Sales development is the function that creates qualified sales pipeline before a deal exists. Sales development representatives (SDRs) research target accounts, reach out to them, follow up on inbound interest, qualify the buyers who respond, and hand qualified meetings to the people who close. It sits between marketing and sales because neither of those functions covers that work.
What is sales development?
Sales development is the practice of creating pipeline through proactive outreach to the accounts you want and disciplined follow-up on the leads marketing creates. It exists because of a gap.
Marketing creates interest, then usually stops at the lead. Account executives are paid to close, and every hour they spend chasing an unresponsive prospect is an hour taken from a deal in motion. Without a function in between, leads wait and target accounts go unworked. Sales development is the team built to close that gap.
The model spread through B2B software after Aaron Ross's Predictable Revenue (2011) described how Salesforce split prospecting from closing into specialized roles. The split held because it works: a specialist who only opens conversations gets better at opening them than a closer who does it between deals.
What does a sales development representative do?
An SDR's job is to turn a list of accounts into meetings worth an account executive's time. Day to day, that means:
- Research. Choosing which accounts and people to contact, and finding a reason to contact them now.
- Outreach. Calls, emails, LinkedIn messages and texts, usually in a planned sequence of touches over a few weeks.
- Conversation. Getting past "not interested" to a real discussion of the buyer's problem.
- Qualification. Deciding whether the account fits and whether the timing is real, against criteria the sales team agreed.
- Handoff. Booking the meeting and passing the account executive what was learned, so the buyer does not repeat themselves.
The volume is high. In the Bridge Group's 2025 study of 351 B2B companies, the median SDR made 112 activities a day: 44 phone, 41 email, 19 LinkedIn and 8 text or other. Those activities produced a median of 4.1 quality conversations a day. The gap between those two numbers is the job. Most of the work is getting to the conversation.
Inbound and outbound sales development
The function has two halves, and many teams split them into separate roles.
Outbound SDRs contact accounts that have not raised their hand. They work from a target list, a definition of the ideal customer profile, and signals that suggest an account might be in motion. The work is to start a conversation that would not otherwise happen.
Inbound SDRs follow up on interest that marketing created: demo requests, content downloads, trial sign-ups. The work is speed and judgment. Speed, because interest fades fast. A Harvard Business Review study of 2,241 US companies (Oldroyd, McElheran and Elkington, March 2011) found that companies contacting a web lead within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify it as those that waited longer. Judgment, because most inbound leads are not buyers, and the SDR's job is to find the ones who are.
SDR vs BDR
The titles overlap, and companies use them differently. Salesforce describes SDRs as top-of-funnel specialists who research prospects, qualify interest and book meetings. A common split is SDR for inbound and BDR (business development representative) for outbound, but some companies reverse it and many use the titles interchangeably.
| SDR, as commonly used | BDR, as commonly used | |
|---|---|---|
| Main source of leads | Inbound: demo requests, content, trials | Outbound: target accounts that have not engaged |
| Core skill | Fast, accurate qualification | Research and starting cold conversations |
| Typical measure | Speed to lead, qualified meetings from inbound | Meetings booked from outbound, pipeline created |
| Usually works with | Marketing on lead flow | Account executives on target accounts |
The title matters less than the agreement behind it: which leads the rep owns, what counts as qualified, and what the handoff includes.
How the sales development process works
Every sales development team runs some version of the same loop:
- Define the market. Which accounts can succeed with what you sell, and which to turn down.
- Watch for signals. Hiring, leadership changes, funding, technology changes and inbound activity that say an account might be ready.
- Research. Enough to know why this account and this person, and why now.
- Write the message. Specific to the buyer's role and situation, not a template with a name swapped in.
- Run the sequence. A planned set of touches across channels, at a pace the buyer will tolerate.
- Qualify. Against agreed criteria, in the first real conversation.
- Hand off, and learn. Book the meeting, pass the context, and feed what happened back into the targeting and the message.
B2B purchases involve groups, which makes the research step harder than it looks. Forrester's State of Business Buying 2024 found that on average 13 people are involved in a buying decision and 89 percent of purchases involve two or more departments. An SDR who only ever reaches one contact per account is starting a deal with a single point of failure.
The definitive guide to sales development covers each layer of this system in depth, and where AI fits in it.
