A Sales Development Representative (SDR) is a sales professional focused on generating and qualifying new leads for a business through prospecting and outreach. As the first point of contact, they identify and educate potential customers, creating a pipeline of qualified opportunities before handing them off to an account executive or another closing role.
SDRs are the engine of the sales pipeline, responsible for identifying and nurturing potential customers. They act as the initial bridge between the company and its future clients, ensuring the sales team engages only with well-vetted, high-potential leads.
To excel as an SDR, a unique blend of hard and soft skills is essential. These professionals must be adept researchers and compelling communicators to consistently generate high-quality leads. Success hinges on their ability to connect with prospects while navigating the technical aspects of sales.
While the titles are often used interchangeably, SDRs and BDRs can have distinct roles focused on different parts of the lead generation process.
The SDR role is a common entry point into a sales career. Successful SDRs often advance to become Account Executives, where they close deals. Other growth paths include moving into sales management, customer success, or even marketing, making it a versatile foundation for professional development.
SDRs leverage a robust tech stack to streamline prospecting and engage potential customers effectively.
How is an SDR's performance typically measured?
Performance is primarily measured by the number of qualified opportunities or meetings booked for account executives. Key metrics often include call volume, email response rates, and conversion rates from lead to opportunity, ensuring a focus on quality over quantity.
Is the SDR role just about cold calling?
No, it's much more. While cold calling is a component, modern SDRs use a multi-channel approach, including personalized emails and social media engagement, to connect with prospects and build relationships before the first call.
What is a typical compensation structure for an SDR?
SDR compensation is usually a mix of a base salary and a variable component like a commission or bonus. This variable pay is tied to achieving specific targets, such as the number of qualified meetings set or opportunities generated.
Consumer Relationship Management (CRM) is a strategy for managing all of a company's relationships and interactions with its customers.
Lead scoring models rank prospects by assigning points for their behaviors and demographics, helping sales teams prioritize their outreach.
Account-Based Everything (ABE) is a strategy aligning sales, marketing, and success teams to focus on a specific set of high-value accounts.
The awareness stage is the first step in the buyer's journey, where a potential customer realizes they have a problem or an opportunity to explore.
A Content Management System (CMS) is software for creating, managing, and modifying website content without needing specialized technical skills.
A sales lead is a potential customer—an individual or organization that has shown interest in your company's products or services.
Intent-based leads are potential customers whose online actions—like searches or content engagement—signal a clear interest in buying a solution.
Email marketing is a digital strategy where businesses send targeted emails to prospects and customers to build relationships and drive sales.
A sales kickoff (SKO) is an annual event for a sales team to celebrate wins, align on goals, and get motivated for the upcoming year.
Data enrichment is the process of enhancing raw data by adding missing information from other sources, making it more complete and actionable.
Account management is the post-sales practice of building and nurturing long-term relationships with a company's most valuable clients.
Lead generation is the process of identifying and cultivating potential customers for a business's products or services.
Predictive lead generation uses data and AI to find prospects most likely to buy, helping teams focus their efforts on high-value leads.
An elevator pitch is a short, memorable summary of what you do, designed to be delivered in the time it takes to ride an elevator.
Technographics is data that outlines a company’s technology stack, helping B2B teams identify prospects based on the software and hardware they use.
Regression testing ensures that new code changes don’t negatively impact existing features. It's a key step to maintain software quality after updates.
The FAB technique is a sales framework connecting product features to advantages and then to the specific benefits for the customer.
Revenue Operations (RevOps) is a business function that aligns a company's sales, marketing, and customer service teams to drive predictable revenue.
Competitive analysis means identifying your rivals and assessing their strategies to pinpoint your own business's strengths and weaknesses.
Account-Based Marketing (ABM) software helps teams coordinate personalized marketing and sales efforts to land high-value customer accounts.
An Account Executive (AE) is a sales professional responsible for closing new business deals and managing existing client relationships to drive revenue.
