What is an SDR?
A sales development representative, or SDR, is a specialized seller whose job is to qualify inbound interest and convert it into booked meetings for account executives. SDRs work the top of the funnel, respond to form fills, demo requests, and content signals, and run a short qualification motion against a defined set of criteria such as fit, authority, and intent. They do not carry a revenue quota in most organizations. Their performance is measured on meetings booked, meetings held, and the downstream conversion of those meetings into qualified pipeline.
Read the full answer →
What is a BDR?
A business development representative, or BDR, is a seller focused on outbound prospecting into named accounts that have not yet raised a hand. BDRs build target lists, research buying committees, and run multi-touch sequences across email, phone, and social to open conversations with new logos. The role requires account research, writing craft, and the stamina to work cold territory. BDR success is measured on first meetings generated, qualified pipeline sourced, and account penetration rather than closed revenue, which stays with the account executive who takes the handoff.
Read the full answer →
What is the difference between an SDR and a BDR?
The practical difference is direction of motion. SDRs work inbound: they qualify people who already raised a hand through content, demo requests, or trials. BDRs work outbound: they open conversations in accounts that have shown no prior intent. Both roles book meetings for account executives and both are measured on pipeline sourced, but the daily rhythm, the skills emphasized, and the tooling leaned on differ. Some organizations collapse the two titles into one function. The clearest teams keep them separate so each motion has owned goals, owned sequences, and owned coaching.
Read the full answer →
What is an account executive?
An account executive, or AE, is the quota-carrying seller who owns a deal from qualified first meeting through closed revenue. The AE runs discovery, builds the business case with the buying committee, manages the evaluation, negotiates terms, and signs the order form. In most organizations the AE is the forecast unit of record: pipeline is graded through them, close dates are owned by them, and win and loss outcomes trace back to their book. Senior AEs often also run named-account strategy, co-sell with partners, and mentor the SDRs and BDRs feeding them pipeline.
Read the full answer →
What is a customer success manager?
A customer success manager, or CSM, owns the post-sale relationship with a book of accounts and is accountable for adoption, retention, and expansion signal. CSMs run onboarding plans, quarterly business reviews, and health checks against defined usage milestones. They are not a support queue and they are not a renewal clerk. They are the operator closest to how the customer actually gets value, which is why they are usually the first to see churn risk and the first to flag an expansion opening. Compensation plans typically blend retention targets with a growth or expansion component.
Read the full answer →
What is a sales engineer?
A sales engineer, sometimes called a solutions consultant, is the technical seller who partners with an account executive to run product demos, scope integrations, and answer architecture or security questions during an evaluation. Sales engineers translate buyer requirements into a credible solution design and translate product capability into language the buying committee can defend internally. They typically join deals at the discovery or demo stage and stay engaged through technical validation or proof of concept. Strong sales engineering shortens cycles, raises win rates, and keeps closed deals from unraveling in the first ninety days of use.
What is sales operations?
Sales operations is the function that owns the systems, data, and process behind the selling motion. The remit covers CRM configuration, territory and quota design, forecast cadence, stage definitions, enablement reporting, and the health of the seller workflow itself. Sales ops is the function managers call when a report is wrong, a stage definition drifts, or a new comp plan has to be modeled before it ships. The role is a force multiplier on seller time: good sales ops gives every rep an extra hour a week by removing friction, and gives every leader a cleaner forecast call.
Read the full answer →
What is the difference between sales ops and RevOps?
Sales ops is scoped to the sales organization: pipeline, forecast, quotas, territories, and the CRM that supports them. RevOps extends the same operating discipline across marketing, sales, and customer success, treating the full revenue motion as a single system. In a RevOps model, one team owns lead definitions through renewal metrics, one data model backs every report, and one planning cycle sets targets for the whole go-to-market org. Sales ops still exists inside a RevOps structure, but it shares the stack and the operating cadence with marketing ops and customer success ops.
Read the full answer →
How are SDR and BDR teams usually structured?
Most organizations run SDRs and BDRs as a shared development function reporting into sales, with a dedicated manager for every six to ten reps. Inbound SDRs are typically pooled across territories to keep speed-to-lead tight, while outbound BDRs are aligned to named-account lists owned by specific AEs or verticals. Some teams report the function into marketing instead, which can tighten the lead-to-meeting handoff but tends to blur quota alignment with AEs. The structure that works best is the one that matches how the AE book is cut, because that is where every pipeline conversation ultimately lands.
What does a typical sales team structure look like?
A typical mid-market sales team pairs a top-of-funnel development layer, SDRs or BDRs, with a closing layer of account executives segmented by deal size or vertical. Customer success managers own the post-sale book, sales engineers back the AEs on technical evaluations, and sales operations sits horizontally to keep the system of record honest. Leadership usually includes a sales manager for every five to eight AEs, a development manager for the SDR or BDR layer, and a head of revenue who owns the full plan. Enterprise orgs add specialists for enablement, partnerships, and strategic accounts on top.
When should a company hire its first SDR?
The clearest trigger is that account executives are consistently losing selling time to prospecting and the win rate on inbound meetings is already strong enough to defend the handoff. A rough test is that at least one AE is already running a repeatable motion against a defined ideal customer profile, inbound volume is predictable enough to staff against, and management has the bandwidth to coach a new role. Hiring the first SDR before those conditions exist usually produces a very expensive list builder. Hiring after them tends to unlock the next step of AE productivity quickly.
What career path do most sales roles follow?
The common path starts in a development role as an SDR or BDR, promotes into an account executive seat after a year or two of consistent quota attainment, and then branches. Some AEs move up-market into enterprise or strategic accounts, some move laterally into sales engineering or customer success, and some move into first-line management. Operators who prefer systems work pivot into sales ops or RevOps. There is no single ladder, and strong revenue leaders usually have at least two of these experiences in their background before taking a head of revenue role.
