Role
SDR
How many people touch one contact before it reaches a salesperson? Usually one - the person who has to find the signal, understand the company, write the message and make the call. The first three can be taken off the desk without losing what matters most in the fourth.
Intro call
Four questions we would start with
Outbound breaks down into four very different activities and only one of them needs a person throughout. The questions below are there to establish how much time the other three eat.
How do you know this particular company is worth a call right now?
If the answer is "because it was on the list", then the signal is not a criterion, it is decoration. A contact with no reason here and now turns the conversation into a lottery, however good the script.
What do you drop first when a week runs short?
Usually the preparation - exactly what distinguishes a message written to somebody from a message written to everybody. The pace stays, the quality falls, and it falls invisibly, because nobody measures the quality of a touch.
Where does what an SDR learned in a conversation that did not end in a meeting go?
If it goes nowhere, or into a note nobody reads, the company pays for the same knowledge a second time - when somebody else calls that organisation in six months.
How quickly do you find out that a sequence has stopped working?
With manual counting, usually after a month. In that month you use up a base you cannot get back - you will not call the same people a second time with the same opening.
We take over the preparation, you keep the conversation
Finding the signal, understanding the company's context and assembling the first version of the message can be done by machine. The decision who to call and what to say stays with the SDR.
- We do not write for the SDR, we prepare the ground. - They get a signal with evidence - a job ad, an announcement, a change of role - and a first version of the opening built on that signal. What they do with it is their decision.
- Nothing goes out without a person's approval. - No message sends itself. With a call that is obvious, with an email it is sometimes tempting - which is exactly why we write it down.
- Every signal has a source you can click. - The SDR can see where the system got the reason for contact and can reject it. A signal with no evidence is guesswork dressed as data.
Scope
What can be taken off an SDR
Twenty-five example tasks. Each one has a human approval point. Below is a selection, and the exact scope we fit to your process.
Finding the signal
- Reviewing job ads for roles that reveal a missing system or a new project
- Catching announcements about an investment, an acquisition, a new product line
- Detecting a change in a decision-making role at the companies you watch
- Collecting public statements by people at the company on the topic we sell
- Rejecting companies outside the criteria before anybody spends time on them (final qualification: the SDR)
Preparing for contact
- A summary of the company's situation in a few sentences, with links to the sources
- Establishing who at that company owns the process the signal concerns
- Checking whether the company is already in the CRM and with what history (decision to make contact: the SDR)
- A first version of the opening grounded in the specific signal (edited and sent by: the SDR)
- Two subject line variants to choose from
The sequence
- Laying out the sequence steps over time, with reminders
- Detecting contacts that dropped out of a sequence with no reply
- Marking automatic replies and out-of-office messages so they do not count as contact
- Pausing a sequence when the company has got in touch through another channel
- How well the openings worked after several weeks, not after one day
The conversation and its record
- Three opening questions prepared for the specific signal
- A suggested answer to a common brush-off, marked as material rather than a script
- Recording what was agreed into the CRM from the SDR's note (approved by: the SDR)
- Pulling out of the conversation what changes the company's qualification
- Marking companies worth returning to in a quarter, with the reason
Handing over to a salesperson
- A one-sentence brief for the salesperson: who, why now, what was agreed
- Checking the meeting has the full set of data required for it to be accepted
- Reminders about the meeting to both sides
- Returning a lead to the SDR when a meeting did not happen, with the reason
- A summary of which signals most often end in a meeting
A day's work
Today
- The morning goes on browsing portals and LinkedIn for anything that can be called a signal
- Before every call you read the company's website to know what to talk about at all
- The messages written in the afternoon are shorter and more generic than the morning ones
- The note from a conversation is written after three more calls, when the details have blurred
- You learn that a sequence is not working at the results review
- A company that said "not now" comes back onto the list by chance, or not at all
With AI assistance
- Today's list is waiting with signals and evidence - you decide which signals are worth a call
- You have the company's context in a few sentences, with a link to the source, before you pick up the phone
- The first version of the opening is ready; your work is fitting it, not writing from scratch
- You dictate the note after the call, and what was agreed lands on the right record
- A drop in how well an opening works is visible in the week it happens
- "Not now" comes back to you with the reason and on the agreed date
- Relevance
fewer calls to companies that had no reason to pick up
the criterion for contact stops being presence on a list and becomes a signal with evidence
- Speed of reacting to a signal
you call while the signal is fresh
a job ad or an announcement is caught as it appears, not while building a list
- Continuity after turnover
an SDR leaving does not zero out the knowledge of the market
the companies' context and the contact history sit in the system, not in somebody's head
- The quality of the handover
the salesperson gets a meeting with the full picture
the brief and the handover conditions are part of the process, not goodwill
We start with one stream of signals, not with rebuilding the whole of outbound.
- Step 1
We name the signals
We sit down with the team and establish what actually precedes a good conversation in your company. It usually turns out one or two kinds of event account for most of the successful contacts, and the rest of the list is habit.
- Step 2
One stream, one person
We take the strongest signal and build a daily list around it for one SDR. Narrow, so it can be judged whether it works before it covers the whole team.
- Step 3
Preparation and the record
The company's context before the conversation and the record of what was agreed after it. That second half decides whether anything beyond call statistics is left of the team's work.
- Step 4
Extending
Further signal streams and further people come in on settled rules. Measuring how well the openings work switches on only here - earlier there is nothing to base it on.
Common questions
Questions that come up at the first meeting
Will this not just be spam, only faster?
It would be, if the point were to increase the number of sends. Here the point is the opposite: fewer contacts, but only to companies where a reason here and now can be named. If the system finds no signal, the company does not go onto the list - and it does not go on "just in case".
The SDR will leave and the sequences and contacts will stay - whose are they in the end?
The company's. That is in fact one of the reasons it is worth putting in order: today half the knowledge of the market leaves with the person, because it sits in their notebook and their inbox. After the change it stays in the system, together with the reason a given company went onto the list.
Is this compliant with the GDPR and the rules on commercial contact?
It is worth naming the thing plainly, because it is the hardest question in outbound. Electronic communications law requires prior consent for marketing contact by email and by phone - including towards business recipients, which sometimes surprises people. Processing the contact data itself is a separate matter and there you usually rely on legitimate interests. Establishing on what basis you contact whom is part of the rollout rather than something automation sidesteps. The one thing that changes in your favour: every touch leaves a trail, so it is easier than before to show what you sent and on what basis.
Does this fall under the AI Act?
Preparing material for a sales conversation is not a high-risk use - nobody is being assessed here and no decisions are being made about people. The obligations concern transparency and oversight; we take them on and describe them in the rollout documentation.
We already have a sequencing tool. Why anything more?
A sequencing tool sends. It does not say who is worth sending to and why right now - and that is where the difference between a campaign and a conversation sits. If your tool already does that, we will say plainly that there is nothing to add.
Still have a question that is not here? Book a call
Next step
How many calls does your team make with no reason anyone could name?
We will show you what an SDR's day looks like when the morning list is ready and the preparation stops competing with the calling.