Our vision for SDR Leaders Global

2026
What will we be doing next year?

As ive been walking my dog Choccy during this freezing Christmas period here in the Netherlands (it was -13 °C / 9f on Christmas Day!), It's given Dale and I time to reflect on what has been a whirlwind of a year.

Globally, we have delivered 90 in-person and virtual events in 2025 and produced content that has driven our vision for what this community is: to dictate what the SDR function will look like in 2030.

So what I wanted to do today is share with you our vision for our community, where it's going from here, and how you can play your part in driving it.

Sales development is in a powerful state. We have seen over the last 18 months a wind of change going through the tech world, with AI taking the lead. We have been through this pendulum swing, where we were being told by people with ulterior motives that our function was going to be rendered obsolete, with SDR leaders then taking back the initiative and identifying that AI will never take away the need for humans to interact with other humans to make initial contact with them to set up those meetings to drive pipeline and sales.

That has been reflected in the growth of our community, now with over 11000 followers in APAC, the USA, and EMEA, and 2500+ who actively participate in our Slack channels globally.

So what will we be doing as a community?

The last few weeks since our final meetup of 2025 in San Francisco have been as busy as Dale and me have been since we started our USA community. Our underlying theme has been: how can we grow the value for our members in the limited time they have each week, under the pressures of work and the realities of their personal lives?

We have decided to focus on some key areas:

In real-life events

Human-to-human interaction is our lifeblood, not just for our community, but for our daily lives. We feel more connected, relaxed, and in control the more time we spend with people. Our meetups are different for a reason. We want to create an environment where you, as leaders, can wind down from the stresses of the day and leave with having maybe learned one new aspect of the role youre going to replicate or one new connection that could be the new manager you've been looking to hire or a new job opportunity for you. We are planning over 60 in-person events globally next year, with many already announced (you can check the bottom of the respective Luma pages to see what's scheduled).

Chapter/Collective Heads

Our community is ours, not focused on the top. Dale and I really want to create a day-to-day community for you all, rather than in-person events happening once per quarter, with connections and momentum made with individual members dissipating after a 3-hour meetup. Therefore, we meet up with our local city communities in both EMEA and the USA, which will be tasked with making more micro connections every month, such as happy hours or breakfast meetings. It will be up to you, as the city, to decide what would best benefit you. You will have seen, and will see, more city heads announced over the next few weeks, along with a calendar of events they plan to roll out. If you don't see a city that's been announced, have you considered setting up your own to help your local community? Drop me a message!

Slack

What has been a massive source of pride has been the continued engagement in our Slack channels. There is nothing better to see than when a member asks a question, and then immediately, 5-6 leaders from all different companies and seniority titles dive in to help answer those questions. What you will start to see over the coming months is more channels for specific titles and growth stages, to ensure you get the correct information for the particular problems youre facing.

Virtual

One significant aspect of our community is providing continuous professional development for our leaders and giving them access to content that isn't available anywhere else, and, best of all, it's. So in 2026, we will be really up-levelling our virtual content for people who want to learn new concepts and be better leaders for their teams. Expect to see more virtual content and ensure our virtual content is available in real time with the launch of our YouTube channels. You can check out EMEA here and our USA channel here. Please be sure to like and subscribe!

Podcast

We are also going to be launching a podcast not your standard structure; but with each podcast being an individual aspect of the function with the best leaders sharing their best practices.

Research and content

Our goal is to be the ‘’Gartner of the SDR Leadership Space’ that means we want to give you, as our members more analytical, objective data, that can allow you to influence your exec level on what sales development is really moving too, and give you the credibilty and evidence based approach needed to secure additonal head counts and budgets for the initiatives you are aiming to drive. Expect us to roll out a similar state-of-sales development survey in the USA and EMEA this year, as well as other evidence-based research collateral for you.

You will also start to see upgrades to our website that will keep it more up-to-date with what is going on within our community and the offers available to you from vendors, ensuring we maintain the community free at the point of use for all of you.

We have a few more ideas and concepts we are working on that will be announced shortly, and they are all underpinned by making our function future-proof.

Our goal is to make 2026 community-led. Made by leaders, for leaders. For the betterment of all, and not the few. For all of us to dictate what the function should look like.

So, how can you help?

As I said earlier, our community is only as strong as its members. We are building something for the long term. If you have ideas to improve our community, want to run a virtual session, or host your community for a meetup, let us know!

FUNNEL
We are having a conference!

Some of you might have seen on our social media pages over the last few weeks that we are going to be hosting a conference!

Why? There are some great events and conferences for SDR managers and team leads, and for those who really want to get into the nitty-gritty tactical aspects of the role.

Those things are so important for frontline SDR managers to be a part of, but there isn't a dedicated space where heads of sales development, directors, and VPs of sales development can come together and really figure out the big strategic and visionary aspects of their job to set up those frontline leaders to be as successful as possible.

That's why we're really happy and privileged to announce Funnel 26. This will be a conference where the best global VPs of sales development are going to be talking to the best heads of sales development, directors, third-line leaders sharing their strategy and their vision for how the function will look like, giving access to those that come to the best sales development leaders in the globe with workshops, with networking, with everything that is kept true to what SDR leaders of USA and EMEA does but on a far grander scale.

Starting in the new year, we'll announce our speakers and who else is supporting this incredible conference for you all.

We've been really humbled by the feedback so far, with many directors and VPs already telling us that this is a space truly for them, dedicated to them, where they can learn from their peers and talk about the big strategic topics that are really affecting them in their business.

So that's been really great to hear so far!

We're really excited to be partnering up with Anastasia Chihai from ATX SDR Leaders to deliver this conference for everyone and because you're part of our newsletter, you can also get access to our early bird tickets which are on sale before general release comes out on the 1st of January.

So we really look forward to seeing you all there!

AGENDA
Check out what’s going on in our SDR Leadership Community