Pipeline coverage is a key sales metric. It's the ratio of your total open pipeline value to your sales quota for a specific period.
User interaction is any action a user takes within a digital interface, like clicking a button, scrolling a page, or filling out a form.
An AI sales script generator is a tool that uses artificial intelligence to create personalized sales scripts for any outreach scenario.
Stress testing is a type of software testing that determines a system's robustness by pushing it beyond its normal operational capacity.
Sales metrics are quantifiable data points that track and measure a sales team's performance against specific goals and objectives.
Video selling uses personalized video messages to engage prospects, build rapport, and guide them through the sales funnel to close more deals.
Mid-market companies are businesses larger than small businesses but smaller than large enterprises, often defined by revenue or employee size.
GPCTBA/C&I is a sales qualification framework for understanding a prospect's goals, plans, challenges, timeline, budget, and authority.
Closed Lost is a sales term for a deal that didn't go through. The prospect decided not to buy, or the sales team disqualified them.
Competitive intelligence (CI) is the ethical gathering and analysis of market data to inform strategic business decisions and gain an advantage.
Lead routing is the automated process of distributing incoming leads to the right sales reps based on predefined criteria.
Email verification is the process of confirming that an email address is valid and deliverable, which helps improve campaign performance.
Learn about buyer intent, including understanding buyer intent signals, strategies to capture buyer intent, & buyer intent vs. customer interest.
Network monitoring is the continuous process of tracking a computer network's performance and health to detect and resolve issues proactively.
Responsive design is an approach where a website's layout adapts to the user's screen size, providing an optimal experience on any device.
A sales demo is a presentation where a sales rep shows a prospect how a product or service works and solves their specific problems.
Channel partners are third-party firms that help market and sell a company's products or services, acting as an indirect sales force.
Intent data tracks a user's online behavior—like searches and site visits—to identify signals that they are ready to make a purchase.
A demand generation framework is a strategic process for creating awareness and interest in your product, ultimately driving new business.
Sales intelligence is technology that gathers and analyzes data to help salespeople find and understand prospects and existing clients.
Hadoop is an open-source framework designed for the distributed storage and processing of extremely large data sets across clusters of computers.
Retargeting marketing is a digital advertising strategy that targets users who have previously interacted with your website or brand online.
Persona-based marketing uses fictional customer profiles, or personas, to create targeted messaging for specific audience segments.
Site retargeting is a marketing strategy that shows ads to people who have previously visited your website but left without converting.
CRM integration connects your CRM software with other tools, creating a unified system for all your customer data and business processes.
Warm outbound is a sales strategy for contacting prospects who've shown interest in your brand through prior engagement, like website visits.
Learn about B2C2B, including how B2C2B transforms sales, key strategies for B2C2B success, & differences between B2C2B and B2B2C.
Learn about buyer intent data, including sourcing and interpreting buyer intent data, & key metrics in buyer intent analysis.
Website visitor tracking collects and analyzes data on user behavior to understand their journey and improve the overall user experience.
NoSQL ("Not only SQL") databases offer a flexible alternative to relational models, excelling at managing large and unstructured data sets.
Mobile compatibility ensures your site or app works flawlessly on mobile devices, like smartphones and tablets, for a seamless user experience.
A sales call is a real-time conversation between a salesperson and a prospect, aiming to persuade them to purchase a product or service.
Docker is a tool that packages applications and their dependencies into isolated environments called containers for easy deployment and scaling.
A commission is a service charge paid to an agent for a transaction. It's typically a percentage of the sale, rewarding performance directly.
Demand is the economic principle describing a consumer's desire and willingness to purchase a specific good or service at a particular price.
HubSpot is a customer relationship management (CRM) platform with tools for marketing, sales, and service, all aimed at helping businesses grow.
A sales territory is a specific group of customers or a geographic area that a salesperson or sales team is responsible for managing.
Cohort analysis is a behavioral analytics tool that groups users with common traits to track their actions and engagement over time.
