SDRs/BDRs
Also written: Sales Development Representative, Business Development Representative
Salespeople who find and contact potential new customers, now being automated by AI.
Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) and Business Development Representatives (BDRs) are people whose job is to find new customers for a company. They often make the first contact, like sending emails or making calls, to see if someone might be interested in a product or service.
AI tools, like those from OpenAI, are starting to automate parts of this job. For example, an AI can research potential customers, figure out what they need, and even send them personalized messages. This helps sales teams work faster and reach more people.
SDRs and BDRs are roles focused on lead generation and initial customer outreach. SDRs typically qualify inbound leads or conduct outbound prospecting to identify potential customers. BDRs often focus on strategic partnerships or larger enterprise accounts. AI is increasingly being used to automate tasks like data enrichment, personalized outreach, and lead qualification, aiming to improve efficiency and scale sales efforts.
The term is appearing now because frontier AI labs like OpenAI are developing AI agents capable of automating complex sales tasks. These advancements show how AI can directly impact business development and sales operations, moving beyond simple chatbots to more sophisticated business functions.
- Achieving 10x growth with agentic sales prospectingOpenAI · OpenAI News ·
- OpenAI ChatGPT
- OpenAI's GPT-4 is being used by companies like Clay to power AI agents that automate sales prospecting and data enrichment for SDRs and BDRs.
- Account Executive
- Account Executives typically close deals after leads have bee
- Marketing
- Marketing focuses on broader campaigns to generate interest, while SD
- Customer Success Manager
- Customer Success Managers focus on retaining and growi
SDR and BDR are established job titles within sales organizations. Their automation by AI is a recent development driven by advancements in large language models and agentic AI.
You can try asking a tool like ChatGPT to draft a personalized outreach email for a fictional company and role. For example, ask it to write an email to a potential client about a new productivity software, mentioning their company's recent funding round.
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Questions people ask
- What is the main goal of an SDR or BDR?
- The main goal is to identify and contact potential new customers, or leads, and determine if they are a good fit for the company's products or services.
- How is AI changing the role of SDRs/BDRs?
- AI can automate tasks like researching leads, personalizing messages, and initial outreach, potentially increasing efficiency and allowing human reps to focus on more complex interactions.
First seen on Subvolts Jun 18, 2024. Updated Sep 15, 2026. Written by an AI model from the items above and reviewed against them weekly; report an error.