Notes for owners · Sales management
What is the difference between an SDR and a BDR?
An SDR works the enquiries that come in, while a BDR goes out to create conversations where none existed, and most SMEs need one before the other.
The GullySales team · Updated 15 Sept 2026 · 6 min read
Rules for this trade differ by state and professional body, and they change. Check the current position with your own council or adviser before you act on anything here.
On this page
An SDR, a sales development representative, works on demand that already exists: enquiries from your website, portals, advertising and events. Their job is to reach the person quickly, qualify them, and book a meeting for the salesperson who closes. A BDR, a business development representative, works where no enquiry exists: a built list of target companies, approached by call, email and LinkedIn, to create a conversation from nothing. The skills overlap heavily. The direction is opposite, and that difference changes who you hire, how you pay them, and what you measure.
The two roles side by side
| SDR (inbound) | BDR (outbound) | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the work starts | An enquiry has arrived | A list you built |
| First job of the day | Call whatever came in overnight | Work through the list at the planned hour |
| Conversation opener | They asked, so you ask what they need | You have to earn the next thirty seconds |
| Volume of attempts | Lower, each one warmer | Much higher, most go nowhere |
| Skill that matters most | Speed and asking the right questions | Persistence and a message worth answering |
| What to measure | Response time, contact rate, meetings booked, show-up rate | Contacts reached, conversations held, qualified meetings created |
| What breaks it | Enquiries not routed to one owner | A poor list, and no message tested |
| Emotional load | Manageable | Heavy, needs a manager who notices |
Which one does an SME need first
Almost always the SDR work, and almost always it is not being done.
Look at your own numbers before hiring anybody. If enquiries are arriving and a third of them are never spoken to, you do not have a demand problem. You have an answering problem, and an inbound-focused person pays for themselves immediately. Adding outbound calling to a business that is losing inbound enquiries just spends money to create more of what you are already wasting.
Outbound becomes the right first hire in two situations. The first is when your market is small and identifiable, for example a few hundred plants in India that use your equipment, so a list is the only sensible route. The second is when you have a new product or a new geography where nobody is searching yet, because there is no demand to capture.
How the two roles should work together
In a mature setup they feed one closing salesperson or a small sales team, and the handover rules matter more than the titles.
The SDR owns first response, with a stated time target, and hands over a booked meeting with the requirement recorded. Building the list and the sequence is the BDR's job, and it ends the same way, with a booked meeting handed over. From there, the proposal, the negotiation and the order belong to the closer. Nobody owns both ends, because the person who has to close this month's deals will never make ninety calls to strangers on a Tuesday.
One rule prevents most of the friction: the meeting is not counted until it happens. If the closer's calendar fills with meetings that nobody attends, the incentive is pointing at the wrong thing.
A facility management firm adding both roles
For example, imagine a facility management firm in Bengaluru with six salespeople and a target of adding office contracts in tech parks. The details and figures below are illustrative.
Inbound first. The firm receives enquiries from search and from referrals, and an illustrative 40 a month arrive across the website, phone and WhatsApp. One person given the SDR role answers within minutes, qualifies on building size and renewal month, and books site surveys. That converts far more of those 40 than six salespeople each dipping into a shared inbox between site visits.
Outbound second. The target universe is finite and knowable: the office buildings in Whitefield, Bellandur, Electronic City and the Outer Ring Road corridor, with the admin or facility head named for each. Illustratively that is 400 buildings. A BDR working that list by call and visit, with the renewal month recorded against each building, creates a pipeline that fills twelve months ahead. No advertising reaches that buyer as efficiently, because the decision is made once a year by one person.
Note that the two roles need different lists, different scripts and different weekly reviews, even in a six-person sales team.
Hiring and managing either role
Hire for two things in both roles: whether the person can hold a conversation with a stranger without reading from a page, and whether they keep records without being chased. Test the first in the interview by asking them to call you back and qualify you. Test the second by asking for an example of how they tracked their own follow-ups in the last job.
Manage both on leading numbers and review weekly. For inbound, response time and contact rate. For outbound, conversations held rather than dials made, because a team measured on dials will call the easy numbers twice. Listen to two recorded calls per person per week, which does more for performance than any monthly target discussion.
Expect outbound to take a quarter before it produces predictably, and expect the message to change three times in that quarter.
What to do next
Count two things from last month: how many inbound enquiries you received, and how many were never spoken to. Then count how many companies in India could realistically buy from you. If the first shows a gap, fix inbound first. Hire nobody until it is fixed. If the second is under a few thousand, build the list and start outbound.
