Sales Development Representative: Job & Pay

What is a sales development representative?

A sales development representative (SDR) is the person on a B2B sales team who starts conversations. Salesforce's definition puts it this way: an SDR handles the top-of-the-funnel activities in the sales cycle. Coursera's career guide lists what that looks like in practice: building relationships, educating prospects, filtering out the ones who don't fit, and keeping colleagues informed. An SDR usually doesn't close the deal. Once a prospect agrees to a meeting and meets the qualification criteria, the SDR hands the opportunity to an account executive (AE), who runs discovery, the demo, the proposal and the close.

Some companies split the role in two. Inbound SDRs follow up on demo requests and form fills. Outbound SDRs, sometimes called business development representatives (BDRs), contact people who've never heard of the company. Job boards like Built In list both under titles such as "Founding Outbound SDR" or "Business Development Representative (SDR)", so read the job description to see which one you're applying for. The outbound version means cold email, cold calls and LinkedIn. It's also where deliverability and domain reputation become part of the job.

What does an SDR do day to day?

Most of an SDR's day is spent on a repeating loop. Each step produces something you can check in the CRM:

1. 1 Research: pick accounts that match the ideal customer profile and find the right contacts at each one (role, verified email address, phone number).
2. 2 First touch: send a short, relevant opener by email, call, or LinkedIn message.
3. 3 Follow-ups: run a dated sequence of further touches that stops as soon as the prospect replies, books a meeting or opts out.
4. 4 Qualification: in the first conversation, check budget, authority, need and timing, or whatever your team's framework asks for.
5. 5 Handover: book the meeting into the AE's calendar and write up the context in the CRM so the prospect doesn't have to repeat themselves.
6. 6 Hygiene: log the outcome of every touch, remove bounced addresses, and record opt-outs right away.

Which framework you qualify with depends on the team. BANT, MEDDIC and SPIN each have SDRs ask different questions, and our comparison of sales methodologies and their frameworks goes through what each one checks. How touches are spaced out belongs to the cadence, which is covered in sales cadence steps and exit rules.

What is prospecting in sales?

In sales, prospecting means finding and qualifying potential buyers before the first real sales conversation. It's the core of the SDR job. A lead is a name that might fit. A prospect is a lead you've checked against your criteria: the right industry, company size and role, plus a reachable, verified address. Prospecting covers sourcing the data, verifying it and making the first contact. It goes wrong in predictable ways. Unverified addresses cause hard bounces, and those bounces count against the sending domain. A list built on job titles alone reaches people with no buying authority. And contacts imported without checking where they came from can create a consent problem in the EU. There's a longer explanation, including how sales and marketing use the word differently, in our article on what prospecting is in sales.

How SDRs write sales follow-up emails

Many of the meetings an SDR books come from a follow-up rather than the first email, because a single message is easy to miss. The sections below answer the follow-up searches one at a time.

What is a follow-up sales email?

A follow-up sales email is a later message to a prospect who hasn't answered an earlier one. Done properly, it's a real reply in the same thread: the email client sets the In-Reply-To and References headers to the original message, so the conversation stays grouped together. Typing "Re:" into a new subject line does not set those headers. The message won't thread, and recipients can tell it's a trick. A follow-up should add one new piece of information or one easier ask. It shouldn't just repeat the first email.

Sales follow-up email template

Most sales follow-up email templates use the same four-part structure: a one-line reference to the earlier email, one new reason to reply (a trigger event, a relevant resource, a narrower question), a single ask that's easy to say yes or no to, and a plain sign-off. Leave out attachments and tracking-heavy links in early touches. For full versions sorted by situation, see our sales follow-up email templates.

Sales follow-up email examples

• After no reply: "Quick follow-up on my note about your hiring push. Is onboarding new reps on your list this quarter, or should I check back later?"
• After a trigger: "Saw you opened an office in Lisbon. That's usually when routing territories gets messy. Worth a short call?"
• Narrower ask: "If a call is too much, would a two-line answer work: is this owned by sales ops or by you?"
• Breakup: "I'll close this out on my side. If timing changes, a one-word 'later' is enough."

