5 Ways AiSDR Helps SDRs Power Your Outbound Sales Campaigns

An outbound sales campaign involves reaching out to prospects who may be hearing from your brand for the first time. You’re coming in cold, making you less likely to receive a warm response.

This alone makes a top-of-the-funnel sales strategy tough. But throw in all the repetitive work it involves — from qualifying leads to sending follow-up emails and finally booking meetings — and before you know it, the team you hired to connect with and nurture your leads is drowning in routine work and spreadsheets. And failing to meet quota.

Fortunately, AI is here to save the day.

The implementation of outbound sales software revolutionizes your sales strategy by automating and optimizing outreach efforts, allowing businesses to reach potential customers more efficiently and effectively.

In this article, we’ll discuss how AiSDR and other AI sales tools can help automate and scale your outbound sales processes. We’ll also spill some SDR best practices for using AI tools in a way that generates value, not drains value. 

And if you’re looking for how AiSDR powers inbound, you’re in luck. You can find out by paying this blog a visit.

But before we cover how AiSDR can oversee outbound sales, we’ll need to take a quick step back and explore the key challenges of attracting new customers.

Attracting new customers: The challenge of outbound sales

Outbound sales aren’t smooth sailing. Instead, outbound is best likened to rough and choppy seas during a thunderstorm.

First, most people aren’t keen on cold calls and emails. Many view these unsolicited outreach attempts as interruptions, leading to a negative perception of first-touch sales interaction. To avoid unwanted calls, some even use automated screening call tools, leaving SDRs no chance to reach their intended audiences (even if their offerings truly address their needs).

Second, the modern prospect receives numerous outreach attempts every day. Even if an SDR manages to make contact, there is a big risk that the interaction will be lost in the ocean of other emails. 

Finally, your sales activities should be built around the right people. This means keeping customer information up-to-date and accurately scoring leads—a daunting task added on top of any mundane work for an SDR. 

Fortunately, AI-powered SDR marketing solutions can handle these. They free your sales team and allow them to focus on calibrating SDR outbound strategies for sales personas so that they stand out from competitors’ outreach, convert cold prospects into customers, and establish long-term relationships. 

Normally, this would be a tall task, but thanks to the capabilities of AI, it’s become much more manageable.

The main advantages of AI

The key strength of artificial intelligence lies in its ability to quickly process large amounts of data and generate insights from it. This ability translates into numerous advantages, including: 

• Productivity – AI can swiftly perform extensive chunks of work, allowing you to automate repetitive and mundane tasks like email warm-up so you can focus on more creative endeavors or strategic initiatives like fostering innovation. 
• Accuracy – AI helps you minimize tasks that require manual input, which is, in essence, extremely error-prone. Plus, it never makes errors due to fatigue or oversight. 
• Streamlined data analysis – AI can process and analyze large datasets quickly, improving decision-making and taking personalized customer experiences to new heights.
• Self-learning capabilities – Some AI models can learn from their own experience and improve with time.
• 24/7 availability – AI systems don’t need breaks or sleep, enabling them to operate continuously and provide round-the-clock services.
• Cost reduction – By handling large chunks of work on their own, AI allows you to rely on fewer employees.

While these advantages might sound fantastic, AI isn’t all roses. In fact, AI is still undergoing some growing pains.

The main disadvantages of AI

Despite the numerous advantages of AI, you can’t delegate the entire spectrum of SDR tasks. While AI sales tools like AiSDR were designed to run on autopilot, they still need someone who can oversee strategic needs, such as setting up campaigns. This is primarily due to AI’s current limitations:

• No creativity and empathy – AI lacks creativity and empathy, which are invaluable in SDR prospecting and turning cold leads into customers. 
• Reliance on human input – When it comes to data analysis, AI’s performance heavily relies on the amount, relevance, and quality of data it uses. 
• Lack of regulation and standards – The regulatory landscape doesn’t keep up with the rapid development of AI. Be prepared that you won’t be able to use the full potential of AI if you operate in a heavily regulated niche.
• High implementation costs – If you’re looking to build a custom AI-powered SDR tool from scratch, it will require significant investments in development, training, and infrastructure. 

It’s for these reasons that AI tools are designed not to replace their human counterparts, but rather to provide support and ease the workload on overburdened teams.

Here’s a closer look at how exactly AI helps in SDR prospecting and other sales activities. 

How AI can help in sales

Imagine uploading a spreadsheet of leads and instantly getting a list of which ones fit your profile. Or if you could draw on all your previous outreach and see what’s worked to create a stellar SDR outbound strategy or nurturing campaign… in seconds. 

