Every day, sales reps spend hours on tasks that don’t require human insight - lead generation, data entry, follow-ups - yet these activities take up most of their time. Studies show that up to 65% of an SDR's workday is consumed by these repetitive tasks.
What if SDRs could redirect their energy from tedious, repetitive tasks to just building relationships with prospects?
AI sales assistants make this possible by automating the repetitive work, allowing teams to focus on what really moves the needle: building connections and closing deals.
In this blog, we’ll examine what AI sales assistants are, why they’re essential for outbound sales teams, how to choose the right one, and the different categories and top companies offering them.
Let’s dive in.
What Are AI Sales Assistants
AI sales assistants are tools that help sales teams manage routine tasks in the sales process. They process information like contact data and engagement and automate time-consuming activities like gathering insights and launching sequences.
These tools integrate with existing sales workflows, making managing leads, tracking interactions, and maintaining consistent communication easier. AI sales assistants can handle high volumes of tasks simultaneously, ensuring no opportunities are missed while enabling sales teams to focus on connecting with prospects and advancing deals.
In businesses where managing multiple prospects across long sales cycles is the norm, AI sales assistants act as reliable partners, reducing administrative burdens and improving overall productivity.
Why Do Outbound Sales Teams Today Need AI Sales Assistants?
Sales teams constantly juggle multiple tasks, many of which are time-consuming and manual. From finding the right leads to personalized outreach, these responsibilities take valuable time away from engaging with high-potential prospects.
Here's a closer look at some of their most common challenges.
1. Wasting Hours on Manual Contact Searches
Sales reps often waste hours manually searching for leads that fit their target profile. Sifting through databases or cold-calling irrelevant prospects is time-consuming, leading to missed opportunities or inefficient use of time on unqualified leads.
2. Spending Too Much Time on Account Research Across Various Sources
Sales reps can spend up to two hours researching a single account, gathering details from sources like LinkedIn profiles, company websites, press releases, and industry news. This time-intensive process makes it difficult to keep up with outreach efforts. It also ties into the long-standing debate in sales engagement: should you prioritize personalization or scale? Many reps struggle to strike the right balance, and in trying to do both, they often end up doing neither. Overwhelmed, they skip research entirely and resort to generic outreach that fails to connect with prospects meaningfully.
3. Verifying and Updating Prospect Lists
Building accurate, relevant prospect lists takes hours of work, often relying on outdated data, such as changes in job roles or companies, and incomplete information, like missing phone numbers or email addresses. As a result, reps waste time reaching out to incorrect contacts, leading to ineffective outreach and lost opportunities.
4. Getting Stuck Between Generic Templates and Time-Consuming Customization
Writing personalized emails for every prospect can take up a significant portion of a rep’s day. Without proper tools, they either use generic templates or spend hours crafting emails for every cohort, diverting time from other important tasks. This slows down the outreach process and reduces their overall volume of outreach.
5. Manually Sending LinkedIn Messages, Limiting Outreach Scale
Sales reps struggle to scale LinkedIn outreach while maintaining personalization. Manually sending connection requests and follow-up messages becomes tedious, and without automation, they often fall short of engaging prospects at scale, missing key opportunities for relationship-building.
Qualities to Look For in an AI Sales Assistant for Outbound
1. Flexibility with Your Sales Process
An AI sales assistant should integrate smoothly with your existing sales workflows and methodologies. It needs to adapt to your prospect’s stages of engagement, from prospecting to closing, without forcing you to change how you operate. Whether automating tasks or supporting your sales cadence, the AI should simplify your process, not disrupt it.
2. Support for Multi-Step Sequences
An AI sales assistant must be able to handle complex, multi-step outreach cadences, managing branching workflows where different prospect groups receive tailored messages and follow-ups at the right time. It should assist reps across all channels where prospects are active - email and LinkedIn - and automatically manage multiple segments based on prospect behavior. It should be able to understand each prospect's stage of engagement, ensuring that outreach is always timely, relevant, and aligned with where the prospect is in the sales process.
