Sales Development Representative (SDR)

TL;DR

A sales rep responsible for outbound prospecting and inbound qualification, handing qualified opportunities to Account Executives.

SDRs sit at the top of the sales funnel. They prospect target accounts, run cold outreach, qualify inbound leads, book discovery calls, and feed pipeline to AEs. The role is metrics-heavy: activities per day, meetings booked, and qualified opportunities created.

SDR org design (volume vs account-based, dialing vs writing, paired vs pooled) is a strategic choice driven by ICP and ACV. High-ACV enterprise teams favor account-based; SMB-heavy motions favor volume.

Worked example

A 4-person SDR team books 240 qualified meetings in Q3 (60 each, ~1 per business day) at $42k base + $18k OTE per rep. Pipeline created: $4.8M; cost per qualified meeting ~$1,000 — within healthy SaaS benchmarks.

Common pitfalls

• Hiring SDRs before AEs can close the deals SDRs source.
• Measuring activity without measuring qualified opportunity quality.
• Burning out SDRs with unrealistic activity quotas.

When this shows up in a pitch deck

Sales-led decks reference SDR-to-AE ratios when explaining the GTM cost structure.

Related terms

• Business Development Representative — An outbound-focused sales rep who creates pipeline by prospecting target accounts, often used interchangeably with SDR.
• Account Executive — The sales rep who owns the deal cycle from qualified opportunity to signed contract, carrying revenue quota.
• Sales Pipeline — The set of qualified opportunities currently moving through the sales cycle, segmented by stage and weighted by probability.
• Win Rate — The percentage of qualified sales opportunities that result in closed-won deals over a given period.
• Sales Velocity — A composite measure of how quickly a sales team converts pipeline into closed revenue, derived from deals × win rate × ACV ÷ cycle length.

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