What is a Business Development Representative?
A Business Development Representative (BDR) is responsible for identifying and generating new business opportunities.
A BDR is typically involved in the early stages of the sales process. This includes outreach and - sometimes - lead qualification. The BDR’s goal is to find potential leads before handing them over to another sales team member for deeper engagement and conversion.
Why is Business Development Important?
Business development dictates a company’s growth trajectory. It helps identify new leads, which eventually grows revenue streams. Without the assistance of BDRs, companies lose out on potential growth opportunities and aren’t able to keep up with competitors.
Business development matters because it places you in front of the right audience at the ideal time. If your offer is good, quality BDR work is necessary for sales pipeline maintenance and growth.
A BDR’s Role in the Sales Process
Identifying potential clients is at the heart of what a BDR does. This means they come in right at the beginning of the sales process. They use outreach and outbound marketing to find prospects - but may also leverage professional networks, use inbound channels, and more.
Once identified, a lead is qualified to determine if they are valuable. This responsibility can fall to a BDR or SDR (Sales Development Representative). If a lead is deemed valuable, it’s time to nurture and build the relationship.
Nurturing could be in the form of calls, emails, product demonstrations, and meetings. The end goal is to hand a primed lead over to an Acount Executive (AE).
BDR vs SDR: Is There a Difference?
The roles of Business Development Representatives (BDRs) and Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) are similar. That being said,there are some key differences.
A BDR focuses on generating new business opportunities, identifying untapped markets, and sourcing valuable leads.
An SDR usually deals with leads that have been pre-qualified. They are usually not involved with outreach. The SDR role is far more sales-centric and the goal is to only pass the most promising leads onto the sales team.
Not all organizations will employ both a BDR and an SDR, purely because some of their responsibilities overlap. It’s far more common for a business to employ either a BDR or SDR than both.
Essential BDR KPIs
To gauge the effectiveness of a BDR's efforts, there are a few important Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to focus on.
- Number of Qualified Leads. This indicates how many leads a business development representative has found and qualified.
- Lead Conversion Rate. The percentage of leads that move to the next stage of the sales process. This means the lead is ready to be passed on to an AE or someone on the sales team for conversion.
- Outreach Volume. The total number of prospects reached by a BDR. You can calculate it by tracking the number of calls, emails, or meetings conducted by a BDR.
- Lead Response Time. Measures the time it takes for a lead to express interest after a BDR’s initial engagement. Lead response time can also help determine the length of a sales lifecycle.
- Pipeline Value. To calculate how much revenue your business can expect in any given month, you can look at the pipeline value. This is a potential monetary estimate of the revenue a BDR has generated from their work.
- Engagement Duration. The average time a BDR spends nurturing a lead before passing it to the sales team. This metric can also help determine the length of the sales cycle.
