Short answer
SDR (sales development representative) and BDR (business development representative) are both prospecting roles that book first meetings for account executives. The usual convention is that SDRs follow up inbound leads from marketing and BDRs prospect outbound into accounts that haven't shown interest, but many companies use the titles interchangeably. Neither has a federal occupation code. The difference that matters is the lead source: inbound work rewards speed, outbound work rewards research.
- Convention: SDR means inbound lead follow-up and BDR means outbound prospecting, but many companies use one title for both.
- In the Predictable Revenue model, outbound reps were "Sales Development Reps or New Business Development Reps" and inbound reps were "Market Response Reps".
- Measure inbound reps on speed and conversion; measure outbound reps on accounts engaged, accepted meetings and pipeline.
- No primary source we found separates SDR and BDR pay; the 2025 median for the function was $80K on-target earnings.
- Split the roles once inbound volume can keep one person busy; until then, one hybrid rep is usually better.
On this page
This guide is for job seekers comparing SDR and BDR postings and for sales leaders deciding how to structure a prospecting team. It explains how the titles are used, where they came from, how the work and the metrics differ, and how to decide which role, or both, a team needs. For the full job description, pay and a day in the life, see the sales development representative guide.
SDR vs BDR at a glance
| SDR (common usage) | BDR (common usage) | |
|---|---|---|
| Lead source | Inbound: demo requests, form fills, trial sign-ups, event leads | Outbound: target accounts that haven't raised their hand |
| First job each day | Respond to new leads | Research target accounts |
| What wins | Speed and good qualifying questions | Research, relevance and persistence |
| Volume set by | Marketing's lead flow | The rep's own list |
| Core metrics | Speed to lead, lead-to-meeting rate, meetings held | Accounts engaged, meetings held, pipeline sourced |
| Hands off to | Account executive | Account executive |
Neither role usually closes deals. Both feed account executives (AEs), and both are common first jobs in B2B sales. The inbound leads an SDR works are often marketing qualified leads; the MQL vs SQL guide explains how a lead moves from one stage to the next.
Why the titles are muddled
The specialized prospecting role was popularized by Predictable Revenue, the book by Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler based on the outbound team Ross started at Salesforce.com. In an interview about the book on David Skok's For Entrepreneurs blog, Ross set out four sales functions:
| Function in Predictable Revenue | What it does | What it's usually called today |
|---|---|---|
| "Inbound" lead qualification: Market Response Reps | Qualify marketing leads coming in through the website or phone | SDR (inbound) |
| "Outbound" prospecting: Sales Development Reps or New Business Development Reps | Prospect into lists of target accounts to create opportunities from cold or inactive accounts | BDR, or outbound SDR |
| Account Executives | Quota-carrying reps who close deals | Account executive |
| Account Management or Customer Success | Deployment, ongoing management and renewals | Account manager, customer success manager |
So in the model that made the role famous, "sales development" meant outbound, and the two titles meant the same thing. Many companies have since split them, using SDR for inbound and BDR for outbound; others use SDR for everything, or BDR for everything. The Bridge Group, which has surveyed sales development teams since 2007, sidesteps the question entirely: "ADRs, BDRs, SDRs - whatever you call them."
Government data doesn't settle it either. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' 2018 list of direct-match job titles has no SDR or BDR, so there's no official definition and no federal pay figure for either title.
What BDR roles look like day to day
People searching for "BDR sales" jobs will find several flavors of the outbound role. The daily loop is the same in each:
- Build and rank the list. Accounts that fit the ideal customer profile, ranked by a recent trigger such as a new site, a leadership hire or a funding round.
- Map the people. Two to four contacts per account: the person who owns the problem, their boss and someone who would use the product.
- Run a sequence. Calls, emails and LinkedIn messages over two to four weeks, each touch adding something new.
- Qualify the conversation. Confirm a problem worth solving and the right person, then book the meeting.
- Hand off. Write a note the AE can use without re-asking the basics.
The flavors differ in volume and depth. An enterprise or account-based BDR (sometimes called an ADR) works a few dozen named accounts with heavily researched touches. A mid-market or SMB BDR works hundreds of accounts with lighter research. Partner BDRs prospect alongside resellers or technology partners. Ask which one a posting means. At volume, the research in steps 1 and 2 is the slow part; Bebop researches each account in a list and suggests who to contact and the angle to open with.
How each is measured
| Metric | Inbound SDR | Outbound BDR |
|---|---|---|
| Speed to lead (minutes from form to first contact) | Core | Not applicable |
| Lead-to-meeting conversion | Core | Not applicable |
| Accounts and contacts engaged | Secondary | Core |
| Meetings held | Core | Core |
| Meetings accepted by AEs | Core | Core |
| Pipeline sourced | Core | Core |
| Quota is set from | Lead volume and conversion | List size and conversion |
The Bridge Group's 2025 survey of 351 B2B companies reports the sales development function as a whole, not by title: a median quota of 10 meetings held a month, 6 converted into accepted opportunities, 3.0 months to ramp and 1.9 years of average tenure. One figure shows how inbound teams are organized differently: 82% of all teams align reps to AE territories, but only 40% of inbound-only teams do, a sign that many inbound teams route leads as they arrive rather than by territory.