3. Scalability
An AI sales assistant must help you scale across your TAM by providing access to data such as geographies, firmographics, and prospect behaviors. It should enable you to target segments you may not currently be reaching, expanding your outreach and improving coverage. For example, if you're currently targeting companies in the tech sector, the AI sales assistant can help you broaden your focus to include industries like finance or healthcare, increasing your market reach.
4. Consistency and Reliability in Execution
Reliability is critical for maintaining consistency in outreach. Your AI sales assistant must handle routine tasks without error, ensuring timely follow-ups, and ongoing lead engagement. A dependable AI assistant ensures your team remains on top of all interactions and that no lead is overlooked due to inconsistent execution. AI prevents common errors like missed follow-ups, duplicate entries, or incorrect data capture, ensuring that outreach remains precise and on schedule.
5. Integration with Your Tech Stack
An AI sales assistant must work with your existing tools - CRM, email, calendar, sales engagement platform, dialer, etc. It should pull and update data automatically, triggering actions based on your sales process. This eliminates manual data entry and keeps all systems aligned without requiring extra steps or causing disruptions.
Types of AI Sales Assistants for Outbound Sales
1. AI SDR Assistants
Tools that use AI to automate manual, repetitive sales tasks that a human SDR would typically do.
SDRx
SDRx is an AI SDR that automates your sales outreach from start to finish - list building to meeting scheduling so that you can focus on high-value activities like calls.
Key Features
- Targeted List Building: SDRx identifies your ICP to generate precise account and prospect lists. Then, it enriches their emails and phone numbers to run multi-channel outreach.
- In-Depth Prospect Research: SDRx understands accounts deeply and collects actionable insights from internal sources like your CRM, and external data sources like Linkedin, 10-K reports, etc.
- Email Deliverability: SDRx ensures email deliverability by combining multiple strategies: it warms up email accounts to build sender reputation, rotates inboxes to avoid spam triggers, authenticates messages using DKIM and SPF, controls sending frequency and volume to maintain a natural cadence, employs custom domain tracking to prevent blacklisting, and randomizes sending patterns to mimic human interactions - all while safeguarding inbox placement and engagement.
- Email Creation: SDRx creates personalized emails using 25 proven frameworks, increasing your chances of getting responses.
- LinkedIn Outreach: SDRx sends connection requests based on your target criteria and automatically engages with prospects who accept those requests. Messages are personalized using details from each prospect’s profile, increasing the likelihood of meaningful interactions. Unaccepted connection requests are removed after 30 days to maintain a clean outreach process.
- Quality Control Check: SDRx performs hallucination checks, ensures proper structure and formatting, and verifies correct links in each email. SDRx uses a research agent to validate the accuracy of the information used in outreach.
- Adaptive Follow-Ups to Prospect’s Journey: SDRx automatically customizes follow-up email frequency and messaging based on the prospect’s buying stage and awareness levels, ensuring its outreach remains relevant.
Pricing
Contact SDRx to know more.
Piper
Piper is an AI SDR that engages website visitors in real time to qualify leads, schedule meetings, and drive conversions.
Key Features
- Real-time Visitor Engagement: Engages website visitors instantly through AI-powered chat to qualify leads and drive conversations.
- Lead Qualification: Uses AI to automatically qualify prospects based on their behavior and engagement.
- Meeting Scheduling: Schedules meetings with prospects, integrating with calendars.
- Conversation Insights: Provides valuable insights from interactions to help sales teams improve strategies and close rates.
Pricing
Piper offers 3 pricing plans, starting at $3,500 per month for basic functionalities.
2. AI Prospecting Assistants
Tools designed to identify and prioritize potential leads based on specific criteria, helping sales teams focus on high-value prospects.
Growbots
Growbots is an AI Prospecting Assistant that automates your lead generation by delivering AI-curated lists of prospects based on your target criteria.
Key Features
- AI-Powered Lead Generation: Automatically identifies and generates leads based on custom criteria like industry, company size, and job titles.
