Benchmarks for metrics that matter to an SDR or BDR team

Wondering how well your sales development team is doing? We've compiled a huge list of benchmarks for the SDR metrics that matter.

We work with a lot of sales development teams to help them automate processes that more fairly distribute accounts and make sure reps are working the right accounts at the right time. (Is this something you’re dealing with? Gradient Works book management software might be just the thing you need.)

One of the common denominators across every BDR and SDR team we’ve talked to is the complexity of measuring - and compensating - these reps. There are so many ways to measure a BDR’s success, and most of them go well beyond tracking that rep’s activity or productivity.

And selecting the metrics to monitor is one thing, but knowing how well your team is doing is another. What’s considered a “good” call connect rate? How much should BDRs be contributing to the overall pipeline?

So let’s talk about benchmarks for some of the metrics that matter to a sales development team.

One big caveat before we start... We know these benchmarks vary dramatically by company - based on ACV, customer, company stage, and so much more. We've pulled together the most common or median figures across industries and ACVs, so these benchmarks should be considered a baseline. For every metric, we've linked to the original source that includes more information about how that particular number varies. For example, the TOPO Sales Development report linked throughout includes breakdowns by ACV. If you're interested in a particular number, click through to learn even more about it. 

Operational vs strategic metrics 

Gartner breaks sales development metrics into two categories: operational and strategic. That’s a useful distinction because you need to track activity metrics but you may not want to compensate reps on them.

Operational metric benchmarks

• Touchpoints per account
  • 16 touches per account (TOPO)
  • At least 8 touches (Hubspot)
  • 78% of accounts are single-threaded (LinkedIn)
• Accounts and leads owned
  
  • 75-125 accounts per rep (TOPO)
  • 100-300 leads per rep month (TOPO)

• Accounts touched per month
  • 80 accounts per month (400 contacts with 5 contacts per account) (Terminus)
  • 101 accounts per month (Storm Ventures)
• Calls per day/week/month, call connect rate
  • It takes 18 or more dials to connect with a prospect over the phone and call-back rates are <1% (Gartner)
  • Reps see an average of 4.4 connects per 100 touches (The Bridge Group)
  • 1 of 59 calls ends in a meeting (Keller Center)
• Emails sent 
  • 100 emails per day with some personalization (KiteDesk via Quora)
  • 70 tailored emails per week (Operatix)
• Email open rates
  • Open rates are notoriously inaccurate, so we don’t recommend tracking this one unless you’re using it directionally only (just look for regular improvements instead of paying attention to the number itself).
• Email response rates
  • Most cold emails get a 1% to 5% reply rate (GMass)
  • 12% reply rates for effective sequences (Outreach)
• SLAs
  • Only 7% of companies respond to new leads within the first 5 minutes (Drift) 
  • The average response time is 42 hours (Harvard Business Review)
  • More than half (55%) of companies do not even respond over the course of 5 business days (Drift) 
• Meetings booked/scheduled
  • 5-25 meetings booked per month (Operatix)
  • 1.3 meetings per day (Tenbound)
• Qualified leads/sales accepted leads/sales accepted opportunities 
  • Average lead-to-opportunity pipeline conversion rate for SaaS companies is 12% (OpenView Partners) 
  • 4 SAOs per month (Operatix)
  • 20 SQLs per month (Operatix)
  • 58% of SDR-qualified leads end up as opportunities (TOPO)

Strategic metric benchmarks

• Pipeline sourced by SDRs
• Pipeline generated varies by ACV, but SDRs generate between 46% and 73% of pipeline conversion. (TOPO)
• For lower ACV companies (<$25k), SDRs generate $191k in pipeline monthly. For higher ACV companies (<$25k), SDRs generate $600-700k in pipeline monthly.  (TOPO)
• Outbound SDRs are responsible for 53% of pipeline conversion. (Tenbound)
• 71% of sales development teams deliver less than half the sales pipeline (Revenue.io)
• Median SDR-generated pipeline is $3M (Bridge Group)
• Closed revenue generated from qualified leads
• 22% of SDR-sourced opportunities end up as closed-won deals (TOPO)
• Only 32% of companies track closed-won revenue for SDRs (Tenbound)

Inbound vs outbound

Depending on how your team is set up, it may help to think about different metrics for outbound reps vs inbound reps. Depending on where your SDRs source leads, you may be measuring success in different ways. And if you have hybrid reps, you may need to look at a combination of these. 

Outbound SDR metric benchmarks

• Calls and emails per day
• 40-50 calls per day, 10-40 emails per day (Operatix and Bridge Group)
• 80-100 total activities per day (Bridge Group and Tenbound)
• Conversations held 
• It takes 18 or more dials to connect with a prospect over the phone and call-back rates are <1% (Gartner)
• Average cadence has 10.6 attempts (Bridge Group)
• 4.4 conversations per day (Bridge Group)
• Meetings scheduled
• Outbound SDRs produce 15 meetings a month, with an 80% show rate, leading to 12 meetings held per month (Operatix)
• 21 meetings per month, 62% conversion rate (The Bridge Group)
• Closed revenue generated from qualified leads
• Outbound reps generate 30-45% of sales pipeline, median pipeline of $3M per year (The Bridge Group)
• The median pipeline generated is $2.7M (BlossomStreetVentures)

Inbound SDR metric benchmarks

• Calls and emails answered per day 
• Reps can handle 15 inbounds per day (Operatix)
• SLAs 
• Only 7% of companies respond to new leads within the first 5 minutes (Drift) 
• The average response time is 42 hours (Harvard Business Review)
• More than half (55%) of companies do not even respond over the course of 5 business days (Drift) 
• Qualified leads/SALs/SAOs
• The average lead-to-opportunity conversion rate for SaaS companies is 12% (OpenView Partners) 
• Meetings scheduled/held
• 5-10% of lower intent leads (content downloads, webinar attendees, etc), will convert to a meeting (Crunchbase)
• 75-80% of high-intent leads (demo requests, etc) (Crunchbase)

And the miscellaneous category

Finally, a few related areas to think about...  

• Ideal SDR:AE ratio
  • The average is 2.6 AEs for every 1 SDR. With higher growth, smaller companies may experience a tighter ratio (BlossomStreetVentures)
• Separate inbound and outbound roles?
  • 36% of companies have hybrid roles (TOPO)
  • There are generally 2 outbound SDRs for every 1 inbound SDR (BlossomStreetVentures)
• SDR quota attainment
  • 56-60% of SDRs achieve quota (Tenbound)
  • On average, 68% of SDRs achieve quota (BlossomStreetVentures)