To hire offshore SDRs from Africa for a US sales team, you need three things in place: a shift that covers your buyers’ working day, an outbound process that follows US calling and email rules, and a hiring model that makes someone legally responsible for the SDR’s contract and pay. Get those right and an offshore sales development rep can book meetings for your account executives at a fraction of the cost of a US hire.
This guide is written for US founders, sales leaders and RevOps teams. It covers what an offshore SDR should and should not own, how the time zones really work, what it costs, the compliance rules that apply to outbound calls and emails, how to interview and ramp an SDR, and your options for hiring one.
What does an offshore SDR do?
An offshore SDR does the same job as an in-house SDR: they research target accounts, reach out by phone, email and LinkedIn, qualify interest, and book meetings for your account executives. The difference is where they sit and how they are employed, not the work itself.
It helps to be clear about where the SDR role starts and ends, because many companies hire the wrong role for the problem they have:
| Role | Main job | Measured on | Hire this if |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lead generation VA | Build and clean prospect lists, find contact details, set up sequences | List quality and volume | Your reps spend hours researching instead of selling |
| SDR | Start conversations, qualify, book meetings | Qualified meetings held | Your account executives have capacity but not enough meetings |
| Account executive | Run discovery and demos, negotiate, close | Revenue closed | You have meetings but not enough people to close them |
If your real bottleneck is research and list building, a lead generation assistant is cheaper and easier to manage. Our guide to hiring a lead generation virtual assistant in Africa covers that role. This guide is about SDRs: the people who actually talk to your prospects.
What an offshore SDR should not own
Keep pricing decisions, discounts, contract terms and anything that commits your company in writing with your US team. An SDR can explain your offer and share approved pricing, but the commercial decisions should stay with an account executive or manager.
How the time zones work for US sales teams
This is the question that decides whether offshore outbound works at all. An SDR calling US prospects has to work during US business hours, so what matters is what time that is where the SDR lives.
Here is the local time an SDR would work to cover a full 9am to 5pm day in each US time zone:
| To cover 9am to 5pm in | Accra, Ghana | Lagos, Nigeria | Nairobi, Kenya | Manila, for comparison |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US Eastern | 1pm to 9pm | 2pm to 10pm | 4pm to midnight | 9pm to 5am |
| US Central | 2pm to 10pm | 3pm to 11pm | 5pm to 1am | 10pm to 6am |
| US Pacific | 4pm to midnight | 5pm to 1am | 7pm to 3am | midnight to 8am |
Times shown during US daylight saving (March to November). Add one hour to each African and Philippine time from November to March. Ghana, Nigeria and Kenya do not change their clocks.
Two things stand out. First, West Africa is the only offshore region where covering the full US Eastern and Central working day is an afternoon-and-evening shift rather than an overnight one. Second, covering the Pacific time zone from anywhere offshore gets late. If most of your buyers are on the West Coast, plan a split: an SDR in West Africa covers the East Coast morning, and your US team or a later shift picks up the Pacific afternoon.
You also do not always need the full eight hours. Many outbound teams find that live calling works best in a few windows, such as mid-morning and late afternoon in the prospect’s time zone. An SDR can do research, email and CRM work before those windows and call during them, which shortens the late part of the shift.
How much does an offshore SDR cost?
For a US reference point, sales representatives of services earned a mean wage of $81,260 a year in May 2024, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. SDRs are usually earlier in their careers than the average sales rep, so US SDR base pay tends to sit below that figure, but commission, benefits and payroll taxes are added on top.
Here is how the cost of an offshore SDR in Africa builds up when hired directly and employed through an Employer of Record (EOR), using an example salary of $1,000 a month:
| Example monthly salary | $1,000 |
| One-off recruitment fee (10% of annual salary) | $1,200 |
| Monthly EOR fee (15% of gross salary) | $150 |
| Statutory employer contributions | Vary by country; for Nigeria, see our guide to the cost to hire someone in Nigeria |
| First-year total before statutory costs and commission | About $15,000 |
The salary is an example only. Real pay depends on country, experience and whether the SDR has sold to US buyers before.
Budget for these as well, wherever your SDR is based:
- Commission or bonus. A clear variable pay plan tied to meetings held keeps an SDR focused on the right outcome. Pay it on meetings that actually happen and meet your qualification criteria, not just meetings booked.
