A 2024 Salesforce study found that reps spent 70% of their time on non-selling tasks, making it difficult to connect with prospects.
As sales development evolves alongside AI, sales teams have access to many tools that allow them to devote more time to selling, enabling teams to pursue competitive growth and crush their quotas.
A scalable complement to human SDRs, AI SDRs help sales teams hone their focus, improve speed-to-lead, and do more with their day. If you’re wondering if AI SDRs are really worth it for your team, or you’re unsure how they work, this article will clear things up.
When it comes to AI SDR vs. human SDR, it’s not a choice between the two—it’s knowing how to use each. Let’s discuss the capabilities of an AI SDR vs. human SDR, when to use each, and which one is the best fit for your team.
What is an AI SDR?
An AI SDR (artificial intelligence sales development representative) is an automated software that engages, qualifies, and routes leads.
This type of AI agent lives at the top of the funnel and takes on certain responsibilities that an SDR would normally do. Capabilities include:
- 24/7, immediate follow-up and outreach
- Lead qualification
- Lead routing and appointment setting
- CRM updates
- Lead nurture
Companies opt for AI SDRs for greater cost efficiency, time savings, and reduced team burnout. AI SDR platforms (like Verse) instantly engage and qualify leads, passing warm, ready leads to human salespeople.
AI SDRs benefit sales teams because they enable immediate speed-to-lead, which is often impossible for human teams. They also handle many of the repetitive, non-selling tasks that many salespeople loathe (Think: sifting through unqualified leads, or CRM updates!).
What does an SDR do?
So what about human SDRs?
SDRs are often responsible for outbound and inbound lead engagement, including:
- Prospecting
- Lead follow-up
- Lead qualification
- Appointment setting
- CRM updates
When it comes to outbound lead engagement, SDRs are the first ones to reach out (think: emailing or cold calling).
For inbound leads, they are the first to engage, follow up, and qualify. When leads are qualified, they set up an appointment with the correct sales executive.
As the first line of your sales team, SDRs are experts at building relationships and having nuanced conversations. They possess deep product knowledge in order to answer complex questions and handle a variety of objections.
However, this role comes with a risk for burnout: common challenges include constant follow-up without response, wasted time on dead-end leads, and sales quotas to make.
Key differences: AI SDR vs. human SDR
Obviously, there are key differences between AI SDRs and human ones. While AI SDRs are incredibly efficient at what they can do, humans possess nuance, empathy, and knowledge that AI does not have. On the other hand, human teams have limited bandwidth and time constraints.
Let’s break it down further by factors that matter most for sales teams.
Speed-to-lead
With 78% of customers choosing the company that contacts them first, speed-to-lead is a vital metric for sales teams.
According to Chili Piper, responding within the first minute can boost lead conversions by up to 391%. This is where we see a huge advantage of using an AI SDR: AI agents can make one-minute response times a reality—for every lead, all the time.
In contrast, human teams are limited in time and bandwidth to respond quickly. Operating within business hours, with full work schedules, SDRs have trouble getting back to leads within five minutes.
In fact, research by InsideSales on over 400 companies showed that almost 60% of lead contact happened after a full week had already passed.
Scalability
AI SDRs also stand out when it comes to scalability. If your company is generating hundreds to thousands of leads daily, it can be very expensive and time-consuming for a human team to get back to every single one (let alone in a timely manner).
Rather than hiring just to keep up with lead generation, using AI SDRs can easily scale lead engagement.
No matter how many leads you’re generating, AI SDRs can follow up quickly and funnel the warmest, most qualified leads to human reps.
Tone and empathy
When it comes to having genuine conversations, human SDRs are superior. Human SDRs have nuance, empathy, and complex problem-solving skills.
While AI is improving when it comes to tone and language processing, they often can’t handle certain responses with empathy and understanding. Human-in-the-loop AI, where AI’s conversations are supervised and quality-managed by humans, can help ensure that AI responds appropriately in any situation. Conversations that AI cannot handle are then passed directly to a person instead.
Real SDRs are also necessary to handle complex questions and objections.
In addition, as leads move down the funnel, they should be handed off to human reps who can best execute the rest of the selling motion.
Cost
Financially, it can be expensive and unsustainable to hire and train a huge team of SDRs to manually follow up with every lead, qualify every lead, set appointments, and keep the CRM updated.
A big reason why companies opt for AI SDRs is cost. AI SDRs can handle many of these activities for a fraction of the cost it takes to hire and train a team of SDRs.
Availability
Going back to speed-to-lead, availability is a big plus.
While human SDRs would completely burn out working 24/7, AI can handle incoming inquiries at any time, promoting a fast speed-to-lead and a better customer experience.
Consistency
In sales, we know that every rep brings their own unique approach, which can sometimes lead to variations in how the process is followed. Inconsistent messaging leads to an inconsistent experience, which is never good.
