What Is The Difference Between SDRs and BDRs in B2B SaaS

Reading Time: 6 MinutesB2B SaaSSales
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There’s something deeply romantic about the chaos of a poorly structured B2B SaaS sales team. The overlapping roles, the handoffs that resemble airport baggage claims, the acronyms tossed around like confetti at a board meeting—SDRs and BDRs, anyone?

If you’ve ever found yourself in a meeting wondering why you have two entire departments emailing the same prospect three times before lunch, it might be time to ask the question: what exactly is the difference between SDRs and BDRs?

The Great SaaS Sales Team Identity Crisis

Building a sales team in SaaS is like assembling IKEA furniture without the instructions—and with only one Allen wrench shared between six departments. You know it’s supposed to work, but at some point someone ends up crying or dramatically quitting Slack.

A major culprit? Undefined roles. Specifically, confusion between SDRs and BDRs.

Let’s break it down:

  • Role Overlap: Imagine paying two people to do the same job and then being surprised when no one knows who’s supposed to follow up with the CTO from that demo call.

  • Misplaced Resources: Assigning your BDR to field inbound demo requests is like hiring a Michelin-star chef to heat up frozen waffles.

  • Pipeline Paralysis: When no one knows who owns which part of the funnel, leads get passed around like a potato no one wants to hold too long.

What Are SDRs and BDRs Supposed to Do, Anyway?

We’re glad you asked. Or maybe you didn’t—but here we are.

SDRs: The Frontline Email Gladiators

Sales Development Representatives are the people who make more cold calls before 9 a.m. than most of us make in a year. They are the greeters at the door of your sales process, though instead of saying “Welcome to Walmart,” they’re saying, “Hi [{{FirstName}}], have you considered optimizing your cloud-based workflow?”

They qualify inbound leads. They stalk you on LinkedIn. They survive off rejection and mediocre coffee.

What SDRs do best:

  • Send emails that sound suspiciously friendly

  • Ask “Can I steal 15 minutes of your time?” 37 times per day

  • Pretend they’re not reading from a HubSpot script

  • Decide if you’re a real buyer or just someone who likes to click “Book Demo” out of boredom

BDRs: The Outbound Dreamers

Business Development Representatives, on the other hand, don’t wait for leads to come in. They go out into the world (read: internet), armed with curated lists, optimism, and LinkedIn Sales Navigator, in search of new business.

They’re the ones who cold-email your VP of Operations after noticing you posted about a webinar six months ago.

What BDRs do best:

  • Research companies like they’re planning a heist

  • Show up at industry events and say things like “Let’s sync offline”

  • Woo potential partners who didn’t even know they were shopping

  • Strategize like chess players, except every move leads to a calendar invite

So while SDRs warm up leads that have already knocked on the door, BDRs are out there building the house, selling the house, and sometimes cold-knocking on other people’s doors entirely.

SDRs and BDRs in Practice: The Daily Grind

Let’s look at a day in the life:

  • SDRs are inbox warriors. Their calendars are filled with 3-minute voicemails and automatic follow-ups. Their KPI dashboards look like a video game—except instead of shooting zombies, they’re targeting CMOs.

  • BDRs are more like sales anthropologists. They study the terrain, watch for patterns, and slowly make their move like a panther wearing business casual.

Their objectives?

  • SDRs: Fill the calendar with qualified meetings.

  • BDRs: Build relationships that don’t implode after one awkward demo.

Skills Breakdown: Who You Want in Which Seat

You don’t hire an SDR to schmooze. You hire them to execute—fast, hard, and often with a questionable grasp on time zones.

SDR Skills:

  • Rejection resilience (bonus if they’ve dated in New York)

  • CRM obsession

  • Persuasive writing and slightly exaggerated enthusiasm

  • The ability to make “just following up” sound like a fresh concept

BDR Skills:

  • Long-game thinking

  • Market curiosity

  • Conversation over conversion (at first)

  • The ability to make your product sound like the best thing since sliced APIs

Why You Need Both (Even If You Think You Don’t)

This is the part where a well-meaning VP of Sales will say, “Why can’t we just have one person do both?”

And this is the part where we gently suggest you stop trying to make fetch happen.

SDRs and BDRs complement each other like peanut butter and judgmental stares. When working in harmony, they:

  • Keep your funnel full at all stages

  • Ensure your AEs don’t spend their lives Googling “company size” and “funding round”

  • Create a predictable, scalable process rather than chaos disguised as hustle

The Handoff Dance: Where It All Falls Apart

If there’s one thing that can ruin a perfectly good sales team, it’s a botched handoff.

An SDR qualifies the lead, sets the appointment, and adds just enough information to the CRM to make you think, “Wow, this is promising.” Then the BDR joins the call and realizes the “interested CTO” is a junior intern who thought SaaS meant “snacks and sodas.”

This, friends, is why alignment matters.

A smooth SDR-to-BDR handoff includes:

  • Clean notes (not “cool guy, probs interested??”)

  • A shared definition of what “qualified” means

  • A mutual understanding that no one gets credit for booking a meeting with their mom

Metrics, Baby

How do you know if your SDRs and BDRs are actually doing their jobs?

SDRs are judged on:

  • Number of qualified meetings

  • Response and conversion rates

  • Volume of outreach (plus whether it includes typos like “Hi {{FirstName}}”)

BDRs are measured by:

  • Pipeline contribution

  • Deal velocity

  • Amount of charm deployed per quarter

Building a High-Performance Team Without Losing Your Mind

Want to get serious about your sales org? Here’s how:

  1. Define the roles—no more “BDR, but also does inbound SDR stuff.”

  2. Train them separately—they are not the same species.

  3. Align them weekly—get them in a room, give them coffee, and let them air their grievances.

  4. Pay them well—or prepare for LinkedIn to become their real job.

Final Thoughts: You Can Stop Pretending Now

You know what the difference is between SDRs and BDRs. You’ve known all along. You just didn’t want to admit it because it meant you might have to do something—like restructure your sales team or admit that 73% of your pipeline is built on wishful thinking.

But here we are.

So, if you’re ready to stop winging it, we’re here to help. SDRs and BDRs are the backbone of a functioning B2B SaaS sales machine. Treat them accordingly, and they’ll treat your funnel like the money-printing mechanism it was meant to be.

Ready to structure your sales team like an actual adult? Schedule a free consultation with Insivia—because SDRs and BDRs deserve more than confused job descriptions and copy-pasted outreach scripts.

Andy Halko, Author

Written by: Andy Halko, CEO & Founder

I started Insivia in 2002 and for over 22 years I have had the chance to work directly with hundreds of companies and founders to redefine or reinvent their businesses.