AI SDR vs SDR Agency: Which is the Better Choice?
Explore the differences between AI SDRs and SDR agencies
Just 16% of sales reps hit their quota. However, growing this number is an uphill battle due to targets increasing annually, huge workloads, and high SDR turnover.
To plug the gap and provide in-house SDRs with more support, two options companies turn to are SDR agencies, AI SDRs, and AI BDRs.
Here’s a closer look at both choices, as well as which might be the better fit for your outreach.
What is an AI SDR?
An AI SDR is specialized sales software that uses artificial intelligence to carry out typical SDR tasks. This includes, but isn’t limited to:
- Creating cold outbound emails
- Writing contextual replies to incoming messages
- Running a follow-up cadence across multiple channels
- Answering questions and handling objections
- Prospecting and scoring leads
- Qualifying prospects
- Pausing and resuming email sends based on out-of-office messages
At the end of the day, an AI SDR is an AI-powered sales tool that you can use to run high-volume or time-intensive outreach at scale.
What is an SDR agency?
The sales process consists of many distinct stages, and SDRs typically focus on the early ones, such as lead generation and qualification.
Before AI SDRs like AiSDR became a viable option, businesses turned to SDR agencies to outsource and scale their sales outreach. This includes day-to-day outreach activities like email cadences and prospecting so that founders can focus on building the product.
There are several reasons why a business chooses to partner with an SDR agency:
- Not enough budget to hire full-time in-house employees
- Not enough resources, expertise, or strategic insight to run sales outreach
- Not enough time to recruit, onboard, and train new SDRs
- In-house sales reps are at capacity and prioritizing deals over generation
- Results are expected immediately
SDR agencies are able to address the first four, and if you hire a good agency and have product-market fit, you might see faster results than recruiting and training new SDRs.
AI SDR vs SDR agency breakdown
How well do AI SDRs stack up to outsourced SDR services?
Here’s a closer look at how the two option compare.
Flexibility
Both AI SDRs and SDR agencies are very flexible.
AI sales tools run around the clock without downtime. Solutions with user-friendly interfaces make it simple to set up new campaigns. Sometimes, all it takes for an AI SDR to run your outreach is to tell it the sales persona it needs to adopt and your ideal customer profile.
SDR agencies are limited by their management structure and talent. While they can adapt to changes relatively quickly, they will need time to brief team members, review workload capacities, and reassign tasks.
And while SDR agencies operate within a normal business day, they are able to provide strategic insight, critical thinking, and creative problem-solving.
| AI SDR | SDR agency |
| Works 24/7 Fast to set up and experiment with outreach ideas Easy to reconfigure | Available during business hours Needs time to rebalance and adjust to new requests Able to provide high-level insight |
Advantage: AI SDR
AI SDRs are available 24/7 and can be quickly re-configured to use different tones, styles, and email frameworks, such as the JMM approach or AIDA framework. SDR agencies are usually limited to their working hours, and people need time to practice and become comfortable with new writing approaches.
Scalability
AI SDRs carry out high-volume tasks with minimal intervention and supervision. Creating a campaign takes just a few minutes, and you can place lead prospecting on auto-pilot.
AI SDRs tackle lead lists of 100 or 1,000 prospects with the same approach, quality, and – for lack of a better word – mindset. AI SDRs aren’t at risk of burning out or shutting down from high-volume outreach.
SDR agencies are able to scale as well, but it will take longer. Outsourced SDR services need time to review capability, rebalance priorities, shift responsibilities, or hire new workers if they’re expected to carry out more work.
Well-run SDR agencies are capable of minimizing the adjustment period, but adding a new person will still take time to get up to speed.
| AI SDR | SDR agency |
| Easy to scale in clicks Fast to scale in minutes Limitless capacity and won’t burn out regardless of workload | Easy to scale on request Adjustment period needed Capacities and workloads need rebalancing |
Advantage: AI SDR
AI SDRs are easily scaled up and down, and some providers even allow you to pause the subscription if you expect a slow month. SDR agencies also scale without too much difficulty, but they need advance notice, and there is a noticeable, and at times significant, lag before scaling happens.
There’s no real advantage when it comes to pricing as the cost of both will change as you scale outreach up or down. This will come down to how individual AI SDRs and SDR agencies price themselves.
