What is a BDR?

The definition

A BDR owns the cold end of the funnel. They choose target companies, make first contact, qualify interest and hand the conversation to a closer. They do not run the deal and they are not measured on revenue.

The distinction from an SDR is inconsistent across companies and not worth arguing about. Where a line is drawn, BDRs work purely outbound while SDRs also handle inbound enquiries. Some companies reverse the two entirely.

What matters is the structural point underneath the titles: one person owns creating conversations, a different person owns closing them.

What a BDR does

Job descriptions differ from company to company, but most BDR roles cover the same five tasks:

• Account research. Picks target companies that match the ideal customer profile and finds the person who owns the problem.
• First contact. Writes the cold emails and LinkedIn messages and makes the first calls.
• Follow-up. Runs the sequence until the prospect answers or the sequence ends.
• Qualification. Checks budget, timing and fit on a short call.
• Handover. Books the meeting and leaves notes in the CRM for the account executive.

What the week actually looks like

Research, outreach, qualification and handover, in that proportion. A good BDR spends more time choosing who to contact than contacting them, because volume without targeting produces nothing but domain damage.

A realistic week is a few hundred well-chosen contacts across email, LinkedIn and phone, not thousands. The number that matters is not messages sent but conversations started with companies that match the profile.

The unglamorous part is CRM hygiene, and it is the reason forecasts are wrong when it slips. A BDR who books meetings but does not record why they were qualified leaves the closer walking in blind.

BDR, SDR and AE

Give both jobs to one person and prospecting is always what gets dropped, because closing has a nearer deadline and a clearer reward. That is the whole argument for splitting the role, and it holds at almost any company size above a founder selling alone.

What a BDR costs

The salary is the smallest part. Fully loaded in Western Europe, the first year runs well into six figures once you count base, commission, employer social costs, data and tooling subscriptions, a laptop, management time and three to six months of ramp before the pipeline is real.

Ramp is the line people forget. A BDR hired in January is not producing predictable meetings until spring, and roughly a third of first-year cost is spent before the first qualified meeting arrives.

Against that, an outsourced campaign in Europe typically runs 2,500 to 6,000 euros a month with no ramp, no employer liability and no recruitment risk. Ripe Leads charges 3,750 euros for the first month, setup included, then 2,850 euros a month.

When you need one rather than an agency

When you have a proven offer that has closed repeatedly, someone with the time to manage a junior salesperson weekly, and enough deal value to absorb a six-figure first year.

The management condition is the one that fails most often. A BDR without weekly coaching is an expensive person guessing, and founders who intended to coach usually find they cannot.

Hire when you want the capability in-house permanently and can afford to build it. Outsource when you want pipeline this quarter, when you are testing a market, or when the market needs a language nobody on your team speaks.

How to tell whether a BDR is working

In the first quarter, judge activity quality rather than output: is the target list right, are the messages specific, are the replies coming from the right kind of company.

From the second quarter, judge qualified meetings held and their fit to the profile. Meetings booked is a vanity number if half of them do not show or do not match the ICP.

Do not judge on emails sent or calls made. Both are trivially inflated and both reward the behaviour that damages a sending domain.

For the fuller scorecard, leading indicators alongside the lagging ones, see The B2B sales KPIs worth tracking.

Judging a BDR and choosing between hire and outsource

A BDR is judged on different numbers in each quarter. Judge activity quality early, and qualified meetings held once the programme has run.

A BDR can also work inbound leads, and the lead magnet page covers what works in B2B and why most fail. Prospecting includes finding decision makers on LinkedIn.