Another day, another conversation with a CRO who got burned by AI SDRs. These conversations follow the same pattern as convos about outsourced SDR agencies: It sounds great It seems cheaper It feels low risk And inevitably... It doesn't work as promised It's a waste of money It risks your domain health Prospecting is hard, and it's getting harder. AI-powered SDR is going to beat AI-automated SDR every day of the week. PS. If you want to see more about how we make this happen for our customers, come to this event next week: https://lnkd.in/esgWh-z6 #gtmai #gtm #sales
Anne Pao
2w
100% I got a linkedIn message recently. The AI must have done a good job because while I wasn't interested, I DID respond because it was a good personalized email. So i wrote back sharing this feedback. What happened then? The account sent me the same message. 4 more times. So clearly it was an AI driven message. Got a respons. but they hadn't trained the AI to then respond (or rather pass to a human to respond). and kept sending. After the 4th one, I deleted the contact.
Josh Lucas
2w
I think one of the reasons people keep making this mistake is due to how we have measureed SDRs historically around activity, activity, activity. With those metrics, an AI SDR seems like a no-brainer.
If you hate talking to a chatbot you won't like talking to an AI SDR. I'll take human interaction over a bot any day
AI-powered ____ is going to beat AI-automated ____ every day of the week… is probably a pretty good framing in general.
How did this CRO get burned?
these days the outbound emails i get don't even bother to get my name right . it's getting worse before it gets better
Nikola C.
2w
Imagine being a CRO and not listening to the CEO of Nvidia “Ai will not replace you, someone using Ai will replace you… learn how to use Ai as fast as possible”
To be fair, AI is only good if you micro manage it. Give it super clear tasks with really good training data, and it will do well. Reason why a lot of AI SDRs aren't working is because the manual SDR process wasn't working either 🤷♂️
Sigh. Everyone is looking for a silver bullet. A story every marketing leader knows too well 😉 If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
Enterprise Business Development || Wine, Wave, & Data Enthusiast
2wMy favorite thing about this whole movement is that (anecdotally) my connect and conversion rates have gone up a ton. I call as a first-resort. And I cannot tell you how often - especially recently - utilizing good data, having the warmth of human touch, and personalizing conversations, I am surprised at how simple conversions are through the channel of human rapport. At least this has been my story at a startup where, outreach is completed by one individual into a very niche subsegment of the enterprise market. Regardless, it works. And it works well. I'm with you - I do not have faith in this automation-heavy AI-SDR movement.