Role comparisonReviewed by Adroit Staffing editorial reviewPractice guidance, no data claims8 min read
The short answer
SDR and BDR work creates conversations; Account Executive work converts them. If your problem is that not enough qualified conversations exist, hire for creation. If qualified conversations exist and nobody can run them to a decision, hire for conversion. SDR and BDR are usually the same job with different names, so read the KPIs in an advert rather than the title.
Key facts
- Creation roles
- SDR, BDR — measured on qualified conversations created
- Conversion role
- Account Executive — measured on closed business
- SDR vs BDR
- Frequently interchangeable; the split is inbound versus outbound
- First hire in a small team
- Often one person doing both, deliberately and temporarily
The three jobs, in the order a deal happens
| Role | Owns | Measured on | Right next hire when |
|---|---|---|---|
| SDR (inbound-leaning) | Responding to and qualifying demand somebody else created | Response speed and qualification accuracy | Enquiries arrive and go cold before anyone replies properly |
| BDR (outbound-leaning) | Choosing target accounts and creating conversations from cold | Self-sourced qualified conversations and pipeline created | Pipeline depends on accounts that have never heard of you |
| Account Executive | Running an evaluation from first meeting to signature | Closed business and forecast accuracy | Qualified conversations exist and stall without an owner |
How to decide in your own business
Look at where deals currently die. If the honest answer is that too few conversations start, no amount of closing skill will help. If conversations start and then drift for months, adding more of them makes the drift worse.
- Count the qualified conversations in the last quarter and who created them.
- Count how many stalled without a clear next step owned by the buyer.
- Ask which of those two numbers you would rather fix first, then hire for that.
- If both are broken and you can only hire once, hire for the harder skill and accept slower coverage.
Where the titles mislead
Titles are set by whoever wrote the advert, so treat them as marketing rather than specification. Two adverts with the same title routinely describe different jobs, and candidates cannot tell from the outside either.
Publish the measure the person will be judged on, say who chooses the target accounts, and state whether they will be closing. That single paragraph attracts better applicants than any title choice.
The hybrid first hire
In a first sales team one person usually creates and converts. That is a reasonable choice when the deal cycle is short enough for one person to do both without one half collapsing — but protect creation time in the diary, because conversion work is urgent and creation work is merely important.
Common questions
- Can one person do SDR and AE work properly?
- For a period, yes, and in a first team it is often the only sensible option. It stops working when inbound or existing deals consume every hour and prospecting quietly disappears, which is visible in your own calendar long before it appears in pipeline.
- Is an Account Executive more senior than an SDR?
- It is a different job rather than a promotion in the abstract, though AE work usually requires more commercial experience. Neither title tells you much about seniority on its own.
- Which role is hardest to hire well?
- In our experience the outbound creation role, because sustained self-sourced pipeline is rarer than confident interview performance suggests. Assess it with evidence of accounts worked and conversations created, not with enthusiasm.
Sources and review
- Written by
- Adroit Staffing
- Reviewed by
- Adroit Staffing editorial review
- First published
- Last reviewed
This page is practice guidance from our own Sales and GTM recruitment work. It makes no claims about current market data, so it cites no external figures.