- Smart Segmentation: Allows users to segment leads dynamically based on various attributes and behavior patterns for more targeted outreach.
- Lead Enrichment: Automatically enriches lead profiles with additional data, such as social media accounts and company details, to improve targeting accuracy.
Pricing
Growbots offers a free plan with basic features, along with Starter and Pro plans priced based on your daily email sending needs, starting at $29/month and going up to $1,950/month.
Conversica
Conversica is an AI Prospecting Assistant that engages, follows up with, and nurtures your leads, freeing sales teams from manual prospecting tasks.
Key Features
- Automated Lead Engagement: Conversica uses AI to automatically reach out to leads through email, initiating and maintaining conversations until a response is received.
- Personalized Communication: The AI personalizes each message based on lead behavior, ensuring relevant and engaging interactions tailored to each prospect.
- Lead Qualification: It automatically qualifies leads by evaluating responses, helping sales teams focus on high-potential prospects while the AI handles initial outreach.
- Persistent Follow-Ups: The AI conducts continuous follow-up emails until a prospect responds, reducing the risk of leads slipping through the cracks.
Pricing
Growbots pricing details are unavailable on the website.
3. AI List Building Assistants
Tools that help identify, enrich, and manage targeted prospect lists using automated data analysis.
Snov.io
Snov is an AI list-building assistant that finds emails validates them, and helps users grow their lead lists.
Key Features
- Email Finder: Helps you find email addresses based on the prospect’s name and company, offering options for bulk searches.
- Domain Search: Allows you to search for emails linked to a specific domain, ideal for gathering contacts from companies.
- LinkedIn Email Finder: Extracts email addresses from LinkedIn profiles, aiding in prospecting directly from social media.
- Lead Generation & Enrichment: Collects data from publicly available sources to enrich lead profiles with additional contact information.
Pricing
Snov.io offers tiered pricing plans to accommodate various user needs. Each plan scales in terms of features and limits to suit businesses of different sizes and requirements. Starts at $39/month, and goes up to $738/month.
FindThatLead
FindThatLead is an AI list-building agent that searches for and verifies contact information, creating high-quality prospect lists for outreach.
Key Features
- Email Finder: Extracts verified email addresses from LinkedIn profiles and other sources.
- Prospect Generation: Allows users to find leads by specifying target demographics and locations.
- Enrichment: Provides additional details like company size, industry, and social media profiles for leads.
- Bulk Actions: Supports bulk searches and exports, making it easy to handle large prospecting tasks.
- Email Verification: Ensures the validity of email addresses to minimize bounce rates.
Pricing
FindThatLead has Starter ($49/month) and Pro ($99/month) plans based on your user and credit counts.
4. AI Account Research Assistants
Tools that use artificial intelligence to automate the process of gathering, enriching, and analyzing information about target accounts.
Ocean.io
Ocean.io is an AI account research assistant that analyzes firmographic data, intent signals, and activity patterns to identify and prioritize high-potential target accounts.
Key Features
- AI-Powered Lookalike Search: Lets users input URLs of companies they've successfully sold to and finds similar companies based on their website descriptions.
- Precise Vertical Targeting: Categorizes companies based on specific industry activities.
- Comprehensive Contact Data: Provides access to key decision-makers' contact details.
Pricing
Ocean.io offers a free plan with basic features, along with Premium and Pro plans, starting at $59/month and going up to $1090/month.
Crystal Knows
Crystal Knows is an AI account research assistant that analyzes publicly available data and provides insights into the personality and communication style of decision-makers within target accounts.
Key Features
- Personality Insights: Analyzes publicly available data to provide detailed personality profiles of decision-makers.
- Communication Style Analysis: Helps identify the preferred communication styles of key stakeholders within accounts.
- Behavioral Insights: Predicts how decision-makers are likely to engage with different communication approaches.
Pricing
Crystal Knows offers Premium ($49/month), Business (contact sales), and Enrichment (contact sales) plans based on team size and requirements.