Pay
Neither title has a federal occupation code, so there's no government pay data for either. The Bridge Group reports one median for sales development reps, whatever the title: $80K on-target earnings in 2025, split 68:32 between base ($55K) and variable ($25K). We couldn't find a primary source that publishes SDR and BDR pay separately, so be careful with articles that claim a precise gap. Pay depends more on the company, segment and quota than on which of the two titles is on the offer letter.
Which one does your team need?
| Your situation | Hire | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Steady inbound flow that AEs can't answer within the hour | Inbound SDR | Response speed is the bottleneck |
| Few inbound leads and a clear list of target accounts | Outbound BDR | Pipeline has to be created |
| Some inbound, not enough to fill a day | One hybrid rep | Inbound first each morning, outbound the rest of the day |
| Entering a new segment or region | Outbound BDR aligned to the AEs there | Marketing has no presence yet |
| Large deals with a short list of named accounts | Account-based BDR | Each account matters too much for volume tactics |
| Free trial or product-led sign-ups | Inbound SDR focused on users who fit your ICP | Product usage is the buying signal |
Worked example: splitting a team at an ERP vendor
Illustrative example. The company and every rate are invented to show the arithmetic.
Ledgerline (ledgerline.example), a mid-market ERP vendor, has 8 AEs and 3 hybrid reps who answer inbound leads between call blocks. Inbound leads wait hours for a reply, and the AEs say they're short of pipeline.
What the AEs need. Each AE needs 5 new qualified opportunities a month: 40 in total. If 60% of held meetings become qualified opportunities, that's 40 ÷ 0.6 = 67 held meetings a month.
What inbound supplies. Marketing produces 450 leads a month, and 30% fit the ideal customer profile: 135 workable leads. Working each one properly (research, calls, emails, qualifying) takes about 40 minutes over a week, so 135 × 40 = 5,400 minutes, or 90 hours a month. A full-time rep has about 120 hours of selling time a month (6 hours a day for 20 days), so inbound needs 90 ÷ 120 = 0.75 of a rep. At a 20% lead-to-meeting rate, inbound produces 135 × 0.2 = 27 held meetings.
What outbound must supply. 67 − 27 = 40 held meetings a month. At the median quota of 10 held meetings per rep, that's 4 outbound BDRs.
The new structure. One dedicated inbound SDR, who spends the spare quarter of their time on trial users and old leads, plus four BDRs: five reps instead of three. That's one rep for every 1.6 AEs, against a 2025 median of one for every 2.4. It's a rich ratio because this company's inbound is thin, which is exactly when outbound headcount has to carry the plan.
For job seekers: what to ask before you accept
The title on a posting tells you less than the answers to these questions:
1. What share of my meetings will come from inbound leads, and what share will I source myself? 2. What counts toward quota: meetings booked, meetings held or meetings an AE accepts? 3. What is the quota, and what share of the team hit it last quarter? 4. Who builds my account list: me, marketing or revenue operations? 5. What's the base, what's the variable, and what exactly is the variable paid on? 6. How long do reps usually stay in the role, and what do they move into?
Questions 2 and 3 matter most. A quota of 15 booked meetings and a quota of 8 accepted ones can be the same job or very different jobs, depending on how much qualifying you're expected to do.
Next step: see the full job, the benchmarks and a day in the life in the sales development representative guide.
Sources
- An Argument for Specialized Sales Teams: An Interview with Aaron Ross, David Skok, For Entrepreneurs, accessed 26 October 2026
- SDR Models, Motions & Metrics: 2025 Research Report (10th edition), The Bridge Group, 6 February 2025
- Research & Insights, The Bridge Group, accessed 26 October 2026
- 2018 SOC Direct Match Title File, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, accessed 26 October 2026
Written by the Bebop team at Blackpearl Group. Last updated .
Questions people ask
Is a BDR the same as an SDR?
Often, yes. Both are prospecting roles that book first meetings for account executives, and many companies use the titles interchangeably. Where a company uses both, the usual split is that SDRs follow up inbound leads and BDRs prospect outbound. In the Predictable Revenue model that popularized the role, outbound reps were called Sales Development Reps or New Business Development Reps, so the two titles started out meaning the same thing.
What does BDR stand for in sales?
BDR stands for business development representative. In B2B sales, it usually means a rep who prospects outbound: researching target accounts, finding the right people, contacting them by phone, email and LinkedIn, and booking first meetings for account executives. In some industries, business development means partnerships or new markets instead, so check the job description to see whether the role is prospecting or something broader.
Which pays more, SDR or BDR?
There's no reliable public data that separates them. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has no occupation code for either title, and The Bridge Group's 2025 survey reports one median for sales development reps, whatever they're called: $80,000 on-target earnings, split $55,000 base and $25,000 variable. Pay depends far more on the company, the market segment and how achievable the quota is than on the title.
Do SDRs or BDRs close deals?
Usually not. Both roles create and qualify opportunities, then hand them to an account executive who runs the demo, negotiates and closes. That split is the core idea of the specialized sales model: prospecting and closing need different skills and a different rhythm, so separating them gives each person a clearer job. At very small companies, one person may do both until volume justifies splitting the roles.
Is SDR or BDR better for a sales career?
Both lead to the same place, usually an account executive role, so pick the job with the better manager, a fair quota and a clear promotion path. Outbound BDR work builds research, writing and resilience; inbound SDR work builds speed, qualifying and product knowledge. If you can, ask to do some of both. Reps who have created pipeline from cold accounts are well prepared to source their own deals as an AE.