What Is Rep Tenure?

The SDR seat is generally structured as an entry-level, high-volume role that feeds into account executive or other promotions, which by design produces shorter average tenure than most B2B functions. A rep who leaves shortly after finally ramping to full quota means the company recovers very little of what it spent getting them there.

Category research offers a comparison point worth repeating carefully rather than turning into an invented number. One industry analysis found managed AI SDR tooling contracts cancel at 50% to 70% within 90 days, described in that same source as roughly double typical human SDR turnover, without publishing the specific human baseline percentage behind that comparison. That is a real, sourced data point about the relative gap, not a stand-in for an actual human tenure statistic.

For a company deciding between hiring in-house and buying meetings, tenure risk sits on different sides of the two models. In-house, tenure determines whether ramp-time investment ever pays off. Outsourced, a vendor's own rep turnover does not force the buyer to restart their pipeline from zero the way losing an in-house SDR does.