- Tool seats. A CRM seat, a sales engagement or dialer platform, a data provider and LinkedIn Sales Navigator are usually per user, and together they can cost more each month than you expect.
- A US phone number. Prospects answer local numbers more often. Most dialer platforms provide these.
- Ramp time. Plan for one to three months before a new SDR reaches full output.
Want a real number for your team? Tell us your target market, the hours you need covered and how many SDRs you want, and Betternship will send a full monthly cost breakdown. Request an SDR cost breakdown.
US compliance rules your offshore SDRs must follow
Where your SDR sits does not change which rules apply. If they call or email people in the US on your behalf, US rules apply to your outreach, and your company carries the risk. Build these into your playbook before the first call. This section is a practical overview, not legal advice, so check your process with counsel.
Cold calling
- Calling hours. Federal telemarketing rules limit calls to between 8am and 9pm in the recipient’s local time. Your dialer should enforce this automatically by time zone.
- Do Not Call lists. Scrub consumer and mobile numbers against the National Do Not Call Registry and keep your own internal do-not-call list. When someone asks not to be called again, record it immediately.
- Autodialers, prerecorded and AI voices. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) restricts calls to mobile numbers made with an autodialer or an artificial or prerecorded voice without prior consent. The FCC confirmed in 2024 that AI-generated voices count as artificial. Keep SDR calls manually placed and live unless your counsel has approved otherwise. The FCC’s telemarketing guidance explains the rules.
- State rules. Some states, such as Florida and Oklahoma, have their own telemarketing laws that go further than federal rules. If you call into those states, check them.
- Call recording. Some states require every party to consent to recording. If you record calls for coaching, tell the prospect at the start of the call.
Cold email
- CAN-SPAM. Commercial emails need accurate sender details, honest subject lines, your physical postal address and a working way to opt out, and you must honor opt-outs within 10 business days. Penalties are charged per email. See the FTC’s CAN-SPAM guide.
- Sender requirements. Gmail and Yahoo require bulk senders to authenticate their domains with SPF, DKIM and DMARC, offer one-click unsubscribe, and keep spam complaints low. Google’s email sender guidelines set out the details. Send outbound from a separate, warmed-up domain to protect your main one.
Data and access
Give your SDR a seat in your own CRM and sales tools, with access limited to what they need. Keep prospect data inside those systems rather than in spreadsheets or personal email, and remove access the same day the engagement ends.
Why US companies hire SDRs from Africa
A sustainable shift. The time zone table above is the core of it. An SDR in Lagos or Accra covers the US East Coast day in the local afternoon and evening. That matters more for SDRs than for most roles, because outbound is draining work, and people who sleep at night and work during the day tend to stay in the job longer and sound better on the phone. For most other offshore locations, the same coverage is a night shift.
English as a working language. English is the language of business and education in Nigeria, Ghana and Kenya, and many SDR candidates have already worked in customer support or sales roles serving US and UK customers. Test it anyway, on a live call, as described below.
A deep early-career talent pool. Nigeria and Kenya in particular have large numbers of graduates looking for international careers, which is exactly the profile of a strong SDR hire: curious, resilient and ready to learn a sales process.
The cost gap funds a better team. The savings do not have to go straight to the bottom line. Many teams use them to hire two SDRs instead of one, or to add a lead generation assistant who does the research so the SDR spends more time in conversations.
Africa is not the right fit for every team. If your buyers are mainly on the US West Coast, or you need SDRs who have sold into a specialist US industry for years, a US-based hire or a nearshore option may suit you better. Our comparison of the Philippines and Africa is a useful read if you are weighing offshore regions.
How to interview an offshore SDR
A CV tells you very little about whether someone can do outbound. These four tests tell you much more, and together they take about an hour:
- A live cold call role-play. Give the candidate a one-page brief on your product and a fictional prospect the day before. On the call, play the prospect and push back. You are listening for clear spoken English, a calm response to rejection, and whether they ask questions or just pitch.
- A written email task. Ask for a short first-touch email and one follow-up to a real type of buyer you target. Good SDRs write short, specific emails that are about the prospect, not the product.
- An objection round. Give them three objections you hear often, such as “we already use a competitor” or “send me some information,” and ask how they would respond to each.
- A CRM task. Ask them to log the role-play call as they would in your CRM. Clean notes and clear next steps matter more than most managers realize, because your account executives rely on them.
