The Future of SDR Outreach in 2025: Kiss, Marry, Ghost
Which tasks will human SDRs delegate or share with AI, and which will they keep in 2025?
Outreach is evolving fast, and 2025 will bring even bigger changes for SDRs and BDRs. To keep up with increasing quotas and decreasing budgets, sales teams need to decide which tasks they should own, share, or delegate to AI tools.
But instead of just listing these tasks, we’re throwing in a fun twist — Kiss, Marry, Ghost.
Find out which tasks an SDR will want to Kiss, which they’ll want to Marry, and which they’ll definitely want to run away and Ghost.
Basic rules of Kiss, Marry, Ghost
If you’ve ever played Bang, Smash, Dash or one of its other variants, then you already know the rules. But just in case, here’s a quick recap.
One person names three people to another, and that person should say who they would bang, smash, or dash. This process repeats as many times as you want.
But for our purposes, we’re adding a twist to the rules. Instead of names, we’ll list common SDR tasks. Then, from the perspective of a human SDR, we’ll say whether the SDR will want to kiss, marry, or ghost each task:
- Kiss – The SDR handles the lion’s share of the task, with occasional help from an AI SDR
- Marry – The SDR can roughly split the workload with an AI SDR
- Ghost – The SDR lets an AI SDR completely take over this task, stepping in only when necessary
With that in mind, which parts of an outreach SDR’s job will a human SDR kiss, marry, or ghost?
Common SDR tasks in 2025
Here are 13 tasks that fall under an SDR’s responsibilities in 2025. For each one, we’ll state which ones human SDRs will want, and which are better left to tools like AiSDR.
Lead research – GHOST
Lead research is all about sifting through and finding data to work with. Once you know who your ideal customer is (or at least have an idea), you’ll need to filter through thousands of potential prospects to locate ones who match your criteria.
Like any other high-volume, low-level task, SDRs can easily leave this to AiSDR, which will research leads by:
- Using buyer personas to identify leads
- Pulling data directly from LinkedIn, HubSpot, and other sources
- Identifying key stakeholders in a company
- Spotting job openings, people new to their role, and intent signals
- Creating lead lists
- Tracking website visitors
- Running bounce checks to keep your outreach bounce rates under 5%
AiSDR and other AI sales tools can research leads and prospects faster, deeper, and more efficiently than any human SDR. What used to take a human SDR weeks can be done in a matter of hours, which is precisely why human SDRs will ghost lead research.
Lead qualification – KISS
Although human SDRs likely wish they could ghost lead qualification, SDRs will probably have to settle for a kiss.
The lead scoring component of qualification can be easily automated and left to tools like AiSDR, but that’s only half the equation.
While it’s a breeze for AiSDR to evaluate leads according to a set of predefined criteria, it needs to be told what to look for, which means a human SDR will need to:
- Analyze your conversion process and customer journey so they’re reflected in your scoring
- Define the scoring criteria
- Specify the number of points assigned for every action and attribute
- Check and update the scores as needed
For now, hashing out the specifics of what makes leads qualified or not isn’t something AI will take over anytime soon. It requires a deep understanding of your business model, sales pipeline, and customer journey.
As a result, lead qualification is best left split between humans and AI SDRs.
Lead nurturing – GHOST
Lead nurturing is something that takes a lot of time and effort. And as your number of leads grows, the difficulty of personalizing each interaction increases.
Toss in the challenge of staying consistent and sending regular nurtures on top of juggling your other SDR tasks, and you can start to see why SDRs would like to ghost lead nurturing.
That said, there are many benefits to allowing AiSDR to handle your nurtures:
- Every nurturing email by AiSDR is 100% unique and tailored to each lead
- You can segment your leads by intent or other criteria for more targeted nurturing campaigns
- Email performance is easier to track
- AiSDR won’t stall from writer’s block
The challenge of successful lead nurturing happens to be where AiSDR shines.
Cold email – GHOST
Cold outreach is like knocking on a thousand closed doors. Only you don’t know who will answer or what awaits on the other side.
And cold emails are a daring leap into that unknown, fueled by the hope of turning silence into opportunity. One bold message at a time.
Sound scary? It can be. Which is exactly why human SDRs will ghost cold email as soon as they have a chance.
So why delegate cold email to AI SDRs and AI BDRs?
Easy, AI sales reps will:
- Draft and send emails in seconds
- Sync and pull data to and from your CRM
- Write crisp emails based on your preferred email framework
- Research leads and companies in minutes
What’s even better is that AI solutions like AiSDR will handle other cold outreach essentials for you like email warm-up.
