A worksheet with six lines. Bring your own salary band, your finance team's burden multiplier and your tool list prices, and you have the real number in about twenty minutes. Working example filled in below.
| Line | Where your number comes from | Worked example |
|---|---|---|
| 1. On-target earnings | Your own offer band, checked against The Bridge Group's SDR compensation work and posted ranges for your market | $80,000 |
| 2. Employer load | Your finance team's burden multiplier. The common planning range is 1.25 to 1.4, and it carries employer-side FICA at 7.65% of wages plus unemployment, workers compensation and health cover | 1.25x to 1.4x, so $100,000 to $112,000 |
| 3. Tools for the seat | Current list prices for a Sales Navigator seat, a contact data provider, a sequencer with warmed domains, and somewhere searchable for replies to land | $250 to $500 a month, so $3,000 to $6,000 a year |
| 4. Ramp | Months to a first honest data point, times your loaded monthly cost. Published benchmarks put this at about three months and hiring managers plan for three to six | 3 months on a $100,000 seat, so $25,000 |
| 5. Management time | Hours a week from whoever writes the sequences, checks the list and reads the numbers, at that person's real cost. Early on it is the founder | 2 to 4 hours a week, outside every budget line |
| 6. Tenure and replacement | Your own average tenure for the role, plus recruiter fee at 15 to 25% of first-year salary if you use one | Under two years, so the model resets |
| Total | Lines 1 through 5 for one US mid-market seat | $110,000 to $145,000 a year, or $9,000 to $12,000 a month |
The full reasoning behind each line, with every source named, is in the long version. This page is the sheet you fill in; that one is why each line is on it.
Ramp is the largest single number in year one, and it is paid every week whether or not anything is working yet. Three months on a $100,000 loaded seat is $25,000 spent before the first honest data point, and the first data you get is the data least worth trusting.
The channel has a ramp of its own that is worth knowing separately, because it belongs to the sending profile rather than to the person. Across our own senders, the first twenty invitations from any profile returned 15.4% accepts, 46 on 298. Invitation twenty-one and later returned 21.0%, 268 on 1,278. Same signals, same copy, often the same week. So whoever does the sending, hold the first twenty touches out of every verdict.
A cost per year is easy to argue with, and a cost per meeting is hard, so build that one. You need three conversion rates and one volume number, and three of the four you already have.
Divide the monthly seat cost by the meetings that volume produces and you have the only number that belongs on a slide. The rates in steps two and three, with their definitions, live on the benchmarks page.
| A hired SDR seat | Operated outreach | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $9,000 to $12,000 loaded | $2,000 for the worker, $5,000 with a team, $10,000 with a fractional CRO |
| Time to first send | Search, offer, notice period, then onboarding | Sending starts in week three |
| Ramp cost | About three months of loaded salary | Included in the monthly price |
| Tools and infrastructure | $3,000 to $6,000 a year on top | Included in the monthly price |
| Commitment | An employment contract | Month to month, no setup fee |
| What stays when it ends | The knowledge leaves with the person | Lists, signals, copy variants and every conversation stay with you |
There is also a level from $199 a month where you connect your own assistant to the same stack and run the sourcing and the queue yourself, which is the honest choice when someone on your team has ten hours a week for this.
For one US mid-market seat, $110,000 to $145,000 a year, or $9,000 to $12,000 a month. That is $80,000 on target, a 1.25 to 1.4 burden multiplier, $3,000 to $6,000 of tools, and roughly three months of ramp before the first honest data point.
Finance teams commonly plan at 1.25 to 1.4 times compensation. It carries employer-side FICA at 7.65% of wages up to the wage base, plus unemployment insurance, workers compensation, health cover, equipment and a share of shared software. Ask your own finance person for the figure they use.
Published benchmarks have put it at about three months for years, and hiring managers plan for three to six. Payroll runs the whole time, which makes ramp the largest single line in year one.
Take weekly volume per rep, multiply by your accept or open rate, then by your reply rate, then by your reply-to-call rate. Divide the loaded monthly cost by the meetings that produces. Every rate needs its denominator written next to it.
At $2,000 a month against $9,000 to $12,000 loaded, yes on cost, and it starts sending in week three. A hire wins when you need someone in your building, in your standups, owning accounts end to end.
Which lists worked, which opener got answered, which objection killed three deals. Average tenure for the role has been under two years for most of the last decade, so keeping that knowledge in a system the company owns is the cheapest line on the sheet.
Book a 30-minute call. Tell me who you need to reach and I will say plainly whether this is a fit.