SDR (Sales Development Representative)

The SDR is the first link in the sales team. Their day is spent finding prospects, writing to them, calling them, following up and sorting out who has a real need. When a prospect fits the target and shows interest, they book a meeting and hand the file to an account executive.

This split was popularised by Predictable Revenue, the 2011 book by Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler that described how Salesforce organised its sales team. The starting idea is simple: a salesperson who both prospects and closes stops prospecting as soon as deals come in, then finds an empty calendar the next quarter.

SDR and BDR are often confused. When a company separates them, the SDR mostly handles inbound leads and the BDR goes after accounts that don't know the company yet. Plenty of teams use both titles for the same job, though. Read the job description, not the title.

Their week falls into four blocks. Researching accounts and contacts that match the ICP. Running outreach sequences on LinkedIn, by email or by phone. Handling replies and qualifying. Booking meetings and handing them over to the person who will close.

Qualification often follows a framework, BANT or a home-made variant: does the prospect have a need, a budget, the authority to decide, a timeline? The SDR doesn't need every answer. They need enough to make the meeting worth the account executive's time.

The handover matters as much as the meeting. A good note says why this prospect, why now, what they said and what they expect from the call. Without it, the prospect repeats everything and the call starts badly.

A large part of the week goes into repetitive work: searching, copying, writing variations of the same message, following up. That's the part tools automate best.

There are three layers. Activity first: invitations, messages, calls. Useful for diagnosis, dangerous as a target, because it pushes people to send anything to anyone. Conversion rates next: acceptance, reply, meetings. Outcomes last: qualified meetings held and opportunities accepted by the account executive.

For a LinkedIn benchmark, the MimikFlow 2026 Observatory gives a reference on a cold cohort. Of 50,930 invitations at least 30 days old, 30.2% were accepted, 24.8% led to a first message, 9.7% to a reply from the prospect and 1.6% to an observed meeting. That last figure is a floor, since some meetings get booked outside the platform.

Judge with some lag. In the same study, fewer than half of replies arrived within 24 hours and 15.2% came after the first week. Part of an SDR's week shows up in the following week's numbers.

Setting a volume target on its own. The SDR hits 500 messages, burns part of the market and fills calendars with meetings nobody wants to take.

Not defining a qualified meeting. If the SDR and the account executive disagree on the definition, every handover turns into an argument about lead quality.

Stopping after one message. In the 2026 Observatory, 46.4% of replies came after at least one follow-up, and three follow-ups covered 90.2% of observed replies.

Hiring an SDR before you have a target and a message that work. An SDR runs a playbook, they can't invent it alone. And leaving them without feedback: they need to know which meetings turned into deals to adjust.

MimikFlow takes over the repetitive part of an SDR's LinkedIn work. It finds profiles matching your target, checks their relevance and keeps the reason for each decision, sends invitations at the pace the account allows, writes the first message and runs up to eight follow-ups.

When a prospect replies, the AI Setter understands the answer, asks the useful questions, offers real time slots and books the meeting. A sensitive or ambiguous request lands in the inbox with the full history. The SDR keeps their time for those conversations, for phone calls and for accounts that need a tailored approach.