AI SDRs: what, why, how & when to use them

Imagine being able to generate thousands upon thousands of new leads in short order — all without having to hire a single person.

By augmenting your sales team with an AI sales development representative (SDR), you can supercharge prospecting without adding any headcount.

What is an AI SDR?

An AI SDR is an AI-powered technology that automates repetitive sales activities, like lead qualification and cold email outreach, enabling human reps to reclaim time to focus on more strategic initiatives. 

Using natural language processing, machine learning, and automation, AI SDRs are capable of handling sales tasks traditionally performed by good old-fashioned humans. 

The AI SDR market is expected to grow rapidly over the coming years, hauling in $67.36 billion by 2030, up from $18.58 billion in 2023. Now let’s get into the differences between AI SDRs and AI sales agents. 

AI SDRs vs. AI sales agents

While AI SDRs and AI sales agents are similar, they’re not the same thing. 

Typically, AI SDRs are designed to mimic normal sales development reps tasks, automating things like identifying leads, cold outreach, lead qualification, and scheduling discovery calls. 

These tools can either be fully automated or they can augment a human rep’s output with a hybrid model where humans and technology work side by side. When used as an assistant, AI SDRs are laser-focused on filling the pipeline so that human reps can step in and do what they do best.

AI sales agents, on the other hand, are entirely autonomous and can perform a variety of tasks across the entire sales process, including AI SDR tasks, but also automating follow-ups, answering questions for reps, handling objections, identifying cross-selling and upselling opportunities, and even post-sale follow-up. 

AI SDR use cases

Virtually every sales team deals with the same headaches:

• Reps don’t have enough time to devote to prospecting. The average rep spends less than 30% of their weeks actually selling.
• Difficulty responding to prospect inquiries rapidly. Reps who reach out within an hour are 7x more likely to qualify the lead compared to those who wait 24 hours or more - with as many as 50% of sales going to companies that respond to prospects first.
• Writing personalized emails at scale. Since 82% of B2B buyers expect personalized experiences, this can make it considerably harder for reps to hit their numbers.

By implementing an AI SDR, sales orgs can overcome these challenges — and more. By 2028, Gartner expects AI sales tools will handle 60% of all sales work — a significant uptick from the less than 5% the technology managed in 2023. 

AI SDRs can help with:

• Automating outreach (e.g., engaging new leads instantly and following up rapidly)
• Real-time lead enrichment
• Identifying leads that match your ideal customer profile (ICP)
• Book meetings
• Lead routing
• Lead scoring
• Handling objections
• Nurturing inbound leads
• Summarizing conversations
• Personalizing outreach at scale
• Detecting buying signals
• Keeping CRM data clean and accurate

4 AI SDR tools to try in 2025

Thinking about adding an AI SDR tool to your tech stack? Shrewd move! Here are five AI SDRs to consider testing out based on online user reviews. 

1. LeadIQ

G2 score: 4.2 out of 5 stars 

LeadIQ’s powerful data enrichment and sales prospecting tools deliver several AI-powered features that can help sales teams work more effectively. 

With automated alerts, champion and contact tracking, and a built-in generative AI email writing tool, Scribe, that enables reps to personalize outreach at scale in just a few clicks. And the best part? We’re constantly adding new AI features to our solutions, enabling our customers to future-proof their AI strategies and grow alongside us.

Pricing: Free Chrome extension available. Request demo for full pricing with all available features. 

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2. Salesforce Agentforce

G2 score: 4.4 out of 5 stars (83 reviews)

Salesforce AI Sales Agents — also known as Agentforce — are customizable AI agents that can handle all kinds of SDR activities, including lead nurturing, personalized outreach, and fast follow-ups. While the tool can help teams get more done, some users on G2 say that the solution is buggy, that it’s hard to integrate external data, and that it can be expensive if used at scale due to consumption-based pricing.

Pricing: Starts at $2/conversation

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3. AiSDR

G2 score: 4.7 out of 5 stars (49 reviews)

AiSDR is a startup that builds tools designed to help teams automate their sales playbooks by reviewing inbound leads, identifying high-intent prospects, and initiating conversations over LinkedIn, email, and text.

While AiSDR has good reviews on G2 it’s also a newer product with some users reporting issues with uncustomizable sequences, a lack of integration, and confusing analytics.

Pricing: Starts at $900/month

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4. Katie by Alta

G2 score: 4.9 out of 5 stars (17 reviews)

Katie is a new AI SDR designed by Alta, a new startup who received recent funding by Entrée Capital and Target Global. Teams can deploy Katie and gain access to an AI SDR that identifies prospects and follows up automatically, with personalized interactions, 24/7. 

Users do, however, report that Katie has a bit of a learning curve and that the up-and-coming platform is missing features they expect would be there.

Pricing: Available upon request.

Human SDRs vs. AI SDRs

Whenever there’s a conversation about artificial intelligence being deployed at an organization, some folks worry that the technology is going to take their jobs. While these concerns are totally understandable, sales reps shouldn’t be too concerned about a future where robots do all the selling. 

Sales is personal, and people want to do business with people they like — not robots. Unlike AI, humans are also able to adapt to a lead’s personality or their unique circumstances, getting creative in the moment.

While AI SDRs should never entirely replace their human counterparts, they can certainly augment their productivity. 

On top of this, AI SDRs can also qualify leads rapidly, enriching contact data and making sure they’re routed to the right agents every time. 

