Sales Development Representative (SDR / BDR)
Starts conversations that did not exist yet — outbound research, first contact, qualification — and hands a real opportunity to whoever closes it.
Who to hire
The shape of person who does this job well — and whether you should be hiring it at all yet.
The naming is regional more than functional: SDR is the common term in the United States, BDR more common in Canada, the UK and Europe, and where a company runs both, SDR usually means qualifying inbound while BDR means generating outbound. Pick one word and define it in writing, because the two populations are measured differently. Hire the first one only after the founder has closed deals from cold outreach themselves — otherwise you are asking a junior person to discover the message as well as deliver it.
Education
No requirement. Written clarity and resilience are the screen; a short written exercise tells you more than any résumé line.
Experience
0–2 years. Hire for curiosity and follow-through, train the rest. The useful interview question is what they would say in the first thirty seconds to your actual buyer — and whether they researched that buyer before the interview.
Vertical / domain experience
Matters when the person being called is a professional with their own language — clinicians, contractors, finance teams. In those markets someone from the trade who learns outbound outperforms a career SDR learning the trade.
What it pays, roughly
$65,520 median, Canada — for Retail salespersons and non-technical wholesale trade sales and account representatives, the closest occupation Statistics Canada actually measures, measured from $36,005 to $65,520 over 596,285 people. That occupation is broader than this role, so read it as an anchor, not a salary band — and note that a startup usually pays below it in cash and above it in equity.
Credentials and certifications
What exists, who issues it, and whether it means anything for this seat. A credential is evidence of a floor, never of judgment — and in a few of these roles it is a legal requirement rather than a nice-to-have.
| Credential | Issued by | When it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Sales engagement platform certifications | Your outbound stack's vendor | Quick, free and specific to the tools the job lives in. No general credential exists for this role, and anyone selling one is selling a course. |
| Salesforce Trailhead badges | Salesforce | Worth something only if your CRM is Salesforce; it signals someone will keep the record clean. |
What this role does at each stage
The same title means three different jobs depending on how much money is in the bank. Read the stage you are at, then read the next one — that is what you are hiring toward.
The founder. Every cold email is a test of the positioning, and the replies are the research.
One, after the founder can hand over a script that has actually produced meetings. A first SDR with no proven message will burn your list and conclude the market is cold.
A small pod with a defined handover to whoever closes, a weekly pipeline number, and a manager who listens to calls rather than reading dashboards.
Can one person hold this and something else?
The whole point of the many-hats problem: which of these jobs merge safely into one person, and which merges quietly cost you money or control.
Merges well with
- Head of Go-to-Market (Founders & fractional leadership)
- Marketing Manager
- Revenue Operations Lead
SDR plus marketing is a natural early merge in a small team — the same person writes the sequence and the campaign that warms it. Keep the handover to closing explicit either way.
Keep separate from
Hunting and keeping reward different temperaments, and the urgent new conversation always beats the quiet renewal. Separate them as soon as there is a book of business to keep.
Reading a candidate
What good looks like in an hour, and what should stop the process.
Good signals
- Researched your company before the interview and says something specific about it
- Writes short, plain emails
- Takes a correction and applies it in the next attempt
Red flags
- Volume-first instincts with no view on targeting
- Will not leave a voicemail
- Treats the CRM as optional
What this role runs on
The software categories this seat lives in, each linked to the screen of who sells it — the incumbent, the challengers and what the lock-in is.