Email personalization – GHOST
Email personalization is more than just adding the recipient’s name to the greeting. Prospects expect your email to appeal to them personally, referencing their unique challenges, pain points, and recent work.
Deep personalization for each email would be a mammoth task for human SDRs, but not for AiSDR who can:
- Generate high-quality email templates
- Deeply personalize each email by pulling data from your CRM database and the prospect’s LinkedIn profile
- Dynamically tailor the email content to the prospect’s preferences
- Fine-tune its approach in real time to the user feedback, using the CTA that secured the highest conversion rate
- Personalize at scale with no additional cost
With all these benefits, there is a good reason to hand email personalization over to AiSDR right away. This way, you’ll get ahead of the competition who are still trying to personalize their emails manually.
Inbound responses – KISS
Prospects are 8 times more likely to convert if you get back to them within 5 minutes. A human SDR team would struggle to manage that, but AiSDR will ace it.
While AiSDR can manage most of your inbound lead development, there are a few cases where humans will need to be available.
Inbound requests are less predictable
If your website and social media already have all the important details, you’re unlikely to be showered by simple queries like: “What’s the price of A?” or “How do I order B?”
Instead, your prospects are likely going to ask difficult-to-anticipate questions that need a deeper knowledge of the product. When this happens, a human will need to step in.
AiSDR can still give a hand by keeping the lead warm and responding to the inbound lead with a “Thanks for reaching out! Let me check…” The AI could then flag the question for a human to respond to.
Final decisions must be made by humans
The goal of inbound prospecting is to turn MQLs into SQLs, at which point your sales team takes over.
That means it’s up to your SDRs to decide when a prospect is ready for a more direct sales approach. AiSDR and other AI solutions can’t make this decision for you, although it can assist with other matters like scoring, nurturing, and personalization.
Follow-ups – GHOST
Following up with leads is probably one of the least creative SDR tasks. It’s essentially about reminding someone you’re around and have something that may be of value to them.
There are still ways to do it wrong, such as sounding pushy or demanding. Human SDRs sometimes make this mistake, but AiSDR doesn’t. It maintains a friendly and professional tone at all times without getting emotional.
While following up with your prospects, AiSDR will:
- Make every email 100% unique
- Hyper-personalize each email
- Tailor the message to its broader context using the prospect’s recent LinkedIn activity, buyer intent, and customer journey stage
- Do bounce checks and automatic warm-up to avoid getting emails flagged as spam
A human SDR can definitely handle all this, but the time is better spent elsewhere, making it a ghost for SDRs.
CRM data management – GHOST
Like follow-ups, CRM data management is another tedious part of the SDR job that you still can’t go without. Customer data must be checked and updated to stay fresh, accurate, and complete. Fortunately, AiSDR is ready to take care of that.
AiSDR will:
- Automatically check and update key information, such as the prospect’s company and job title
- Monitor data changes in real time
- Create lead segments according to your criteria
- Close any gaps in lead data by monitoring external resources
- Update interactions and data in your HubSpot CRM
Since SDRs can use AiSDR for enriching lead data and syncing lead activity to HubSpot, this puts CRM data management as a strong ghost.
Objection/question handling – KISS
On the surface, objection handling seems like an easily automated task. Yes, you can configure AI tools to respond to the most common objections you encounter.
Here are a few possible examples:
| Objection | Response |
| It’s too expensive. | We have a variety of pricing plans for different needs and a free 1-month trial. |
| Can your product really do that? | You’re welcome to see for yourself via our free demo. |
| Is my data safe with you? | We comply with data protection regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and others. We are also SOC-II certified. |
However, AI might fail to take into account the broader context, such as the prospect’s non-verbal cues during a video call. An experienced SDR can act on these cues and adjust their persuasion strategy.
For example, suppose a prospect is concerned about ROI rather than mere spending. In that case, rather than mention affordable pricing plans, your sales rep may point to the revenue growth other companies have achieved with your product.
AiSDR can’t (yet) adjust its reasoning by picking up non-verbal cues. It will also struggle with very specific questions that require a high level of product knowledge or access to the product to check.
As a result, handling questions and objections is a kiss.
Cold calls – KISS
Cold calls are another SDR outreach task that AI tools aren’t ready to take over, for one reason or another:
- Too much can go wrong as the prospect’s responses are unpredictable
- There’s no way for AI to interpret and respond accordingly to non-verbal cues
- People are quick to hang up on voices that obviously sound like AI
- AI cold calls are legally restricted or limited in different jurisdictions
One of the issues of AI voiceovers is that generated voices often lack normal human modulations, which makes them sound dull and monotonous. This is something SDRs want to avoid.
