A BDR (business development representative) and an SDR (sales development representative) do almost the same job with one real difference: BDRs are usually chartered with outbound prospecting, cold calling and cold outreach into net-new accounts, while SDRs are usually chartered with inbound qualification, working the leads marketing already generated. That split isn’t universal. Plenty of companies use the titles interchangeably, and some flip the definitions entirely.
According to LinkedIn Sales Solutions’ own guide to the role, SDRs typically sit inside the sales organization and report to sales managers or sales directors, though the same guide notes some companies place SDRs under a cross-functional growth team or under marketing instead, specifically because of how closely the role works with performance marketing on inbound leads. The Bridge Group, which has run sales development research since 2007, frames the ambiguity directly on its own research page: "ADRs, BDRs, SDRs, whatever you call them, the metrics that drive the sales development function are always in demand." Nobody in this space, including the firms that study it professionally, treats the title as standardized.
Key Takeaways
- BDR usually means outbound prospecting into new accounts. SDR usually means inbound qualification of leads marketing already generated. The split is common but not universal, confirm it for any specific company rather than assuming.
- Per LinkedIn Sales Solutions’ guide to the role, SDRs typically report to sales managers or directors, though some companies place the function under marketing or a cross-functional growth team because of how closely it works with inbound campaigns.
- Comp structure for both roles skews base-heavy relative to quota-carrying closing roles like account executives, since neither BDRs nor SDRs typically carry a full commission-only structure. Exact bands should be checked against a current compensation benchmark before you build an offer around them.
- The handoff to an account executive (AE) is where most of the role’s value gets proven or lost: a BDR or SDR who hands off a poorly qualified lead just moves the problem downstream instead of solving it.
- Good BDRs and SDRs are judged on qualified pipeline they create, not raw activity volume like dials or emails sent.
What’s the difference between a BDR and an SDR?
BDR and SDR describe the same core job, generating and qualifying pipeline before it reaches an account executive, split along one axis: which direction the lead came from. LinkedIn Sales Solutions’ guide to the role draws this same line: a BDR typically works outbound, cold calling, cold email, and prospecting into accounts that never asked to hear from you, while an SDR typically works inbound, following up on demo requests, content downloads, and other leads marketing already surfaced, then qualifying them before they reach an AE.
That distinction holds at plenty of companies and means nothing at plenty of others. Some orgs use "BDR" for the entire function regardless of inbound or outbound split. Some use "SDR" the same way. A few flip the convention and use BDR for inbound and SDR for outbound. If you’re hiring, writing a job description, or benchmarking comp, the title alone tells you less than the actual job description does. Always confirm which motion a specific BDR or SDR role covers before assuming.
BDR vs SDR: responsibilities, reporting line, and comp
Typical motion
BDR: outbound prospecting into new accounts. SDR: inbound qualification of marketing-generated leads.
Core daily activity
BDR: cold calls, cold email sequences, LinkedIn outreach into cold accounts. SDR: fast follow-up on inbound requests, qualification calls, lead scoring review.
Reports to (commonly)
Both typically report to a sales manager or sales director, though SDR sometimes reports to marketing or a cross-functional growth team.
Hands off to
Both hand off to an account executive (AE): a BDR once a meeting is booked or an opportunity is qualified, an SDR once a lead is qualified against the ideal customer profile.
Compensation structure
Both are base-heavy, with variable tied to meetings booked or opportunities created for BDRs, and to qualified opportunities created for SDRs, not closed revenue.
Compensation bands for both roles move constantly with market conditions, so treat any specific dollar figure with a healthy amount of skepticism unless it’s dated within the last year. The Bridge Group publishes ongoing sales development compensation research and is the most credible named source in this space; check their current report directly before putting a number in an offer letter or a job posting. We’re intentionally not printing a specific figure here because comp benchmarks go stale fast, and a wrong number is worse than none.
Should BDRs and SDRs report to sales or to marketing?
Report to sales by default, and only route to marketing when the role is functioning almost entirely on inbound leads with tight, ongoing coordination with campaign performance. Per LinkedIn Sales Solutions’ own breakdown of the role, most SDRs sit inside the sales organization, because the job still ends in a sales handoff and the skills being coached (objection handling, qualification, booking meetings) are sales skills, not marketing skills.
The exception is real, though: companies running a heavily inbound-led motion sometimes place SDRs under marketing or a shared growth team specifically because the role needs to react in near real time to campaign performance, lead scoring changes, and content that’s actually converting. That works when the reporting line comes with genuine coordination, not when it’s used to make the SDR team marketing’s dumping ground for lead volume problems marketing itself hasn’t solved.
The wrong answer, regardless of which department owns the role, is treating the reporting line as a proxy for accountability. Wherever a BDR or SDR team sits, someone still has to own whether the pipeline they generate is actually qualified, and that ownership question matters more than the org chart box it lives in.
What "good" actually looks like in each role
A good BDR creates outbound pipeline an AE can actually work, not just a full calendar. That means the accounts were researched before the first call, the outreach referenced something specific to that company instead of a generic template, and the meetings booked match the ideal customer profile closely enough that the AE isn’t disqualifying half of them in the first call.
A good SDR protects the speed and quality of the inbound handoff. That means responding to a new lead in minutes, not hours, actually reading what the prospect filled out or downloaded before calling them, and being willing to disqualify a lead that doesn’t fit rather than passing volume to the AE just to hit an activity number.
The shared trait across both roles: good BDRs and SDRs get judged by the AE’s win rate on what they hand off, not by how many dials or emails they logged that week. A rep who books twenty meetings a week that all get disqualified on the first call is not outperforming a rep who books eight meetings that convert. Activity metrics are easy to game and easy to measure. Qualified pipeline is neither, which is exactly why it’s the metric that actually matters.
Frequently Asked Questions
BDR vs AE, how do they hand off?
The BDR or SDR qualifies a lead or books a meeting, then hands it to an AE with the context needed to run that first sales conversation: who the buyer is, what triggered their interest, what they’ve already been told, and why they fit the ideal customer profile. A clean handoff includes real notes, not just a calendar invite. A bad handoff is a meeting the AE walks into blind, which is usually where a good BDR’s work gets undone by a broken process on the other side of it.
How long does it typically take a new BDR or SDR to ramp up?
Most teams see a new BDR or SDR reach full productivity somewhere between 60 and 90 days, though the range depends heavily on deal complexity and how much of the ramp is spent learning the product versus learning the outreach motion itself. The first few weeks should be treated as onboarding, not underperformance: a BDR who isn’t booking qualified meetings in week two is normal, one who still isn’t by month three is a coaching problem worth addressing directly rather than waiting out.
Do BDRs need marketing training?
Not formal marketing training, but they need real fluency in what marketing is actually saying to prospects. A BDR who doesn’t know what campaign, content, or messaging a prospect may have already seen ends up contradicting marketing or repeating something the prospect already ignored once. That fluency comes from actually reading the content and sitting in on campaign planning, not from a separate training program.
