Sales Development Representative (SDR)
A Sales Development Representative (SDR) is a sales role focused on inbound lead qualification and top-of-funnel prospecting rather than closing. SDRs respond to and qualify marketing-generated leads, then hand qualified opportunities to account executives who run the deal to close.
How it works
SDRs typically work inbound signals — form fills, demo requests, content downloads — plus some outbound follow-up, qualifying each lead against fit and intent criteria before booking a meeting for an account executive.
Why it matters
Splitting prospecting from closing lets each role specialize: SDRs generate qualified pipeline volume while AEs focus on conversion. Clear SDR-to-AE handoff criteria (an agreed definition of a qualified opportunity) is what keeps the model efficient.
What does an SDR actually do in a normal day?
A typical day splits into three blocks. The morning goes to responding: new inbound leads, replies to yesterday's sequences, and meetings to confirm. The middle of the day goes to live touches, usually call blocks and personalised first emails to the highest-priority accounts. The afternoon goes to research and list work for tomorrow, plus logging outcomes so the pipeline shows what happened.
The job is qualification, not closing. An SDR's output is a booked meeting with a buyer who fits, handed to an account executive with notes on what was learned. What is an SDR covers the role in more detail, and discovery call questions that qualify lists the questions most teams use in the first conversation.
How is SDR performance usually measured?
By meetings that the account executive accepts, not by activity alone. Activity counts such as dials and emails sent are useful as leading indicators, but a rep who makes 80 calls a day and books meetings that no-show or fail to qualify is adding cost, not pipeline. Many teams track three numbers per SDR: meetings booked, meetings held, and meetings accepted as qualified opportunities.
Say an SDR books 20 meetings in a month, 15 are held and 9 become opportunities. The conversion from held to accepted (60%) says more about qualification quality than the 20 does. Compensation plans that pay only on booked meetings tend to push the first number up and the third down, which is why many pay on held or accepted meetings instead.
How many SDRs does one account executive need?
There is no fixed ratio, and published ratios vary widely because they depend on deal size and sales cycle. The useful way to work it out is from capacity. If an account executive can run 12 first meetings a week alongside their existing pipeline, and one SDR reliably produces 5 accepted meetings a week, then two to three SDRs keep that AE full. Fewer, and the AE prospects for themselves; more, and meetings get rushed or dropped.
Review the ratio every quarter, because both numbers move. A new market segment can halve an SDR's output while they learn it.
What tooling does a new SDR team need first?
A CRM that everyone updates, a way to send sequences from warmed mailboxes, a dialer, and one shared inbox for replies. Data tools and intent feeds come later, once the team has a working process to feed them into. Starting with five disconnected tools usually means the first month goes to integration work instead of conversations.
Autocloz puts those pieces in one product, and its free plan covers 5 users, which fits a small first SDR pod. The outbound sales solution page shows how the pieces fit together.
How Autocloz handles it
Autocloz gives SDR teams a free CRM for 5 users — unlimited on paid — with shared sequences, a unified inbox and a pipeline board, so qualification activity and handoffs to closers live in one system instead of scattered tools.
Free tools for this
No signup required — they run in your browser.
FAQ
What is the difference between an SDR and a BDR?
The titles overlap and vary by company, but SDR usually denotes inbound-focused qualification of marketing leads, while BDR denotes outbound-focused prospecting into net-new accounts. Both feed qualified opportunities to account executives.
Do SDRs close deals?
Generally no. SDRs qualify and book meetings; account executives run the demo, negotiation and close. Some smaller teams have a single rep do both, but the specialized model separates the two.
Related terms
Multichannel sequencing is automating a coordinated outreach cadence across more than one channel — for example email, then a LinkedIn touch, then a call, then a WhatsApp follow-up — from a single sequence, with per-channel timing and safety rules.
Lead enrichment is the process of automatically adding missing data to a lead or company record — job title, company size, industry, verified email, phone, LinkedIn, technographics — from third-party data sources, so reps can segment, personalize and prioritize without manual research.
A sales sequence is an automated, pre-defined series of outreach steps — emails, calls, LinkedIn touches, texts — that fire on a schedule to move a prospect from cold to a conversation. Each step specifies a channel, a delay and often a branching condition (like skip if the prospect already replied), so follow-up happens consistently without a rep remembering every touch.
A Business Development Representative (BDR) is a sales role focused on outbound prospecting — generating net-new pipeline by proactively reaching accounts that have not raised their hand. BDRs research target accounts, run cold outreach across channels, and book qualified meetings for account executives.