In-house SDR team vs. an SDR-as-a-service agency

If you lead sales at a FinTech or Enterprise software company, you'll reach a point where the founders can't carry new business alone. You need a steady flow of discovery meetings, and someone has to book them. You can hire your own sales development reps (SDRs). Or you can work with a specialist agency that provides an outsourced SDR team. These routes differ in how quickly you get qualified meetings, how much risk you carry, and what each meeting costs.

‍What each model involves

‍In-house SDRs

Going in-house means hiring SDRs and having a manager coach them. You buy the tools. You also carry the risk of a bad hire.

SDR as a service

A provider recruits and manages the reps. They work under your brand and book meetings into your account executives' calendars. The monthly fee covers the tech stack and day-to-day management.

The full cost of an in-house SDR

Salary is where most budgets start. The cost rarely ends there. Before you compare models, add up every line an in-house hire brings:

• Base pay and commission. A UK SDR earns around £35,000 base plus £15,000 in commission, before employer National Insurance, pension and benefits.
• Recruitment, at 15 to 25% of first-year salary through an agency, or your own interviewing hours.
• A CRM, a sales engagement platform, two B2B data providers and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Around £39,000 a year for a team of five.
• A Sales Development Manager to own the playbook and coach each rep every week. Around £59,000 base plus commission, before employer costs.
• Ramp, when you pay full salary while a new rep learns your product.

Delta-v costed a UK team of four SDRs and one Sales Development Manager in 2023/24. Fully loaded, it came to around £416,000 in year one, or about £104,000 per SDR seat. The figures draw on Glassdoor, Statista and gov.uk rates for National Insurance and pensions.

H2: Ramp time and turnover

A new SDR spends their first months getting up to speed, working below full output. SDR can also be an entry-level role, so your best reps will soon want to become account executives. When a rep leaves, you're back to recruiting and training. Pipeline dips while the seat sits empty.

Add the weeks it takes to hire, and building the function yourself runs to six months or more.

What an SDR-as-a-service agency changes

Recruitment and ramp risk

A specialist provider takes both off your hands. An experienced one brings a tested playbook, so you skip the trial and error. A specialist can have a trained team live within 30 days. If a rep leaves, the provider replaces them. Your agreed targets don't reset while a seat is refilled.

Pricing

Costs are easier to plan because a fixed monthly fee that scales with headcount replaces variable expenses. Ask any SDR company exactly what the fee includes. Extra charges hide in data and tooling. Be careful with pay-per-meeting pricing. It rewards volume over quality. Your account executives end up sitting through calls that go nowhere.

Channel mix and who works your accounts

Look at how the reps reach buyers. Outreach that leads with the phone, with email and LinkedIn in support, reaches senior buyers that inbox-only campaigns miss.

A good provider gives you named reps who learn your market and carry your accounts over time.

Compare on cost per meeting sat

Setting a salary against a monthly fee is misleading. A better measure is the cost of each discovery meeting sat with a decision-maker at a target account. Work out what each model costs over a year. Divide that by the meetings you can expect in year one. On the in-house side, allow for ramp and at least one replacement hire.

Judge a provider on outcomes: meetings sat, sales-accepted leads and pipeline value. Dials and emails are useful as an early warning that something needs adjusting, not as proof of results. 

When building in-house makes sense

Your own SDR function suits companies that already have an experienced sales development leader with time to coach. You can then promote SDRs into closing roles.

Conclusion

Building in-house pays off when you have someone ready to lead the function. An outsourced SDR team wins when pipeline can't wait for a hiring cycle. It's also a lower-risk way to test a new market before you commit headcount there.

An agency works best for companies with a proven B2B product that's already sold to several customers. You'll need a clear picture of who you sell to; a good provider builds the target account list from there. You'll also need deal values of $30k ACV or more, enough to justify specialist outbound. Whichever route you take, confirm your CRM records stay with you when the contract ends.