Ask five sales leaders how long it should take to ramp a new SDR and you'll get five different answers.
I've heard everything from "they should be booking meetings in week two" to "it takes a full year to really know if someone's going to make it." Neither extreme is particularly useful.
The honest answer is that it depends. But that's a cop-out if we don't explain what it depends on.
What "Ramped" Actually Means
Part of the confusion is that nobody agrees on the definition.
Some companies define "ramped" as hitting 100% of quota for a full month. Others use 80% as the threshold. Some measure time to first meeting booked. Others track when a rep can handle calls without manager intervention.
Before worrying about how long ramp takes, define what you're measuring. A rep who books their first meeting in week three but doesn't hit quota for six months looks very different from a rep who takes two months to book anything but then ramps quickly to full productivity.
The most useful definition I've seen: ramped means the rep is performing at 80%+ of tenured rep averages across key metrics, not just quota. That includes activity volume, conversion rates, and deal quality.
What The Data Suggests
Research from the Bridge Group's annual SDR survey consistently shows median ramp times of 3-4 months for B2B SaaS companies. Their 2023 report found that average SDR ramp time was 3.2 months, though this varied significantly by deal complexity.
Companies selling to enterprise (longer sales cycles, multiple stakeholders) reported ramp times closer to 6 months. Transactional sales with simpler products saw ramps under 3 months.
Benchmarks tell you what's average, not what's possible. Plenty of companies have cut ramp time in half by changing how they onboard.
The Factors That Actually Matter
Product complexity is obvious. If your product takes three months to learn, you can't ramp someone in 30 days. But most products aren't that complex. The bottleneck is usually something else.
Onboarding quality matters more than onboarding length. I've seen 8-week programmes that produced worse results than 2-week programmes because they were all classroom learning with no practice. Information without application disappears within weeks.
Practice before live calls is the biggest accelerator. Reps who spend their first week doing simulated calls, role plays, and mock objection handling outperform reps who learn "on the job" from day one. The gap isn't small. We've seen companies cut ramp time by 40% just by adding structured practice to the first two weeks.
This is why ramp time usually reflects onboarding investment, not rep quality. The same person will ramp in 2 months at one company and 6 months at another, based purely on how they're trained.
Manager Involvement Changes Everything
The Bridge Group research found another pattern: companies with dedicated SDR managers (not AEs or sales directors wearing multiple hats) had much shorter ramp times.
Why? Dedicated managers do more coaching. They listen to calls. They give specific feedback. They catch problems early.
A rep who's struggling with objection handling and gets feedback on day three will fix it in week one. A rep who doesn't get feedback until their first monthly review will spend four weeks practising bad habits. Call reluctance often goes unnoticed without this kind of close attention.
Coaching frequency matters more than coaching duration. Five minutes of feedback after every call session beats an hour-long weekly 1:1.
The Hidden Cost of Slow Ramp
When ramp time stretches too long, the costs compound.
Direct cost: salary and benefits while the rep isn't producing. For a rep earning $50k base, a 6-month ramp versus a 3-month ramp is roughly $25k in unproductive payroll.
Opportunity cost: the pipeline that rep would have generated if they were productive earlier. If a ramped rep books 20 meetings per month, three extra months of ramp time is 60 missed opportunities.
Turnover risk: longer ramp times correlate with higher early attrition. Reps who struggle for months without clear progress often leave, either voluntarily or involuntarily. Then you start over.
The companies that track ramp time closely tend to invest more in onboarding. The ones who don't track it often don't realise how much slow ramps are costing them.
What Top Companies Do Differently
The companies with fastest ramp times share a few patterns.
They front-load practice. New reps spend real time on simulated calls before touching real prospects. They make their mistakes in low-stakes settings, not on potential customers.
They use clear milestones. Not just "hit quota eventually" but specific checkpoints: complete product certification by week 2, pass mock call evaluation by week 3, book first meeting by week 4. Milestones let you identify struggling reps early and provide targeted support.
They pair new reps with top performers. Not as a replacement for manager coaching, but as a supplement. New reps learn faster when they can listen to how successful peers handle different situations.
They give real-time feedback. Call recordings reviewed within 24 hours. Immediate coaching after rough calls. Feedback loops measured in hours, not weeks.
A Realistic Timeline
For a B2B SaaS company with moderate product complexity, here's what a reasonable ramp might look like.
Weeks 1-2 cover product knowledge, market understanding, and initial practice. Reps learn the product, understand the ICP, and practice their talk track in simulations. No live calls yet.
Weeks 3-4 introduce supervised calling. Reps start outreach with close manager oversight. Every call is reviewed. Daily coaching. Focus on the first 30 seconds and handling initial objections.
Month 2 brings independent calling with regular coaching. Manager listens to a sample of calls. Weekly 1:1s review metrics. Rep should book first meetings during this period.
Month 3 targets full productivity. Rep hitting 80%+ of team averages. Coaching shifts from basics to refinement.
This 90-day timeline isn't magic. It's achievable when onboarding is structured, practice is prioritised, and coaching is frequent.
When Ramp Time Is Too Fast
This might sound backwards, but very short ramp times can signal problems.
If reps are "ramped" in 30 days but churning at 50% within a year, your definition of ramped is wrong. You're declaring victory too early and paying for it later.
Fast ramp to low performance is worse than slow ramp to high performance. The goal isn't to check the "ramped" box quickly. It's to build reps who can sustain performance.
Track ramp time alongside 12-month retention and 12-month average attainment. The best onboarding programmes optimise for all three.
The Question That Matters More
Instead of asking "how long should ramp take," ask "what would need to be true for ramp to take half as long?"
The answer usually reveals gaps: not enough practice opportunities, unclear expectations, insufficient coaching, poor training materials, or a product that's genuinely too complex to learn quickly.
Ramp time is a symptom. If it's too long, something upstream needs fixing.
The companies that treat SDR onboarding as a system to improve, rather than a fixed cost to endure, consistently outperform. They get new reps productive faster, retain them longer, and build something repeatable for scaling their team.
Everyone else just keeps hoping the next hire will somehow figure it out faster than the last one.