What Is SDR (Sales Development Representative)?

An SDR (Sales Development Representative) is a sales role dedicated to the top of the funnel: finding prospects, running outreach across email, phone, and LinkedIn, qualifying interested leads, and booking meetings for account executives who close the deals. The role exists because prospecting and closing are different jobs with different rhythms — splitting them lets closers spend their time in deals while SDRs generate the at-bats. SDR and BDR (Business Development Representative) are often used interchangeably; where organizations distinguish them, one commonly handles inbound qualification and the other outbound prospecting, though which title takes which duty varies by company. SDRs are measured on activity (touches, conversations) and, more importantly, on outcomes: qualified meetings booked, meetings held, and pipeline sourced. It is typically an entry point into tech sales, with tenure in the role averaging around a year and a half before promotion to closing roles.

SDR (Sales Development Representative) in Practice

The economics of the role drive most decisions about it. A fully loaded in-house SDR in the US typically costs $80,000 to $120,000 per year once base salary, commission, data subscriptions, sending tools, and management overhead are counted — and that is before the three or so months of ramp during which output is minimal, and the recruiting cost of backfilling when the average SDR moves on within two years. A productive SDR running email as a core channel works within the same physics as any outbound program: roughly 25 emails per mailbox per day for deliverability, multiple mailboxes and domains to reach volume, and reply rates in the 2-15% band that reward tight targeting. The common mistake is hiring a single SDR with no data budget, no tooling, no playbook, and no manager, then judging outbound as a channel when the hire struggles. An SDR is one component of a system; teams that cannot fund the whole system usually get better unit economics from outsourcing the function.