BDR outreach volume has nearly doubled but it's not predicting performance

saraboostani

Hi all! Back with more from year 5 of our BDR research.

Outreach volume has nearly doubled. BDRs now average ~34 touches per contact, up from ~17 in 2024. Every channel is up — email, calls, social — and the pace is almost identical across all BDRs: roughly 4 to 5 touches per week.

What differs is how long cadences run. Inbound BDRs selling physical goods pursue individual contacts for nearly three months. Outbound SaaS reps for about six weeks. That's outreach nearly every working day, for months — quite the volume for any prospect to be on the receiving end of.

And sheer volume of touches to any one contact is not a reliable predictor of quota attainment.

What is associated with better performance in our models: time spent actively contacting prospects (versus administrative tasks), BDR training hours, tools, and the number of contacts reached per account. Reaching two additional personas beyond the primary contact was associated with ~11 percentage points of additional attainment — and receiving guidance on which personas to prioritize added a further independent ~10 points on top of that.

Love how Kelly Hopping phrased it in her post "More touches to the wrong accounts at the wrong time isn't a strategy. It's what happens when teams don't have the context to know where to focus… Signal over volume, every time. " So true!

Haven't had the chance to read the research yet? Find our report and deep dive edition below:

• In a Brave New AI World, BDR Performance Still Comes Down to the Fundamentals
• Deep Dive: In a Brave New AI World, BDR Performance Still Comes Down to the Fundamentals

@Kerry @Ernest Owusu

Kerry

And twas ever thus. if all you do is hound BDRs for more dials, more emails, you'll get exactly that and nothing more.
The function really needs to be about delivering messages and content of interest to buying group members. If you do that, the meetings will come.
If you power dial through a list trying to lure people into meeting without delivering value, you may see temporary success in that metric, but that's all it will be.