Why the usual comparison is wrong
Most companies put a monthly retainer next to an SDR's base salary, see a smaller number on the salary side, and conclude that hiring is cheaper. Base salary is roughly half of what an SDR actually costs.
Here is the structure of the real number. The figures below are illustrative UK market typicals, not a quote - substitute your own.
| Cost line | Typically modelled? | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Base salary | Yes | The only line most calculations include |
| Commission / OTE | Sometimes | Paid on performance, so it scales with success |
| Employer NI and pension | Rarely | A fixed percentage on top of total earnings |
| Tooling, data and dialler | Rarely | Per-seat costs that do not shrink for one hire |
| Recruitment | Rarely | Agency fee or internal time, amortised over tenure |
| Ramp time | Almost never | Months of full cost at partial output |
| Management time | Almost never | Daily coaching from someone senior, or the hire plateaus |
| Attrition risk | Almost never | SDR tenure is short. The cycle repeats |
The two costs nobody models
Ramp
A new SDR is not productive on day one. They need to learn your product, your market and your objections, and to build enough call reps to handle a real conversation. During that period you are paying the full cost for partial output. Outsourcing shifts that: a matched, already-trained SDR goes live in week three.
Management
An SDR without regular coaching plateaus quickly, and coaching has to come from someone who is good at it. If your sales leader does not have several hours a week to listen to recordings and correct technique, an in-house hire will underperform for reasons that have nothing to do with the person.
This is the constraint that most often decides it. Companies rarely lack the budget to hire an SDR. They lack the management bandwidth to make one succeed.
Honest scorecard
| In-house SDR | Outsourced SDR | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to first meeting | Months, after hiring and ramp | Typically week three |
| Management burden | Yours, daily | Ours, three coaching sessions weekly |
| If it is not working | Performance process, then rehire | Replacement at our cost |
| Product depth over time | Higher - they live in your business | Good, but they serve one account not five |
| Cultural integration | Full | Partial, by definition |
| Long-term asset | Yes - promotes into an AE seat | No - capability stays with the partner |
| Market intelligence | Depends on your reporting | Built in - recordings, notes, conversion by role and region |
When we tell people to hire instead
We are not the right answer for everyone, and it is cheaper for both of us to work that out on the first call.
Hire in-house if you already have a proven, documented playbook, a sales manager with genuine coaching capacity, and a market you understand well enough to brief precisely. Under those conditions an in-house SDR will out-perform any outsourced arrangement over a two-year horizon, and they promote into your AE bench.
Outsource if you need pipeline before that infrastructure exists, if the market is unproven and you want to test it without a permanent headcount decision, or if the honest answer about management capacity is that nobody has the hours.
The hybrid most people land on
A common pattern: outsource first to establish which segments respond, which messages convert and what good looks like. Then hire in-house against a playbook that has already been proven with real conversations, instead of asking a first hire to invent it.
That sequencing removes most of the risk from the in-house hire, because you are no longer paying someone to discover your market for you.