A Business Development Representative (BDR) creates pipeline from accounts that never asked to hear from you. The work is list building, cold calling at the right hours, live qualification and a clean handover to an Account Executive. In 2026 a BDR is measured on cold meetings held and accepted, not on dials or email opens.

The BDR owns the top of the outbound funnel. Marketing brings inbound leads to the SDR; the BDR goes and gets the accounts marketing cannot reach. The seat exists because inbound alone almost never fills AE calendars, and because AEs who prospect two hours a day stop prospecting the week a deal heats up.

In France the title is rarer than SDR, and most "SDR" job posts actually describe this role. If you are writing an offer, state the funnel stage in the first line, and avoid "Business Developer", which French candidates read as a full-cycle closer.

What a BDR does every day

• Builds the list. Picks 30 contacts a day inside the ICP and finds the trigger for each: a hire, a funding round, a product launch, a visit on your site, an old closed-lost deal.
• Calls in blocks. Two parallel-dialing sessions at the slots people pick up. In the 1,000,000-call benchmark we built with Quentin Despas (Katana), 4pm connects at 15.8% and 10am at 14%, against 9.8% at 8am.
• Runs multichannel cadences. Email and LinkedIn before and after the call, never instead of it. In our experience, most connects happen within the first three attempts, so the cadence has to include a second and a third call.
• Qualifies live. Confirms the pain, the timing and who decides, and books on the call.
• Hands over. Writes the trigger, the pain, the people involved and what was promised, then checks the meeting happened.
• Keeps the CRM honest. The BDR is the person who makes next quarter's signals usable.

The BDR funnel in numbers

Here is the math we use with customer teams. The average connect rate in French B2B is 11.3%. To reach our north-star of 20 conversations per day, a BDR needs roughly 180 dials, which is only possible with parallel dialing; one dial at a time caps most reps around 60-80 dials and 6-8 conversations.

Then the opener decides the output. 65% of reps open by explaining what they sell and convert 2-3% of conversations into meetings. Trigger-based openers convert 7-10%. On 20 conversations a day, that is the difference between about three meetings a week and seven to ten.

So the two levers a BDR controls are conversations per day (tool and hours) and conversation-to-meeting rate (opener and questions). Everything else follows.

BDR KPIs: results and health

Result KPIs (what the BDR is paid on):

• Cold meetings held per month
• AE acceptance rate (target 60% or more)
• Cold pipeline sourced per quarter

Health KPIs (what the manager reads when a result drops):

• Conversations per day
• Connect rate by slot and persona
• Conversation-to-meeting rate
• Second and third attempt rate on the cadence

Never put dials in the comp plan. It punishes the rep who uses a better tool and rewards the one who hangs up fast.

Skills to look for in a BDR

• Trigger hunting. The ability to find a reason to call in two minutes of research. In our experience reps use only about 20% of the signals already in the CRM; a good BDR starts there.
• Opener craft. A sentence that names the trigger and asks for 30 seconds, instead of the company pitch.
• "How" questions. Discovery questions starting with "how" lift conversion by 190% in the benchmark.
• Objection reflex. "What do you mean?" before answering an objection: +197%.
• Resilience with a routine. 160 people a day do not pick up. The BDR who keeps the same two blocks every day survives; the one who dials when motivated does not.

BDR salary in France

We do not run a salary survey. Pay varies with seniority, city and employer, so compare against current public salary sources and the offers you compete with. In our experience BDRs are paid a little above inbound SDRs because the work is harder and the rejection rate higher.

A common split is around 70/30 in our experience. Variable on meetings held and accepted, with a bonus on sourced pipeline that closes. Ramp to full quota takes three to six months in our experience, faster with a written 30/60/90 plan and a dialer from day one.

BDR job description template

• Mission. Create cold pipeline with [persona] at [ICP] companies in [territory], phone first.
• Daily. 30 prepared contacts with a trigger each morning, two calling blocks (10am, 4pm), 20 conversations a day, CRM updated before leaving.
• Targets. [X] cold meetings held per month, 60% accepted by AEs, [€Y] pipeline per quarter.
• Skills we test. Trigger research, opener, "how" questions, objection handling. The interview includes a live mock call.
• Tools provided. Parallel dialer, CRM, sequence tool, data provider.
• Pay. Fixed [€], OTE [€], 70/30, variable on held and accepted meetings.
• Path. AE, BDR lead or RevOps; criteria published; typical 12-18 months on quota.

How Sonik approaches the BDR role

Sonik is built for the outbound session. Parallel dialing gives a BDR about 5x more conversations per hour, which turns 20 conversations a day into the normal output of a block, not a stretch target.

The signals layer feeds the morning list with website visitors, job changes, closed-lost and dormant leads, so each contact comes with a trigger ready for the opener. AI call prep writes the context before the dial, and coaching reads the opener and questions after it, so a manager coaches the two levers that matter.

Conclusion

A BDR is the person who makes outbound predictable: 20 conversations a day at the right hours, a trigger in every opener, a clean handover. Write the job around those outcomes, pay on meetings held, publish the path. This week, pull your BDR's last 20 conversations and count how many openers named a trigger. If it is under half, that is your first coaching session.