Tailoring guide
Sales Development Representative resume keywords and example
Sales development representative postings are about the top of the funnel: outbound prospecting by phone, email and LinkedIn, qualifying inbound leads, and booking meetings for account executives. Résumé guides for the role repeat the same advice: use the posting's exact terms (cold calling, outbound prospecting, BANT), name the sales engagement tools you used such as Outreach, Salesloft and LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and show meetings booked and pipeline against quota. Below are the keywords that recur, a sample summary, skills grouped by type, and example bullets across seniority levels.
Updated 14 November 2026. Keyword research current as of November 2026, sourced from public ATS keyword guides, not Weydr's own usage data.
Sales Development Representative keywords that repeat in job postings
- Outbound Prospecting
- Cold Calling
- Cold Emailing
- Lead Qualification (BANT)
- Meetings Booked
- Pipeline Generation
- Outreach / Salesloft
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator
- Quota Attainment
Only include the ones that are true for you. A keyword you can't back up in an interview costs more than it gains.
Sample professional summary
Sales development representative with 2 years at a B2B security software company, prospecting mid-market IT leaders by phone, email and LinkedIn. Runs multi-touch sequences in Outreach, researches accounts in Sales Navigator and ZoomInfo, qualifies with BANT, and averaged 112% of meetings-held quota across 8 quarters.
Illustrative example. Swap in your own years, domain, tools and results.
Skills to list on a sales development representative resume
Hard skills
- Outbound cold calling and voicemail
- Personalised cold email sequences
- Account and contact research
- Inbound lead qualification (BANT)
- Objection handling
- CRM data hygiene
Soft skills
- Resilience after rejection
- Curiosity about prospects' problems
- Concise written and spoken communication
- Coachability
- Daily activity discipline
Tools
- Outreach
- Salesloft
- Salesforce
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator
- ZoomInfo or Apollo
- Gong
A tailored bullet, before and after
Made cold calls and sent emails to prospects.
Booked 18 qualified meetings a month with mid-market IT directors through Outreach sequences and cold calling, reaching 112% of meetings-held quota for 8 straight quarters and sourcing $1.4M in pipeline.
Example resume bullets by seniority
Illustrative examples: the companies, numbers and outcomes are made up to show the structure (action, scope, tool, result). Use your own real figures.
Entry level
- Qualified 150 inbound demo requests a month with BANT, routing them to account executives in Salesforce within 2 hours and lifting inbound-to-meeting conversion from 30% to 42%.
- Ran 60 cold calls a day to manufacturing operations leaders, booking 12 meetings in my first full month and ramping to quota by month 3.
Mid level
- Wrote a 7-step Outreach sequence for healthcare accounts that reached a 9% reply rate, which the team adopted as its default for the vertical.
- Partnered with 2 account executives on an account-based campaign for 40 named enterprise accounts, opening conversations in 15 of them and sourcing $600K in pipeline.
Senior
- Ranked first of 14 SDRs for two consecutive quarters on pipeline sourced, then was promoted to account executive.
- Onboarded and coached 5 new SDRs on call openers and Gong call reviews, with all 5 hitting quota by their third month.
Gaps candidates miss most
- Quota attainment by period, stated as a percentage of target
- Meetings booked or held and pipeline sourced in dollars
- The exact tools you used (Outreach, Salesloft, Sales Navigator), not "sales tools"
Common sales development representative resume mistakes
- Listing activity alone ("made 80 calls a day") with no meetings or pipeline result.
- Paraphrasing keywords, such as "phone outreach" instead of "cold calling", so searches miss you.
- Leaving off rankings or promotions, which are strong signals at this level.
- Hiding the market you sold into, when SDR managers value segment and persona fit.
- Writing a long résumé when a single tight page with numbers reads better for SDR roles.
Before you stuff in keywords
- Does ATS really reject 75% of résumés?: what the research says about ATS filtering.
- How to tailor your résumé to a job description: what the research says about ATS filtering.
- What an ATS résumé checker can and can't tell you: what the research says about ATS filtering.
- Tailoring a résumé to a job description: a worked example: what the research says about ATS filtering.
- How to explain an employment gap on your résumé: what the research says about ATS filtering.
- How to write a cover letter for a specific job: what the research says about ATS filtering.
- Résumé summary examples, and how to write your own: what the research says about ATS filtering.
- How long should a résumé be?: what the research says about ATS filtering.
- How to write a career change résumé: what the research says about ATS filtering.
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