To ensure its AI SDR performed at an elite level, Qualified based its capabilities, speed, and knowledge on their best-ever human SDR, Blake. This "best performer" benchmark became the north star for product development, ensuring the agent was designed to replicate proven success from day one.
Don't expect an AI agent to invent a successful sales process. First, have your human team identify and document what works—effective emails, scripts, and objection handling. Then, train the AI on this proven playbook to execute it flawlessly and at scale. The AI is a scaling tool, not a strategist from day one.
To build truly effective agents, adopt a "founder's level of service" mindset. This involves an intensive discovery process to become a temporary expert in the client's business, culture, and brand voice. This deep, meticulous care ensures the final AI system is perfectly aligned with the client's intentions.
To foster adoption and prevent resentment, Qualified gives its human sales reps quota credit for meetings and pipeline generated by the AI agent if it falls within their territory. This reframes the AI as a helpful collaborator that contributes to their success, rather than a competitor for valuable inbound leads.
Beyond automating 80% of customer inquiries with AI, Sea leverages these tools as trainers for its human agents. They created an AI "custom service trainer" to improve the performance and consistency of their human support team, creating a powerful symbiotic system rather than just replacing people.
Don't let an AI agent generate sales copy from scratch. The key to creating high-quality, effective outreach is to train the model using the proven email templates and scripts from your highest-performing salesperson. This provides a strong baseline for the AI to iterate and test from.
Don't just "turn on" an AI sales agent and expect results. The only path to success is to first identify what works with your human reps—the scripts, the process, the data. Then, you must manually train the AI on that proven playbook, iterating and refining its performance daily for at least a month. The AI automates success; it doesn't create it from scratch.
By building a custom AI assistant integrated into Salesforce, Personio dramatically increased its expansion SDRs' productivity. The tool consolidates customer information from over 10 systems, reducing daily research time from two hours to just 15 minutes and doubling the pipeline generated per employee.
To ensure product quality, Fixer pitted its AI against 10 of its own human executive assistants on the same tasks. They refused to launch features until the AI could consistently outperform the humans on accuracy, using their service business as a direct training and validation engine.
Create a dedicated AI agent pre-loaded with your company's specific deal qualifiers (budget, timeline, ICP). Feed it discovery call notes, and it can instantly score the opportunity or flag it as disqualified, preventing reps from wasting time on deals that will never close.
A common misconception is that AI agents are "set it and forget it" technology. In reality, they require daily coaching, especially in the first 30-60 days. Using scorecards, giving feedback, and continuously training them on new offers and content is crucial for maintaining brand voice and ensuring high performance.