How to Get an SDR or BDR Job: Interviews, Pay and Path

To get an SDR job, show a hiring manager three things before they ask: you can handle rejection at volume, research an account and write a sharp first message, and hold a two-minute call without a script. In our view, a sample prospecting exercise and a rehearsed mock cold call usually beat a polished resume.

Definition: A sales development representative (SDR), often called a business development representative (BDR), finds and qualifies potential customers through calls, email and social outreach, then books meetings for account executives (AEs), who run the sales process and close the deal.

It's an entry-level job with a scoreboard on day one. That makes it hard, and it makes it one of the more open doors into tech for people without a technical degree.

What an SDR job is, and how a BDR differs

The SDR seat sits at the top of the sales funnel. You don't close revenue. You create the conversations that turn into revenue.

The labels are messy. Some companies call reps who follow up inbound leads (people who filled out a form) SDRs, and reps who prospect cold accounts BDRs. Others flip it, and plenty use both titles for one job. In our view, two questions matter more than the label:

What share of my meetings should come from inbound versus my own outbound prospecting? Inbound-heavy roles reward speed and qualification; outbound-heavy roles reward research, writing and persistence.
Who do I report to? Per The Bridge Group's 2025 SDR research (351 B2B companies), 60 percent of SDR teams report to sales, 26 percent to marketing and 10 percent to an executive. A team inside sales tends to sit closer to the AE ladder.

The same report puts the ratio at 2.4 AEs per SDR, consistent since 2018. You're usually working for a small group of closers whose quota depends partly on you.

At a very young startup the seat may not exist yet. Jason Rosenthal, an operating partner at a16z, advised founders in March 2026 to hire the first SDR only after a head of sales, a first AE and a first solutions architect are in place, all after product-market fit. If you want an SDR job with real support around it, that's a useful filter.

A day in an SDR job: activities, meetings and the metrics that count

Most SDR teams set both activity and outcome targets. Bridge Group's 2025 data for the median team:

Activity: about 112 touches a day, split roughly 44 calls, 41 emails, 19 LinkedIn actions and 8 texts or other messages.
Real conversations: about 4.1 a day. Read that next to the 112: most of the job is reaching people who don't answer.
Meetings: a median quota of 10 meetings held per month, and 6 that convert into a real sales opportunity (quotas shift with how strictly a meeting is defined: the report shows about 16 for introductory meetings, 10.4 for semi-qualified and 9.0 for fully qualified ones).
Attainment: 60 percent of reps at quota, which the report calls the lowest on record.

A typical week: research and first emails in the morning, call blocks late morning and late afternoon, follow-ups and logging every touch in the CRM (customer relationship management software, such as Salesforce or HubSpot) in between, and a pipeline review with your manager and AEs on Friday.

The work is repetitive. The craft is in small variations: a better first line, a sharper reason to call.

SDR pay: base, variable and what OTE means

SDR pay is usually quoted as OTE, or on-target earnings: base plus the variable pay earned at 100 percent of quota. Per Bridge Group's 2025 research, median SDR OTE was $80,000, split 68:32 between a $55,000 base and $25,000 variable, with an average ramp (time to full quota) of 3.0 months. Location, stage and the inbound or outbound mix all move these numbers.

The BLS has no SDR category. Its nearest group, sales representatives of technical and scientific products, had a median of $104,920 in May 2025, but that covers experienced reps, not entry seats. The BLS notes most employers there mix salary with commission or bonus, as SDR plans do.

An illustrative example of how variable pay can work. Say the offer is $55,000 base plus $25,000 variable on a quota of 10 meetings held a month, or 120 a year. Each meeting is then worth about $208 in variable pay.

Meetings held per month	Annual meetings	Variable earned	Total pay
5	60	$12,500	$67,500
7	84	$17,500	$72,500
10 (quota)	120	$25,000	$80,000
12	144	$30,000	$85,000

Real plans often pay per qualified opportunity, add accelerators above quota or pay quarterly. With 60 percent of reps at quota in the Bridge data, we'd budget around the 7-meeting row, not the 12. For equity in a startup SDR offer, our guide to how startups pay early employees explains options and vesting from the company's side.

How to get an SDR job with no sales experience

SDR hiring managers screen for a short list of traits, none of which require a past sales title:

Evidence you've hit a number. Retail targets, call-center metrics, club fundraising: a measured goal and your result.
Coachability. A before-and-after story of taking feedback beats a claim.
Written clarity. Your application email is your first prospecting sample.
Curiosity about buyers. Who buys the product and why matters more than its feature list.
Energy on the phone. Comfort talking to strangers, which you can practice.

