BDR (Business Development Representative)

A Business Development Representative (BDR) is an outbound-focused seller whose job is to generate net-new pipeline from cold accounts. They work off a target list built from the ICP, run cold email, LinkedIn, and phone sequences, and hand qualified meetings to an Account Executive.

In practice, BDR and SDR are used interchangeably at most B2B companies. Where teams do draw a line, the usual convention is: SDRs handle inbound leads and marketing-sourced interest, while BDRs are pure outbound — prospecting cold, building lists, and opening conversations with accounts that have never heard of the company. A BDR in that setup lives closer to the market, does more account research, and spends more time on personalization than an SDR qualifying a content download.

The BDR role is a common first sales hire for a founder-led B2B company that has proven its outbound motion but wants to take volume off the founder’s plate. It is also a frequent entry point into a sales career — strong BDRs tend to promote into AE or account management within 12 to 24 months.

When the term matters

BDR shows up in hiring plans, org charts, and compensation conversations. If you are building a sales function, the BDR decision sets the ceiling on how much new business the team can source — their output becomes the AE team’s input. The supporting infrastructure (list quality, deliverability, sequence design, call prep) does more to determine BDR performance than raw headcount.

Related concepts

BDRs are the outbound counterpart to SDRs, feed pipeline to the Account Executive, and rely on a tight ICP definition to aim their outreach.