Speed & efficiency
AI SDRs work at lightning speed. They can process big data faster than humans, and they can create and send unique emails in seconds. Data entry and copywriting proceed typo-free, and AI SDRs can reply to incoming messages within 10 minutes.
SDRs agencies employ experts and specialists who leverage business automation sales tools to do their work faster. As an agency gains more clients and requests, it hires more people, potentially even in other time zones to improve coverage. Unique emails take an average of 15-20 minutes, and the only way to reduce time on emails is templates.
However, a person’s performance fluctuates throughout the day, from slow starts in the morning to drop-offs during lunch and at the end of the day. People also get mentally tired the more they write, which can lead to a decrease in email quality.
| AI SDR | SDR agency |
| Creates emails and researches leads in 1-2 minutes Replies to incoming emails within 10 minutes Content is free of typos and mistakes | Creates unique emails in 15-20 minutes Time spent on lead research varies significantly Data entry and replies can have typos |
Advantage: AI SDR
In any battle of speed and efficiency, AI will always win compared to humans. Also, SDR agencies are in a difficult position as their costs increase when they hire more people to do work faster. That cost may get passed to clients. As for AI SDRs, while it depends on the pricing model, most will increase the price based on your expected usage.
Personalization
AI systems pull data from CRM systems, lead databases, previous interactions with leads, and other sources you provide to create fully unique emails, follow-ups and replies tailored to each lead.
But they might not always catch subtle details in tricky interactions, or they risk missing the mark in their communication goal.
Still, the quality of communication stays consistent no matter how many emails get sent. Advanced AI SDRs can even recognize and work with intent signals and levels to better move prospects to the next stage.
SDR agencies often work with the same lead databases, but their access to CRM and previous interactions is limited to what you provide. Additionally, writing a well-personalized email from scratch for a single lead takes 20 minutes.
In other words, 1 SDR will write 24 emails max, if they spend all day writing without a break. An AI SDR can max out a single mailbox’s daily limit of 50 emails in less than 30 minutes (but it won’t because doing so will likely burn the domain, so it will spread the 50 sends across the day).
To cut this time down, agencies leverage their library of email templates for different use cases. The trade-off is that templates don’t let you build in as much deep-level personalization.
| AI SDR | SDR agency |
| Creates personalized emails in 1 minute Quality of personalization is consistent across emails Pulls data from a variety of sources | Creates personalized emails in 20 minutes Quality of personalization varies and can become clunky Pulls data from a variety of sources |
Advantage: Even
On the one hand, AI SDRs will create a fully personalized and researched email in 1 minute while human SDRs need at least 20 minutes, and the quality may still sound superficial, clunky, and forced.
But on the other hand, human SDRs understand nuances, and can personalize content with greater care and certainty. For now, AI SDRs don’t always catch nuances, and can potentially make bad choices in personalization, such as referencing someone’s passing.
Any edge depends on your preference. Speed and depth versus emotional intelligence?
Human touch
As previously mentioned, AI SDRs lack the ability to understand nuance, cultural context, and other human qualities. Still, you can configure AI to follow specific SDR frameworks and capture your voice to get the conversation started, and then step in if the AI flags a question or response it doesn’t know. Email recipients may even try to break the AI SDR if they figure out an AI is at the other end.
Outsourced sales reps at SDR agencies are human, which means they can pick up on subtle cues in tone that might signal concern, sarcasm, or another human emotion. However, human SDRs are still human, and their mood may affect their communication. And while humans pick up on culture cues easier than AI, different cultures approach topics differently, and people from other cultures may still struggle.
| AI SDR | SDR agency |
| Can’t perceive emotion Struggles with slang and cultural expressions unless fine-tuned with basic data | Can perceive and work with emotion Understands slang and culture when in the same culture, but struggles with different cultures |
Advantage: SDR agency
Like AI will always win in competitions of speed against people, SDR agencies will always win in a human touch against AI. After all, it is called a “human” touch for a reason.
Data
AI SDRs often come with integrations for major sales tools and databases like HubSpot, ZoomInfo, and Apollo. Set on auto-pilot, AI SDRs will continue to work through lead data while continuing to send your emails.
