Introduction
I spent ten years managing AEs. Not a single BDR. When ScaleFast started running SDR pods for clients, I quickly realized the two roles have almost nothing in common, and that my complex-sale instincts were useless.
So I did what I tell everyone to do: I called someone who does it better than me. A sales director managing several BDR teams at a French scale-up. Twelve minutes, between two meetings.
Here is what I took away, and what we changed afterward.
The Four Things to Watch in a BDR
The answer came immediately, without hesitation, which is a signal in itself. When someone manages well, their framework fits in a few points they can recite from memory.
One. Does the rep have enough material to call?
This comes first, and not by accident. Before asking whether a BDR is good, you need to check that they have something to work with. An exhausted contact list produces exactly the same symptoms as a BDR losing their edge: falling rates, falling morale, and explanations about the market.
The line that stuck with me: assume people want to do a good job, they just need to have work to do.
Two. Are they recycling?
A prospect who says no today is not a dead prospect. They go back into a backlog with a dated follow-up task, three, six, or nine months out. The question to ask a BDR is not "how many rejections this week," it is "how many accounts have you put back in the queue, and on what timeline."
A BDR who does not recycle burns through their market. After six months, they have nothing left to call and they come to explain that the list is bad.
Three. Are they qualifying correctly?
Not "how many meetings," but "which meetings." Are they talking to the right people? Are they asking the right questions? Are they checking budget, authority, need, and timing? And are they logging all of that properly in the CRM, or does the information stay in their head?
This third point is what separates an agency that sells meetings from an agency that sells pipeline.
Four. What is their activity level?
How many calls per week, per month. This number lands in fourth position, and that is intentional.
Volume Matters Less Than You Think
I asked about target volume. The answer surprised me: it depends. Some BDRs make 200 calls a week, others 400, depending on the team and the market.
Then came this line: volume, honestly, I don't really care.
What he cares about is results. Is the rep producing qualified calls? Are they opening opportunities? Are they booking meetings? And above all, what is their no-show rate?
This is a useful inversion for any prospecting agency, including ours. Call volume is the easiest number to show in a client report, and the least interesting one. A BDR making 400 calls with a 40% no-show rate destroys more value than they create: they burn through contact lists, they fill AE calendar slots, and they make you think something is happening.
What to Look at Next, Once the Basics Are in Place
Once those four points are covered, the conversation goes one level deeper.
The percentage of opportunities that go the distance. A BDR can open a lot of opportunities that never close. If their rate is structurally lower than their colleagues, that is not a volume problem, it is an upstream qualification problem.
The percentage of their portfolio that has been touched. How many accounts in their book have been worked, and how many have never been called. This is a metric people rarely look at, and it reveals a lot: many BDRs loop endlessly over 20% of their portfolio, the accounts they know, while leaving the rest untouched.
The BDR-to-AE ratio. This is where the reasoning lands. By accumulating these numbers, you eventually know how many BDRs you need to feed one AE in your context. That metric lets you size a team properly instead of hiring on instinct.
The Red Flag in Recruiting
My next question was about recruiting. What warning signs should you watch for in a BDR candidate?
Just one, but a big one: someone who cannot pitch, who is not comfortable speaking.
With a corollary that interviews often overlook: you cannot be afraid of getting the door slammed, because it happens all day long.
Those are two different things, and they are evaluated differently. Verbal fluency can be tested in five minutes: ask the candidate to pitch a product they know, with no preparation. Rejection tolerance cannot be tested through a speech. You read it in their track record and in how they talk about their failures.
Note what does not appear on the list: degree, industry knowledge, prior SaaS experience. Those are the criteria most BDR hiring decisions are built on, and they rarely predict performance.
The Best Advice from the Call
It came at the end, almost as an aside, and I passed it along to the whole team that same day.
Just because a prospect says no does not mean it is a no. It might just be no right now.
The important point is not the rejection. It is what is behind it. Is it no because I do not have time? Because I do not have budget? Because I misunderstood what you sell?
Those three "no" responses have nothing to do with each other.
- No time: the account is a good fit, the timing is not. You recycle with a date.
- No budget: the question is when budget decisions are made, and whether you are talking to the right person.
- Misunderstood the offering: that is not a rejection, it is a pitch failure. And if it keeps happening, your message needs to be rewritten, not your contact list.
A BDR who logs "not interested" in the CRM destroys information. A BDR who logs why builds an asset, because they can come back two months later with a different angle.
This is also the most valuable raw material to surface for a client. Knowing that 60% of rejections are about timing rather than need completely changes a software vendor's strategy.
What We Changed on Our End
Three decisions after that call.
The contact list comes before everything else in our reviews. Before discussing performance with an SDR, we check how many fresh contacts entered their scope that week. We had seen rates collapse on an account because SDRs were calling contacts already reached five or six times. That was not a skill problem.
The rejection reason becomes mandatory. No "not interested" entry without qualifying why. The gain is twofold: the account stays usable, and the client gets a real map of their market's objections.
No-shows become a headline metric. A booked meeting that does not happen is not a partial success. It is a qualification failure, and it needs to appear as one in our numbers.
What I Take Away on Method
Twelve minutes on the phone with someone who has been doing this longer than me produced more value than a week of reading.
Two conditions make it work. Choose someone whose work you admire, not someone who is available. And ask closed questions that require a concrete answer: "what are the four things you look at" produces a framework, "how do you manage your teams" produces a polite conversation.
The other condition is accepting that you are the least experienced person in the conversation. That is uncomfortable when you run a company. It is also, in practice, the only way to learn fast.
