The Cyborg SDR: 5 Insights for Blending AI and Humans in Sales

Ladies and gentlemen, I surely don't need to tell you how AI has become a game-changer for several professions and that it will continue to impact our work, right?

After all, there are a ton of posts and content on how AI will take our jobs, burn down our houses, and farm us as batteries, and several others more on how it can make you a millionaire in a month with almost no friction.

However, instead of sharing another 10,127 prompt ideas for finding a new job, or writing your next business plan to achieve 1 million dollars in no time, I will share 5 actionable insights and tools you can apply now to make your life and sales better.

The Power of Human Touch In Sales

All the advancements of generative AI are super cool and can save a lot of time, but at the end of the day who buys is a human who has the power to decide if going to make a purchase decision with the help of a human or a bot.

What do numbers say about that?

In general, people prefer to talk and do business with other people, and I tell you by personal experience. Cool sales enablement systems definitely are valuable tools but, in the majority of cases in B2B, the sales decision will be made after a moment of human-to-human interaction.

However, this doesn't mean that AI didn't impact the work in sales (and will continue to impact). There is a lot of preparation and repetitive work that happens before and after moments of human-to-human interaction.

Where AI Can Augment the Sales Person

Ok. Now that I probably got your attention, and you probably noticed that I like memes, let's jump into the 5 actionable insights and tools.

1. Personalized Email Campaigns

If you ever did run email B2B outreach campaigns you definitely know that just sending emails, even with a clear ICP, can sometimes do more harm than good.

From every 10 videos about successful outreach campaigns, 11 you tell you how important it is to personalize your emails with 'icebreakers" after doing your research.

The fact is, in my experience, that rarely personalization will make a person a B2B person, even matching your ICP, making a purchase decision that doesn't solve an issue painful enough.

So, in the end, good personalization will help guarantee that the right doesn't confuse your approach with another crap of thousand they receive every day.

Here, in the effort to research and personalize, you can start using generative AI in your favor. Tools, like Apollo.io , have offer generative AI to help you to craft engaging and personalized messages. It will save a lot of your time.

However, finally, it's good to remind you that the quality of your results depends on the quality of the information you input (prompt). Crap in, Crap out.

2. Linkedin Outreach and Content

Here is another piece of advice that you probably did read somewhere. When it comes to B2B, just focusing on email outreach campaigns is probably not the optimal way.

Besides the personalized outreach, you should explore LinkedIn, and boost your founder and business brand by creating helpful and actionable content.

The process of reaching out on LinkedIn is similar to the email one in a way that it will work best if you personalize your messages after doing your homework, and, of course, that's a kind of work that you should use AI in your favor.

For that, a tool like lemlist will provide you with generative AI for creating engaging campaigns in no time, and you can and should add your spices too.

Finally, when it comes to creating helpful and engaging content for Linkedin, you could always use common generative AI bots like ChatGPT, Bard, or the amazing Claude by Anthropic , but if you want to go another level I suggest trying Taplio .

To make it short, Taplio (also from the Lemlist family) will allow you to curate hot topics and posts, and use generative AI to create post proposals in no time.

Finally, another great option for creating content not only for Linkedin is Writesonic . The solution, besides the normal inputs like topics and descriptions of what you want to achieve, allows you to input other successful posts and articles as an inspiration to their powerful generative AI engine.

3. Video Prospecting

Video prospecting is cool. If made correctly and personalised it will increase the chances of the person paying attention to what you have to say.

The problem?

1. It's very time-consuming, and because of that, if there is a lot of time pressure it can look like a template presentation with your name on it.
2. If you have plenty of time and go too wild on research, there is a thin line between sounding friendly and sounding like a stalker ready to break out in your house while you're sleeping.

For issue number 2, it's up to you to find the right dosage that fits your campaign, however for issue number 1, generative AI can save you big time.

For that purpose, tools like Reachout.ai make it possible to use AI for creating personalized outreach videos, and if you're into avatars, you can use tools like HeyGen to create your own personal and realistic avatar for outreach.

4. Personalised Newsletters

Still, on the topic of content generation, one action usually overlooked by most companies, is sending personalized newsletters based on individual interests.

While it is definitely a time-consuming task, especially if you're a startup with a small team, relevant content helps in your brand awareness and increases the likelihood of conversions.

AI-powered newsletters use AI to personalize content for each reader based on their interests, behavior, and past interactions. Sending personalized newsletters that are highly relevant to the reader increases the likelihood of engagement and conversions.

There are email marketing platforms like Mailscribe that offer generative AI for the creation and optimization of your newsletters, or you can always combine tools like the already mentioned Writesonic for content creation, and combine with your favorite distribution platform like Substack or beehiiv .

5. Onboarding and Coaching Sales Agents

Finally and moving from the theme of content generation and outreach, another area where generative AI is deeply impacting is L&D (Learn and Development).

After the launching of tools like ChatGPT, Bard, and Claude, there is a big probability that you, like me, very often use generative AI for learning.

Looking at the big picture, we could say that two of the main benefits are:

• Being able to create more personalized and adaptive learning plans and experiences.
• Making learning more accessible and affordable. After all, now you don't need to be a part of a royal family to have a dedicated tutor 24/7 available for topics from Excel tricks to super strings theory.

Now going back to sales, and considering the average time managers and seniors are required to apply to onboard and continuously develop sales representatives, this is also another topic where you can take advantage of AI.

AI-powered mentors like Yera help to onboard and continuously coach sales and service teams based on real-life interactions between them and clients and potential clients.

To Wrap it Up...

AI is great for automating stuff, but the human touch is still gold, especially in sales. Forget the hype about AI making us rich overnight. What matters are real, useful tools and tips that can make a difference in our work and sales game.

I hope you find the insights and tools useful, and if you'd like to question or get some extra advice just drop me a DM.

See you.

Eduardo