The short answer
Decide what this person is hired to produce: meetings booked, meetings held, or pipeline created. Then write down how your sales manager and the account executives who take the meetings coach and accept handoffs, and hire the representative whose working style fits, not just the one with the most experience or who interviews the best. A poor fit tends to show up as meetings the account executives do not want.
Why this hire is hard right now
The data on this seat point in two directions. The Bridge Group's 2025 survey of 351 B2B companies, mostly software and mostly North American, found average ramp time at 3.0 months, the lowest since 2010, and average tenure at 1.9 years, the highest since the early 2010s. It also found 60% of reps at quota, the lowest in the study's history, and median annual attrition of 40%.
Then there is AI. The same survey saw "AI SDRs" appear as a category for the first time in 2025, at 1% of respondents. BLS projects no change in employment for the nearest US group through 2035 and says AI and automation "may limit employment growth." In February 2026, SaaStr's Jason Lemkin wrote that the classic email-outbound version of the role "is going extinct," and reported that his own company went from more than 10 human sales staff to 1.2 plus AI agents. That is one company's account, not market data. If outreach volume is what machines take, what remains is judgment: who not to contact, what to say to someone who did not ask, and how to hand a conversation to an account executive. Know how your manager and account executives work, write it down, and hire someone whose style matches or complements it.
What a business development representative does
Companies use "business development representative" (BDR) and "sales development representative" (SDR) for the same seat or for different ones, so say in the posting what yours means. BLS describes inside sales representatives as working mostly in offices, often cold-calling prospects and taking incoming calls. Three versions cover most roles:
| Version | What it looks like | What you need to have decided |
|---|---|---|
| Outbound | Starts conversations with people who have not asked: calls, email, social messages | Who builds the target list, and how many touches before stopping |
| Inbound | Responds to and qualifies people who raised a hand | How fast to respond, and what counts as qualified |
| Both | Splits the day between the two | Which one wins when the day runs short |
Every version ends in a handoff. The Bridge Group found a typical ratio of 1 SDR to 2.4 account executives, so each BDR serves a few people, and each may want the handoff done differently.
A meeting booked and a meeting held are different jobs. Decide which one you are paying for.
Working style: write it down first
Neither answer in the table is wrong. The trouble starts when a BDR and a manager hold opposite ones. Answer each row for the manager and for each account executive who will take the meetings.
| Moment | Write down, for how you work | What a mismatch looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Something goes wrong | A prospect complains about the outreach, or an account executive says the meetings are poor: do you want to hear at once, or hear the plan? | The BDR quietly changes the message, and the pipeline report shifts with no one knowing why. |
| Instructions conflict | You say hit the call target and an account executive says fewer, better meetings: who sets the priority? | The BDR follows whoever coached last, and the number you review drifts. |
| Feedback | Do you coach from calls, emails, or the weekly numbers? Live, or in a weekly one-on-one? | Feedback arrives as a number at month-end, and the BDR never learns what to change. |
| Speed against quality | How many touches a day, and how much research is a prospect worth before reaching out? | Volume is high and replies dry up, or every message is perfect and activity is half the target. |
Where your answers are "it depends," write down what it depends on. That is the part a candidate cannot guess.
What a bad hire costs
The most transparent estimate puts the cost of replacing an employee at about a fifth of salary, and it is probably low. A 2012 review by the Center for American Progress found a median of 21% of annual salary across most jobs. Only 2 of its 11 papers counted indirect costs such as lost productivity. The data are historical and American, so read them as an order of magnitude.
In this seat the bill recurs. The Bridge Group reports median annual attrition of 40%: 13% involuntary, 11% voluntary, and 16% promotions. Not all of it is a failure, so decide where the seat leads before you hire. Every replacement restarts a ramp that averages 3.0 months. The larger bill is the people around the seat: account executive time spent on meetings that go nowhere, manager hours spent coaching the same problem, and pipeline that does not exist while the seat ramps.
What fit research does and doesn't show
A 2005 meta-analysis of 172 studies found that fit with a supervisor tracked how people felt about the supervisor (corrected correlation .46) and the job (.44), but much less performance (.18) or tenure (.09). Only 5 to 14 studies sit behind each figure. So a mismatch is less likely to make a BDR bad at the work than to make coaching harder, and for someone early in a career, coaching is how they get good.
How to screen for fit
Ask every candidate the same questions and score the answers against what you wrote down. A 2022 re-analysis of hiring research (Sackett and colleagues) ranked structured interviews first, with a validity of .42, ahead of work samples at .33, as summarized by SIOP. The figures cover job performance across occupations, not BDRs specifically.
