SDR metrics: what to measure, and what to ask a provider for.

The metrics that tell you whether sales development is working are meetings held with the right people and the pipeline that comes out of them. Everything upstream of that - dials, emails, connection requests, conversations - tells you whether the work is being done and where it is leaking. A good weekly report shows both, and the rate between each step, because the rates are where you find out what to fix.

The chain, from first touch to pipeline

1. Activity.

   Dials, emails, LinkedIn touches. Necessary and easy to inflate. On its own it tells you a team is busy, not that it is effective.

2. Conversations.

   A real exchange with a decision maker, on the phone or in a reply. The first number that measures whether the targeting and the opener are right.

3. Meetings booked.

   A date in your closer’s diary. Worth tracking, not worth paying for on its own.

4. Meetings held.

   The meeting took place, with the person it was booked with. This is the number that counts; booked and held can be far apart if nobody confirms.

5. Qualified.

   The held meeting met the criteria you set: the right company, the right person, a real need, a reason to talk now. Your closer decides, not the provider.

6. Pipeline.

   The value of the opportunities that came out of the held meetings. Lags everything above by weeks or months, which is why the upstream numbers exist.

The published benchmarks

The most-quoted source is The Bridge Group’s 2025 SDR Models and Metrics report, a survey of 351 B2B companies. Its medians: 112 activities a day (44 of them calls), 4.1 quality conversations a day, and a monthly quota of ten held meetings, falling to nine for teams that book fully qualified meetings. Phone-led teams averaged 56 dials and 4.6 conversations a day. The average ramp was three months, and 60 per cent of reps were hitting quota.

Two caveats matter. The sample is 78 per cent North American and 83 per cent SaaS, so it is a direction, not a UK standard. And the quota counts meetings held, not booked, which is the right way to count and not how every provider reports. For calls specifically, Cognism’s 2026 report puts the average cold calling success rate at 2.7 per cent across more than 200,000 calls, without defining exactly what it is a rate of; use it as a rough floor, not a target.

Our own clients’ numbers are on the case studies: GP Triage averaged fifteen qualified decision-maker meetings a month, 3media three a week, and 87 per cent of the meetings booked for LGN.AI were attended.

The rates that tell you what to fix

• Conversations per hundred dials low: the data or the timing is wrong - wrong numbers, wrong hours, switchboards instead of direct lines.
• Meetings per conversation low: the opener or the reason for calling is wrong, or the market is thinner than the brief assumed.
• Held per booked low: meetings are being pushed rather than agreed, booked too far out, or not confirmed.
• Qualified per held low: the criteria were not agreed, or the provider is being paid to book rather than to qualify.
• Pipeline per qualified low: the handover or the closer’s follow-up is where it leaks, not the prospecting.

What a weekly report should show

• Every number in the chain above, this week and the trend.
• The rate between each step, so a drop has an address.
• What changed this week and why: the opener, the list, the timing, the channel mix.
• What the market is saying back: the objections, the reasons for no, the companies that said not yet and when to go back.
• Every held meeting by name, with your closer’s verdict on it.

What to ask a provider for

Ask to see held meetings, not booked. Ask who decides whether a meeting was qualified. Ask to see the rates, not only the totals, and to log in to the same screen they look at. A provider that reports activity volumes and meetings booked, and nothing between or after, is telling you how busy it is. The twelve questions to put to any provider on the first call are in how to choose an outsourced sales provider.

Sources: The Bridge Group, 2025 SDR Models and Metrics report (351 companies, mostly North American B2B SaaS); Cognism, Cold Calling Report 2026.