Human reps can also make human mistakes and miss following up with leads, leaving some leads forgotten.
In many industries, compliance is also a big issue. When reps go off-script or text message a prospect without proper consent, that can cause huge issues.
AI SDRs, however, ensure consistency in every conversation. With proper scripting and guardrails, AI SDRs are always accurate, compliant, and consistent in their communication—and they never miss a lead.
AI SDR vs. human SDR comparison chart
| AI SDR | Human SDR | |
| Speed-to-lead | Instant | Can be delayed |
| Scalability | Unlimited | Constrained by budget and bandwidth |
| Tone and empathy | Nuanced relationship-building skills | Limited; needs human-in-the-loop |
| Cost | Consistent monthly cost for unlimited leads | Salary per employee plus training and possible turnover |
| Availability | 24/7/365 | Business hours only |
| Consistency | Always follows process/script | Variable by rep |
When to use AI SDRs
So when should you use an AI SDR vs. human SDR?
With the capabilities and limitations of AI SDRs in mind, here are some of the best use cases for AI SDRs.
- Repetitive follow-up tasks
One of the most powerful and practical applications of an AI SDR on any team is taking over the manual, repetitive tasks that slow down human reps and drain their time.
If your sales team spends a large chunk of their day on follow-up tasks, it’s probably time to automate—and an AI SDR could be a great option for your business.
AI SDRs can take care of tasks like:
- Following up with new inbound leads
- Checking in on cold leads to re-engage
- Confirming appointment times or resending forms
- Pinging leads that didn’t respond to the first message
These are essential parts of the sales development process—but they don’t require the nuance or critical thinking of a human rep. However, sales reps know that they take up a massive amount of time when done manually.
- High-volume lead generation
Due to AI SDRs’ basically infinite scalability, AI SDRs are the best choice for teams that generate tons of leads per month. Hiring a human team to engage and qualify every single lead would not only be very expensive, it could also lead the team to burnout.
With AI, every lead would be instantly engaged and qualified. At this point, sales reps could go in and talk to only the most qualified leads, eliminating time wasted on qualifying dead-end leads.
- Nights/weekends or global coverage
For many consumer-facing industries, nights and weekends, as well as global coverage, are must-haves today.
For example, those seeking financial services are probably employed—and often, have families to take care of. For these people, nights and weekends are the only time for them to research financial services. The company that makes themselves available when their customers are available is more likely to win these customers.
In a digital-first economy, global coverage is also important for many industries. If your product or service is sold internationally, having 24/7 coverage across time zones can be your differentiator for your customers.
- Smaller teams
AI SDRs can help to amplify small teams that can’t afford to hire at the moment.
If your team is currently functioning without SDRs, AI SDRs can help to fill that gap—especially for inbound leads. For small teams, it can be especially difficult to get back to every lead quickly.
AI SDRs can take on a bulk of manual tasks like initial follow up and free up salespeople to spend time talking to qualified opportunities.
When to use human SDRs
Though AI SDRs can boost sales efficiency in many ways, there are still many places where human SDRs are necessary.
- Prospecting and outbound lead generation
Though AI SDRs excel at inbound lead response and qualification, much of outbound prospecting is still best left to human SDRs.
Most people already view cold outreach with skepticism, so using AI can be risky. AI is capable of sending outbound messaging via email or text, but this messaging should have human oversight all the way through to ensure that it’s context-aware and compliant.
Cold outreach does best with personalization. While AI can help to create messaging, human SDRs should always personalize cold outreach as much as possible. This could be based on a recent event, shared connection, or industry insight.
In addition, AI SDRs should not do outbound prospecting over the phone—people do not want AI-voiced cold calls.
- Custom proposals
A human SDR’s insight is necessary for complex deals and custom proposals.
Unlike AI SDRs, human SDRs have the nuance and understanding to properly build the proposal based on customer needs, coordinating with both management and the customer on what is possible and necessary. They must also gather feedback from both sides and present the proposal.
- Complex, high-ticket B2B
Human SDRs shine in industries where trust, personal rapport, and long-term relationships are central to the buying process.
In addition, while AI SDRs can be programmed with product knowledge, human SDRs will still understand their product the best. All of these factors play into high-ticket, complex sales, especially in B2B industries like tech.
These purchases also tend to include significant financial investment and risk, so it’s best for human SDRs to handle these deals with nuance.
For example, a B2B software company that charges $30,000 annually can use human SDRs to personalize outreach, build rapport, and establish a relationship over time.
- Enterprise sales
Similarly, for enterprise sales, where financial value and risk are high, human SDRs can be the best choice.
Enterprise sales often involves multiple stakeholders and long sales cycles, making things more complex for AI to handle.
