SDR vs BDR: What’s the Real Difference?
You need someone to grow your sales pipeline. A sales development rep (SDR) could fit the role perfectly. But so would a business development rep (BDR)...
If you check any job board, you’ll quickly spot the confusion: some companies use the titles interchangeably, while others mix up their responsibilities.
So what’s the real difference between these roles? And which one do you need?
In this article, we’ll break down the textbook definitions of SDRs and BDRs, explore how these roles play out in real-world scenarios, and provide criteria to help you choose between them.
What Does an SDR Do?
A Sales Development Representative (SDR) focuses on qualifying inbound leads and engaging potential customers at the top of the sales funnel. Their primary goal is to assess whether the leads generated through marketing efforts are worth pursuing by the sales team.
Key responsibilities of an SDR include:
Responding to inbound leads (e.g., from website inquiries, email subscriptions, or ad campaigns).
Qualifying prospects based on established criteria.
Scheduling meetings for Account Executives (AEs).
Once the meeting is scheduled, a dedicated account executive (AE) takes over the lead and strives to close the deal.
Although some SDRs take on outbound tasks like cold calling or LinkedIn prospecting, this overlaps with responsibilities traditionally handled by BDRs. In its truest form, the SDR role centers on reactive lead qualification rather than proactive lead generation.
What Does a BDR Do?
A Business Development Representative (BDR) focuses on outbound efforts to generate new opportunities for the business.
Key responsibilities of a BDR include:
Researching and building prospect lists.
Conducting cold outreach (calls, emails, LinkedIn messages).
Qualifying leads and initiating relationships with high-value accounts.
Setting up meetings.
Unlike SDRs, who process inbound leads, BDRs operate strictly outbound to create opportunities from scratch. Their work often involves targeting higher-value accounts or new markets.
💡 BDRs identify potential customers who aren't yet familiar with the company. That said, you might still come across job listings where inbound lead qualification is included in a BDR’s responsibilities. This stems from confusion between the two roles.
As many as 85% of BDRs work exclusively on outbound sales.
BDR vs SDR: Key Differences
Over the years, the lines between SDRs and BDRs have blurred. It’s hard to draw a strict distinction because different companies interpret the roles in various ways. Once you’re in the industry for a while, you’ll likely notice that many companies divide the SDR role into inbound and outbound functions, with the latter often overlapping BDR responsibilities.
Let’s go over the textbook differences between these two roles, and then see how (and whether) these hold up in real life.
Who’s Focused on Finding New Leads?
SDRs are all about lead generation and nurturing. They're the ones who find new leads and make initial contact, whether it's through cold calls, emails, or social media outreach.
On the other hand, BDRs focus more on long-term business growth. Most often, they work on sourcing strategic partnerships, building and nurturing relationships that can lead to bigger opportunities over time.
Looking to hand over lead generation to a BDR? Consider adding an AI BDR to your team instead—no overhead costs involved. Ava can find high-quality leads that fit your ideal customer profile (ICP), reach out with personalized emails or LinkedIn messages, and forward qualified leads to your AEs. Hire Ava today.
Where Do They Fit in the Sales Funnel?
SDRs don’t go beyond the top of the funnel. Once they’ve done initial outreach and figured out the leads worth pursuing, they pass them on to the sales team.
BDRs often operate in the middle or even lower parts of the funnel. They may assist AEs in identifying key decision-makers and building relationships with them, guiding potential deals toward long-term business opportunities or partnerships.
How Do We Measure Their Success?
For SDRs, success is often measured by:
The number of qualified inbound leads;
The average time to connect with inbound MQLs;
Response rates;
The number of discovery calls held, etc.
Since BDRs are positioned as a more strategic function, the metrics tend to focus more on quality rather than quantity. Their KPIs are typically tied to the value of the relationships they build and include metrics like:
The conversion rate from qualified leads to quote;
The conversion rate from SQLs to closed-won;
The average deal size;
The length of the sales cycle, etc.
How Do They Work with the Sales Team?
The distinction between roles is most evident in their interaction with the sales team.
SDRs usually hand off qualified leads to AEs once their job is done. They focus on the front end of the sales cycle and don’t typically get involved in the later stages.
BDRs work more closely with the sales team throughout the entire process. Once BDRs identify and qualify for a potential opportunity, they often stay involved in nurturing relationships with high-level prospects.
For instance, they may work with AEs to strategize outreach for key decision-makers, providing insights on client needs or pain points. They may also assist coordination between different departments—like marketing, product, and customer success—to jointly create and optimize sales strategies for winning large accounts or partnerships.
This deeper collaboration is what makes their role more strategic compared to SDRs, especially when targeting larger or high-value deals.
What Skills Do They Bring to the Table?
SDRs need strong communication and research skills to quickly identify and qualify leads. Time management and persistence are also critical in this role.
In addition to strong communication and relationship-building abilities, BDRs often need to think long-term and strategically nurture high-value prospects. They work closely with different departments and may be involved in shaping outreach strategies, so a deep understanding of the market, leadership in coordinating teams, and a knack for solving complex business problems are usually required.
How Do Their Career Paths Look?
SDRs often transition into account manager (AM) roles, where they focus on maintaining relationships with existing clients and ensuring their satisfaction. Their experience with lead qualification and early customer interactions makes this a natural fit.
BDRs, on the other hand, make great account executives (AEs). AEs focus on closing deals and managing high-value prospects, which aligns well with the BDR’s background in building strategic relationships.
That said, it’s not uncommon for SDRs to move into AE or sales manager roles, but we're talking conventional paths here, remember?
