So I think AI will destroy Outbound. It’s already started to. And it’s just going to accelerate, quickly.
What do I mean? First, even the AI we have today used correctly is a huge aid to AEs and SDRs alike. It can do research for you. Improve your emails. Assemble target lists. Set up meetings, to an extent. And yes … run those … dreaded … cadences for you.
And that’s where I think Outbound will be partially destroyed by AI.
Here’s a conversation I literally have with 2-3 sales execs a week. Every single week:
“I’ve got a proprietary AI system and I’ll do targeted outbound with it. It really works.”
Ahem. I then explain to them what the startup, or even SaaStr itself, really needs is thoughtful ABM. A careful, strategic, account-by-account approach to outreach. Slow it down, better carefully research outreach to a handful or several hundred key prospects. A curated, go eep approach.
The sales exec hardly pauses when I explain this, and then always says again the same phrase or a variant thereof: “I’ve got a proprietary AI system and I’ll do targeted outbound with it. It really works.”
It’s all they want to do, that’s the problem. “Set and forget” AI Outbound. The Lowest Lift Outbound. Be it enterprise, mid-market, or SMB. Run an AI-powered outbound set of campaigns. It’s just endless cadences, 2.0, but even more of them. Even more emails that won’t really work. Slightly better than pre-AI for sure. But 100x more of them will on balance make them even worse.
Here’s the thing: if this is your magical sales strategy in 2024, it’s not going to work. Not enough. A slightly better email sent by a computer is not going to solve my problem. It’s not going to really know how I use a workflow or product. It’s not even really going to know what my competitors use and how and why.
Outbound still works in 2024. But you have to slow it down and do a much better job of it.
Too many managers and high velocity sales execs want to do the opposite. Have AI magically do all the work for them.
I think that will be the death of outbound. Not all of it. But the final death of the crappy cadence. And the death of the outbound motion for many. Too many today don’t want to put in the human work to do it right. Even with a big AI assist.
(image from here)
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Jason Lemkin, Khareem Sudlow
