Also called: BDR
A business development representative (BDR) is an outbound-focused rep who prospects into a target account list and books meetings for an account executive, a title often used interchangeably with SDR depending on how a company splits the two.
Where a distinction exists, it usually runs like this: SDR covers inbound, working leads who already engaged, while BDR covers outbound, cold prospecting into a target account list with no inbound signal to work off. Plenty of companies don't split the two roles at all and just pick one title for both halves of the job, so the label alone doesn't tell you much about what a given seat actually does day to day.
In a more engineered GTM motion, the case for a separate BDR seat gets weaker. Once enrichment and signal systems handle the account-finding and list-building work, the outbound-specific research grind that used to justify splitting the role from inbound gets compressed, and a combined prospecting seat can cover what used to take two.
The safest way to compare a BDR role across two job postings: read what the day actually involves, cold calling, cold email, LinkedIn outbound, into a named target list, rather than trusting the title on its own. A posting describing inbound lead follow-up under a BDR title is really an SDR job with a different name stapled on, and the reverse happens just as often.
Don't assume SDR and BDR mean the same thing from one job posting to the next. Ask what the seat actually covers, inbound, outbound, or both, before comparing it to a role at a different company with the same title.
People treat the SDR/BDR split as an industry standard with a fixed definition. It isn't. The split, where it exists, is company-specific, and a title alone won't tell you whether a seat is inbound, outbound, or both.
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