Founders ask us if we're cheaper than an SDR. The honest answer: usually yes, but not because we're inexpensive. It's because most founders are using the wrong number when they imagine an SDR's cost.
Salary alone isn't the comparison. A US-based junior SDR runs $65–$90K base, plus $20–$40K OTE in commission. That's $85–$130K all in. But that's still only the visible cost.
Add the tools: a few hundred a month for a sales engagement platform, a few hundred more for prospecting data, a sprinkle of AI assists on top. Call it $5,000 a year per rep just to make them functional — and that's before any of it talks to your CRM cleanly.
Add the management overhead: a sales manager who can coach is $150–$250K. If you're not buying one of those, you're being one — call it 6–10 hours a week of founder time on call reviews, sequence reviews, and pipeline meetings. At a $300K founder fully-loaded comp, that's $40K–$70K of founder attention reallocated.
Add the ramp risk: average SDR ramp is 90–120 days, and average tenure is 14 months. So you're paying for ~3 months of unproductive ramp on every new hire, and probably re-hiring within 18.
Real number: a single in-house SDR is $130K–$200K all in, plus founder time. A team of three is $400K+.
Our service typically lands between $4–10K/month per channel — call it $50–120K all in, depending on stack. No tools to buy. No manager to find. No ramp risk. No exit interview.
We're not cheap because we're cutting corners. We're cheap because the SDR cost stack is more expensive than founders realize.
Want this kind of thinking applied to your motion?
30-minute strategy call. We'll dig into your ICP and current outbound — no pitch.