Human SDRs are great at:

• Nuanced decision-making
• Building trust and rapport
• Understanding cultural nuances
• Detecting social cues 
• Creative thinking
• Improvisation
• Handling edge cases

When humans and AI work hand-in-hand, the technology can handle the repetitive work, freeing the human rep to focus on building relationships, sales strategy, sales process optimization, and, of course, closing more deals.

Pros and cons of AI SDRs

While AI SDRs can have a positive impact on overall sales outcomes, they’re not without their flaws. In this section we examine five pros and five cons of using artificial intelligence to augment the output of your SDRs.

Pros of AI SDRs

• Scalability. AI SDRs can handle large volumes of tasks while only needing to be set up once.
  
  
• Speed. Instead of putting lead qualification on the backburner, AI can qualify, score, and route leads immediately — increasing the chances your organization will be the first one a prospect hears back from.
• Consistency. AI SDRs that take notes or send follow-up emails will always do things the same way, meaning your CRM data will be more accurate and consistent.
• Cost-effectiveness. AI SDRs can be a cost effective solution compared to reps manually having to perform redundant sales tasks.
• Data-driven. These tools run on data to identify patterns and trends across every task they’re assigned — spotting patterns you might miss. 

Cons of AI SDRs

• Zero emotional intelligence. Since AI SDRs are not humans, they don’t really know what it’s like to be human. As such, they lack emotional intelligence and can’t pick up on tone or body language like their human counterparts.
  
  
• Not as flexible in conversation. If the AI SDR isn’t fine-tuned, their messaging may come across as boring and generic, which could turn prospects away.
• Struggles with edge cases. While AI SDRs are perfectly capable of handling run-of-the-mill scenarios, they struggle with unique nuanced circumstances they weren’t trained on.
• Could seem spammy. If you’ve ever had an AI try to sell you something and you’re not interested, you know how off-putting it feels to have new messages continue to pop up in your LinkedIn inbox at regular intervals. Lean on AI too much, and you risk turning prospects away.

• Requires accurate and actionable data. Unlocking the full potential of AI SDRs is only possible when you have highly accurate, highly actionable data. Without clean data, your AI SDR’s output will be lackluster at best.

How to choose the right AI SDR

As you begin searching for an AI SDR to potentially deploy alongside your team, it’s important to remember that not every tool is created equally. 

Features and functionality can vary widely, so it’s important to do your due diligence and dig into how each solution manages outreach and personalization, along with how they integrate with your existing sales tech stack. You’ll also want to look for solutions that fit within your budget and are easy to use so your team can put the tools to work right away.

Features tied to goals

As you look into AI SDRs, you’ll find that they tend to perform different tasks within the sales process. Some might be great at identifying qualified prospects while others are focused on sending cold outreach or ensuring the CRM is updated with all the right fields.

Identify what goals you’re looking to solve that are taking up your team’s time and see what AI SDR has the right features. 

‍Pro tip: Make sure whatever solution you choose offers human oversight controls so that reps have the final say in how the AI ultimately behaves.

Integrations with existing sales tools

The right AI SDR solution will integrate seamlessly with the other solutions in your tech stack, including your CRM, marketing automation platform, and sales engagement platforms like  Gong and Salesloft. 

This ensures all important data flows back and forth between systems, letting sales teams maintain a single source of truth.

Pricing

In today’s tricky economic climate, it’s important to ensure you know each vendor’s pricing models so that you’re not caught off-guard when it’s time to pay your bill. 

Find out whether the vendor charges on a per-user or per-lead basis or whether they charge you based on usage volume (e.g., number of conversations). 

Most vendors offer tiered plans, so make sure you know what features are included at each pricing level; while some vendors only offer advanced features through premium plans, others may offer a higher volume of conversations or accounts to track at higher tiers.

Whatever you decide, make sure you read the proverbial fine print. The last thing you want is to end up with a solution with hidden fees attached to it.

To increase the chances you make the best decision, spend time exploring each solution with your own eyes. The best vendors are confident in their products and are happy to let you take them for a test drive for free.

Also make sure you’re comparing overall price to the value you’re getting out of each platform - and don’t just look at hard costs but soft costs like onboarding, training, and reviewing outputs and results from the AI SDR. 

Easy adoption

If you end up with a tool that’s too difficult to use, your team won’t adopt it. That’s why it’s so important to choose an AI SDR with a user-friendly interface that’s easy to implement and use.

The best AI SDR will have a small learning curve and won’t introduce additional pain points; reps can incorporate it into their workflows with minimal training and use it for sales outreach productively out of the gate.

Before making a decision, vet the vendor to see what kind of resources, documentation, and customer support they offer. The right partner will be entirely committed to your team’s success and eager to help.

The future of AI SDRs

AI SDR agents can transform the way your team operates, serving as sales assistants that can manage both inbound and outbound sales activities.

While using AI for sales can already make a huge impact on your numbers, the best part is that the AI revolution is just getting started. As time goes on, leading vendors will continue packing more and more functionality into their tools — helping reps work more intelligently while giving them even more time to build relationships with prospects.

Add it all up, and augmenting your sales team with AI is more than just a nice to have. In a world increasingly powered by AI, it’s mission-critical.

Ready to see how LeadIQ’s AI capabilities can help your sales org get to the next level? Start your free trial today to see what the fuss is all about.