SDR/BDR
SDR/BDR is Sales Development Representatives and Business Development Representatives. The front-line outbound (and sometimes inbound) role that generates qualified pipeline for Account Executives. RevOps owns their tools, metrics, and routing logic.
SDRs (Sales Development Representatives) and BDRs (Business Development Representatives) are the pipeline generation engine. They're the ones doing cold outreach, qualifying inbound leads, booking meetings, and handing off opportunities to Account Executives. The SDR/BDR distinction varies by company — some use SDR for inbound and BDR for outbound, others use them interchangeably. What doesn't vary: RevOps is deeply embedded in how this role operates.
RevOps owns the infrastructure that makes SDRs productive: the lead routing rules that determine who gets which leads, the sequencing tools that power their outreach, the enrichment data that tells them who to call and what to say, and the metrics that determine whether they're generating enough quality pipeline. A poorly configured SDR tech stack or broken routing logic doesn't just hurt SDR productivity — it starves AEs of pipeline and tanks the entire revenue engine.
The Role in the Revenue Org
- Inbound SDR: Qualifies marketing-generated leads against ICP criteria. Speed-to-lead is the critical metric — responding within 5 minutes vs. 30 minutes can mean a 10x difference in qualification rates.
- Outbound BDR: Proactively prospects into target accounts using sequences, social selling, and cold calling. Success depends on data quality (accurate contact info, firmographics, intent signals) and message relevance.
- Hybrid model: Many teams blend inbound and outbound, with SDRs handling both. This requires careful capacity planning to ensure inbound response times don't suffer during outbound push periods.
Metrics RevOps Tracks
- Activities: Emails sent, calls made, social touches. Volume matters but only as a leading indicator. Activity without conversion is just noise.
- Meetings booked: The primary output metric. Track show rate separately — a meeting booked that doesn't happen is worthless.
- Pipeline generated: Dollar value of opportunities created from SDR-sourced meetings. This is the metric that connects SDR work to revenue.
- Conversion rates: Lead-to-meeting, meeting-to-opportunity, opportunity-to-close. Each conversion point tells you something different about SDR quality vs. AE execution.
- Speed-to-lead: Time from inbound lead creation to first SDR touch. Measure in minutes, not hours.
The tools that power SDR teams include Outreach and SalesLoft for sequencing, Apollo for prospecting data, and the CRM for pipeline tracking. For compensation benchmarks across the SDR/BDR role, see our salary data.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between SDR and BDR?
The distinction varies by company. The most common convention: SDRs handle inbound leads (qualifying marketing-generated demand), while BDRs handle outbound prospecting (cold outreach into target accounts). Many companies use the titles interchangeably. What matters operationally is whether the role is inbound-focused, outbound-focused, or hybrid — each requires different tools, metrics, and capacity planning from RevOps.
What metrics should RevOps track for SDRs?
Track the full funnel: activities (emails, calls, social touches) as leading indicators, meetings booked and show rates as output metrics, pipeline generated (dollar value) as the revenue-connected metric, and conversion rates at each stage (lead-to-meeting, meeting-to-opportunity, opportunity-to-close). Also track speed-to-lead for inbound SDRs (measure in minutes) and sequence performance (reply rates, meeting rates by sequence) for outbound. The mistake is over-indexing on activity volume — 200 emails that generate zero meetings is worse than 50 emails that generate 5.
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