What a Sales Development Representative does
A Sales Development Representative (SDR) owns the top of the sales funnel: sourcing prospects, running first-touch outreach, qualifying interest, and booking meetings for account executives who close. The role splits selling into two jobs. SDRs create and qualify opportunities. Account executives run the deal from discovery to signature. This division lets closers spend their hours on live deals instead of cold prospecting.Teams split the role by lead source. Outbound SDRs (sometimes titled BDRs) build cold pipeline against a target account list. Inbound SDRs work marketing qualified leads that arrive from demos, content, and form fills. Both hand a vetted prospect to sales once it clears a qualification bar.
How the role fits revenue operations
SDRs are where marketing-sourced demand becomes sales-accepted pipeline. They turn early interest into a sales qualified lead an AE agrees to work, which is the mechanism behind pipeline generation. For inbound, response time drives results, so speed to lead is the metric operators watch first.
Compensation pairs a base salary with a variable tied to booked or accepted meetings. Managers track a small set of activity and outcome numbers.
| Metric | What it measures |
|---|---|
| Activity | Calls, emails, and social touches per day |
| Meetings booked | Qualified meetings set with prospects |
| Meetings accepted | Meetings the AE keeps after review |
| Conversion rate | Accepted meetings that become opportunities |
What good looks like
Strong SDR teams write their qualification criteria down instead of leaving each rep to improvise. Handoffs to AEs carry full context on the prospect and the trigger that prompted outreach. Ramp matters too, since a new SDR rarely hits full quota in the first quarter. As an illustrative convention, many teams allow three to four months of ramp before holding a rep to a full number, though the right figure depends on deal complexity and lead volume.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between an SDR and a BDR?
The titles overlap and many teams use them interchangeably. Where a distinction exists, SDR often refers to reps who qualify inbound leads, while BDR (Business Development Representative) refers to reps who run outbound prospecting against a target account list. Both roles sit at the top of the funnel and hand qualified opportunities to account executives. The right split depends on how your pipeline is sourced.
What is the difference between an SDR and an account executive?
An SDR opens conversations and qualifies interest, then books a meeting for an account executive (AE). The AE runs discovery, demos, negotiation, and the close. Splitting the two roles lets AEs spend their time on active deals while SDRs keep the top of the funnel full. Revenue teams use this structure to protect closing capacity.
How is an SDR's performance measured?
Managers track a mix of activity and outcomes. Activity covers calls, emails, and social touches, while outcomes cover qualified meetings booked, meetings accepted by AEs, and how many of those convert into opportunities. Compensation usually pairs a base salary with a variable tied to accepted meetings or pipeline created. Leading teams weight accepted meetings over raw booked meetings, since that filters out low-quality bookings.
Put these metrics to work
ORM builds custom revenue forecast models that turn concepts like sales development representative (sdr) into prescriptive action for your team.
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