SDR vs BDR: What Each Role Does and Why Companies Mix Them Up

On 2 November 2026, Cloudflare was advertising two kinds of job under one title. One Business Development Representative ad said the hire would "be the first point of contact for customers that need help finding solutions." Another, with the same title, said to "initiate outbound calls."

Same company, same title, close to opposite days.

That's the trouble with SDR vs BDR. You've probably read the rule: SDRs work inbound leads, BDRs hunt outbound. It's tidy, and it's useful as a starting point. But it describes what the words often mean, not what any given company does.

So we checked. We read 154 live job ads from 46 companies and compared what they ask for against the rule. Below you'll get the plain difference, what the ads showed, the pay employers state, which role to hire first, and a role card you can copy so your own team stops arguing about the label.

If you run the team, the hand-off between these reps and your closers is where a lot of value can leak. ParrotNotes turns a rep's spoken note after a call into a summary and action items, so the closer gets more than a calendar invite.

SDR vs BDR: the short answer

An SDR (sales development representative) and a BDR (business development representative) do the same basic job: they find and qualify potential buyers, then book a meeting for someone who closes. By the usual convention, the SDR works leads that came to you and the BDR goes after accounts that didn't.

Neither title has an official definition, so the one that counts is in the job description.

The account executive row is there because "SDR vs BDR vs AE" is the real org chart question. The first two open deals, and the third closes them.

What an SDR does

In the usual meaning, an SDR is the first person a new lead talks to. Somebody downloads a guide or asks for a demo, and the SDR replies quickly, asks a few lead qualification questions, and either books the meeting or drops the lead politely.

New Relic's Associate SDR ad in Dublin is a clean example: "Manage inbound leads from email, phone, and Live Sales Chat." Aircall's SDR ad in Berlin says much the same, with inbound prospects "via chat and over the phone."

Speed matters most here, because the buyer is already looking and may be talking to someone else.

What a BDR does

In the usual meaning, a BDR starts with a list. They research accounts, find the right people, and open conversations by phone, email and LinkedIn with people who've never heard of the company.

New Relic's BDR ad asks for "outbound cold calling, personalised email outreach, and social selling." Vanta's BDR ad is blunter: "Cold calling is at the heart of this role."

This work takes thicker skin and more research per conversation. A call log helps, because the good opening usually comes after several tries, not the first.

We tested the SDR vs BDR rule against 154 job ads

If the rule held, SDR ads would talk about inbound and BDR ads about outbound. Here's what the ads said on 2 November 2026.

Three things stand out.

"SDR means inbound" barely survives. Only 3 of 91 SDR ads mentioned inbound work without outbound work. Almost all the rest ask for outbound, alone or alongside inbound. Sumo Logic even states the mix: "80% Outbound / 20% Inbound."

"BDR means outbound" mostly holds. About two in three BDR ads stick to outbound language. That half of the rule is a fair guess, though not a promise. Toast's BDR ad in Sydney expects "moving fluidly between inbound and outbound functions."

The exceptions cluster. All seven inbound-only BDR ads came from one company, Cloudflare. So market-wide patterns won't tell you what the title means at any one employer.

How we did it, and the limits. We pulled ads from the public job boards of companies using Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby. 81 boards returned listings, and 46 companies had a live ad with SDR, BDR, sales development or business development representative in the title.

We removed managers, team leads, operations roles and talent-pool ads. Language variants count separately, so companies hiring across Europe weigh more.

The sample is mostly software companies, because those are the ones using these boards and these titles. And a word test shows what an ad mentions, not how the week is split. Treat it as a snapshot, not a census.

Why companies mix them up

Nine of the 46 companies were posting both titles that day, which is where you'd expect a clear split. Sometimes there is one. Often there isn't.

Some of Okta's SDR ads refer to an "xDR Organization," which hints that the letter doesn't matter much there.

An ad can't prove why a company chose a title, but the likely reasons are ordinary:

• The titles get borrowed. A new sales leader brings the label from their last company, and it sticks.
• The work changes and the title doesn't. A team that once worked inbound adds outbound when the leads dry up. Nobody reprints the cards.
• A title can mark a rung. One label can go to juniors and another to reps with some experience. New Relic's ad describes moving from inbound work to outbound work as a career step.
• Reporting lines muddy it. The Bridge Group's 2025 SDR report, covering 351 B2B companies, found 60% of SDRs report to sales, 26% to marketing and 10% to a CxO. Even that study uses SDR as the one word for the whole function.

