Sales Development Representative (SDR)

The SDR role emerged in the early 2000s as sales organizations began to specialize, separating prospecting from closing. Rather than having one rep own the entire sales cycle, SDRs handle top-of-funnel activities while AEs focus on converting qualified opportunities. This division of labor dramatically increases efficiency because each role can be optimized independently. A typical SDR spends their day researching target accounts, writing personalized emails, making cold calls, engaging on LinkedIn, and following up with prospects who have shown interest. The primary output metric is the number of Sales Qualified Meetings (SQMs) or Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) booked per month. SDR compensation is usually a mix of base salary and variable pay tied to these booking targets. The SDR role is being significantly shaped by AI. Tools like Outvid allow SDRs to send personalized video emails at scale, multiplying the number of prospects they can meaningfully touch each week. Rather than replacing SDRs, AI tools make each individual SDR dramatically more productive — enabling a single rep to generate the pipeline output that previously required two or three people. The most effective SDR teams today combine human judgment about which accounts to pursue with AI automation for the actual outreach execution.