead them.

João, who has been a BDR for over four years, has watched the shift firsthand, sharing how “I have seen an increase of replies, but the quality of those replies is getting rarer.”

So they do not optimize for reply rate, they optimize for positive intent rate.

What is positive intent rate?

Positive intent rate is the percentage of outbound responses that indicate real buying interest, not just engagement.

• It excludes unsubscribes, polite “not interested” replies, and deferrals with no context.
• It includes requests for more information, pricing conversations, and meeting requests tied to active problems.

Reply rate and positive intent rate are not the same thing, and the difference matters when you are trying to optimize outbound.

How do we use AI in outbound?

While AI is a big part of the workflow, it is not their brains.

As Miguel puts it, “AI has enhanced our output rather than substituted it.” That includes scaling research and improving execution, but never replacing thinking, empathy, or strategic decision-making.

João builds on that, saying that “AI is an amplifier. It can amplify a good system, and it can expose a bad one.”

That is the philosophy in the BD team.

What we automate: data enrichment, signal detection, and workflow efficiency.

What we do not automate: strategic positioning, empathy, contextual judgment, and relationship awareness.

As Ana put it, “empathy is something that AI is not really going to be sensitive to,” and that is an important edge.

The five principles that guide our outbound in 2026

If you asked our BD team to summarize how they run outbound, it would come down to five principles.

1. Intent before volume.
2. Infrastructure before messaging.
3. Positive intent over reply rate.
4. AI as an amplifier, not a replacement.
5. Culture over individual heroics.

What makes a great BDR?

The best BDRs at Amplemarket do not act like executors. Instead, they question metrics, obsess over intent, think in systems, and collaborate constantly.

João says it plainly: the “differentiation does not come from writing a smart AI email. It comes from signal quality. It comes from targeting precision.”

But skill is not the only differentiator, as culture matters within the team.

Laura, who just joined in March 2026, describes the team dynamic simply saying that “we always move together, and we try to push each other.” Something José Eduardo reinforces: “every idea and opinion is valid. Every idea will be considered and explored.”

If you ask the other newest member of the team, Ana Rita, that sentiment is felt from day one: “the team helps each other and does not leave anyone behind.”

Two recent joiners, and the same observation. That unity is the foundation for a team that operates as one.

What advice would you give someone starting as a BDR in 2026?

If you are entering outbound today, here is what this team would tell you.

1. Learn deliverability before copywriting. If your emails do not land in the inbox, nothing else matters.
2. Track positive intent, not just replies or vanity metrics. Engagement without qualification wastes sales bandwidth.
3. Study how pipeline is actually built in your industry, not just how it is talked about on LinkedIn.
4. Think in systems, not tasks. Outbound is an engine, not a checklist.

Ask questions. Be curious. Test things.

And maybe most importantly: do not reduce yourself to a “meeting booker.”

You are building the engine.

Traditional outbound vs. how we run it

Final takeaway

BD at Amplemarket is not just a top-of-funnel support role, it is strategic revenue creation.

It is understanding markets, building repeatable systems, knowing when automation helps, and when it hurts. And, most importantly, it is a team that pushes each other forward.

That is how they run outbound in 2026: human first, AI empowered, signal-driven, and built together.

P.S. message approved by yours truly, ex-BDR turned Marketing specialist at Amplemarket, with an honorary BD title.

Meet the team

The BDRs and BD lead behind everything you just read. Say hi on LinkedIn:

• Miguel Lamas – BD Team Lead
• Ana Ribeiro – Partnerships Manager
• João Miguel Silva – Senior BDR
• José Eduardo Marques – BDR
• Ana Rita Silva – BDR
• Laura Santos – BDR

Want to join us?

If this sounds like a company you’d want to be part of, we're currently hiring. Check out the open roles on the Amplemarket careers page.

Up next in the series

How our SDR team does cold calling in 2026. Stay tuned!