Hiring your first SDR? Run the numbers first.
Set one SDR hire against an engine we build and run in your CRM: year-one cost, time to first meeting and what your team is left with.
First meetings in 30 days, and no lock-in after 90 days.
Hire an SDR
Forás
One hire, or an engine and a team
A good SDR is worth hiring. The question is whether your first one should start before the system does.
Hire figures count from the day you start recruiting. Forás figures count from kickoff.
Sources: base salary from SEEK salary data, Sales Development Representative, Sydney, October 2026 (Robert Walters Salary Guide 2026, NSW, as the cross-check); super at 12% (FY2026-27); time to hire from SmartRecruiters (March 2025) and Robert Half (December 2025); ramp from The Bridge Group SDR report 2025 (US data).
What a first SDR costs in year one
A$130k to A$165k
all-in, year one
One SDR in Sydney: base from SEEK salary data (October 2026) and commission at target, plus super at 12% (FY2026-27), a 15% to 25% recruiter fee and tools. Payroll tax does not apply under the NSW threshold. As of October 2026.
3
months to full ramp
Average time for an SDR to reach full productivity after their first day, from The Bridge Group SDR report 2025 (US data).
A$30k
spent before first meeting
Recruiter fee, plus salary, super and tools from start date to the first qualified meeting, built from the figures above.
Hire one SDR or keep prospecting yourself, and why both stall
A hire with nothing to run
- A new SDR starts with no list, no data and no sequences, so they build tooling instead of pipeline
- Nobody has written down who buys or why, so they learn your ICP by trial and error on live accounts
- Good SDRs ask about the playbook and the path to account executive, and a first hire at a startup often gets neither
- If it doesn't work, you can't tell whether the person, the list or the message was wrong
Prospecting in the gaps of your week
- Outreach gets whatever time product, hiring and investors leave over
- Every pause breaks the sequence, so pipeline arrives in bursts and dries up in between
- What works stays in your head, so there is nothing to hand an SDR when you do hire
- The hours on lists and follow-ups come out of the work only you can do
Sometimes you should hire an SDR
- You can write down who buys, why they buy now and the message that gets a reply.
- Someone senior has time every week to coach, review calls and own the number.
- Your pipeline maths carries a full salary through the ramp, at the reply and close rates you already see.
That's the point we build you towards. When you get there, we hand over the engine, documented, with your hire trained on it.
How we hand you the keysEvery number comes with a name
See all results4
weeks, kickoff to signed deal
Lead Generation
An Australian firm's niche buyer market mapped, verified and emailed in waves, with serious buyers in meetings within three weeks: the engine we build before a first sales hire
Gearóid Considine
Managing Director, BrightSide
Case study
Before you book a call
Yes. Your hires learn the engine on live pipeline, alongside the operators who built it. Everything is written down, so your team can run it without us. You choose whether it sits in your accounts, ours or a mix of the two. Tell us the date, and we plan the handover back from it.
Give us access to your CRM, inboxes and data, and sign off the ICP and first sequences before anything sends. We build the lists, run the sequences, make the calls and book the meetings. You close, or our sales lead closes for you. Each week we report meetings held and pipeline created, and the monthly optimisation review shows what we changed.
From the first meeting. The weekly pipeline report shows the numbers you would judge an SDR on, so you can judge us the same way.
Run the numbers with us before you post the job ad.
First meetings in 30 days, and no lock-in after 90 days.