The BDR role is often both the hardest and most underappreciated role in any organization.
Business Development Representatives are tasked with:
- Calling prospects
- Sending hundreds of emails per day
- Multi-threading across target accounts
- Attending events on behalf of their company
As one B2B SaaS CEO recently wrote on LinkedIn: “The BDR job is harder than it’s ever been. There are just not enough human hours in a day for BDRs to be consistently successful.”
There’s a key phrase in that quote — “human hours” — that reveals where organizations can look to improve BDR performance.
AI email assistants personalize emails at scale with generative AI and handle follow-up until a human is needed. AI tools help BDRs become far more efficient. A 6sense research report found that 65% of BDRs say AI tools make them more productive. And based on the performance of our own AI email tool, we’re seeing a 33% increase in opportunities created.
Let’s look at why and how AI email assistants can take your BDR performance to the next level.
Why BDRs (and their Orgs) Need AI Email Help
BDRs are busy. For a moment, let’s grant them super-human endurance and efficiency for the sake of making some assumptions. If each contact attempt they perform takes three minutes (which requires strong tech integrations to achieve), that means they’re doing roughly 20 activities an hour or 160 per day.
But most of these activities won’t move the needle in terms of generating opportunities or moving deals forward. Some resources suggest that BDRs send over 100 emails a day. That revved-to-the-redline workload often results in quick burnout: the average BDR tenure is only 18 months.
Using AI to craft and send emails is fruitful territory for increased productivity because it frees up BDRs to spend their time having conversations rather than fishing for signs of life.
“It’s not you versus AI email writer. It’s you and the AI. It’s a collaborative approach,” says Michael Brown, Head of Global Business Development at Reltio, which has seen email open rates increase while allowing BDRs to focus on more impactful conversations.
As another example, Custom Truck One Source saved over 738 hours of work using 6sense’s AI email assistant, Conversational Email. “The amount of work Conversational Email does in a day would take someone on my team a week to do. It’s like having five more SDRs working simultaneously,” said Walker Smith, Manager of Sales Development.
How AI Email Assistants Transform the BDR Role and Organizational Performance
Let’s take a look at use cases in which AI email assistants are particularly effective.
These tools reduce the stress and anxiety of daily BDR life by:
- Crafting personalized emails quickly and at scale with generative AI features.
- Reducing the number of BDR activities needed to open opportunities (6sense has seen a 57% reduction).
- Improving the impact they have with their activities (6sense has seen a 33% increase in opportunities created by BDRs using Conversational Email).
“Conversational Email is not only making BDRs’ lives easier, it’s also impacting the entire revenue team,” says Hanna Martin, BDR Operations Specialist at 6sense. “Our CRO and SVP of Marketing are thrilled because we are increasing pipeline AND reducing activities needed to create a qualified opportunity. Overall, it is a story of true GTM efficiency.”
Since rolling out Conversational Email to customers, there have been plenty of similar success stories:
- Vendavo sourced $3.3M in pipeline from Conversational Email campaigns
- Marathon Health generated $4.5 net-new pipeline with Conversational Email
- Reltio increased pipeline production 63%
Conclusion
For BDRs, AI email assistants are here to help them spend more time with potential customers and less time hunting for people who are willing to talk.
Interested in learning more about how an AI email assistant can boost your BDR’s productivity? Check out a demo of Conversational Email here.