Here's how that plays out. Dana runs sales at a 40-person controls distributor, and in March she posts a "BDR" job, meaning someone to chase her 200 dormant accounts. The hire, Luis, comes from a software company where BDRs answered demo requests.

By May he's waiting on marketing leads that don't exist, and Dana thinks he's lazy. Neither is wrong about the word. Nobody wrote down the job. (Dana and Luis are an illustration, not real people.)

SDR vs BDR salary: what the ads state

Most pay figures for this comparison get copied from blog to blog. So here's what employers themselves stated for US roles on 2 November 2026, as on-target earnings (OTE: base plus commission at 100% of quota). Where an ad gave a range, we took the midpoint.

A $2,200 gap on nine ads per side is noise. You'll see claims that BDRs earn more because cold outreach is harder, and these ads don't support much of a premium. At the one company in this table listing both for the same US pay region, it runs the other way: Okta's SDR is $82,011 and its BDR is $71,998.

The Bridge Group's survey lands close by: a median SDR OTE of $80,000, split about $55,000 base and $25,000 variable, in the report published in February 2025. It says that figure hasn't moved since 2022.

Government data won't settle it. The BLS page for wholesale and manufacturing reps names neither title. Its May 2025 medians, $72,080 for non-technical products and $104,920 for technical ones, cover selling roles broadly, so they aren't a fair match.

What this means for you: budget by the work and your market, not by the letter. These ads skew to well-funded software companies, so a regional distributor or a trades business shouldn't expect to match them. If you're setting the variable part, our guide to sales commission plans walks through the structures.

SDR vs BDR: which should you hire first?

Skip the title and look at where your next ten deals will come from.

That last row matters for field teams. As our guide to sales team structure points out, a lot of the SDR-and-pod advice assumes everyone sits near a screen. If your reps drive a territory, a person booking meetings for them has to understand routes and account history, not just a script. The differences in inside sales vs outside sales apply here too.

If you do hire, plan for short stays. The Bridge Group reports an average ramp of 3.0 months and average tenure of 1.9 years, with only 60% of SDRs at quota. Your ramp time and hand-off process will get used often.

The role card: settle it in five questions

Whatever you call the job, write these answers down. Put them in the ad, in the first week's onboarding and in the CRM notes for the team. It also works in reverse: if you're a candidate, ask these in the interview.

ROLE CARD
Title on the ad:
1. Source of work: ___% inbound leads / ___% outbound accounts
2. Done means: a lead is handed over when ______ is confirmed
   (e.g. budget owner named, meeting held, problem stated)
3. Measured on: ______ per month (meetings held, pipeline, or both)
4. Hands off to: ______ (name the role), within ___ hours,
   with these notes: ______
5. Reports to: ______ | OTE: $______ (base $______ / variable $______)

Filled in for Dana from earlier, it's short:

Title on the ad: Business Development Rep
1. Source of work: 10% inbound leads / 90% outbound accounts
2. Done means: the buyer named, the problem stated, a visit booked
3. Measured on: 12 visits held per month
4. Hands off to: territory rep, within 24 hours,
   with a spoken note and the account history
5. Reports to: Dana | OTE: as set in her comp plan

Those numbers are Dana's example, not a benchmark. Set yours from your own close rates. Question 1 alone would have saved her two months.

The hand-off is where both roles win or lose

Whichever label you use, the job ends with a hand-off, and that's where a good conversation turns into a calendar invite with no context.

Picture Priya, an SDR who spends 20 minutes with a plant manager and learns the real issue is a contract that ends in June. She types "interested, follow up" into the CRM, because she has 40 more calls to make. The closer, Sam, opens with a generic demo and loses the plant manager in five minutes. (Priya and Sam are an illustration too.)

A one-minute spoken note helps. Priya hangs up and says who she talked to, what they said in their words, what's dated and what she promised.

ParrotNotes transcribes that voice note and turns it into a summary and action items, and it can sort what she said under a framework such as BANT, so Sam reads the point before he dials. ParrotNotes doesn't record the phone call itself; the rep speaks the note afterwards.

For handing over a whole account rather than one lead, use the sales handover template.

The takeaway on SDR vs BDR

• The usual rule (SDR inbound, BDR outbound) is a starting guess. Only 3 of 91 SDR ads we read were inbound-only.
• Companies posting both titles sometimes split them cleanly, sometimes reverse them, and sometimes blur them.
• Stated pay is close: a median of about $82,800 for SDRs against $85,000 for BDRs, in a small sample.
• Hire for the source of the work and write down what "done" means.

Pick one rep or one open job this week and fill in the role card. Then try ParrotNotes on the next hand-off, and ask your closer whether they noticed the difference.