Why we don't sell AI SDRs

Ask anyone selling AI to sales teams what they offer and you will usually hear some version of "an AI rep that books meetings for you." It's the most funded, most advertised part of the market. We don't sell it, and here is why.

The evidence so far is not kind

• In March 2025, TechCrunch reported that 11x, one of the best-known AI SDR startups, had listed customers on its website that were not customers. ZoomInfo said it had trialled the product for a month and that it "performed significantly worse than its SDR employees."
• Gartner predicts that by 2028 AI agents will outnumber sellers ten to one, yet fewer than 40% of sellers will say those agents improved their productivity.
• Cold email is getting harder. In Mailshake's 2025 survey, 69% of respondents said their cold email performance had declined from the year before.

None of this means AI is useless in sales. It means the problem these tools solve, sending more messages to strangers, is not the problem most companies actually have.

The problem most companies have is closer to home

For many companies the bigger problem is not finding leads. It is losing the ones they already have:

• the web enquiry that waits two days for a reply,
• the call that rings out at 5:45 pm,
• the quote that gets sent once and never chased,
• the customer who used to order every six weeks and quietly stopped.

These leaks happen after the money to find a buyer has already been spent. Fixing them doesn't need a new prospect list. It needs the systems you already pay for to work together.

Where we do use AI

We use AI where it is reliable and a person can check the result:

• Reading. Turning an RFQ email or PDF into structured line items.
• Sorting. Telling a real enquiry from spam and flagging the urgent ones.
• Drafting. Writing a first reply or a quote chase from the actual thread, for a rep to approve with one click.

Rules handle routing and timing. A person approves every price and every first message to a customer.

What this means if you hire us

You won't get a black box that emails thousands of strangers in your name. You get faster replies, quotes that get chased, and customers who get a call before they drift away, all built in your own CRM, inbox and ERP, in accounts you own.

It is less exciting than an AI rep. We think it is where the money is.

Sources: TechCrunch, "a16z- and Benchmark-backed 11x has been claiming customers it doesn't have," 24 March 2025. Gartner press release, 18 November 2025. Mailshake, Cold Email Report 2025.