Most teams reach a moment where the next decision is: hire an SDR, or invest in tooling that lets the current team handle more. This is the build-vs-buy version of that conversation — with the numbers most leaders don't run.
| Hiring SDRs | LeadGen AI Suite | |
|---|---|---|
| Fully loaded cost / year | $95,000–$140,000 | $17,880 (Team plan) |
| Time to first sourced meeting | 3–5 months ramp | 2–3 weeks |
| Volume ceiling | 120–180 meaningful touches/week | 10,000+ touches/week |
| Quality at scale | Drops past 100 touches | Holds (per-lead drafting) |
| Sick days, PTO, attrition | Real costs | n/a |
| Ramp time for new ICP | 4–8 weeks of new training | Update one config |
| Personalization | High at low volume | High at high volume |
| Data hygiene | Manual | Automatic |
| Where humans still beat AI | Discovery calls, objection handling | Routine sequencing, signal monitoring |
| What we recommend | Hire 1 senior SDR + the Suite | ✓ |
A mid-market SDR in the US costs $65,000–$90,000 in base salary, plus $15,000–$30,000 in variable comp, plus the loaded cost of benefits, equipment, and management overhead. That's $95,000–$140,000 fully loaded, before you've sourced a single meeting.
Then there's ramp. Industry data puts SDR productivity ramp at 3–5 months — meaning 25–40% of that fully-loaded cost is paid before the rep is producing at quota. And attrition averages 14–18 months, so the cycle repeats.
Our Team plan is $17,880/year. That's not a comparison we're making to be cute — it's the math. The question isn't whether to hire SDRs. It's whether the marginal next SDR is the right thing to do before you give your existing team the tooling to do 5–10× more themselves.
Discovery calls. Real human conversations with real product knowledge and real listening — AI doesn't do that, won't do that, and shouldn't pretend to.
Multi-thread objection handling on a complex deal. The judgment to know when to escalate, when to hold, when to walk away. That's senior closer work, not anything we'd hand off.
Building actual relationships with the 30 accounts you're going to renew next year. That's the part of the job that justifies senior SDR salaries. AI takes care of the other 80% — the routine sourcing, the cold sequencing, the data hygiene — so your senior people can focus on the 20% that requires them.
For most teams under $20M ARR: one senior SDR (not three junior ones) plus the LeadGen AI Suite. The senior person manages quality, runs discovery, and handles complex deals; the Suite runs sourcing, sequencing, and the paid layer underneath.
Above $20M ARR, the right team is a small pod — two senior SDRs and the Suite, with a dedicated RevOps person managing the configuration and the reporting. That's a team of three doing the work of eight at most peer companies.
If you want, send us your current org chart and quota model and we'll show you what the math says for your specific situation. It's a 20-minute conversation.