Sales development representative (SDR)

A sales development representative is a salesperson whose job is to find and contact prospects, qualify them, and book meetings for account executives to run, rather than to close deals.

The role split off from account executive work in the 2000s as software companies grew, and it's now standard at most B2B companies with a sales team. The SDR prospects. The AE closes. The handoff between them is the booked meeting.

A US SDR costs $70,000 to $100,000 a year fully loaded, before tools, data, and a manager's time, and takes three or four months to ramp. Turnover is high, usually 12 to 18 months, because the job is a stepping stone to AE. That math is why a lot of companies rent the function from an agency instead of hiring it, and why some agencies sell "SDR as a service" at $6,000 to $15,000 a month per rep.

We don't hire SDRs. The people on our team who do calls and LinkedIn for clients work a list built from buying signals, not a database pull, and they're on the account rather than rented by the seat. The difference is what the person is working from, not the title.

An example

A software company hires two SDRs in January. They ramp through April, work a database pull through the company's sequencer, and book a meeting for roughly every 80 dials. One leaves in the fall for an AE job elsewhere. The company spent about $200,000 and got seven months of production from one and a half people. The same company could have had a signal-based program running in week two.

Related roles

A BDR, or business development representative, is the same job under a different name at some companies. An account executive is the closer the SDR books for.

Related terms

Multi-channel outbound · Appointment setting · Outbound prospecting · Rented sales rep

If you want this run for you, see our outbound agency, or outbound for B2B SaaS.