How much does a sales development team in the UK really cost?

The true cost of setting up an SDR team in the UK

A sales development team is one of the biggest levers for fuelling the growth of a B2B SaaS company. The Sales Development Representative’s (SDR) role is to provide your own sales team with a predictable pipeline of high-quality opportunities so that your Account Executives can focus on closing.

The cost of setting up an inhouse SDR team in the UK

So, we researched the cost of setting up and managing an inhouse SDR team in the United Kingdom in 2023/4, including hiring, training, coaching, management, tech and other overheads. Let’s take a look.

Our calculations are based on setting up and managing a small in-house sales development team (4 SDRs and 1 Sales Development Manager).

You’ll see that a fully loaded cost to set up and run a Sales Development team will set you back around ~£416,000 in the first year. If you break this down further – your annual cost per SDR (including everything needed to make them productive) will be ~£104.000 per year.

SDR team staffing costs	Role (#)	Once off	Total
Recruitment fees	SDR (4)	£7,300	£29,200
	Sales Development Manager (1)	£8,800	£8,800
SDR team running costs	Role	Per person per annum	Team total per Annum
Overheads x 5	SDR (4) + Sales Development Manager (1)	£5,000	£25,000
Salaries x 5	SDR (4)	£35,000	£140,000
	Sales Development Manager (1)	£59,095	£59,095
Commission & bonuses	SDR (4): typically a 70/30 split of base salary	£15,000	£60,000
	Sales Development Manager (1): typically a 80/20 split of base salary	£14,773	£14,773
Perks and benefits x 5	SDR (4) + Sales Development Manager (1)	£750	£3,750
Pensions	SDR (4)	£1,454.76	£5,819.04
	Sales Manager (1)	£2,954.75	£2,954.75
Employees National Insurance	SDR (4)	£3,783	£15,132
	Sales Manager (1)	£5,833	£5,833
Training	SDR (4)	£1,250	£6,250
Tech stack*	Premium data provider (E.g. Zoominfo or Cognism) (5 Licenses)	£16,000	£16,000
	Second data provider (E.g. Lusha or Apollo) (5 Licenses)	£285	£1,425
	Linkedin Sales Navigator (5 Licenses)	£1,400	£7,000
	CRM (e.g. Salesforce) (5 Licenses)	£1,200	£6,000
	Sales engagement tool (e.g. Salesloft or, Outreach) (5 Licenses)	£1,680	£8,400
Total costs for year 1			£415,431.79

(Data sources: Glassdoor, Reuters, Pension regulator website, Statista, IPD Blue Chip Office Index; Workplace pension contribution calculator. See notes on these costs at the bottom of this article

Notes On SDR Costs

Recruitment costs

Recruitment in the current UK job market comes with challenges, including increased pay and competition for top talent. Current recruitment costs sit between 15-25% of an employees’ first year salary. For our calculations, we’ve worked on a conservative 15%.

Annual Salary, benefits, and commissions

Every employer knows that an employee’s costs don’t stop at salaries. For the purposes of producing a reasonable calculation, we’ve included a base salary, commissions, plus another £750 per employee for additional employment benefits and incidentals (expenses, perks, gym membership, Friday drinks etc).

Employers NI and Pensions

According to the gov.uk website, employers in the UK are liable for National Insurance contributions (2% base salary for Category A), and pension contributions (at 8% base salary, with a recommended 5% employee and 3% employer contribution).

Training costs

Training, particularly in the first year, needs to be considered, whether conducted in-house by your current staff, or externally. This is especially important when talking about your tech stack and internal processes and includes general staff development.

Overhead costs

Every employee carries a share of overhead costs, which will need to reflect on your balance sheet (office space, equipment, lights, heating, insurance etc).

Tech stack

These include the cost of a premium data provider, such as Zoominfo or Cognism, as well as a secondary data provider such as Lusha or Apollo. We have also included subscriptions to LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and a CRM such as Salesforce, or Hubspot. We have converted the USD pricing into GBP.

What are the benefits of outsourcing your SDR team vs. building it in-house?

Much faster setup time

Building an inside sales team takes a long time. For most companies, hiring a sales leader and then building a functioning team takes at least six months. That’s why at Delta-v, we can setup a team (inclusive of people, tech, and playbook) for you in weeks rather than months.

Avoid burning time and money through trial and error

Building a new SDR team and getting your outbound process working is often a trial and error process—there may be a few false starts along the way. There’s a direct financial cost to this learning process and also an opportunity cost of lost sales productivity.

By using an externally managed team, you can avoid “paying your school fees” in this area of your business. A managed inside sales service can reduce the risks associated with building your sales development function in-house.

You get to focus on closing

Building and running a sales development team requires hiring sales leadership, recruiting individual contributors, training, coaching, as well as selecting and implementing a new SDR tech stack. An outsourced service removes this complexity. This means that you and your sales team can focus on closing deals.

Scale up and scale down when you want

Using our own model as an example, you’ll pay one monthly fee for your outsourced inside sales team. You’ll have total visibility of the costs associated with this function, which makes for simple ROI calculations. It’s also quick to add additional team members so that you can scale up your managed team as needed.

There are many benefits of outsourcing this function – less people hassles, quicker setup time, and access to expertise that you don’t have in your business – but one of the main considerations for our clients is always the cost, and an SDR team is an expensive team to build, run and manage.

While an in-house sales team may feel like it gives you more control, the true cost goes beyond salaries when calculated correctly. Outsourcing can provide all the benefits of having your own team along with a streamlined, cost-effective solution, allowing businesses in the UK to focus on growth without the complexities associated with in-house development.