Should Your Closers Be Prospecting?

Two threads on r/sales in the last fortnight asked versions of the same question. One asked whether anyone's company still has BDRs actually sourcing pipeline. The other asked for advice on structuring an outbound team at all.

It's a live argument because both answers look defensible on a spreadsheet. Splitting the roles costs you a headcount. Combining them looks efficient right up until you check the pipeline six weeks later.

Why the combined role fails, and it isn't effort

A closer with their own pipeline has two jobs with completely different clocks. Closing has deadlines attached to it. Somebody is waiting on a proposal, a call is on the calendar, a deal is at month end. Prospecting has none of that. Nothing breaks today if you skip it.

So when the week gets tight, and it always does, the work with no deadline loses. Not because the rep is lazy. Because that's what a rational person does with a full calendar.

The damage shows up on a delay. You feel it two months later when the deals you didn't source stop arriving, and by then the rep is heads-down closing what's left, which starves the following month too. That's the feast and famine cycle most small sales teams live in, and it's structural.

The part people underestimate: they're different skills

Closing is reactive. Someone raised a hand, and your job is to understand the problem and get to a decision. Prospecting is the opposite. Nobody asked, nobody's waiting, and the whole job is earning thirty seconds of attention from someone who didn't want to hear from you.

Good closers are often bad at that second thing, and it isn't a character flaw. The temperament that makes you patient in a negotiation isn't the one that gets you through two hundred unanswered messages without taking it personally.

When combining them is actually fine

If you're doing under about ten deals a year at a high price, and your pipeline comes from referrals and a network you already have, combining is fine. There isn't enough sourcing volume to specialise, and the founder usually is the closer anyway.

It stops being fine the moment you need predictable volume. Predictable means someone owns the top of the funnel with a number attached, and it can't be the person whose number is revenue, because revenue always wins the argument.

The third option people forget

The choice isn't only hire an SDR or make your AEs do it. The sourcing work splits into parts, and only one of them actually needs a person.

Building the target list is research. Writing the first touch is a template plus one specific detail. Sending it, tracking it, following up and stopping the follow-up when somebody replies is all mechanical. The part that genuinely needs judgment is the conversation once someone bites, and that's exactly the part your closer should be doing.

So the honest question isn't who does prospecting. It's which parts of prospecting need a human at all, and whether you're paying a closer's salary to do the parts that do not.

What to check this week

Pull your last two months. Count how many new conversations your closers started themselves, as opposed to worked. If that number is near zero while they're hitting quota, you don't have a rep problem. You've a structure that's quietly borrowing from next quarter to pay for this one.

For what it's worth, on my own outbound 863 videos produced 71 booked calls, 8.2%. Almost none of that volume needed me until somebody replied. That's the split worth copying.

Common questions

Should account executives do their own prospecting?

Only if deal volume is low and pipeline comes mostly from referrals. Once you need predictable volume, prospecting needs an owner with its own number, because closing always has deadlines and prospecting doesn't, so prospecting is what gets dropped.

What breaks first when you combine the roles?

Sourcing volume, and you don't notice for about two months. The rep keeps hitting quota on deals already in flight while starting fewer new conversations, so the shortfall lands a quarter later.

Do I've to hire an SDR to fix this?

No. Most of prospecting is list building, first touch, tracking and follow-up, which are mechanical. The part that needs judgment starts when someone replies, and that's the part a closer should keep.