How to get hired
Know which seat you are applying for
SDR or BDR (Sales or Business Development Representative). Common at software, cloud and IT-services companies, with a heavy cluster in Bengaluru and the NCR. You do not close deals. You research target accounts, send sequences of emails and LinkedIn messages, cold-call, and book qualified meetings for an Account Executive (AE), who closes. SDRs usually work inbound leads (people who downloaded something or asked for a demo); BDRs usually work outbound (accounts nobody has contacted). Your quota is meetings held or sales-qualified opportunities, not revenue.
Domestic inside sales. Selling business software, courses, insurance or services to Indian customers by phone and video. You often run the whole sale: call, demo, follow-up, payment link. Hindi or a regional language is frequently asked for.
International inside sales or lead generation. Selling to overseas small businesses, or generating leads for a client, often from a services company or a staffing partner. Shifts follow the client's time zone.
The skills and tools that get you shortlisted
Posts for these roles name tools more than degrees. The common ones are a CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot or Zoho), LinkedIn Sales Navigator for finding buyers, sequencing tools such as Outreach, Salesloft or Apollo for scheduled emails and call lists, and data tools such as ZoomInfo. You won't have paid licences at home, but HubSpot Academy and Salesforce Trailhead are free, and listing them with what you actually practised is better than leaving the section empty.
What matters more:
- Clear written English. Your first test is often writing.
- Comfort with rejection on the phone at volume.
- Curiosity about how a business works, so you can ask a CFO or IT head a sensible question in the first thirty seconds.
The rounds
- Recruiter screen, often with a few questions on why sales and your comfort with shifts.
- Written exercise: research a company from its website and write a three-email cold sequence to a named role, or write a two-line LinkedIn connection note.
- Mock cold call: the hiring manager plays a busy prospect. They grade the opener, one discovery question, how you handle "send me an email" and whether you ask for a specific meeting time.
- Manager or AE interview: your numbers from any past target job, and why this product.
Telecallers and BPO agents switching in should lead with metrics they already have: calls a day, conversion, quality score.
How pay works: OTE and quota
SaaS firms quote OTE (on-target earnings): fixed pay plus the variable you earn at 100% of quota, often split somewhere between 70:30 and 80:20 for SDRs. Take a made-up example: OTE ₹6 lakh at 75:25 is ₹4.5 lakh fixed and ₹1.5 lakh variable, paid as ₹12,500 a month if you hit 12 qualified meetings a month. Ask four things: what share of the team hit quota last quarter, whether a meeting counts when booked or only when held and accepted by the AE, whether there is an accelerator above 100%, and whether the first two or three "ramp" months have a reduced quota.
What the work is like
A US-facing SDR in India often logs in around late afternoon or evening and works till past midnight, with cab drop where the company provides it. UK-facing teams start around noon or early afternoon. Days are measured in activity: dials, emails, connects, meetings. A good SDR spends the first hour researching and the rest executing in blocks.
The ladder is the main attraction. A strong SDR typically gets considered for an AE role after twelve to twenty-four months, then Senior AE, then Enterprise AE or a sales manager role, with pay rising mostly through the variable. Others move to SDR team lead, sales operations, partnerships or customer success. Domestic inside-sales roles grow into team lead and regional inside-sales manager.