Questions that surface working style
Ask about a real past situation, then keep asking "what did you do next?" until you hear actions, not intentions.
- Something went wrong: "Tell me about a week when your numbers fell short. What did you change first, and who did you tell?"
- Instructions conflicted: "A manager and an account executive wanted different things from your outreach. What did you do?"
- Feedback: "Tell me about the most useful coaching you have had on a call or an email. What did you change afterward?"
- Speed against quality: "How do you decide how much research a prospect is worth? Give an example where you got it wrong."
A 30-minute work sample
Hand over a mock territory: five prospect profiles, a paragraph on the product, and a note from an account executive describing the ideal buyer. Make one profile look right but miss the note. Ask for a first email and a 60-second call opener for two prospects, and a line on who they would skip and why. Watch for:
- Skips the wrong-fit prospect and says why: strongest.
- Writes to all five and flags which fit least: good.
- Writes to all five without comment: a risk, whatever else the drafts show.
References
Ask a former sales manager: "What did this person need from you to do their best work?" Then have finalists run a mock handoff with the account executive who would take their meetings.
Canada and the US
| Ontario | United States | |
|---|---|---|
| Closest official group | Sales and account representatives, wholesale trade, non-technical (NOC 64101). There is no separate BDR category. | Wholesale and manufacturing sales representatives, which includes inside sales. There is no separate BDR category. |
| Size | About 55,560 in the Toronto region (Job Bank). | 1,571,400 jobs in 2025 (BLS). |
| Median pay | C$31.25 an hour, range C$19.23 to C$57.69 (Job Bank, 2023 to 2024 data). Toronto region: C$31.25. | US$76,460 a year (BLS, 2025). |
| Sales development pay | The Bridge Group survey reports median on-target earnings of $80K for SDRs: $55K base, $25K variable. Currency is not stated. | Same survey, mostly North American. |
| Outlook | "Good" for 2024 to 2026, Toronto region. | No change in employment, 2025 to 2035, with about 123,400 openings a year. |
FAQ
What does a business development representative do?
They start and qualify sales conversations so account executives spend time on real opportunities. BLS describes inside sales representatives as often cold-calling prospects and taking incoming calls. The BDR and SDR titles are used differently from company to company, so say in the posting what yours covers.
What is the difference between a BDR and an account executive?
A BDR starts and qualifies conversations; an account executive runs the sale and closes it. The Bridge Group's survey found a typical ratio of 1 SDR to 2.4 account executives.
How long does a BDR take to ramp, and how long do they stay?
In the Bridge Group's 2025 survey, ramp averaged 3.0 months and tenure 1.9 years. Median annual attrition was 40%, including 16% promotions.
What should I ask in a BDR interview?
Ask about real past situations: a week that missed target, competing instructions, useful coaching, and research against speed. Use the same questions for every candidate and add the mock-territory work sample.
Will AI replace BDRs?
Nobody knows yet. BLS projects no change for the nearest group through 2035 and says AI may limit growth, and the Bridge Group saw AI SDRs at 1% of respondents in 2025. Hire for what is left: judgment about who not to contact, and the handoff.
Sources
All pages opened October 27, 2026.
- The Bridge Group (Matt Bertuzzi), February 6, 2025: Sales Development Models, Metrics & Compensation: 2025 Research Report, 10th edition. A survey of 351 B2B companies run by a sales consultancy; I read the report's web pages, not the full report. Ramp, tenure and attrition figures also appear on its tenure and ramp time page.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook: Wholesale and Manufacturing Sales Representatives (last modified August 27, 2026)
- Job Bank, Government of Canada: Sales and account representatives, wholesale trade, non-technical (NOC 64101): outlook, Toronto region (2024 to 2026; updated December 11, 2024)
- Job Bank, Government of Canada: Salesperson, Wholesale (non-technical) (NOC 64101): wages in Ontario, with Toronto and Canada rows (Labour Force Survey, 2023 to 2024; updated November 19, 2025)
- SaaStr (Jason Lemkin), February 13, 2026: The 2026 Sales Team: What It Actually Looks Like, and What It Doesn't. An operator's opinion and self-reported company figures.
- Center for American Progress, Boushey and Glynn, November 16, 2012: There Are Significant Business Costs to Replacing Employees
- Kristof-Brown, Zimmerman and Johnson (2005), Personnel Psychology 58(2), 281 to 342: Consequences of Individuals' Fit at Work. Person-supervisor figures from Table 4.
- Sackett, Zhang, Berry and Lievens (2022), Journal of Applied Psychology 107(11), 2040 to 2068, as summarized by SIOP's TIP