Sales Development Representative

Sales DevelopmentRepresentative

You contact people who have never heard of your company and try to get them to agree to a meeting. Someone else runs the meeting.

The same work is also posted as

Business Development RepresentativeLead Development RepresentativeMarket Development RepresentativeInside Sales RepresentativeSales AssociateGrowth Representative

What the title covers

The word development does not refer to building anything. You are given a list of companies and a target number of meetings to book each month. The work is repeated outreach by phone, email and LinkedIn to people who did not ask to hear from you. Most never respond. Of those who do, most say no. Your part ends the moment a prospect agrees to a meeting, because an Account Executive takes the meeting and is credited with the sale. Your activity is counted daily, including calls made, emails sent, meetings booked, and meetings the prospect actually attended.

A second use of this title

Same title, different job

Two versions of this job exist under one title. An inbound representative follows up with people who already contacted the company by requesting a demonstration or downloading something. An outbound representative contacts people cold. The inbound version is a considerably gentler job and it is the less common of the two, so a posting that does not specify is usually describing outbound work.

A third version sits at outsourced agencies that sell sales development to other companies as a service. There you may carry several clients at once and pitch products you have never used. A posting that refers to client accounts or campaigns rather than a single product is usually describing that arrangement.

Where it is found

Almost entirely software and business services companies, concentrated in a small number of cities and in remote teams.

Software companiesThe largest employer of these roles by far, and the most likely to have a defined promotion track toward Account Executive.

Outsourced sales agenciesSales development sold as a service. Fast to enter with no experience, and you may work several clients at once.

Business services and staffingRecruiting, payroll, insurance and logistics firms running the same outreach model against their own lists.

Financial and healthcare technologyThe same work with longer sales cycles and stricter rules about what you are permitted to say.

Typical entry requirements

Education: Bachelor's degree in any major. A number of employers do not require a degree at all
Expected: A high volume of calls each day to people who did not ask to hear from you
Frequently required: Comfort with a customer records system and a sequencing tool such as Outreach or Salesloft
Often listed: Zero to one year of experience. This is one of the few roles that genuinely hires with none
Progression: The role is built as a stepping stone. Promotion to Account Executive is usually considered at twelve to eighteen months

What a typical day may look like

The request below is typical of how this kind of work is assigned. The steps that follow describe what completing it involves.

Your sales development manager9:05 AM

You booked four meetings last month against a target of twelve. Before you make another call, let us look at what you are actually sending.

Reviewed together this afternoon.

Count how many of your calls reached a live person rather than how many calls you made. Those two numbers tell very different stories.

Read your first three emails out loud. Anything you would not say to someone standing in front of you becomes obvious immediately.

Check whether you are contacting the person who feels the problem or the person who signs the contract. Early in a conversation it should usually be the first one.

Find where people stop replying. Dropping off at the first message means the opening is wrong. Dropping off at the third means the follow up is.

Rewrite one sequence around a problem the company might have, rather than around what your product does.

Take ten accounts, spend five minutes researching each before contacting them, and compare the response rate against your untargeted list.

Bring your manager the version you changed and the reason you changed it, rather than a promise to make more calls.

What is delivered

A revised outreach sequence, the response rate from the ten researched accounts, and one specific change to the opening line. Logged in the CRM so your manager can see the before and the after.

Is this job for you

Characteristics of the work itself, listed so you can compare them against how you prefer to spend your time.

Yes, if you like

Hearing no many times a day without carrying it home
Clear daily targets rather than vague expectations
A job you can learn quickly and be measured on fairly
Talking to strangers by phone
A promotion path with a known timeline
Getting better at one narrow skill through repetition

No, if you don't like

Credit for the sale you helped start
Work that changes meaningfully from week to week
Being measured on quality rather than volume
Contacting only people who asked to hear from you
A role you can settle into for several years
Ending the day without a count attached to it

What this work pays

Two numbers, because they answer two different questions. The first is what you would be paid in your first job. The second is what people in this field earn after they have been doing it for years.

Starting out

$68,873Average starting salary, business graduates, Class of 2026

This is the average across all business graduates rather than this role specifically. Base pay here usually falls below it, often in the forties to mid fifties, with the rest of any advertised figure depending on meetings booked.

After several years

$66,260Middle of the range across everyone selling services

This covers everyone in the wider field, most of whom moved past sales development years ago. Almost nobody reaches it while still holding this title.

This job is built to be left

Published industry benchmarks put the median time in the role at somewhere between fourteen months and two years. That is not a sign of failure, it is the design. The usual next step is Account Executive, where the pay changes substantially. Judge an offer on whether the company promotes from within, and ask how many of last year's representatives actually moved up. That answer matters more than the base salary.

SOURCES / NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF COLLEGES AND EMPLOYERS, WINTER 2026 SALARY SURVEY. U.S. BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS, OCCUPATIONAL EMPLOYMENT AND WAGE STATISTICS, SALES REPRESENTATIVES OF SERVICES, MAY 2024. TENURE RANGE FROM PUBLISHED SALES DEVELOPMENT BENCHMARKS INCLUDING THE BRIDGE GROUP SDR METRICS REPORT. GOVERNMENT DATA DOES NOT LIST SALES DEVELOPMENT REPRESENTATIVE SEPARATELY.