Every follow-up counts toward your daily sending volume, just like a first touch. Follow-ups to an unverified list repeat the bounces of the first send, so remove hard bounces before the second step goes out. For channel choice and the wider process, see outbound sales channels, process and follow-ups.

Which tools does an SDR use?

A typical SDR stack has one tool per job: a CRM for the record, a data source for contacts, an engagement tool for sequences, and a sending service for email. The table describes each tool by its main job only. Check plan details in each vendor's own documentation before you buy.

Tool	Main job for an SDR	Where it stops
Salesforce Sales Cloud	CRM: the system of record for accounts, contacts, activities and the handover to the AE	Doesn't source contact data or send cold sequences on its own; it needs other tools connected to it
HubSpot Sales Hub	CRM with built-in email sequences and meeting booking	Sequences send through the rep's connected inbox, so volume limits still depend on that mailbox and its domain
Apollo.io	Contact database plus sequencing in one tool	Data coverage and accuracy vary by region and segment, so addresses still need checking before a send
Outreach / Salesloft	Sales engagement: multi-channel cadences, call tasks, team reporting	Built for teams with a CRM already in place; they don't supply contact data
Brevo	Email sending through your own account and authenticated domain	A sending service, not a prospecting database or CRM

Where personalised video fits: EmailFlow OS

EmailFlow OS (a EmailFlow OS product) covers one specific step in this loop: the personalised email touch. You record one video and upload it to EmailFlow OS, connect your Brevo account and sending domain, and import your prospect list into EmailFlow OS. EmailFlow OS then creates a personalised version of that single recording for each recipient, not just for each company. Each version is sent from your own inbox, through your Brevo account and your own sending domain, not through a shared platform sender. The prospect list, the Brevo account and the domain all stay under your team's control. How the per-recipient version is built is explained in our article on a personalized video message per recipient, and the overview of personalised AI video email for B2B outreach shows the full product.

What an SDR needs set up before sending cold email

• SPF: a TXT record on the sending domain that authorises your sending service, Brevo for example, to send for it.
• DKIM: a signature from your own domain, so receiving servers can tie reputation to you rather than to a shared sender.
• DMARC: a TXT record at _dmarc on your domain, usually starting with p=none and a rua address so you get aggregate reports before you tighten the policy.
• Warm-up: raise volume on a new domain or mailbox gradually. Sudden spikes are one of the signals receiving servers react to.
• Consent rules: the FTC's CAN-SPAM guidance for the US requires a working opt-out that's honoured within 10 business days. Germany's Act Against Unfair Competition (UWG) generally requires prior consent for email advertising, B2B included. These are legal requirements on how you operate. No tool satisfies them for you.

These records and habits are inputs the receiving server weighs; the decision about where a message is placed stays with that server, not with the sender or any tool. If a record is missing or misaligned, the Authentication-Results header of a test message shows spf=, dkim= or dmarc= as fail. You can check each record with our SPF, DKIM and DMARC guide for cold email senders.

Questions people ask

? Is SDR an entry-level job?

Usually, yes. Handshake's career guide describes the SDR position as an entry-level sales role whose job is to help the company find customers. Many teams hire SDRs without previous sales experience and train them on prospecting, the CRM and qualification. The usual next step is account executive, where you own the deal through to signature, or SDR team lead.

? Is SDR the hardest sales job?

There's no objective ranking, but the SDR role has a particular kind of difficulty. AEs mostly talk to people who've already agreed to a meeting. SDRs mostly contact people who haven't asked to hear from them, so most touches go unanswered or get a no. Meeting quotas are reset every month or quarter, which means the pressure starts again each period.

? How much does an SDR earn?

SDR pay is usually split into a fixed base salary and a variable part tied to quota, typically measured in qualified meetings or pipeline created, and sometimes in closed revenue as well. The actual figure depends on location, company stage, deal size and quota design. Current figures are on salary pages and job listings, such as ZipRecruiter's SDR salary page for New York.

? Can you make good money as an SDR?

That depends on how the variable part is designed and whether the quota is realistic. If the quota is measured on qualified meetings an SDR can actually influence, hitting it pays out. If it's tied to closed revenue the SDR doesn't control, it's less predictable. Before accepting an offer, ask what share of the current SDR team reached quota last quarter.