Sales
SDR recruitment for SaaS and AI companies
Sales development hiring where outbound has to work: early-career commercial talent screened for coachability, urgency and the ability to hold a technical conversation.
300+
GTM placements over five years
40 / 60
Split of placements across the US and EMEA
25%
Of placements at executive-search level
10 days
Average to identify the ideal candidate after intake
Sales development is the one GTM hire where past performance tells you least. Most SDR candidates have either no track record or a track record produced by someone else's sequences, list and brand.
So the search is a judgement about trajectory rather than a review of attainment, and it has to be run that way deliberately.
When companies hire SDRs
Typically at the point where founder-led outbound has proven a message works but nobody has time to run it consistently, or where Account Executives are spending half their week prospecting instead of closing.
The second common trigger is entering a new market where there is no inbound and no brand recognition, and pipeline has to be manufactured from a cold list.
What we screen for
- Coachability
- Evidence of taking direct feedback and visibly changing behaviour within weeks.
- Urgency
- How quickly someone acts without instruction, tested through the process itself.
- Activity discipline
- Consistency over months, not a strong quarter followed by drift.
- Curiosity
- Whether they can explain what the product actually does and who has the problem it solves.
- Progression potential
- Whether this is a stepping stone to Account Executive, and whether that is realistic.
Stage matters
At Seed and early Series A there is no playbook to inherit. The first SDRs need to be comfortable writing their own sequences, building their own lists and being wrong in public. Polished candidates from large, highly-structured SDR organisations frequently struggle here.
From Series B onward the requirement inverts: there is a playbook, ramp is measured, and the strongest predictor becomes willingness to execute a defined process at volume while enablement handles the rest.
Assessment and the technical screen
Every candidate is interviewed against the competency set we use across searches — intelligence, curiosity, urgency, drive and track record — with an explicit written rationale for each shortlisted person.
For AI and infrastructure products we add a comprehension test: the candidate has to explain the product back in their own words. It removes a surprising proportion of otherwise strong SDR candidates and it is the single best predictor of whether they will get past a technical first line.
US and EMEA
Coverage runs roughly 40% United States and 60% EMEA. In practice most SDR searches are local to the buying market — a US company building an outbound motion into Germany hires in-market and language-native rather than remotely from another territory, and we run those searches that way.
Proof
Cursor
Tipped helped Cursor make its first EMEA sales hire, with the successful candidate introduced within seven days of the search beginning.
Read the case study- 7 days
- From search start to introducing the successful candidate
- First
- EMEA sales hire for the business
Selected clients
- Cursor
- Planhat
- Branch
- Unitary AI
- Sweep
- Anima Health
- FullStory
- Acoustic
- Optimizely
- VertoFX
Common questions
- Do you recruit SDRs with no prior sales experience?
- Yes, where the hiring plan supports it. Genuinely raw candidates need a manager with capacity to coach and a defined ramp; where neither exists we would recommend hiring someone with twelve to eighteen months of relevant outbound experience instead.
- Should SDRs be hired as a pair or individually?
- Two at once is usually better than one. A single SDR has no benchmark, no peer pressure and no way to distinguish a weak market from weak execution.
- How do you assess candidates whose numbers came from inbound?
- We separate self-sourced from marketing-sourced meetings at first interview. A strong inbound qualifier is a different hire to a cold-outbound builder, and the shortlist states which one you are reading.
Ready to talk about the hire?
Tell us the roles, the markets and the stage. You will get a straight answer on whether we are the right partner, and a market view either way.