Amy Philo joined Abnormal almost two years ago to lead sales development across some of the company's newest international markets. The opportunity was clear: a best-in-market product, territories that were largely untouched, and a real chance to build something from the ground up. What drew her in wasn't just the growth potential, though. It was the people she met along the way.
"Every single person I spoke with really reinforced that this was the right move. These are people I wanted to work with every day and learn from."
That instinct has shaped how she leads - and what she has built since.
A New Kind of SDR Playbook
One of the founding principles of Abnormal's SDR team is a strict rule: no bulk templated emails. The reasoning is straightforward. The team's job is to build genuine relationships with prospects, and bulk outreach is antithetical to that. When Amy took on her international teams, she made that principle her own, holding her SDRs to it and building a process around it that actually works in practice. Her SDRs use Claude to do deep-level research on every account before they ever make contact, understanding the company's likely pain points, the threat landscape they're navigating, and the specific context that makes Abnormal relevant to them right now.
"We want to build human relationships with our prospects. We don't want to just spam them."
Since that approach went into effect, Amy has seen better conversion rates, stronger meeting quality, and something she values just as much: SDRs who genuinely understand the problems they're solving. They're not reciting a pitch. They arrive at every conversation informed, prepared, and ready to actually listen.
Be Human in an AI World
There's a tagline that Amy's team has adopted, and it captures the philosophy neatly: be human in an AI world. Use everything AI can offer to become as prepared and informed as possible, then show up in the conversation as a person.
"Use all of the information we can get from AI, become almost superhuman with all of that information, go in with data, go in with context, all of the history that we've got. But really be human behind it."
Amy is clear that the human element is not a soft add-on to the process. It's what the whole approach is built around. AI handles the preparation, and what happens next belongs entirely to the person in the conversation: the personality, the curiosity, the ability to read the room and respond to what's actually in front of them. No day looks the same for her team anymore. Some days it's deep account research with Claude, others it's sending a personalized gift to get the attention of a CISO, others it's working a trade show floor. That variety is intentional, and Amy sees it as a reflection of how much the SDR role has evolved and how much more it now demands of the people doing it.
"What used to be considered a very repetitive, tedious job of just picking up the phone and cold calling is no more."
The Coach Behind the Team
Amy's leadership style is hands-on in the most operational sense. When she moved her team onto Orum, a power dialler that gave her real-time visibility into her SDRs' conversations, she gained something she hadn't fully had before: the ability to see precisely where things were breaking down and understand the specific reasons why connects and conversions weren't following through. With that visibility, she could make targeted, incremental adjustments to how her team was approaching conversations, and those small changes added up to meaningful improvements in their numbers. It's the same philosophy she applies to everything: get the right information first, then use it precisely.
That diagnostic approach is part of what makes her effective as a manager. She doesn't just set a direction and step back. She gets into the detail, figures out what's not working, and fixes it.
The team she has built reflects that same precision. Amy is deliberate about surrounding her SDRs with people who bring different mindsets and experiences to the table. The diversity of perspective across her international teams - across the UK, APJ, and LATAM - is something she sees as a genuine advantage. Being challenged and learning from people who think differently makes the team more creative and more well-rounded, and it shows in how they go to market. The clearest proof of that comes in QBRs, when the broader sales org sees exactly what the SDR team contributed and which early conversations turned into closed business.
“It shows how early level conversations and relationships generate something truly special for the business.”
Building From Scratch
When Amy joined, she was managing emerging pods across France, the Middle East, the Nordics, DACH, and Benelux. She has since taken on ownership of the UK, APJ, and LATAM - a portfolio that reflects both Abnormal's international growth and how much Amy has stepped into since she joined. Setting up new territories has been one of the most formative experiences of her time here, and she's direct about what it requires.
"I've played a small part in creating new pods in the international space and it really does take a village."
She has worked closely with peers across sales, marketing, and channel to make those markets work, and she's proud of what the SDR team has been able to pioneer in those territories, planting seeds that the wider business has been able to build on. What's next is more of the same: continuing to develop the UK team, building out APJ, and helping LATAM find its footing. The opportunity is there, the product is there, and after nearly two years of building from scratch, Amy has a pretty clear sense of what it takes to go after it.
Interested in helping build a market from the ground up? Explore go-to-market roles at abnormal.ai/careers.
