Compare
In-house SDR or outsourced?
The same twelve months laid side by side: time to the first dial, time to the first meeting, what each costs and in what, and the cases where the hire is still the right call. Our side of the comparison is qualitative on purpose - we do not publish a price.
An outsourced SDR function is dialling in week three and booking qualified meetings in month two. A first hire is dialling in month four and producing in month six. The cost over a year is closer than the salary line suggests. Where the hire wins is control and continuity, and that is worth being honest about.
Side by side
| Aspect | Hiring your first SDR | Plugging into Caption |
|---|---|---|
| First dial | Month four (six weeks to offer, a month’s notice, a month of onboarding) | Week three |
| First qualified meetings | Month five to six, after a 3.0-month average ramp | Month two |
| You know if the market responds | Month six to nine, tangled up with whether the hire was any good | Month two |
| Who coaches | You, or nobody | A Caption manager, daily |
| Data, dialler, sequencing | Bought, wired and paid for separately, £6,000 to £10,000 a year | Included, on Setta |
| The board | The new hire’s first weeks of research | Built before the first dial, shown to you |
| First-year cost | Around £85,000 all in outside London, a quarter of it ramp | One agreed figure from the first dial; no recruiter, no stack, no ramp |
| If it does not work | A hire to unwind, and no answer about the market | Stop; what you keep is set out before you start |
| If it works | One SDR, and a process to build around them | Add to the team, or hire into a process that already works |
| Control | Yours entirely: the person, the pace, the culture | Shared: you set the brief and the criteria, we run the day |
| Continuity | Average tenure in the role is 1.9 years | The function stays; individual reps can change |
The hire figures are the published UK numbers - salary ranges, employer’s National Insurance at 15 per cent, the automatic-enrolment pension, standard recruiter terms, and the Bridge Group’s SDR research for ramp and tenure - set out line by line in this post. Run them with your own salary and fees in the SDR cost calculator; the wider benchmarks are on UK SDR statistics.
When the hire is right
- You already have a sales leader who has run outbound and can spend a fifth of their week coaching. The management cost falls away and the hire gets cheaper in real terms.
- Your sale needs deep domain knowledge to open a conversation - clinical, regulatory, heavily technical - and you can recruit that knowledge.
- You are past the first SDR. A second and third hire into a working process, with a manager and a stack already in place, is a different and easier decision.
When plugging in is right
- Nobody in the business has run outbound before, and nobody has the time to coach.
- You need to know this half whether your market responds, not next year.
- You have closers and nobody feeding them, or an SDR who left and has not been replaced.
- You are opening a market or an office the existing team does not know.
The order that tends to cost less is the other way round from the usual one: plug in first to learn what the market returns, then hire into a process that already works.
Outsourced SDR vs in-house: the short answers
Is an outsourced SDR cheaper than hiring one?
Usually, in the first year. A first UK hire costs around £85,000 once salary, employer’s National Insurance, pension, recruiter, tools and management time are counted, and the first quarter of it is ramp. An outsourced function is one figure with the manager, data and platform included. The arithmetic, line by line.
Which is faster to pipeline?
Outsourced. Around three weeks to the first dial against roughly four months for a hire, once the search, the notice period and onboarding are counted, and the published average ramp after that is three months.
When is hiring in-house the better choice?
When you already have someone who has run outbound and has time to coach, when the product needs deep technical knowledge built over years, or when you are ready to build a team rather than test a market.
Can we do both?
Yes, and it is often the order that costs less: plug in first to learn what the market returns, then hire into a working playbook.
Give us the market. We will show you what is in it.
If the calendar decides it, the board is the quick way to find out what your market holds. Send the brief.
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