An AI-powered SDR tool can do this for you! It’s no wonder that 52% of sales professionals in HubSpot’s survey emphasize the importance of AI in their day-to-day tasks. 

But what exactly makes AI so invaluable in sales? 

Benefits of AI: The key capabilities of AI in sales

With its ability to analyze large amounts of data, AI can now handle some of the most time-consuming tasks related to sales outreach. Here are the main aspects of outbound sales that AI can assist you with:  

• Lead qualification, segmentation, and scoring – AI algorithms can quickly analyze vast amounts of customer data to score leads based on their likelihood to convert against multiple criteria. 
• SDR analytics – AI tools can forecast future sales trends based on historical sales data and market research, enabling you to optimize your SDR outbound strategy better. In HubSpot’s survey, 73% of respondents agree that AI tools help them highlight insights they wouldn’t be able to uncover on their own. 
• Personalization – AI’s analytics capabilities help you better understand your prospects: 65% of respondents in the same HubSpot survey agree. It can tailor communication and product offers based on individual preferences and behaviors. 
• Real-time communication – Generative AI-powered assistants can handle routine inquiries and provide instant responses to customer queries—thus freeing up your sales representatives’ focus on relationship building. 
• Training – Some AI tools (like Second Nature) can help sales reps hone their skills with training simulations. Meanwhile, solutions like Chorus record past interactions (calls and emails) and highlight efficient sales strategies in them.
• Other mundane and repetitive tasks – AI automates data entry, appointment scheduling, canned message generation, and follow-up communications. 

With this level of assistance, your SDRs no longer have to be buried up to their necks in spreadsheets, cold emails, and follow-up correspondence. Instead, they can focus more on what you hired them for in the first place: providing a human touch in value-added services and building client relationships.

But, not to be unfounded, let’s unpack how AiSDR helps bring your leads in from the cold.

AiSDR: High-powered AI in sales development

AiSDR is a great option for managing outbound activities, tracking outbound performance, and fixing broken outbound. In addition to qualifying leads, building sales personas, and sending email sequences, it can also automate lead scoring, content generation, and lead nurturing. It also leverages generative AI and key insights from sales leaders for driving correspondence. 

Here are five ways AiSDR enables SDR outbound sales activities.

Improving lead qualification and segmentation

AiSDR is a powerful SDR analytics tool. On the one hand, it can pore over your leads and identify those more likely to turn into paying customers. On the other hand, if you’re running low on fresh leads, you can use its Lead Discovery database to find lead look-alikes based on your current customers.

Getting started is as easy as uploading a spreadsheet or connecting your ZoomInfo account and setting your ideal customer profile. Then, the tool analyzes and filters customer profiles and behavior patterns. It also groups similar profiles into segments you can easily reach with bespoke messaging. 

Thanks to their ability to analyze large amounts of data at lightning speed, AI SDRs can save significant time for your busy sales team. 

Streamlining lead scoring

AiSDR’s ability to process large data volumes has one more benefit — it streamlines data scoring. 

Like a team of SDRs scattered across different time zones, this tool alone is able to work on this mammoth task 24/7. AiSDR sifts through an enormous amount of lead data. It takes into account both explicit and implicit factors, including demographics, company size, job title, engagement level, and beyond. 

As a result, it can accurately evaluate the conversion likelihood of each lead and assign the correct score, enabling you to focus on nurturing relationships with customers.

Personalizing outreach at scale

83% of customers don’t mind sharing some of their data if it means they get a personalized experience. Unsurprisingly, the global revenue of personalized customer experience software and services is expected to grow from $7.6 billion in 2021 to $11.6 billion in 2026. 

To this end, embracing personalization is one of the main SDR best practices. Fortunately, sending personalized emails no longer has to eat up hours of your team’s time. 

AiSDR tailors email content and responses based on a multitude of criteria, including the recipient’s job title, pain points, company size, and industry. With AI segmenting emails and personalizing content, virtual SDRs can now send non-generic emails in bulk.

Supporting lead engagement and follow-ups

AiSDR can help segment your leads and send out bulk personalized emails. But the buck doesn’t stop there. 

After all, reaching all these new contacts means even more follow-up emails. ZoomInfo puts things into perspective with the following sample figures (note that this is just an example, and real-life numbers can be even more staggering):

Let’s say you assign a daily quota of 45 new contacts to each SDR. That sounds doable since it only amounts to approximately 1,000 contacts each month.

But it’s never that simple. 

After all, each contact corresponds to a new sequence. This means the number of required emails increases exponentially. 

