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Leading a GTM team

When do I hire SDRs, and how many AEs can one SDR feed?

Hire SDRs after you can point at a message and a segment that reliably produce meetings, not before. If a founder or AE cannot book meetings from cold outreach, an SDR will not fix it, they will just fail more expensively. When you do hire, hire two rather than one so you can tell a person problem from a process problem. Ratios depend on deal size and cycle length, but the useful discipline is Aaron Ross's original point: separate the person who opens from the person who closes, and measure the SDR on qualified opportunities created, not on activity. Give them a written playbook, a defined list, and at least a quarter before you judge them.

Go deeper

4 resources, 1 India-specific, 4 link-checked.

📄 Article
✓ Link checked Free Beginner

This is where the SDR and AE split came from, and the summary gives you the whole model without the book. The rule that no AE prospects and no SDR closes explains why GTM org charts look the way they do.

15-Minute Summary of Predictable Revenue

From Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross ~15 min read

  • Split the role into three: SDRs on cold accounts, market response reps on inbound, AEs as the only quota carriers who close.
  • Start SDRs at 50 to 100 prospecting emails a day, aiming for a 10 percent response rate.
  • The core myth it attacks: selling more does not mean hiring more salespeople, it means building lead generation.
  • Hire for talent and initiative over experience, since technique can be taught.
Open predictablerevenue.com →
📄 Article
✓ Link checked Free Intermediate

The mistake is not the hire, it is stepping out of sales afterwards, which Lemkin reckons about two thirds of founders do and which backfires almost every time. Six specific reasons your presence still matters, plus where to redirect your hours instead.

The #1 Mistake I See Founders Make When They Hire Their First VP of Sales

From SaaStr by Jason Lemkin short read

  • 66 percent of founders step back from sales after hiring a VP of Sales, and it backfires 95 percent of the time.
  • Getting the first VP of Sales wrong sets you back a year and burns half your cash.
  • Only hire the VP after two individual reps are really closing and hitting quota.
  • Plan to spend the same hours on sales after the hire, just redirected to bigger deals and relationships.
Open saastr.com →
📄 Article
✓ Link checked India Free Intermediate

Built from a masterclass with Mohit Garg, former CRO at MindTickle, and written for cross-border companies selling from India, including how to structure SDR and AE teams for cost efficiency. Covers qualification, MEDDIC scoring, pipeline reviews and loss reviews in one place.

SaaS Playbook: Sales

From SeedToScale by Accel by Rachit Parekh long read

  • Expect 15 to 20 follow-ups: some of Mohit's biggest customers came on the 14th or 18th touch.
  • Score deals MEDDIC-style and only grant reference calls above a score of 9, treating references as scarce.
  • Set quotas only after the process is repeatable, since even great reps miss without one.
  • Many Indian SaaS companies run SDRs in India with AEs in the US for the cost advantage.
Open seedtoscale.com →

Browse all 796 resources →

The same ground, at another level

How outbound that works reads from a different seat.

I have never sent a cold email in my life. Where do I even start? Start with twenty companies, not two thousand. Pick people you can describe precisely (job title, company size, the specific problem you think they... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → My cold calls die in the first ten seconds. What do I actually say when they pick up? Stop asking whether you caught them at a bad time, because it hands them an exit and Gong's data across hundreds of millions of calls shows it cuts... Doing the work 4 resources → What are the best outbound teams doing in 2026 that the rest of us are not? They treat outbound as an engineering problem, not a headcount problem. The best teams have someone technical sitting inside GTM (the GTM engineer ... How the best do it 4 resources →

Terms in this answer

Sales Development Rep Account Executive Cold Outreach

People also ask

I have never sent a cold email in my life. Where do I even start? 4 → I am a founder in India and my buyers are in the US. How do I get a stranger twelve time zones away to reply? 4 → My cold calls die in the first ten seconds. What do I actually say when they pick up? 4 → How do I build a target list that is worth working instead of scraping ten thousand random companies? 4 → Should my outbound team sit in India while my buyers are in the US? 5 → What are the best outbound teams doing in 2026 that the rest of us are not? 4 →

Also in Starting Up

The same ground, over in Get your first customers, our Starting Up track.

How do I actually get my first 10 customers when nobody has heard of me? 19 → When is my product 'ready' to launch? 20 →

Also in D2C

The same ground, over in Grow organically & retain, our D2C track.

How do I build a referral program that people actually use, not one that just sits unused in my Shopify admin? 4 → Should I be on Instagram, YouTube Shorts, and Pinterest, or just pick one? Where do I actually put my limited time? 4 →
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