Ask HN: Would you replace your SDRs with AI at 10% of the cost | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Would you replace your SDRs with AI at 10% of the cost

4 pointsyuriy_zaremba15 comments

Hey everyone! My name is Yuri. I am a Ukrainian and a YC founder (AXDRAFT, W19).

I want to ask for your feedback and critical thoughts on an idea that I can’t stop thinking about for few weeks now – AI SDR.

Many of us know what SDRs do and the end goal is to automate all of SDR’s functions, but to narrow it down, I see it as an AI tool to: (1) craft and send email campaigns and (2) correspond and handle objections via email on your behalf with a goal to book a meeting for your sales rep and using only your (1) ideal customer profile; (2) product overview and (3) objections playbook as inputs. The underlying AI technology is mostly GPT-4 API, potentially with some fine tuning.

With the boom of generative AI, this idea seems obvious and there are already few companies getting started in this space, including Lavender.ai, Aristotle, as well as Sail, Rift and Coldreach , backed by YC during S23.

Nevertheless, I think that the market opportunity is huge and can support more than one company and execution (UX+sales funnel build-up approach) will determine, who gets the biggest share.

Here are some questions, I would be grateful if you could answer:

1. When and why did you decide to hire your first SDR? Did it work? 2. If you have an SDR team – how many people and are you satisfied with the output/results/return on investment? 3. Would you buy an AI solution instead of hiring a full-time SDR? (yes/no, why?) 4. Would you fire any number of your SDRs to replace them with an AI solution (yes/no, why?)

Please respond in comments or email me directly at yz@aisdr.com

I would also be very grateful for any critical feedback or thoughts in respect of the above idea, especially in terms of potential bottlenecks and risks that you see.

If you want to learn more about how I see it working and receive updates on my progress, you can check out a landing page here: https://aisdr.com.

Thank you all so much in advance!

Yuri

Create automation may costs the same as two years for salary of your representative. They always custom of logic, regions, pics. No one start SendGrid without a lot of checks with business team. When it flew out you can not catch it.

I was trying to reach a sales person the other day and thought an AI would have been a better experience. The SDR was an idiot and probably lost them the sale, though their competitor had a better SDR that I don't think an AI would have done as well as.

So... I'm not sure where I stand on this issue... they could be good for pre-SDR, but a great SDR is still better than the AI will be.

Thank you! Can you please elaborate a bit more on (1) what were the key issues with the "bad" SDR and (2) what did the "good" SDR do, that you liked and AI can't yet do.

> know what SDRs do

Software defined Radios?

Sales Development Rep, they typically do first contact and presales before passing the lead to a sales person.

Thank you for helping out!

I am sorry for the confusion. SDR stands for Sales Development Representative. Those are the most junior sales team members, whose main job is to reach out to prospective customers and offer them some service or software with a goal to schedule a conversation with a sales representative.

Yes, me too.

I never want to talk to a sales rep. Just put the prices on your website. If you don't, I'll assume you're trying to scam me.

I never want to talk to a sales rep. Just put the features on your website. If you don't, I'll assume the sales rep will lie to me to get a sale.

I never want to talk to a sales rep. Just put a demo on your website. If you don't, I'll assume you're sales rep will show me a demo which doesn't match reality.

Etc etc etc

Thank you! Very valuable input!

What about complex enterprise-ish products that need some explaining, like contract management tools or ERP or HR software?

I've worked on several large procurement projects for things like that. At no point has a sales rep been useful.

HR software is a commodity. So are CRM, ERP, and other things like that. You have a price per seat licence, or a price per feature, or a price per year. Just tell me what it is.

Even if it's custom development, you can publish a price list.

Got it. Thank you!

> HR software is a commodity.

It's not really, a commodity is typically fungible and these services you've listed are not easily swappable. There is a lot of cost in switching.

There is a wide range of service quality which you cannot determine by simply reading the website. You can figure this out by talking to a person and seeing how the company responds to your inquiries.

I'm in the process of leaving one such vendor because I did what you like to do. Just sign up easy on a website. It was a mistake and cost me money to fix because their service was bad and their support refused to fix their mistakes. I'm likely to go with a more expensive, bigger player in the field now.

If you can speak to a person - that means that person has some documentation they can look at.

So why not put the documentation on the web for me to read?

Normally, it is because they want to obfuscate the price and use sales tricks to encourage me to buy.

No, it was because they had to go talk to their expert on a taxes, accounting for my company details. You can't put this kind of thing in documentation or some form based thing.

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