That's also the short answer to how to become a business development representative: the role is learned on the job, but the screen rewards drive and clear communication. A degree helps at some companies and is optional at many.

It's a reasonable entry point in a tight market. The New York Fed's data for the second quarter of 2026 put the unemployment rate for recent college graduates at about 5.6 percent and their underemployment rate at 42 percent. Sales development is one of the few tech roles a non-technical graduate can start in on salary. With zero sales background, our guide on breaking into tech sales with no experience covers the wider path; if you already sell elsewhere, moving from sales into tech helps you decide whether to start as an SDR at all.

A two-week plan to get interview-ready:

Days 1 to 3: pick a software category whose buyers you understand (restaurants, clinics, finance teams) and learn the words: pipeline, ICP (ideal customer profile), qualification, ARR.
Days 4 to 7: do the prospecting exercise below for two target companies. Record a 2-minute cold call, listen back, repeat.
Days 8 to 14: apply to 5 to 10 SDR roles and send each sales manager a short note with your exercise attached. Our guide on cold emailing a startup founder for a job works for SDR managers too.

To find the roles, search "SDR", "BDR" or "Sales Development" on the 1752vc careers board, set Level to Entry and Time posted to Past 7 days, and sort by Newest. Each posting shows the employer's own date, so you know which are fresh enough for a direct note.

The SDR interview: role play, mock cold call and the prospecting exercise

A typical SDR loop: recruiter screen, hiring manager interview, role play or mock cold call, sometimes a written exercise, then a sales leader. The role play is where many offers are won or lost.

There's a gap that works in your favor. Salesforce's 2026 State of Sales report (4,050 sales professionals surveyed in August and September 2025) found 47 percent of Gen Z sellers say they lack enough role-play practice before customer calls. A candidate who has clearly rehearsed stands out.

How the mock cold call usually works

The interviewer plays a busy buyer, from a company and persona you get anywhere from 15 minutes to a day ahead. Expect pushback. They're mostly watching how you handle the no.

A simple structure that holds up:

Permission and name. "Hi Dana, it's Sam from [company]. This is a cold call. Can I have 30 seconds to tell you why I picked you?"
The reason. One specific line about their world: a hiring post, a product launch, a regulation, a growth signal.
The problem, as a question. "Teams your size often lose hours on X. How are you handling that today?"
Listen, then one follow-up. Ask why it matters before pitching.
The ask. A specific 20-minute slot, two time options.

Don't skip step 5. Pete Kazanjy's sales hiring process, published in First Round Review in 2015, ends with a mock presentation where one of the main questions is whether the candidate asks for the sale.

Cold-call data is mostly vendor-reported, so weigh it accordingly. Gong's analysis of more than 100,000 recorded cold calls (first published in 2018) put the baseline success rate at about 1.5 percent and linked stating the reason for the call to 2.1 times higher success. For objections, we've written about keeping your cool on objections during cold calls from the founder's side, and the same moves work for reps.

A sample prospecting exercise you can copy

Some companies set this as homework. Doing it unprompted is one of the stronger moves an applicant can make. One page:

Account: one real company that fits the employer's customer profile, and why (size, industry, a trigger such as new funding or a telling job post).
Persona: the title you'd target and the one problem they likely own.
Sequence: day 1 email, day 3 call plus LinkedIn note, day 8 follow-up with something new.
First email (neutral, copyable):

Subject: [their team] and [problem]

Hi [name], noticed [specific trigger]. Teams going through that often run into [problem], usually showing up as [concrete symptom]. [Company] helps by [one-line outcome]. Worth a 20-minute look on [day] or [day]?

Your hypothesis: what you'd test if the first version gets no replies (subject line, persona, trigger).

It's also, frankly, the job. For broader interview prep (behavioral questions, the STAR format, "why sales"), see our guide on tech interviews for non-technical roles.

"Cold calling is dead, so why train for it?"

It's a fair objection. Salesforce's 2026 report found 55 percent of sales professionals already use AI for prospecting, and nearly half of reps named cold calling the worst part of the job. Bridge Group's 2025 data also logged "AI SDRs" as a category for the first time, at 1 percent of respondents.

But.

The same Bridge data shows the median SDR still making about 44 calls a day, and the live conversation is where AI help is thinnest. Rosenthal's a16z piece frames the shift as the role gaining a more quantitative dimension with AI-assisted tools, rather than disappearing. Our read: AI is likely to take more of the research and first drafts, which raises the bar for the human parts (who to call, a real conversation, a clean handoff). That argues for practicing the call, not skipping it.

