11/18/2025
Most SMBs are drowning in lead gen advice but starving for actual pipeline. Here's what we're seeing work in 2025:
The old playbook:
→ Hire an SDR ($60K+ fully loaded)→ Give them a CRM and a phone→ Hope they figure it out→ Watch them burn out in 6 months
The new playbook:
→ AI researches your ICP daily→ Personalized outreach at scale→ Real-time reply handling→ Meetings booked automatically→ Zero manual data entry
We just deployed this for a Texas insurance agency.
25 leads/day → 5-8 replies → 2-3 bookings/week. All while their team focused on closing instead of prospecting.
The cost? Less than 1/3 of an SDR salary.
The kicker: AI doesn't take vacation, doesn't have bad days, and improves with every conversation.
Not saying human SDRs are replaced. But if you're an SMB trying to scale with limited resources, you can't afford to ignore this shift.
The companies winning right now aren't the ones with the biggest sales teams. They're the ones automating the grunt work so their people can focus on what actually requires human judgment.