Tips on BDR Sequences to avoid overdue Tasks

[RMA12345]

Hi all, 

I am working with a services company that has a BDR team of 7 BDRs that make 80 calls per day to schedule sales calls for our sales reps. 

I'm looking for any best practices on tips re:  addng Contacts into Sequences that avoid the BDRs getting bogged down in overdue call tasks. Here are the details on the Sequence:

-40 day sequence with 10 steps - 5 calls, 5 emails.

The cadence on calls is on day 2, 10, 18, 29, 40.

Email cadence are days 1, 9, 17, 20 and 39. 

We think we need a min of 300 contacts added monthly given our open and appointment rates that pulls contacts out of Sequences. This might not be the right #

We are trying to figure out: 

1. Are there best practices on timing of adding contacts into  Sequence so we don't overwhelm the BDRs?  For example, if we have 300 contacts to add per month, add 10 per day for 2 weeks and 5 per day week 3 and 10 per day week 4....

2. Is there a rule of thumb on the max # of contacts that can reasonable be added to a seqence with 5 calls over 40 days?

This BDR team is new so we don't have a ton of data but we do know with the limited data we have:

1- It takes about 25 dials to reach a decision maker.

2- When we engage with a decision maker about 1 in 12 lock in an appointment. 

3. BDRs are making 80 dials per day.

4. BDRs targets for their variable comp is based on a held meeting target of 8.

5. We will be implementing Lead Scoring (from HubSpot) in July.

6. We have the titles, target companies dialed in - meaning we know who we need to reach and the companies to target.

7. We pull contacts from Zoom Info, Linkedin and trade shows we attend. 

8. We just rolled out Task Queue's. the plan was for the BDR manager to manually load their queue each night with 80 tasks but that quickly gets overwhelminng with the cadence of calls in the Sequence. 

Although this team is new. the industry is one I've worked in before and we know that outbound calling works. 

Any advice or insights would be greatly appreciated.

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @RMA12345,

What you’re running into is one of the classic growing pains of outbound sales ops in HubSpot: Sequences are easy to launch but hard to maintain at scale unless you really map out your inputs, outputs, and how tasks stack over time.

Overdue tasks are usually a sign that the input volume (number of new contacts entering the sequence) doesn’t match the BDR team’s output capacity (how many tasks they can realistically complete per day). It snowballs fast because of the asynchronous nature of sequence steps. Once a task is overdue, it throws off the rhythm and piles up.

Let's leverage generative AI for the math part ↓

You’ve got 5 call steps across 40 days. That means each contact added to the sequence will generate 5 call tasks over 6 weeks. If you add 300 new contacts this month, you’re not just creating 300 tasks. You’re creating 1500 call tasks spread across time. But the problem is that due to the uneven call cadence, those tasks don’t spread out neatly. For example, day 2 and day 10 will be very front-loaded if you add a lot of contacts at once.

Each BDR makes 80 dials a day. Let’s assume ~80% of those are tied to tasks (because some might be follow-ups or manual lookups), that gives each rep about 60–65 tasks/day capacity, and across 7 reps that’s roughly 450 tasks per day across the whole team.

So the number of contacts you can add per day is directly tied to how those call steps land on future days. If you dump 50 contacts in on Monday, day 2 hits hard on Wednesday with 250 calls due (5 calls per contact * 50 contacts = 250 over time, but some of those come fast).

A better approach is exactly what you were thinking: smooth the volume. Instead of adding big blocks of contacts once a week, break it down into a daily rhythm that matches expected BDR capacity. If each contact results in 5 calls over 40 days, you’re basically generating 1 call every 8 days per contact. So 10 new contacts = 10 tasks per day roughly once you’re in a steady state. Multiply that across the team and reverse engineer how many they can handle.

You’ll find that adding 10–15 contacts per rep per day is a good starting point. That’s 70–105 per day total, depending on comfort. Run that for a week, see what day 10 looks like in terms of total tasks due. The idea is to get to a point where task volume per BDR stays between 60–70 tasks per day consistently – not all spiking on day 2 or 10.

Also, try building sequence variants with different cadences. For example, spread call steps a little wider or shuffle call-heavy sequences with more email-based ones.

In short: stagger contact intake, align it with BDR call task capacity, test different sequence variants, and get out of the manual queue loading game. Once you’ve built a consistent rhythm, the overdue tasks should drop.

Hope this helps!