SDRs and BDRs in the Real World
In reality, it’s not common for companies to have both SDRs and BDRs on the team—often due to tight budgets, hiring priorities, or a lack of qualified talent. But when they do, their roles are typically divided in one of these ways:
Outbound vs. Inbound: The BDR role focuses on outbound efforts, actively searching for new business opportunities, while the SDR role handles inbound leads that come through the marketing team. The specific responsibilities vary from company to company.
Strategy vs. Execution: BDRs take on the strategic side, creating outreach playbooks and developing new approaches, and SDRs put these strategies into action.
Relationship Development vs. Ongoing Lead Generation: BDRs focus on partnerships and sourcing new vendors, while SDRs work on consistently filling the pipeline through inbound prospecting.
High-ticket vs. Low-ticket: BDRs handle high-ticket or enterprise-level deals, leaving leads that require a faster, more transactional approach to SDRs.
Which Role Is Right for Your Team: SDR, BDR, or Both?
So, who will bring the most value to your company?
You might have a good idea after going through the definitions, but if you're still on the fence, here are some tips to help you make an informed hiring decision.
1. Consider Your Business Goals
Why do you want to bring in a new role to your team in the first place?
A lot of companies that are unsure whether to hire SDRs or BDRs don’t have a clear strategy yet. But most likely, they pursue one of two goals: they either want to boost the number of incoming leads or, if they’ve hit a certain level of growth, they might be looking to generate higher-quality leads to improve conversions.
Both SDRs and BDRs can help you reach these goals. So, you'll need to do a bit of brainstorming to make a more informed decision. Try answering these questions first:
Where are you in your business journey? For example, BDRs often make more sense for younger companies with tighter budgets since their role encompasses a wider range of responsibilities.
What’s your target market? Think about who your ideal customers are and how they buy. Are you going after small businesses, startups, big corporations, or a mix? Different markets can require different outreach tactics, which will influence whether you should lean more toward SDRs or BDRs.
Considering all of these, what’s the most realistic path for you to achieve your goals? You may decide you need to grow quickly and capture as many leads as possible or choose to take the time to build strong, long-lasting relationships with high-ticket clients.
After you answer these questions, you’ll likely find yourself leaning toward one option. If you’re still unsure, keep the decision-making process going by taking a closer look at your sales cycle.
2. Assess Your Sales Cycle
The length and complexity of your sales cycle can significantly impact whether you should hire SDRs, BDRs, or both.
Longer sales cycles often benefit from a BDR or both roles. BDRs can focus on identifying new business opportunities, while SDRs take over to nurture these leads, setting the stage for successful appointments.
In shorter sales cycles, a BDR might be all you need. They can quickly fill your pipeline with high volumes of leads to be nurtured by AEs or sales representatives.
3. Evaluate Your Current Team Structure
Assess where your current team stands and what gaps you need to fill before making that decision.
Do you have an AE currently responsible for the entire sales process? If so, hiring an SDR will help you lighten their load so they can focus on closing deals.
Or perhaps you’re making your first sales hires and weighing whether an SDR or BDR should form the core of your team. The truth is, in this case, a common answer is “none.” Sometimes, you might not need to hire either just yet.
4. Fill the Gaps With AI
You may find that you don’t actually need an SDR or BDR. If you’re hesitating about who to hire, it’s likely that you lack a clear vision of how either role will help you. In such case, the investment is doomed to end up a waste.
And even if you know which role you need, the time and resources you’ll spend onboarding them and building processes around them are considerable. You’d better search for some proof that it will pay off first.
This is where an AI sales assistant like Ava can help you out. Ava can take on the functions of both SDR and BDR, handling lead generation, outreach, and lead qualification for you. By “hiring” her, you can streamline your processes without the hassle of hiring decisions and the lengthy onboarding process.
Benefits of Combining SDR and BDR with AI
Whether or not you decide to hire a human SDR or BDR, incorporating AI into the role will provide you with numerous advantages, including:
Combine the strengths of both roles
With Ava handling lead generation, outreach, and qualification, you free up your team to focus on what they do best—closing deals and building relationships. You won’t have to juggle between two different roles; Ava can seamlessly manage the tasks that typically fall under both.
Cost savings
Hiring one AI sales assistant can be much cheaper than onboarding multiple full-time employees. Instead of paying around $100K annually for one SDR, you get a tool that can do the job without the overhead costs.
Consistent performance
While new hires may have impressive track records, maintaining consistent performance can be challenging. On the other hand, Ava always achieves consistent performance. Here’s how:
With access to over 300 million B2B leads, Ava never runs out of prospects to engage with.
She taps into hundreds of data sources to keep your lead information fresh and accurate.
Ava uses the latest data to personalize each outreach message.
You can specify the sales playbook for Ava to follow, ensuring consistent messaging and approaches across all outreach efforts.
She continually optimizes her performance in real time, using data from your campaigns to refine her strategies.
Furthermore, Ava doesn’t need breaks, vacations, or time off. She’s always on the job, delivering a consistent level of performance day in and day out.
Augment Your Sales Team with Ava
Roughly speaking, a BDR helps sales organizations fill their pipelines while SDRs primarily take over leads generated by marketing functions. However, the lines between these roles have blurred so much that distinguishing them only creates an unnecessary challenge.
So here’s our final tip: don’t get too caught up in the titles. What matters is understanding the tasks that need to be done and clearly outlining the job responsibilities. Even if you nail the definitions, different companies have different interpretations of these sales roles, which can lead to attracting the wrong candidates either way.
Instead, focus on your goals and how you want to achieve them. If you need help with:
Lead generation
Personalized email and LinkedIn outreach
Lead qualification
Follow-ups
Performance analysis
Meeting scheduling
… then you don’t even need to worry about hiring. An AI SDR like Ava can handle all of this for you. Bring her on board today.
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