SDR Course: just the essentials
For salespeople and business owners. Not a tactics checklist. About the one thing that actually works: find by hand — then automate. Plus how to launch that process in LDM in one evening — by hand or through an AI agent over MCP.
Why a client hires an SDR
The same task — finding clients — can be solved in different ways. Each option has its own price, speed, and risks.
Every option is a search for a process that returns the client's invested capital. Everything else is detail.
An SDR is a human adapter
Business is return on invested capital. The client's SLA is ROI. The SDR has to deliver it — otherwise they're not needed.
Between the client's financial goal and market reality there is no automatic bridge. The SDR builds it. They watch the market, find where the customer can find their clients, and join the SLA to the opportunities.
It's a creative process. A modern SDR runs trade shows, meetings, calls, and messages. Not one channel — the whole palette.
An SDR is a human adapter between the client's ROI and the market's possibilities.
Count what matters to the client, not to the SDR
Open rate and reply rate are inside-baseball. Clients care about other numbers — the ones tied directly to their P&L:
CACCustomer acquisition cost — how much you spent to land one deal.LTV / CACLifetime value over acquisition cost. Below 3 — the unit economics are broken; above 5 — healthy.Cost per MeetingHow much one meeting with a qualified lead costs.Time-to-ValidateHow many weeks it takes to find a working combination. The main SDR-stage metric.Lead → DealWhat percentage of leads close. Without this number, CAC doesn't exist.
If your SDR metrics don't intersect with the client's economics, you're in parallel worlds. Speak the client's P&L language, not inbox-kitchen jargon.
Find by hand. Then automate. That's the whole course.
Step one — find the perfect combination by hand: channel → offer → reason → person. Use every channel and variation. Understand the client. Write. Sit down and do the work.
Step two — automate what proved itself. Automation can be AI agents, operators, or nothing — that's not the point. The point is you automate what already works, not a hypothesis.
Downloading someone else's list and hitting send is a familiar temptation. But that means writing to people who have no reason to receive your email — and breaking data-protection and advertising laws. Work with addresses that have a lawful basis behind them: public corporate contacts, your own leads, confirmed interest. It only strengthens a hand-found combination: precise segment, honest reason, real person.
If it were that simple, the world would be flooded with spam. SDR is not "what to write and to whom." It's a search.
Be the tow truck that arrived on time
You're driving — your wheel breaks. No one to help. A tow truck pulls up. It doesn't push, doesn't sell aggressively — it just shows up at the right moment, at the right price.
As an SDR, you are that tow truck. Show up at the right moment, at the right time, at the right price, for the right person. It's not a technology. It's a creative search — and only then automation.
Search together with the client. The business owner is the best marketer — they know their own product better than anyone.
What to tell the client up front
A system that always delivers results doesn't exist. The market is chaos — you go in many directions at once, and something occasionally produces a result. It's not one system; it's many actions. The biggest risk is inflated client expectations: they want a sterile, transparent process from day one.
- 01Past cases don't repeat — different offer, different client, different outcome.
- 02A creative process is not sterile by definition. It's a search, not a conveyor belt.
- 03If the client wants transparent SLAs from month one — better to walk away. You can't honestly deliver that.
- 04Even where you have repeatability in a niche, you still take risk — the market shifts faster than case studies.
Build your own picture of the process and bring it to the client honestly. Or refuse the client who wants the impossible.
What the “automate” step looks like in LDM
The Live Direct Marketing philosophy is simple: the platform is a transparent conveyor for a validated combination, not a spam cannon. Every email is verified for actually landing in the Inbox: Inbox is billed, Spam and non-delivery are not. Our incentive is the same as yours — delivered emails to real people. Here's a launch, step by step.
The platform automates what you already found by hand. It doesn't replace the “find” step — it makes it cheaper to repeat.
Your AI agent is a full LDM operator
LDM was designed for AI agents from day one. MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open standard that lets Claude Desktop, Cursor, and any compatible client connect to the platform as a set of tools. Everything you can do in the UI, an agent can do over MCP: lists, creatives, test sends, campaigns, dialogs.
The key difference: the platform answers the agent not as a bare API but as a market expert. Every response carries an _expert block — what to do next, the typical flow, known pitfalls. The capability map and the recommended end-to-end scenario live at /api/v1/agent-guide — the agent reads them itself; you don't have to write it a manual.
- 01Issue an API key in Settings. One ldm_* key works for REST, MCP, and A2A at once.
- 02Connect the MCP server in your client — Claude Desktop, Cursor, or any other. Config below.
- 03Give the agent a task in plain words: “Import companies from CSV, build a list, prepare a creative with variables, send a test to my address, and show campaign readiness.” It walks the conveyor itself, guided by the _expert hints.
{
"mcpServers": {
"ldm": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "--package=@live-direct-marketing/sdk@latest", "ldm-mcp"],
"env": { "LDM_API_KEY": "ldm_..." }
}
}
}The agent prepares — the human decides: launching a campaign requires explicit confirmation, and every agent action is visible in the audit log.
MCP is not a side feature. It is the platform's primary interface: the human sets the goal, the agent runs the conveyor.The full agent-driven launch guide: MCP flow →
White-hat only
Outreach only survives long-term when it's lawful. These rules are built into the platform — you don't have to remember them, and you can't bypass them:
- 01An honest sender: real name, real domain, no deceptive subject lines. No masks, no spoofing.
- 02Every email carries a working unsubscribe link. Once someone opts out, the address goes to suppression — the platform itself won't let you mail it again.
- 03Stop lists and suppression are checked automatically before every single send — not “when convenient”.
- 04Write to business addresses with a legitimate business reason. Handle personal data strictly by the law (GDPR and local equivalents): minimal data, deletion on first request.
- 05Purchased grey lists and attempts to dodge unsubscribes are a direct violation of the platform rules and grounds for a ban.
Domain reputation and legal cleanliness are the same asset. Spent in a day, earned over months.
We share cases privately
We don't publish cases publicly — too many nuances, and what worked today may not work tomorrow. Write to us — we'll share what we've run into ourselves. No commitments, no lawyers.
Showing up on time, at the right price, for the right person — that's the whole SDR job. Everything else is an addendum to it.