SDR, BDR, AE: who does what, and why the first two should not be the third.

An SDR (sales development representative) finds and qualifies new prospects and books them into meetings. A BDR (business development representative) does the same job, and in some companies the same job with a different emphasis. An AE (account executive) takes those meetings and closes the deal. That is the whole of it; the rest of this post is the detail and the reason the split exists.

The difference at a glance

• SDR - finds and qualifies new prospects, and books the meetings. Measured on activity, then on meetings held.
• BDR - usually the same job under another title. Where a company has both, the BDR tends to own outbound or larger accounts.
• AE - takes the qualified meeting and closes the deal. Measured on revenue.
• The handover - the SDR or BDR books the meeting; the AE runs it from there.

SDR: sales development representative

The SDR works the top of the funnel. Their day is research, calls, emails and LinkedIn messages to people who have not asked to hear from them, and their output is qualified meetings for somebody else to run. They are measured on activity first - dials, conversations, replies - and on meetings held second, because the outcome lags the work by weeks. In a mature team an SDR handles inbound leads as well; in a small one they are almost always outbound.

BDR: business development representative

In most UK companies BDR and SDR are the same role under a different title, and which one a company uses says more about its HR system than its sales process. Where the two are both used, the convention is that SDRs qualify inbound and BDRs prospect outbound, or that BDRs work larger accounts and partnerships. Ask what the person actually does; the title will not tell you.

AE: account executive

The AE, or closer, runs the sales cycle from the first meeting to the signature. Their work is deep and narrow: a handful of live opportunities, discovery, demonstrations, proposals, procurement, the politics of a decision with several people in it. They are measured on what lands, and they are paid mostly on it.

Why the roles are split

Because the jobs need different days. Prospecting is wide and shallow, mostly refused, measured on activity long before outcome, and it has to survive week three when nobody has replied. Closing is deep and patient, and every hour on a live deal compounds because the deal is already real. Give both to one person and the live deal wins every afternoon, the prospecting quietly stops, and the pipeline thins three months later for reasons nobody can point at. We wrote that argument out in full in Prospecting is a different discipline to closing; this is the short version.

The split also fixes the economics. A closer is expensive and good at closing; spending their hours on the ninety-first cold call of the week is an expensive way to make that call. An SDR - employed or plugged in - is the cheaper hour, doing the job it was built for.

Where an outsourced SDR sits

Exactly where an employed one does, in the diagram: finding and qualifying, then handing over. The difference is who employs, tools and coaches them. What does not change is the handover - the AE still has to be there, ready, and convinced the meeting is worth taking. That handover is where most sales development, in-house or out, either works or does not.