The SDR promotion path: how long, and to where

The traditional pitch is a year or so to AE. The data suggests a slower road.

Bridge Group's 2025 research found SDR tenure at 1.9 years, its highest since the early 2010s, with median attrition of 40 percent. Promotions accounted for 16 points of that 40 percent in 2024, meaning about one SDR in six left the seat by being promoted; the report says that rate has roughly halved since 2020, when it was 34 percent. Its 2026 AE research found companies asking for 3.7 years of prior experience for AE hires, up from 2.7 in 2022.

The promotion still happens at many companies, but it seems to take longer and depend more on where you sit. Common exits:

Account executive, usually starting with small-business (SMB) deals.
SDR team lead or manager, for people who like coaching. Further on sits sales management, where the BLS put median pay at $148,270 in May 2025 ($173,700 in professional, scientific and technical services).
Customer success or account management, for people who prefer keeping customers to finding them.
Marketing, partnerships or revenue operations, where messaging and CRM skills transfer.

Worth asking before you sign: how many SDRs were promoted in the last 12 months, after how long, and against what written criteria? The answers often say more than the OTE. To compare employers, the startup track of the 1752vc careers board filters sales development roles by level and location. For early-stage companies, our guide on getting a sales job at a startup covers how to judge whether there's enough product-market fit to hit any quota at all.

Common mistakes SDR candidates make

A generic application note. It's the first prospecting sample they see.
Pitching in the role play. Two good questions usually beat a minute of features.
Folding at the first objection. Interviewers often object on purpose. Acknowledge, ask, try again.
Skipping the comp plan details. Ask what counts as a meeting and who decides it qualified.

Where we land

We think an SDR job is one of the more honest entry points in tech: you're measured from week one, and the skills travel to almost any later role. It's also a grind, and the fast-track promotion story looks shakier than it did.

So we'd pick the team as carefully as the company. A strong manager, a product buyers want and a record of promoting SDRs will likely matter more over two years than a few thousand dollars of OTE. That's our view; your market may point elsewhere.

The bottom line

Do the exercise before anyone asks. Rehearse the call until the no stops rattling you.

The resume gets you a screen.

The role play gets you the job.

Key takeaways

An SDR job creates sales conversations rather than closing them; SDR and BDR titles overlap, so ask about the inbound versus outbound mix.
Per The Bridge Group's 2025 research, the median SDR makes about 112 touches and 4.1 quality conversations a day against 10 meetings held per month.
Median SDR OTE in that data was $80,000 ($55,000 base, $25,000 variable), with 60 percent of reps at quota.
A one-page prospecting exercise and a rehearsed mock cold call tend to separate candidates more than a resume does.
In that data, about 16 percent of SDRs left the role through promotion in 2024, versus 34 percent in 2020, so test the AE ladder before you accept.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between an SDR and a BDR?

Both create sales meetings for account executives. Many companies use SDR for reps who qualify inbound leads and BDR for reps who prospect cold accounts, but some reverse the labels and many treat them as one job. Ask what share of meetings come from inbound versus your own outbound work, since that shapes the role more than the title.

How much does an SDR make in tech?

The Bridge Group's 2025 research, covering 351 B2B companies, put median SDR on-target earnings at $80,000: a $55,000 base and $25,000 in variable pay. Actual earnings depend on hitting quota, which 60 percent of reps did in that data. Pay also varies with location, company stage and the inbound or outbound mix.

What happens in an SDR mock cold call interview?

An interviewer plays a busy prospect from a company and persona you get shortly before. They tend to push back with objections such as timing or an existing vendor. They are mostly judging how you open, whether you ask questions before pitching, how calmly you handle the no, and whether you ask for a specific meeting time.

How long does it take to get promoted from SDR to account executive?

It varies by company, and it seems to be getting longer. The Bridge Group's 2025 research found average SDR tenure at 1.9 years, and that about 16 percent of SDRs were promoted out of the role in 2024, down from 34 percent in 2020. Asking how many SDRs were promoted last year, and after how long, is a reasonable way to test a company's path.

Can you become an SDR without a college degree?

Often, yes. Many SDR postings ask for drive, communication and a record of hitting targets rather than a specific degree, though some larger companies still list a bachelor's. Results from retail, hospitality, call centers or any role with measured goals can stand in for sales experience, especially alongside a prospecting exercise and a rehearsed mock call.

Sources

Disclaimer: This guide is for general education only and is not legal, tax or investment advice. Laws, market data and program terms change, so it may not reflect the latest developments or fit your situation. Treat it as a starting point, not a source of truth, and talk to a qualified lawyer, accountant or financial adviser before you make decisions.