Disclosure: we are Fortitude Media and New Business, our AI prospecting department, is one side of this comparison. We have hired, managed and been SDRs across two decades of B2B, so the human side gets its full due here, including the cases where the hire is right.
Last checked: 20 July 2026.
The short answer
A UK SDR costs £30,000 to £45,000 base, £45,000 to £55,000 all-in once commission, tools and management time are counted, takes three to six months to reach speed, and the role turns over famously often. Fortitude's New Business department costs £199 a week, about £10,300 a year, researches accounts, finds and verifies contacts, writes outreach in your voice across email and LinkedIn, chases politely and books meetings into your closer's diary, starting in AI Assisted mode where you approve every message. The honest answer for most B2B firms under £50m is not either-or: it is AI for the research, writing and chasing (most of an SDR's hours), humans for the conversations. If you were about to hire your first SDR, run the arithmetic here before you do.
What an SDR's week actually contains
Ask anyone who has done the job. The week is account research, finding the right names, verifying emails, writing first lines that do not sound like everyone else's, sequencing, chasing at day three and day seven, updating the CRM, and reporting the numbers. The actual conversations, the reason you wanted a salesperson, are a sliver of the hours. The rest is diligent, repetitive, structured work. That split is the entire case for AI in this role: not that software sells better than people, but that most of the role was never selling.
What New Business does: researches your named accounts and lookalikes using business data providers, identifies decision-makers and verifies their details, writes outreach in your voice referencing something true about the prospect, runs the sequence across email and LinkedIn, chases without nagging, books meetings straight into your closer's calendar, logs everything, and reports weekly: contacted, replied, booked, and what message patterns are working. What it does not do: take the meeting, negotiate, or close. Your best people do that, with fuller diaries.
The comparison, honestly
| Hiring an SDR | New Business (AI) | |
|---|---|---|
| All-in annual cost | £45,000 to £55,000 (base, commission, tools, management) | About £10,300 (£199 a week) |
| Time to productive | Three to six months | Days |
| Coverage | Working hours, holidays, sick days | Continuous |
| Voice | Theirs, coached toward yours | Yours, enforced |
| Research depth per account | Limited by hours | Consistent on every account |
| The actual meetings | They take some | Your closer takes all of them |
| Turnover risk | High; the ramp restarts | None |
| Management load | Real: coaching, reviews, pipeline pressure | Minutes a day of approvals |
The arithmetic, worked
Say your average first meeting converts to a client worth £15,000 at a one-in-five rate, so a booked meeting is worth roughly £3,000 in expectation. The SDR at £50,000 all-in needs 17 meetings a year just to cover cost; a good one books far more, but only after ramp, and the median tenure in the role means you may fund two ramps in as many years. New Business at £10,300 covers itself at four meetings a year; everything past one meeting a quarter is margin. The point is not that the AI books more meetings than a great SDR at full speed. It is that the break-even is a fifth of the height, the ramp is days, and the ramp never restarts.
And if you already employ salespeople: the department does not replace them, it feeds them. The most common configuration we see is one closer whose diary the department fills, which is also the configuration we run ourselves; our own outreach is this department, sending as us.
Where hiring the human wins
If your motion is true enterprise selling, nine-month cycles, procurement committees, relationships built at dinners and conferences, an experienced salesperson's judgement and presence is irreplaceable and £55,000 is cheap for it (though note what you want there is an AE, not an SDR, and the department can still fill their diary). If your total addressable market is forty named accounts, craft beats scale: have your founder write forty personal letters. If your product needs a demo only a human can give and you have nobody to take meetings, fix that first; a full diary you cannot service is worse than an empty one. And if outbound is simply wrong for your category, say, all your business arrives by referral, spend this budget on being found instead.
Trust, voice and the approval queue
Every message the department sends is drafted as you and queued for your one-click approval in AI Assisted mode; you promote action types (the day-three chase, the polite break-up email) to Autopilot only when the queue has bored you into trusting them. Nothing is sent to anyone your rules exclude, suppression lists are respected, volumes are kept human-plausible, and everything is logged. Your reputation is the asset here; the machinery is built around protecting it. Regulated firms layer Compliance Guardrails on top, including financial-promotions sign-off staying in your process.
Frequently asked questions
How much does an SDR cost in the UK compared with AI?
A UK SDR typically costs £30,000 to £45,000 base and £45,000 to £55,000 all-in once commission, tools and management time are counted, plus a three-to-six-month ramp. Fortitude's New Business department costs £199 a week, about £10,300 a year, and is productive in days. The break-even in booked meetings is roughly a fifth of the SDR's.
Does AI outreach actually get replies?
Outreach gets replies when it is relevant, brief and true, whoever wrote it. The department researches every account before writing, references something real about the prospect, sends as you in your voice, and chases with restraint. You approve every message in Assisted mode until you choose otherwise, so nothing generic goes out in your name. Weekly reporting shows contacted, replied and booked, so the answer is measured rather than promised.
Will it replace my salespeople?
No. It replaces the research, writing, sequencing and chasing that consumed their week, and books the meetings into their diary. The conversations, demos and closes stay human. The most common setup is one closer served by the department, which is how we run our own new business.
Is AI cold outreach legal and safe for my domain?
The department works within UK electronic marketing rules as configured for your firm, respects suppression lists, keeps sending volumes human-plausible, and warms and protects sending domains. Every message is logged, and in Assisted mode nothing leaves without your approval. Regulated firms can add Compliance Guardrails. This is not legal advice; your rules are configured in onboarding.
Can it work our existing CRM and pipeline?
Yes. It plugs into the systems you already run, writes its activity into your CRM, and reports weekly against your pipeline stages, so nothing about your sales management changes except the volume at the top.