Some AI tools can act like a coach who helps you prepare for cold calls by roleplaying possible scenarios and reactions. But the call itself? Humans need to handle it.
This tag-team makes cold calls a kiss.
Getting meetings booked – KISS
AiSDR is effective at getting 3-5 meetings booked per 100 leads, but this is only part of the process.
AI is only an assistant. It won’t book meetings purely on its own. It’s a cog in your greater outreach strategy.
AiSDR helps you get more meetings scheduled by:
- Writing personalized emails in seconds
- Researching leads who are more likely to convert into a customer
- Sending follow-ups consistently without pipeline leakage
- Responding to inbound lead requests in 10 minutes
- Reaching out via text message and LinkedIn
These all play a critical role, but ultimate success depends on the whole, which includes lead qualification, handling complex questions, and other elements that humans will need to do.
This division of responsibility makes getting meetings booked a kiss.
Relationship building – MARRY
Building and sustaining prospect relationships is a tricky task. You can’t measure relationship quality, but it ultimately determines whether this prospect will become your customer.
The subjective nature and lack of quantifiability make this a strong marry for human reps.
While relationships are built and sustained by human reps, AiSDR can still lay the foundation by:
- Identifying prospects who are worth approaching
- Researching leads for intent signals, company data, and other indicators
- Creating personalized content to spark a conversation
- Automating reminders and follow-ups
- Creating behavioral profiles that highlight interests and possible triggers
AiSDR and similar tools are best deployed during the earliest stages of the relationship before stepping aside to let your team take over.
Running sales demos – MARRY
At the moment, sales demos remain strictly in the purview of human sales reps as AI isn’t good enough to deal with the complexities of sales demos.
This means humans will marry sales demos.
However, AiSDR can make sure many of the processes surrounding sales demos go off without a hitch, including:
- Pre-demo reminders
- Post-demo follow-ups
- Updating data in your CRM
This lets the human rep focus on the demo itself without the distraction of other tasks.
What can SDRs do with the time they win back?
Here are some of the ways that SDRs can spend the time they won back.
More calls
What’s the easiest way for a sales rep to spend their time when they suddenly get a free hour or two in the middle of a working day?
More calls 📞
The more people your SDRs call, the more customers you might get, especially when the people they call are not random names but qualified leads already researched by AI.
During a phone or video call, human SDRs can use their skills that AI can’t easily replicate: persuasion, empathetic listening, building an emotional connection, and using and interpreting body language.
A/B testing
Sales jobs also involve testing out which tactics work better. With AiSDR tackling the bulk of high-volume tasks, your team will have more time and capacity to run A/B tests and assess ideas like:
- Subject lines – which ones will drive a higher open rate?
- Email length – long or short?
- Personalization approach – segment-based, multimedia, or hyper-personalization?
- Value proposition – cost savings or revenue growth?
- Content – demo links, case studies, or blogs?
- CTA – which placement, wording, UI element, and urgency?
- Timing – which day of the week and time?
Having the ability to test and refine your sales outreach may not lead to immediate short-term results, but that’s okay. It’s a long-term investment that should lead to higher gains and more wins.
Skill development
With time to spare, SDRs can develop the skills that will help them excel at their job, such as:
- Storytelling – telling prospects about your brand through compelling stories
- Negotiation – better ways to position value and handle objections
- Public speaking – running webinars, sales demos, small talk, or other types of speaking
- CRM and sales tool mastery – advanced features of Salesforce, Hubspot, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and other software
On top of that, SDRs will be able to keep up with the prospect’s industry, monitoring its trends and challenges. With this knowledge, they can engage prospects in meaningful conversations, effectively communicate value, and prompt AiSDR for better results.
Career development
Finally, SDRs can focus on developing their careers by:
- Networking with colleagues, account executives, and managers to build relationships and gain a broader view of the sales process
- Attending industry webinars and conferences to keep up with sales trends
- Mentoring new hires
- Building a stronger profile on social media to become a sales voice
This puts them in position to get promoted to account executive or sales manager. This also opens up a path for you to incentivize high-performing SDRs to stay with your company.
What does this mean for the future of sales outreach in 2025?
AI won’t replace your sales reps for the next few years, but it will help you overhaul your SDR outreach strategy and increase your team’s total work capacity.
Here’s a quick run-through of the tasks AiSDR can handle for you:
- Lead research
- Lead nurturing
- Writing cold emails
- Email hyper-personalization
- Email follow-ups
- CRM data management
While your AI sales assistant takes care of these tedious, high-volume tasks, your SDRs will have more time to focus on higher-value activities like calls, responses to complex questions, sales demos, and A/B testing.