5. Email Assistants
Tools designed to generate personalized email content and improve engagement through real-time suggestions and analytics.
Lavender
Lavender is an AI email assistant designed to help sales teams craft better emails faster by offering real-time feedback and generating optimized email content.
Key Features
- Real-Time Email Feedback: Provides instant feedback on your email drafts, suggesting improvements for better engagement and clarity.
- Personalization Recommendations: Suggests personalized elements for each email, such as subject lines, opening lines, and calls to action, based on the recipient’s profile.
- Tone Adjustments: Analyzes the tone of your email and recommends changes to ensure it matches your desired approach (e.g., formal, casual, friendly).
Pricing
Lavender offers a Basic plan that’s free forever, along with Starter ($27/month), Individual Pro ($45/month), and Team (custom) plans.
Smart Writer
Smart Writer is an AI email writing assistant that helps sales teams create high-conversion email sequences and individual emails by leveraging AI to better content based on previous interactions.
Key Features
- AI-Powered Email Generation: Automatically generates personalized email copy based on the prospect’s behavior and engagement history.
- Sequence Creation: Helps create complete email sequences, from cold outreach to follow-ups, with AI-generated suggestions for timing and content.
- Behavior-Driven Personalization: Tailors email content based on specific actions taken by the prospect (e.g., clicking a link, or opening a previous email).
- A/B Testing: Automatically tests different email variations to identify the best-performing subject lines, content, and tone.
Pricing
Smart Writer offers Basic ($59/month), Popular ($149/month), and Pro ($359/month) plans.
6. LinkedIn Outreach Assistants
Tools designed to automate LinkedIn prospecting and engagement.
Expandi
Expandi is an AI LinkedIn outreach assistant designed to help sales teams automate and personalize connection requests, messaging sequences, and follow-ups.
Key Features
- Automated Outreach: Automates LinkedIn connection requests, message sequences, and follow-ups, saving time while maintaining personalized interactions.
- Smart Targeting: Allows users to segment prospects based on specific criteria, ensuring more relevant and effective outreach campaigns.
- Personalized Messaging: Customizes messages based on profile data and interactions, making each outreach more personalized and engaging.
- Safe Automation: Ensures LinkedIn account safety by limiting actions to avoid triggering LinkedIn’s automation restrictions.
Pricing
Expandi offers Business ($99/month) and Agency (custom) plans.
LinkedHelper
LinkedHelper is an AI LinkedIn outreach assistant that automates connection requests, message sending, and profile visits on LinkedIn.
Key Features
- Automated Connection Requests: Sends personalized connection requests to targeted profiles.
- Message Automation: Automates sending personalized follow-up messages after connections are made.
- Profile Visits: Automatically visits LinkedIn profiles to increase visibility and engagement.
- Safe Automation: Includes settings to control and limit actions to avoid LinkedIn restrictions and ensure account safety.
Pricing
LinkedHelper offers Standard ($15/month) and Pro ($45/month) plans.
‘Hiring’ the Right AI Sales Assistant For Your Outbound Sales Process
AI sales assistants are quickly becoming a staple in sales workflows, with four out of five companies seeing AI as a critical part of their business plans (Source: G2). Unlike human reps, who are limited by time and capacity, AI sales assistants operate 24/7, delivering consistent performance. By keeping your outreach active around the clock, they allow your sales reps to focus on meaningful conversations.
While different AI sales assistants handle individual parts of the sales process, the ideal AI sales assistant works across your sales process, handling all your outreach efforts from prospecting to engagement to getting your meetings booked.
SDRx acts as your all-in-one AI sales assistant and
- Builds targeted lists
- Conducts in-depth account research on your prospects
- Crafts personalized emails using 25 copywriting frameworks
- Carries out LinkedIn outreach
- Adapts follow-ups to your prospect’s buying stage
If you’re looking to improve your sales outreach with an AI sales assistant, book a demo of SDRx to learn more.