Score each test against the same criteria for every candidate, and have your account executive sit in on the role-play. They are the ones who will take the meetings the SDR books.
Set targets from your own numbers
Borrowed industry benchmarks rarely fit your business. Work backwards from your revenue goal instead:
- Start with the new revenue you want from outbound this quarter.
- Divide by your average deal size to get the number of deals needed.
- Divide by your close rate from a qualified first meeting to get the number of meetings needed.
For example, if you want $300,000 in new annual contract value from outbound this quarter, your average deal is $15,000 and your account executives close 20% of qualified first meetings, you need 20 deals and 100 qualified meetings. That is about eight meetings a week across the quarter, which tells you how many SDRs you need and what a realistic target for each one looks like.
A 90-day ramp plan
- Weeks 1 to 2: product, buyer and competitor training; tool access set up; listening to recorded calls from your best reps; writing practice emails that a manager reviews.
- Weeks 3 to 4: live outreach to a small, well-defined list, with a manager reviewing calls and emails every day.
- Month 2: full activity on your core segment, a weekly one-to-one on call recordings, and a first meetings target set at roughly half of full quota.
- Month 3: full quota, with the SDR suggesting improvements to messaging based on what they hear from prospects.
Two habits make the biggest difference with an offshore SDR. First, review call recordings together every week, because tone and pacing are easier to coach from real calls than from notes. Second, give them a direct line to an account executive, so they hear what happened in the meetings they booked and can adjust how they qualify.
Your options for hiring offshore SDRs
Hire a freelancer. Freelance platforms are the fastest way to try outbound with one person. You do the vetting, training and management yourself, and a freelancer who works full-time for you on your schedule may count as an employee under local law. Read our explainer on W-2 vs 1099 vs EOR for how classification works when you hire abroad.
Use an outsourced SDR agency. Some agencies, in the US and offshore, run outbound for you with their own SDRs, playbooks and tools, usually for a monthly retainer. This is the quickest route to a working program if you have no sales leadership in-house. The trade-off is that the SDRs, and what they learn about your market, belong to the agency.
Hire your own SDRs directly. You recruit SDRs who work only for you, inside your tools and playbook, and employ them through an Employer of Record if you have no company in their country. This takes more management from your side, but you build a team and knowledge you keep.
How to hire offshore SDRs through Betternship
Betternship recruits SDRs and other sales professionals in Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa for US companies. Candidates go through a skills assessment, a live interview and reference checks before they reach your shortlist, which usually arrives within 48 hours. You can:
- Hire directly through our direct hire service, for 10% of annual salary, with a 90-day replacement guarantee.
- Employ your SDRs through our Employer of Record, for 15% of gross salary, so contracts, payroll and statutory contributions are handled locally.
- Add a managed team through outsourcing to Africa if you want several SDRs supervised on your behalf.
Tell us which US time zones you sell into, and we will shortlist candidates who are ready to work the matching shift.
Start hiring offshore SDRs with Betternship
Can offshore SDRs cold call US prospects legally?
Yes, offshore SDRs can cold call US prospects legally, as long as your outreach follows US rules. That means calling between 8am and 9pm in the recipient’s time zone, scrubbing numbers against the National Do Not Call Registry, honoring opt-outs and avoiding autodialed, prerecorded or AI-voice calls to mobile numbers without consent.
What hours do SDRs in Africa work for US companies?
SDRs in Africa working for US companies usually cover the US East Coast day in their local afternoon and evening. To cover 9am to 5pm Eastern, an SDR in Lagos works about 2pm to 10pm and an SDR in Accra about 1pm to 9pm, one hour later from November to March.
How much does an offshore SDR cost?
An offshore SDR in Africa typically costs a fraction of a US hire. For a US reference point, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports a mean wage of $81,260 for sales representatives of services. Hiring through Betternship adds a one-off 10% recruitment fee and, if you use our Employer of Record, 15% of gross salary each month.
What is the difference between an SDR and a lead generation VA?
The difference between an SDR and a lead generation VA is that an SDR talks to prospects and books meetings, while a lead generation VA researches and builds the prospect lists an SDR works from. Many teams hire both, so the SDR spends more time in conversations.
How long does it take an offshore SDR to ramp up?
An offshore SDR usually takes one to three months to ramp up to full output. The first two weeks go on training and practice, then live outreach to a small list, with a full quota by around month three.