You hire SDRs to grow the pipeline which means more calls, more conversations, more deals. So why should they spend most of their time on everything before the call like research and prospecting instead of actually talking to buyers?

Why most sales leaders decide to hire

End of quarter. Pipeline looks dry. Targets feel heavy. You approve two more SDR roles to make more dials and fill the calendar. The team’s under pressure, new markets are opening, leadership wants more meetings.
But are your existing SDRs working at full capacity? Will your new hires be able to contribute directly to the pipeline?

What you want vs. what you get

When you hire SDRs, your intent is simple: generate more qualified opportunities. You imagine more outreach, more dials, and a steady stream of discovery calls.
But what really happens? An SDR’s day looks busy on paper. Under the hood, 60–70% of the time goes into prospecting, researching, enriching contacts, updating CRMs, and rewriting the same outreach messages. New reps will do the same. Hours disappear into research, list building, qualification, data enrichment, and admin cleanup.
This means your team is spending less than half their time on the one thing that actually moves your pipeline: making dials and having conversations with active buyers.

Revenue-Generating Activities (RGA)

What counts as RGA

• Live cold calls and scheduled discovery calls

• Product demos and pricing/negotiation calls

• High-intent follow-ups (replying to hand-raisers, no-shows, warm referrals)

• Closing support with AEs (handoffs, next-step confirmations)

What does not count as RGA

• Prospect research, list building, and enrichment

• Writing/rewriting templated emails and LinkedIn messages

• CRM cleanup, data entry, and manual lead qualification

• Ad-hoc admin, browsing, and context switching

Are your SDRs spending 100% of their time on RGA?

Before adding headcount, check if your current SDRs are near 100% on RGA. That means calendars are full with qualified calls, show rates are strong, and deals move through the funnel.
If you’re not there yet, you don’t need more people — you need to give your SDRs more time to make dials.

Where AI SDRs fit

Think of an AI SDR as a virtual teammate that handles every non-revenue task. It finds accounts, researches contacts, checks qualification data, drafts outreach, and keeps everything updated — so your human reps spend their time on conversations, discovery, and negotiation.
The result: fuller calendars, fewer tabs, and more deals moving forward.

How do AI SDRs do this? (Example: a data tech company reducing compute costs)

1. Find the right companies. Build a broad list. Look for signals like data engineering teams growing >20% YoY, or job posts mentioning “reduce compute cost.”

2. Quick checks to qualify. Filter for 500–5,000 employees, digital-first, customer-facing analytics, and cloud spend above ~$1M/year.

3. Deep qualification. Read websites, job posts, and tech stacks. Check use of the 10 key competitors you can replace. Filter out GCP/Azure if you only support AWS.

4. Structured data. Return everything as clean, traceable JSON with reasons for every keep/drop. Easy to tweak and improve.

5. Score and tier accounts. The AI SDR scores companies and categorises them into Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 based on fit and intent.

6. Start automated groundwork. Enrol Tier 1 and Tier 2 accounts into an existing LinkedIn Ad sequence to warm them up.

7. Cold email with context. Find and qualify contacts via Apollo and Sales Navigator, tag by seniority/department, and send personalised email sequences to all three tiers using the gathered context.

8. Update scores from engagement. Track ad impressions/clicks, email opens/replies/clicks, and refresh account/lead scores automatically.

9. Daily LinkedIn motions. Enrol the top 20 leads each day into an automated connection sequence. Everyone who accepts gets personalised DMs using all the context.

10. Bring in human SDRs for RGA. Create tasks in the CRM so reps focus only on revenue work:

    1. Cold call the top 50 leads each day (by score/intent)

    2. Engage with the top 10 on-topic LinkedIn posts worth commenting on

    3. Send 5 voice notes to the highest-value leads who accepted connections

11. Instant hand-offs on high intent. High-intent actions (demo requests, content downloads, pricing page views >90 seconds, etc.) go straight to a Slack channel for immediate SDR follow-up.
    
    

What does this mean for headcount?

Maybe you do need more SDRs — new verticals, new markets, and higher targets can justify it. But hire only after your current reps are spending close to 100% of their time on RGA and their calendars are already full of qualified, active buyers to dial.
An AI SDR helps them do exactly that — more dials, more conversations, and more selling — the work that actually hits quota and KPIs and directly grows pipeline.

About Side Kick

Side Kick is an AI SDR agency that helps B2B sales teams focus only on revenue-generating activities — calls, demos, and closing deals. We handle everything else so your team can book 20–50% more qualified meetings.
We get data quality right, personalise with real context, and can run a pilot campaign so you can see if this is what you need.
If your sales team does more “research” and less “selling”, it’s time to give them a Side Kick.