Human SDRs are best for relationship building, multi-threading across stakeholders, and follow-through. Beyond simple follow-up, human SDRs build and nurture relationships much better than AI.
The best strategy: AI SDRs + human SDRs
Overall, combining AI and human SDRs can drive the best results, improving conversions and reducing burnout.
AI SDRs should act as your first response and lead filtration system, improving speed-to-lead, enabling 24/7 coverage, and eliminating wasted time on unqualified leads. AI can handle lead qualification, appointment setting, lead re-engagement and follow-up, and CRM updates.
Human reps should step in post-qualification, having high-value conversations and closing deals.
Depending on the industry and use case, AI can handle only certain leads (for example, re-engaging old leads), or reps can step in earlier in the conversation.
This strategy:
- Allows immediate speed-to-lead, 24/7
- Promotes consistent messaging and CRM updates for data accuracy
- Ensures every lead is contacted and no leads are forgotten
- Saves teams time on lead qualification and appointment setting
- Re-engages old leads without sacrificing team bandwidth
- Scales with growing lead generation
- Reduces burnout for SDRs by removing repetitive work
With this strategy, your team can improve conversion rates without adding headcount or stretching themselves thin with manual work.
How AI SDRs improve cost efficiency
The same strategy could, in theory, be replicated with a full team of human SDRs. However, hiring, onboarding, training, and retaining a team of human SDRs is expensive — especially for teams dealing with uncertain budgets.
Between base salaries, commissions, benefits, training, tech stack costs, and management overhead, even a modest SDR team can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
For teams operating under budget constraints or seeking to maximize ROI, AI SDRs offer a cost-effective alternative that delivers real scale without the headcount.
Here’s how AI SDRs to your sales team improves cost efficiency:
- Less monthly cost: AI SDR platforms are typically priced on a monthly or usage-based model, making the cost predictable and stable. For human SDRs, there are ongoing HR or compensation costs, as well as the cost of turnover and training.
- Lower cost per qualified lead: With AI engaging and qualifying every lead (including re-engagement campaigns), qualification and conversion rates improve, reducing cost per qualified lead.
- 24/7 coverage at a flat cost: While human reps can’t be online around the clock without overtime pay, AI SDRs operate 24/7 at no additional expense.
- Scales during seasonal spikes: Whether your lead volume doubles overnight, or your business has hot seasons, AI SDRs eliminate the need for extra hiring during those times, still operating at a flat cost.
For example, instead of hiring three overnight ISAs for lead follow-up, a home services company adds an AI SDR to instantly engage and qualify leads outside business hours. This saves thousands per month while maintaining 24/7 lead coverage.
Best practices for implementing AI SDRs
If you’re ready to add an AI SDR to your sales team, here are a few next steps:
- Delegate what you want the AI SDR vs. human SDRs to do and create processes around that.
- Understand how you want to AI SDR to reach out to inbound leads.
- Define how the AI will qualify leads and what questions it should ask.
- Implement a human-in-the-loop system.
- Integrate with your CRM and tech stack.
Verse is an example of an AI SDR platform that is fully-managed, making implementing an AI SDR easy. Verse’s AI SDR:
- Texts customers for you around the clock
- Automatically qualifies leads
- Works with customizable scripts
- Integrates with your CRM
- Leverages human-in-the-loop for authentic conversations that convert
If you’re interested in Verse, book a demo or check out our self-serve demo videos today.
AI ADR vs. human SDR: FAQ
What is an AI SDR?
An AI SDR is an AI-powered tool that automates lead engagement, qualification, routing, and CRM updates. It works 24/7, providing instant follow-up and freeing up human reps for high-value sales conversations.
Do AI SDRs replace human SDRs?
Not entirely. AI SDRs complement human SDRs by handling repetitive tasks like inbound lead follow-up, re-engagement, and appointment setting. Human SDRs still play a critical role in outbound prospecting, complex deals, relationship-building, and enterprise sales.
When should I use an AI SDR?
Use AI SDRs when:
- You need instant speed-to-lead
- You’re handling high volumes of inbound leads
- You need 24/7/365 lead coverage
- You want to reduce rep burnout from repetitive tasks
- You have a small or resource-constrained team
Are AI SDRs more cost-effective than human SDRs?
Yes. AI SDRs are typically priced on a monthly or usage basis, offering predictable costs and eliminating the need for full-time hires. They help reduce cost per qualified lead, enable 24/7 coverage, and scale with demand without increasing headcount.
How do I implement an AI SDR?
With AI SDR platforms like Verse, implementation involves:
- Defining outreach triggers (e.g. lead form submissions)
- Customizing qualification criteria and scripts
- Integrating your CRM for seamless handoffs
- Using human-in-the-loop for complex queries or compliance
- Routing qualified leads to sales reps automatically