SDR agencies use the same sales tools and databases as AI SDRs, along with their own resources or purchased lead lists. However, there are a few industries where SDR agencies may have more data than AI SDRs, such as healthcare and legal.
| AI SDR | SDR agency |
| Uses leading essential sales tools May lack data for specific, highly regulated niche industries | Uses leading essential sales tools May have data for specific, highly regulated niche industries |
Advantage: AI SDR
It’s hard to beat AI when it comes to working with data quickly and efficiently. Even SDR agencies often use AI tools for their data needs.
Insights
AI SDRs quickly generate and apply data-driven insights, and they can spot patterns and trends that we humans might overlook.
For example, it can look at dozens of factors simultaneously to score leads or predict customer churn before it becomes apparent to you. The downside is that numbers don’t always reflect the human component, and word sentiment analysis can only go so far.
SDR agencies also use tools to generate data insights, and they can merge those insights with their expertise and experience. They can even talk to experts in fields for further analysis and input, which isn’t something AI SDRs can do.
| AI SDR | SDR agency |
| Pulls data from variety of sources Easily keeps data insights updated Can review a larger amount of data | Pulls data from a variety of sources Easily keeps data insights updated Can review a larger amount of data |
Advantage: Even
Again, this comes down to which you prioritize. High-level strategic insights pulled from expertise and past experience or data insights that are updated regularly?
There are also concerns about AI being biased in its data, but if we’re being honest, one of the uncomfortable truths about AI in sales is that AI is biased because humans are biased.
Agencies might also undergo a bit of tunnel vision when drawing conclusions at the expense of larger trends since people can’t absorb big data quickly. At the same time, AI can oversimplify the situation since it has so much that needs to be boiled down.
Which option is better for your business?
AI can certainly complement your sales efforts, but finding the right balance is key. AI will never fully replace sales teams because someone always needs to point it in the right direction. The best approach is probably one where an AI SDR is a part of your team.
Here are some of the situations when an AI SDR might be preferred, as well as when an SDR agency may be the better option.
When to choose an AI SDR
AI SDRs excel in these cases:
- High-volume outreach – If you’re reaching out to hundreds of leads via multiple channels, AI SDRs will help you manage all the messaging from one location.
- Clear outreach process – AI SDRs are built to cover end-to-end sales, and they get their best results when you have a clear value prop and customer profile. However, they still simplify the journey of finding product-market fit by removing some of the grunt work of A/B testing sales approaches.
- Need for 24/7 availability – AI SDRs make it easy to pursue leads and sales opportunities around the globe if you’re based primarily in one country. They’ll answer when leads are engaged, even if you’re sleeping.
- Easier ROI – Companies often pay human SDRs extra for handling inquiries outside of working hours or with greater urgency, but your AI SDR will handle them for free. The time to value is also a lot shorter. AI SDRs need 1-2 days to get up and running, while human SDRs need 1-2 months to get comfortable.
When to choose an SDR agency
Outsourced SDRs are usually a perfect fit if you:
- Need crisis management – If your sales are stuck in neutral and failing to gain traction, AI won’t be able to provide strategic insight on how to fix it. SDR agencies can.
- Have complex sales cycles – At the moment, AI works best when things are simple. If your sales cycles are long, overly complex, and need input from several decision-makers, AI SDRs won’t be as effective. Their role in such a case will probably be limited to first-touch messages and follow-ups.
- Operate in a niche market – Industries like healthcare and law require more than basic product knowledge. Regulations, technical jargon, and medical terms increase the difficulty. Even human SDRs will struggle at times, but they’re flexible enough to work through misunderstandings.
- Plan to launch a holiday campaign – Holidays are an easy win for running time-sensitive sales campaigns. Creating holiday-themed content that converts without cliches is harder. SDR agencies will likely have an easier time thinking up meaningful Halloween content, Thanksgiving content, and Christmas content or staying on top of recent holiday trends.
Cost and ROI breakdown
Here’s a comparison of the cost of AiSDR with the rates of some of the best SDR agencies.
| AI SDR (AiSDR) | SDR agency (SalesRoads) | SDR agency (Revit) | |
| Cost per month | $750 | $5,500-$9,500 | From $2,500 |
Once you set up an AI SDR, you can scale its capacity and add new touchpoints without a big rise in cost. Plus, AI sales tools operate around the clock, generating more leads in the same amount of time compared to human SDRs.
