To the extent that most sellers today started their careers as SDRs and to the extent that there is a strong trend to replace SDRs with AI agents (e.g., Piper from Qualified), I have a simple question: whence will come tomorrow’s sellers? [1]
It’s not news that this is a trend across all entry-level work, though I just found a new paper on the topic by three people at Stanford who examined ADP payroll data as the basis for their analysis: Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence. And another one that analyzes resume and job posting data: Generative AI as Seniority-Biased Technological Change: Evidence from U.S. Résumé and Job Posting Data.
But in today’s post, we’re not going to look globally at the topic — no matter how interesting it is — but instead look specifically at just one question: if all the SDRs are AI agents, then where are we going to get sellers from?
I should also explain that I have a dog in the fight. My son Brian just graduated from NYU and started this summer as an SDR at Ramp. (If you’re a US-based company with 150+ employees and interested in spend management, please let me know and I can connect you.) I recommended that he take the job because it’s an amazing company, they have built an excellent sales machine (and the early-career learning on how to do things right is invaluable), and he definitely has both the raw material and the mettle to be successful in technology sales. But as I made the recommendation, I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d be in the final cohort of human SDRs.
My question actually has two parts, so let’s take them one at a time: (i) an assumption that SDRs will be replaced with AI agents, and (ii) the realization that doing so would seriously interrupt the sales career development pipeline.
Will All SDRs Be Agents?
I think the answer here is no, though I do think a good number of them will be. One easy division is inbound vs. outbound. Inbound SDRs primarily qualify and route people with intent (“hand raisers”) to sellers for a discovery and qualification meeting. Input: MQLs. Output: stage-1 opportunities. Outbound SDRs focus on some set of target accounts and work them via outreach sequences in order to get them to take a meeting. Input: contacts. Output: stage-1 opportunities. While they might also receive MQLs from their target accounts, they start higher in the funnel and are more responsible for developing interest in a meeting than someone who downloaded an asset, like it, and wants to speak to a seller.
I believe inbound SDRs provide less value than outbound SDRs and their job is more automatable. Ergo, I think inbound SDRs will be quickly replaced by AI or superannuated by targeted, hybrid inbound/outbound models (i.e., my job is to get into Citibank and I’ll take all the names, leads, and MQLs we have and leverage them to get meetings within the account).
I think outbound SDRs are here to stay. And Ramp, for what it’s worth, seems to agree. I know they’ve onboarded another cohort since Brian’s and they seem to believe that their SDR model works quite well for them. So if the old career path was inbound-SDR into outbound-SDR, I think the new one will start with a hybrid. You’re just an SDR and your job is to get meetings within some target. Sometimes you’ll have a lot of inbound interest to work with, sometimes you won’t.
The first-principles argument here is simple. When automated outreach sequences are table-stakes that every firm can easily do, the only way to break through the AI-generated and AI-automated noise will be via some combination of people/execution, message, and air support [2]. That’s why we’ll still need SDRs — and good ones — in the future.
Where Will We Find Tomorrow’s Sellers?
Since I believe there will be SDRs in the future, I think we’ll find our future sellers there. But in case that’s wrong, let’s examine where we might find them additionally or instead. I’m old enough to remember life before SDRs. So where did we find salesreps back then and where might we find them in the future?
- Junior sales roles. You’d work your up from smaller companies to bigger ones and from managing smaller accounts to bigger ones. This should still work.
- Sales training programs. Some companies were famous for their sales training programs, like Xerox or IBM. I’d differentiate those who emphasized entry-level sales training from those who hired sellers with some experience and who emphasized sales onboarding in a particular message or methodology (e.g., Salesforce, PTC). In the future, large companies who find themselves with a talent gap may need to create such programs, substituting Darwinian survival in the SDR ranks for a formal, and presumably demanding, training program. Once established, these companies will be targets for everyone else’s recruiting.
- Sales consultants. A difficult path but those who survive the transition are often your best sellers. Everytime I hear an SC complain about salesrep compensation, I say the same thing: “quotas are available.” Go grab one and see how you do. (Or don’t and stop complaining,)
- Customer success. I think this is an under-developed career path and hopefully, as CS gets more business-oriented and account-management-focused, that customer success will be more of a stepping stone into sales. Think: I developed my prospecting muscle as an SDR, I developed my closing and account management muscles as a CSM, and now I’m ready to be a salesrep.
As the SDR ranks shrink due to the pressure brought by AI, companies will have to be more creative about where they find their salespeople. Some will certainly walk up the SDR path. Others, the junior sales path. Some, the top sales training path. But I don’t believe there will be a shortage of sellers in the future. Just a shortage of good ones, as there is today.
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Notes
[1] Turns out that while both “whence” and “from whence” can be considered correct, technically standalone whence is still better in my humble opinion because whence means “from where” so “from whence” is, well, redundant.
[2] In the form of marketing, awareness, reputation, brand, etc.