The SDR playbook

Prospecting starts with the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Without a sharp ICP, every other step is luck. The working ICP definition includes:

• Firmographics: industry, company size (employees + revenue), tech stack, geography
• Persona: the specific role you're reaching — VP of Sales is not the same buyer as CFO
• Trigger events: what signal indicates "buying window now"? Funding rounds, exec hires, product launches, regulatory changes
• Disqualifiers: who you should NOT pitch — saves rep time and protects sender reputation

With ICP locked, build the list. Sales intelligence platforms (Apollo, ZoomInfo, Cognism, Clay) generate filtered prospect lists in minutes. The trap is volume — a 50-person list of perfectly-fit prospects converts better than a 500-person list of "could be a fit". Quality of list determines ceiling of reply rate.

No single channel wins SDR outreach. The teams hitting quota run a coordinated multi-channel motion. Each channel has its own grammar:

• Cold email — scale, asynchronous, leaves a written record. Sequenced 4-7 touches over 10-14 business days. Each touch adds new value. Subject lines stay 25-45 chars for mobile readability.
• Cold calling — interrupts the algorithm. The opener that lands gets 30 seconds of real conversation. Voicemail still works when the script is written for the medium (not transcribed from email).
• LinkedIn — observe before you reach out. Comment on their content first. Connection requests under 300 characters with specific personalisation; never "I'd love to connect".

Watch reply rate by channel — cold email, LinkedIn outreach, and call-to-conversation on the phone each have their own range. Top performers cluster at the top of each; the bottom half runs at a fraction of that and gets blamed on "the market".

SDR qualification is light — heavier qualification belongs to the AE on the discovery call. The SDR's job is to confirm:

• The prospect has a problem your product solves
• The prospect has rough budget authority OR is close to someone who does
• There's a plausible timeline (urgent vs nice-to-have)

That's it. Trying to fully qualify in the first call burns the meeting. Book the AE call, hand over a clean CRM record with the three answers above plus any trigger event you found, and move on to the next prospect.

BANT works as a lightweight qualification frame at the SDR layer. MEDDIC belongs on the AE side. See the sales methodology hub for the full comparison.

The realistic ramp curve for a new SDR:

• Days 1-30: learn the product, the ICP, the value prop, and the CRM. Shadow calls. Send 50-100 supervised outbound emails. Goal: 1-3 booked meetings.
• Days 31-60: own a territory or vertical. Independent outbound at 300-500 emails + 100 calls / month. Goal: 30-50% of full quota.
• Days 61-90: full activity ramp. 600-1,000 emails + 200-400 calls / month. Goal: 75-100% of quota.
• Days 91+: at quota or above. Coaching shifts from "what to say" to "deal patterns" and "territory strategy".

SDRs who don't hit full quota by day 90 either need a coaching intervention or are in the wrong role. Both signals show up early; manage them honestly.

• Volume over personalisation. 1,000 templated emails get fewer meetings than 200 personalised ones. The math always favours quality at this scale.
• Skipping the trigger event. Outbound with no specific reason for reaching out today reads as random. Anchor every cold email to something specific the prospect or company recently did.
• Asking for a 30-minute meeting in touch one. The ask is too big from a stranger. Start with a yes/no question, a one-line opinion, or a piece of useful content.
• Treating LinkedIn like email. A LinkedIn message that reads like an email gets deleted. Each channel has its own grammar — see the LinkedIn message generator for examples.
• Ignoring sender reputation. 500 cold emails per day from a brand-new mailbox lands you in spam permanently. Warm up properly; cap volume per inbox.
• Forgetting the breakup email. The polite "should I close your file?" breakup at the end of a sequence reliably pulls a meaningful share of dormant prospects back into conversation.