Sales development representatives' role in the AI era
Updated: May 10
What is the SDR's role?
Sales development representatives or SDRs play a crucial role in GTM teams of various tech companies. If you want to be one or aspiring to be one of them your core responsibility would be to perform inbound sales for the product of the company.
To explain what inbound sales is, I would like to give a simple definition - prospecting to people who have shown interest in your company’s products and services to get an appointment for a demonstration meeting. Yes! You read it right, SDRs responsibility ends here, they are expected to get an appointment for the demonstration but not manage the whole sales cycle of the product.
Who manages the further sales cycle of the product?
Business development representatives or BDRs? NO! A big no if you are assuming so. BDRs are quite different from SDRs but they don't take care of the further sales cycle. The account manager does, they are responsible for giving a demonstration of the product as well as further sales operations such as customizing the pricing plan as per the client’s need.
So what is the role of BDRs? They are responsible for outbound sales. Now outbound sales? What’s that now? Outbound sales are prospecting with people who lie under your company’s ideal customer profile, those who have not even interacted with your product, we can also say that they have not even heard of your product or company’s name.
Is aspiring to get into an SDR or BDR role a good idea?
If you are great in communication skills, you can attract someone’s attention you by the way you speak and certain skills like data analysis, ability to cold call, copywriting skills for emails, and the most important one is delivering the maximum amount by speaking less but not least. Then I would give you a big green flag to go ahead with this field.
The sales role in a GTM team of a market is full of adrenaline rush and would give you the thrill of achieving targets and getting more and more appointments. As per my observation if you would go on any job application platform such as LinkedIn and look for these two roles you would get plenty of openings, definitely much more than any other job role. But why so? Nevertheless, each company needs to sell its product or service, no matter how big the company is, prospecting and reaching out to ideal customers will always be needed by all of the companies in the market.
Is the SDR role sustainable in this AI era?
Well, let me clear something to you, AI taking away a human's job is a myth but a person using AI to do its job efficiently taking away the job of another person not using AI is a fact. It’s a strong fact to be more precise. With the rise in various AI tools for various job roles, there are a variety of options to choose from as per requirement and budget.
Usage of AI by you will make you more efficient in your job tasks, in a clearer note you will be able to execute certain tasks at a better pace than before and with more accuracy. So yeah this role is a great option in the era of AI. Don’t worry, I will be mentioning to you various tools you can use as an SDR or a BDR which are powered by AI to automate your various tasks such as list building, sending cold emails, scheduling meets as per availability, and seeing various statistics of your approach.
This blog will provide you with a certain number of AI-powered tools that would help you to be more efficient in SDR or BDR and also will provide you with that one single platform you can use to perform all of the tasks in a single place. So let's dive in and start with that one powerful AI-powered outbound sales platform.
Tools for SDRs to smoothly execute sales operations
Let's start with our one-man army tool first and later we would go with various tools for each stage of cold prospecting. 🚀
Saleasy.io
The single integrated platform for outbound sales with AI tech integration. Goodbye to the old days when people might be using different tools for different purposes. Such as Apollo for list building, HeyReach for LinkedIn prospecting, Smartlead for cold email, and Clay for data enrichment.
Arrives Saleasy.io, a single platform that will provide you with all the necessary features for executing your prospecting operations with ease. Like -
Email Sequencing - Checked✅
Trustworthy database for list building - checked✅
Data enrichment - Checked✅
Assistance in LinkedIn prospecting - checked✅
Easy integration with CRM platform like HubSpot - checked✅
Get statistics of your every campaign run through - checked✅
Convenient team collaboration - checked✅
And not to forget their client support so that you can always be ahead of your competitors without any barriers✅.
It’s time to say goodbye to 6 different tools and use one single platform like Saleasy to automate your sales operations and manage each of your outbound campaigns with ease.
Key features of Saleasy.io
🤖 Get a trusted database of 100 million plus probable customers and advance filters to get your ideal customer profile effortlessly.
🤖 Eliminate the hassle of sending emails every day and get assistance from its AI autopilot feature. Its autopilot feature saves you time in creating campaigns so that you can attend meetings with ease.
🤖 Automate mail sequencing from the first mail to follow-up mail at once, effortlessly. Connect your preferred mail account for cold prospecting and calendly account to automate the booking of demo meetings with ease.
🤖Get hyper-personalised mail content for prospecting from their AI tech to eliminate the hard work of copywriting mail content.
🤖Integrate Saleasy with CRM to stay connected with your leads in a much more convenient way.
🤖Get help from their LinkedIn extension to reach out to prospects on LinkedIn with ease. Generate personalized messages and connection requests with ease.
🤖Have a CSV file of prospects of your own? No worries! Use its data enrichment features to get access to your prospects' data digitally with ease.
Pricing of Saleasy.io
💵Connect with them to get a customized plan as per your need with the help of the box on the right side.
Apollo.io for list building
Well, when it comes to the list-building stage in the sales process we can’t ignore Apollo.io. They have a great reputation in the market for providing the most trustworthy set of data for prospecting. It also has additional features like a project management interface, email verifier, Automation of workflow, and insights into the campaigns.
Key features of Apollo.io
🤖Automate your sales workflow with no code interface, to get rid of manual repetitive tasks.
🤖Have a list of prospects with trusted details so that you won’t be wasting your time in finding false prospects for your list.
🤖Manage your tasks with its project management tool so that you can have a clear idea of the execution phases of your sales process.
🤖Integrates with CRM to enable you of easier engagement with your leads.
Pricing of Apollo.io
💵Their basic plan starts with USD59 giving you access to 1000 credits per month
Smartlead for automation of mail sequencing
If you are looking for a tool to automate your mailing sequence, then Smartlead is your go-to option. It enables you to approach your prospects with cold mailing without worrying about daily limits or email reputation.
Key features of Smartlead
🤖Approach your prospects as per their presence on the internet. It enables you to make your outreach multichannel.
🤖Their AI tech keeps your email reputation out of trouble by generating personalized conversations so that you will be out of the spam box in your prospect’s account.
🤖Manage your leads in one place, overview the status of each reply such as booking of meeting slot, and positive or negative reply
🤖Provides you with insights so that you can improve with time and get better in conversion rates.
Pricing of Smartlead
💵Their basic plan starts with USD 39 per month.
Twain for mail copywriting
Copywriting is not as easy as making a lime juice. If you are worried or tired or have less availability time for writing impressive sales mails, then try Twain. It will act as your perfect assistant for writing impressive emails and messages so that you can win your prospects' attention at a better pace than before.
Key features of Twain
🤖 Not quite confident of sending an outreach or follow-up message to your prospect? No worries, give it to Twain to see how the mail or message can be improved.
🤖 If you are new to the field of outreach sales, then worry not Twain can also be a great virtual tutor for you. It will guide you on how the outreach should be framed and why certain features need to be placed in a particular area.
Pricing of Twain
💵Its free to use, so no matter you are looking for sales outreach or recruiting notification or for personal use. Your AI assistance for copywriting is here.
It’s time to leverage AI in this generation and be an efficient sales person for your GTM team
Above I provided you a list of tools that can be used by you to be a digital SDR in this digital generation. Using these you will be able to eliminate most of the manual processes and have a better rate of approaching new prospects.
Saleasy.io is an integrated platform for outbound sales that can strike off various sales stack tools so that you can manage your operations in a single place, effortlessly. So dive in and get your free credits now!🤯
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