Sales development benchmarks (2025)
The Bridge Group has surveyed SDR teams every two years since 2007. Its 10th edition, published in February 2025, covers 351 B2B companies (78 percent based in North America, 83 percent B2B SaaS, median revenue $47 million, median deal size $50,000).
| Benchmark | 2025 median or average | Trend noted in the study |
|---|---|---|
| Meetings held per month (quota) | 10 | Down 40 percent since 2018 |
| SDRs at quota | 60 percent | Lowest in the study's history |
| Quality conversations per day | 4.1 | First rebound in the study's history |
| Ramp time | 3.0 months | Lowest since 2010 (peak 3.8 months in 2014) |
| Tenure | 1.9 years | Highest since the early 2010s |
| Annual attrition | 40 percent | Promotions 16 percent, down from 34 percent in 2020 |
| On-target earnings | $80,000, split 68:32 ($55,000 base) | Unchanged since 2022 |
| Pipeline per SDR per year | $3.78 million | Up from $2.83 million in 2022, driven by larger deals |
| SDRs per account executive | 1 to 2.4 | Steady since 2018 |
| SDRs per first-line leader | 6.4 | Down from 8 in 2021 to 2023 |
Two of these deserve a second look. Pipeline per SDR rose because deal sizes rose ($44,000 in 2024 against $27,000 in 2022), not because SDRs booked more meetings. And on-target earnings have barely moved in a decade, growing about 0.56 percent a year, while prices rose 43.9 percent over 14 years. At the median, SDR pay has fallen in real terms. For which of these numbers to manage a team on, see the sales development metrics that decide things.
Who SDRs report to
In the same study, 60 percent of SDR teams report to sales, 26 percent to marketing and 10 percent to an executive outside both. The sales line has been the most common since 2012. Reporting to sales ties the team to the pipeline it creates. Reporting to marketing ties it to the lead flow it works. Where SDRs should report covers the trade-offs.
Sales development with AI
AI changes how the work is done more than whether it is needed. Account research that used to take a rep a long stretch of the morning now takes seconds. Personalization at volume, call scoring and practice with an AI prospect are all available. The 2025 Bridge Group study is the first to record "AI SDRs" as a distinct category, at 1 percent of respondents. The study suggests the falling ramp time may reflect AI-assisted onboarding, though that is a possible explanation, not a finding.
What does not change is the contract: a qualified conversation with the right person at the right account, handed off well. That still takes judgment about who is worth contacting, a message that is specific, and a conversation that earns the next one. SDR training is where most teams build that judgment.
If you are deciding how to run the function, the paths are the ones the rest of this site describes: build the team in house, buy software that does part of the work (graph8's SDR agent, for example), or have it run for you as a managed service (CIENCE outsourced SDR services, for example).
Frequently asked questions
What does sales development mean?
Sales development means creating sales pipeline before a deal exists: researching target accounts, reaching out to them, following up on inbound interest, and qualifying the buyers who respond. The team that does it is usually called sales development, and its reps are sales development representatives (SDRs). Their output is qualified meetings handed to the account executives who close.
What does the acronym SDR mean?
In sales, SDR stands for sales development representative: the person who researches prospects, reaches out, qualifies interest and books meetings for account executives. Outside sales the same letters mean other things, such as the IMF's Special Drawing Rights or a software-defined radio, which is why searches for "SDR" return such mixed results.
What do SDRs get paid?
The Bridge Group's 2025 study of 351 B2B companies put median SDR on-target earnings at $80,000, unchanged since 2022, split 68:32 between base and variable pay ($55,000 base, $25,000 variable). SDR managers had a median of $146,000. Pay varies with location, company size and whether the role is inbound or outbound.
Is SDR the hardest sales job?
It is one of the hardest to do well. SDRs face more rejection than most sales roles. The 2025 Bridge Group median was 112 activities a day for 4.1 quality conversations. Quotas are tight too, with only 60 percent of SDRs at quota, the lowest in that study's history. It is also a common entry point into a sales career.
What is the difference between an SDR and a BDR?
The titles overlap and companies use them differently. A common split is SDR for inbound leads (demo requests, content, trials) and BDR for outbound prospecting into accounts that have not engaged, but some companies reverse the two and many treat them as the same role. What matters is which leads the rep owns and what counts as qualified.