By the end of the month, each SDR would have made 270 follow-up emails in a day. That’s not to mention the follow-up calls that are often included in a sequence. 

This is why AiSDR’s email sequence automation makes such an impact. You can configure your AI-powered SDR to send out a certain number of follow-up messages at specific intervals—all tailored to your needs.  

As a result, no leads fall through the gap. And you can make it happen without driving any of your human SDRs to exhaustion. 

Dynamic content generation

The needs of your prospects change as they move down the sales funnel, and your content must keep up. Brands that leverage dynamic content in their emails are seeing an ROI of 42:1.

Here’s an example of what your sequences may look like:

Stage 1: Prospecting and initial outreach

• Cold Emails
• LinkedIn Messages
• Social Media Posts

Stage 2: Engagement and qualification

• Cold Calls Scripts
• Follow-Up Emails
• Video Messages
• Content Sharing

Stage 3: Building interest and trust

• Case Studies and Success Stories
• Educational Resources
• Event Invitations
• Personalized Video Demos

Stage 4: Nurturing and closing

• Customized Proposals
• Drip Campaigns
• Feedback Surveys

Although you’re sending messages in bulk, you still need to make them resonate with individual recipients. Luckily, AiSDR can automate dynamic content, which changes depending on who the recipient is.

How to automate external sales with AI

AI’s potential encompasses all aspects of outbound sales, from SDR prospecting and performance analysis to cold emailing and training. 

At the same time, if your SDR team has always been relying on more conventional methods, embracing AI right off the bat can seriously disrupt your processes, having the opposite effect.

So how do you automate your sales pipeline the way it empowers your team, not vice versa? Here are a few SDR best practices for successful AI adoption:   

• Focus on your needs. Embracing novel tech just for the sake of embracing novel tech is a road to nowhere. The task of any tech is to assist you—so analyze your current workflow and define where you need this assistance. 
• Start small. Don’t automate everything in a single stroke—this can be fatal. Implement something small for starters. For example, you can begin with AI-powered lead scoring and see the effect. 
• Take your staff into the equation. There’s a lot of concern around AI’s potential to take over jobs, so be prepared for some reluctance from your staff. To this end, you need to reassure your sales experts that a new AI solution will empower them, making their jobs even more enjoyable. Plus, training your staff on how to use AI properly is critical. 
• Measure everything. Treat AI adoption like any other investment in your company. Make sure it’s worth the investment, driving more revenue instead of bringing in complications into a well-oiled workflow.
• Use the maximum of your data. The performance of AI heavily relies on the data it digests. Insufficient data can be one of the reasons your AI solution doesn’t produce good results. Make sure your AI tool seamlessly integrates with your intel platforms, having access to the full wealth of your data.    

These are some of the key considerations for ensuring your AI adoption is heading in the right direction, whether you’re just starting an AI journey or you’re in the middle of it. In addition, making AiSDR your companion in this endeavor will increase your chances for good ROI. 

Fire up your outbound sales campaigns

With AI-powered sales automation, you can supercharge your outbound campaigns without bogging down your SDRs with routine tasks. 

Your sales team can rely on AiSDR to score leads, segment your prospects, generate personalized content, and automate follow-up sequences. Because this AI sales tool does everything at scale, you’ll reach more qualified leads and see bigger results.  

Instead of spending all their time on countless emails and calls, your SDRs can devote more effort to building connections and nurturing leads until they’re truly ripe for your closers. Before you know it, your sales team will be hitting quota and increasing your revenue. 

AI-powered sales enablement can speed up the rate of leads flowing down your funnel. Failing to embrace the fast-evolving technology will have you falling behind your competitors. 

Book a demo today and stay ahead of the game!

FAQ

What is an outbound sales campaign?

Outbound sales is the strategy of reaching out to prospects to directly establish contact. It may involve cold emailing or calling people from a list of leads.

How does outbound sales differ from inbound sales?

Outbound sales is about approaching prospects who have yet to express interest in your product offering. Inbound sales involve leads who have made initial contact with your brand.

What is the role of outbound in sales development? 

Instead of waiting for prospects to approach your business, the outbound sales team is responsible for reaching out and informing prospects of your product offerings. This sales strategy is particularly effective for reaching customers who may not even be aware that your brand exists and that they need or could use your products or services. 

What are some common tactics in outbound sales?

The outbound sales process involves the following common tactics:

• Personalizing
• Multi-channel outreach
• Developing sales scripts
• Improving sales collateral
• SDR training
• Shortening follow-up times
• Scaling with AI

The right AI tool can automate many of these things.