The short version
- In-house SDR, fully loaded: about $135,000–$150,000 a year per rep (median $80,000 OTE, ~30% benefits, ~$10,000 a year in tools and data, a share of a manager, and recruiting amortized over a 1.9-year tenure).
- Cost per held meeting, in-house: roughly $900–$1,300 for a rep hitting the B2B median of 12–15 booked meetings a month; several thousand dollars for a rep who is ramping or underperforming.
- Outsourced or embedded BDR: $3,000–$8,000 a month per rep for generalist firms; government specialists price above that because reaching agencies takes more list work and more dials. Cost per held meeting typically lands between $350 and $700.
- What actually moves the number: meetings per rep per month and tenure. A rep who books 20 a month and stays three years costs half as much per meeting as one who books 10 and leaves in a year.
Calculator
Defaults are the public benchmarks in the table below. The in-house model counts half productivity during ramp and re-incurs ramp and recruiting every time a rep leaves (tenure). The outsourced model assumes the firm absorbs recruiting and management.
Government lead generation cost calculator
Pre-filled with the benchmarks above. Change any number to match your plan. Nothing is sent anywhere; the math runs in your browser.
In-house SDR team
Outsourced or embedded BDR
Where the defaults come from
Showing all 9 line items
| Line item | Benchmark | Source |
|---|---|---|
| SDR on-target earningsBase plus variable at quota | $80,000 median OTE (about $60,000 base) | Bridge Group 2025 SDR report; RepVue |
| Benefits and payroll taxesHealth, retirement, FICA, unemployment | Roughly 30% of wages for private-industry employers | BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation |
| Sales technology per SDRCRM, dialer, sequencing, conversation intelligence | About $371 per SDR per month, before data | Bridge Group via QuotaPath |
| Contact dataGovernment contact and signal data | $100–$300 per user per month for commercial data; government-specific platforms run $5,000–$30,000+ a year per team | Vendor pricing pages; see our sales intelligence tools comparison |
| ManagementSDR manager time, coaching, QA | One manager per 6–8 SDRs; allocate 15–25% of a $130,000–$160,000 manager | Bridge Group team-structure data |
| Recruiting and backfillAgency or internal recruiting, onboarding | $5,000–$15,000 per hire; median tenure 1.9 years, so expect a backfill every two years | Bridge Group 2025 (tenure) |
| RampMonths before a new rep is fully productive | 3.0 months on average; count on half productivity during ramp | Bridge Group 2025 |
| OutputBooked meetings per month at full ramp | 12–15 for a typical outbound SDR; 19–24 at high-volume outsourced teams; KSG's government standard is one qualified meeting per BDR per day | Prospeo benchmark summary; Abstrakt, 6.2M dials; our SDR benchmarks |
| Outsourced SDR retainerPer dedicated rep, per month | $3,000–$8,000 a month for generalist firms; government-specialist embedded BDRs price above that range because of the list-building and reach work involved | Prospeo unit-economics model |
What an in-house government SDR really costs
The salary is the smallest surprise. Take the Bridge Group's median $80,000 on-target earnings, add about 30% for benefits and payroll taxes (BLS puts benefits at roughly 30% of total compensation for private employers), and you are at $104,000 before the rep makes a call. Tools and data add $800–$1,200 a month: a CRM seat, a dialer, a sequencing tool, and government contact data, which is more expensive than commercial data because the good sources (agency directories, budget documents, meeting minutes) have to be assembled. A manager's time is real money too: one manager for six to eight reps means each rep carries $15,000–$25,000 of management cost.
Then there is churn. Median SDR tenure is 1.9 years, which means you recruit, hire and ramp a replacement roughly every two years. At $5,000–$15,000 per hire and three months at half productivity, each turnover event costs $20,000–$35,000 in cash and lost output. Spread over the tenure, that is another $10,000–$17,000 a year per seat.
Government adds one more cost that rarely shows up in a budget: the learning curve. A commercial SDR who moves to public sector has to learn fiscal years, procurement thresholds, cooperative contracts, the difference between a county administrator and a county executive, and why a director who loves the product cannot buy until the next budget cycle. Our sales-cycle benchmarks show why that matters: the meetings a new rep books in month one will not close for 9–18 months, so a rep who leaves at month 20 may never see a deal they sourced.
What outsourced and embedded BDRs cost
Generalist outsourced SDR firms publish retainers of $3,000 to $8,000 a month per dedicated rep, or per-meeting pricing of $150 to $600. Government-specialist firms, including Kensington Sales Group, price per embedded BDR rather than per meeting, and sit above the generalist range because the rep arrives with the lists, scripts, dial discipline and public-sector vocabulary already in place. The trade: you pay a predictable monthly fee, the firm carries recruiting, management, tools and backfill, and the program can be up and running in as little as one week instead of the three to five months it takes to post, hire and ramp.
The honest comparison is cost per held meeting over a year, not monthly fee against salary. A $6,500-a-month embedded BDR who holds 15 meetings a month costs about $430 per meeting. A $135,000-a-year in-house rep who holds 11 a month (12–15 booked, 80% show rate) costs about $1,000 per meeting, and more in the year they are hired or replaced. In-house wins when you can keep a strong rep for three-plus years and feed them a product with a short sales cycle; outsourced wins when you need pipeline this quarter, sell into a long government cycle, or cannot afford a bad hire.
Other ways to generate government leads, and what they cost
- Conference booths and sponsorships: $5,000–$50,000 per show plus travel; our conference list covers the 100 that matter. Good for relationships, poor for volume unless meetings are booked in advance.
- Bid and signal data subscriptions: $5,000–$30,000-plus a year for platforms like GovWin, Civic IQ or Starbridge (see our comparison). They tell you who is buying; someone still has to make the call.
- Paid search and LinkedIn: government buyers click less than commercial buyers and rarely fill out forms; most B2G marketers report cost per qualified lead well above $300.
- Content and SEO: the slowest to start and the cheapest per lead once it works. Pages like this one are how KSG gets found.
Method and sources
Benchmarks are from The Bridge Group's SDR Metrics and Compensation report (351 B2B companies, 2025 edition) for OTE, tenure, ramp and tools; the Bureau of Labor Statistics for benefits as a share of compensation; Gong, Operatix and Abstrakt Marketing Group for meeting and conversion rates; and published pricing from outsourced SDR firms and government data vendors. Government-specific figures are Kensington Sales Group's operating standards. Checked November 7, 2026. Corrections: sales@kensingtonsalesgroup.com.
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