A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is a prospect who has shown interest based on marketing efforts but isn't yet ready for a sales conversation.
Inside sales is a remote sales process where reps sell products or services via phone, email, and other digital tools instead of in person.
Sales operations analytics is the practice of analyzing sales data to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the entire sales process.
Integration testing is a software testing phase where individual modules are combined and tested together to verify their interaction.
A cold email is an initial outreach sent to a potential customer with whom you've had no prior contact, aiming to introduce your business.
Learn about B2B data platform, including key benefits of B2B data platforms, choosing the right B2B data platform, challenges in implementing B2B data platforms.
Cross-selling is a sales tactic of encouraging customers to purchase products or services that are related to what they're already buying.
Content Rights Management involves controlling the use and distribution of copyrighted digital media to protect intellectual property.
Revenue forecasting is the process of estimating a company's future revenue, using historical data and market trends to guide strategic planning.
Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are websites that look and feel like native mobile apps, offering features like offline access and push notifications.
Psychographics categorizes people by their attitudes, interests, and lifestyles, revealing the 'why' behind their purchasing decisions.
A marketing play is a repeatable tactic used to achieve a specific marketing goal, like generating leads or driving engagement.
Account mapping is comparing your customer list with a partner's to find common prospects and unlock new sales opportunities.
Sales Engineers blend deep technical knowledge with sales acumen, demonstrating a product's value and solving customer problems to drive revenue.
An email cadence is a scheduled sequence of emails sent to prospects over a specific period to nurture leads and drive engagement.
Product-Led Growth (PLG) is a business strategy where the product itself drives user acquisition, conversion, and expansion.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search results.
Objection handling in sales is the process of responding to a prospect's concerns about a product or service to move the deal forward.
Cold emailing is sending unsolicited emails to potential customers you haven't contacted before, aiming to start a business conversation.
Key accounts are a company's most valuable customers, vital due to their significant revenue contribution and strategic importance for growth.
An enterprise is a large-scale organization, often a corporation, defined by its complex structure and substantial number of employees.
An Account Development Representative (ADR) identifies and qualifies new business opportunities, creating a pipeline for account executives.
Lead scoring is the process of assigning points to leads based on their attributes and actions to determine their sales-readiness.
Accounts Payable (AP) is the money a company owes its suppliers for goods or services bought on credit. It's listed as a current liability.
De-duping, or data deduplication, is the process of eliminating duplicate copies of data within a dataset to improve accuracy and save space.
Digital advertising is the practice of delivering promotional content to users through various online and digital channels like social media or search engines.
“End of Quarter” (EOQ) refers to the final weeks of a business quarter when sales teams rush to meet quotas, often leading to a flurry of deals.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the total cost a business spends to gain a new customer. It includes all sales and marketing expenses.
Lead enrichment adds third-party data to your raw lead lists, creating fuller prospect profiles for more effective and personalized outreach.
Firmographic data is information used to classify firms. It includes attributes like industry, employee count, location, and annual revenue.
Chatbots are AI-powered programs that simulate human conversation. They interact with users via text or voice, typically for customer support.
Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior for a given situation.
Total Addressable Market (TAM) represents the maximum revenue a company can earn by selling its product or service in a specific market.
Cold calling is a sales tactic where reps contact potential customers by phone who haven't previously expressed interest in their product or service.
A knowledge base is a self-serve online library of information about a product, service, department, or topic.
Lead scraping is the process of automatically extracting contact information and other relevant data about potential customers from online sources.
A sales pipeline is a visual representation of where prospects are in the sales process, from the first contact to the final sale.
No Cold Calls is a sales strategy that replaces unsolicited calls with warm outreach to prospects who have already demonstrated interest.
Data security protects digital information from unauthorized access, corruption, or theft throughout its entire lifecycle.
A sales dashboard is a visual tool that centralizes and displays key sales data, metrics, and KPIs to help teams track performance and goals.
A Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) API is a web service that uses XML to exchange structured information between different applications.