Comparison · In-house SDR
Hire in-house. After you know the market answers.
This page is not an argument against hiring an in-house SDR in Europe. We think you should. It is an argument about the order you do it in.
No retainer, no minimum, no annual contract, no setup fee.
Same two decisions. The order is the whole argument.
An in-house SDR is the right end state for a market you intend to be in for years. It is also the most expensive way to ask a question you have not asked yet — whether your product, at your price, in that language, gets a reply from the people you sell to.
Split them. Buy the answer to the first one per qualified meeting — no retainer, no minimum, no annual contract, no setup fee. Then make the second decision knowing what the market said.
Ask the question first. Hire on the answer. We are not asking you to hire later. We are asking you to hire second.
The two orders, by what you know at each point.
Same company, same market, same budget. The only difference is which decision is made first.
| Order A — hire first | Order B — evidence first | |
|---|---|---|
| Before you spend anything | An employment contract, a notice period and a recruitment fee. No evidence. | Nothing. No retainer, no minimum, no annual contract, no setup fee. |
| Month 1 | Onboarding and ramp. No meetings yet. | The market starts answering. You pay for the meetings that qualify, and for nothing else. |
| Month 3 | Ramp ends. The recruitment fee is spent and so are 3 months of salary. | You have the replies, the objections, the recordings and the meetings — for that market, in that language. |
| If the market doesn't answer | You are managing a person out of a role, while still not knowing whether the role was the problem. | You stop. There is nothing to unwind and nobody to manage out. |
3 months of ramp is the category norm for an SDR hire, not a figure about any particular person. Category norm for an SDR hire, not a figure about any particular person.
The salary is the smallest number in the decision.
€52,000 is what the contract says. It is not what the year costs. Add employer social contributions, the recruitment fee, tools, data, licences, a share of somebody's management time, and 3 months in which the role produces nothing, and the first year lands in the €115,000–€125,000 year one, fully loaded band.
None of that is an argument against the hire. It is an argument for knowing what the market does before you sign it.
What the first year actually costs.
A German SDR, at a mid-range base, fully loaded. These are market ranges, not quotes, and they are the same figures published line by line on the pricing page.
Year one, built up
| Line | Low | High |
|---|---|---|
| Base salary | €52,000 | €52,000 |
| Variable | €20,000 | €20,000 |
| Employer on-costs | €15,120 | €15,120 |
| Recruitment | €10,400 | €13,000 |
| Tooling | €6,000 | €9,000 |
| Management load | €12,000 | €15,000 |
| Year one, fully loaded | €115,520 | €124,120 |
The same salary costs different amounts in different countries
| Market or group | Employer on-cost |
|---|---|
| France | 42–45% |
| Nordics | 31–38% |
| Netherlands | 22% |
| Germany | 21% |
| United Kingdom | 15% |
Before any of that: you probably can't employ them at all.
A US company with no European entity cannot simply put a German SDR on payroll. There is no version of the offer letter that works.
There are three routes through it. Only one of them is quick.
Three routes to employing someone in Europe.
| Route | Time before anyone can start | What it costs before the first meeting |
|---|---|---|
| Incorporate your own European entity | Months, plus a filing obligation you keep permanently | Legal, accounting and filing costs, before anyone is hired |
| An Employer of Record | About 14 days | US$199–US$700 per employee per month, on top of salary |
| Run the market with us first | None — nobody is employed by you | €0. You buy qualified meetings, not payroll. |
That route stays open whichever way you go. If you later decide you want the person who ran your campaign, an Employer of Record can employ them in their own country — and we are not a party to that contract. How a permanent hire actually works.
Where in-house wins. Plainly.
A comparison where one column wins every row is marketing, and you will read it as marketing. So here is the honest list, in our own words, before the table rather than in a footnote under it.
There are six things an in-house SDR does better than we do. Five of them we cannot fix, because they follow from the fact that they work for you and we don't.
The two options, side by side.
Product depth over time
Someone who sits with your product for 2 years knows it better than anyone we can assign to a campaign. We get to competence fast, in the market's language, on the pitch we agreed at kickoff. We do not get to that.
Access to your own people
They can walk to your product manager, sit in your pipeline review, and hear what the last deal actually died on. We get a kickoff, the material you send us, and a shared channel. That gap is real and it does not close.
Full-cycle ownership
An in-house SDR can carry a conversation past the first meeting, take the follow-up call, and stay on the account until it closes. We hand over at the meeting. That is the boundary of what we sell and we are not going to blur it.
Culture and retention
People stay for companies they belong to. The reps who run your campaign are ours; a person you employ is yours. Over 2 or 3 years that difference compounds in your favour, and it is not a small one.
Cost per meeting once they are ramped
At steady state, a producing in-house SDR is very likely cheaper per meeting than any per-meeting price, including ours. We are not going to put a number on that, because we would have to invent a meetings figure to do it, and we don't publish delivery numbers we can't stand behind. Take the direction, not a number.
It is the correct end state
A market you intend to be in for years should be run by people you employ. We agree with that completely. It is why our third stage is an introduction to a permanent hire rather than a longer contract.
| What you are deciding | An in-house SDR in Germany | KLAR | Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you commit to before anything happens | An employment contract and a notice period. | Nothing. No retainer, no minimum, no annual contract. | Advantage: KLAR |
| What you spend before the first meeting | A recruitment fee of 20–25% of base — €10,400–€13,000 — plus salary through ramp. | €0. No setup fee, no onboarding fee, no data, list or tooling fee. | Advantage: KLAR |
| Time to the first meeting | About 3 months of ramp. | The market's lead time. No ramp — reps are certified for the market before a campaign starts. | Advantage: KLAR |
| Year one | €115,000–€125,000 year one, fully loaded fully loaded. | Whatever you booked. There is no other line. | Advantage: depends on volume |
| What happens when a meeting is no good | You coach, or you start again. | It fails the published rubric and it isn't invoiced. If we'd already invoiced it, you get a credit note. | Advantage: KLAR |
| If the market doesn't answer | A notice period, a spent recruitment fee, and no way to tell whether it was the person or the market. | You stop. Capacity changes take 14 days. | Advantage: KLAR |
| Product depth after 12 months | Deeper than ours. They live in it. | Competent, in the market's language, on the agreed pitch. Not deeper. | Advantage: in-house |
| Access to your own people | Full. Pipeline reviews, product managers, lost-deal post-mortems. | A kickoff, the material you send, and a shared channel. | Advantage: in-house |
| After the first meeting | They can carry the conversation, take the follow-up and stay on the account. | We hand over at the meeting. That is the boundary. | Advantage: in-house |
| Cost per meeting once ramped | Likely lower. We are not putting a number on it — see the note below. | A rate per qualified meeting, agreed in writing before anything starts. | Advantage: in-house |
| Who they belong to in 3 years | Your employee, and worth keeping. | Ours — unless you make an offer and they accept. | Advantage: in-house |
| Where it ends | You already have the person. | An introduction to a permanent hire, at a published placement fee. | Advantage: depends on where you are starting |
- Every euro figure is a European market range. Nothing in this table is a claim about how many meetings anybody books, ours included.
- The year-one band is €115,000–€125,000 year one, fully loaded, fully loaded, for a German SDR at €52,000 base.
- Capacity changes take 14 days. That is not a 24-hour kill switch.
This ends with you hiring in-house.
When a market works and you want the person who made it work, we introduce them as a permanent hire. The fee is published. We do not get a say in whether that happens.