‍AI SDRs today – there’s no free lunch

There are 3 million inside sales reps in the US alone. And AI is transforming their jobs.

These reps now have access to powerful AI tools that unlock massive productivity gains. But “AI SDRs” are spamming inboxes with high-volume, low-quality outreach. That makes it harder than ever to break through the noise.

In the near term, we’ve seen fast adopters of new AI tech gain a temporary advantage from “personalizing at scale”. But the majority of teams who try an AI SDR churn after 3 months. 

Replacing reps with AI might save you money on headcount, but the cost is losing trust from your buyers. There’s no free lunch, especially in outbound. 

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Human reps 🤝 AI assistants

Soon, we’ll see the AI playing-field has leveled, spam filters have evolved, and we’re back to the fundamentals. How do you stand out when everything is AI? Be human!

We believe the future is human reps working with AI assistants. Our AI assistants take care of busywork so reps can focus on the strategic, human parts of sales. We intentionally call them “assistants” not “agents” because assistants empower reps; they don’t replace them.

The Nooks journey

Our first product was the AI dialer to boost quality conversations with prospects over the phone. It handles the busywork in calling - finding phone numbers, skipping answering machines, leaving voicemails, prepping talk-tracks, taking notes, etc. We didn’t realize it at the time, but this was our first AI assistant.

The world’s fastest-growing companies use the AI Dialing Assistant to generate over 70% of their pipeline. Teams typically double their pipeline generated per rep within days of starting our free trial. And reps love using the platform – they spend 3 hours per day on it. 

Strategically, it was very important to start with calling. Unlike most AI tools, reps actually use and love it. And it quickly demonstrates tangible ROI. Calls also provide the richest data at the top-of-funnel and they’re at the center of so many sales workflows: cleaning data, determining follow-ups, coaching reps, improving messaging, etc.

And since calling requires live conversations with prospects, it’s one of the key workflows that will always require a human rep.

Expanding beyond calling

While calling is the most successful outbound channel, we knew our customers still needed help in other areas. Managers spend much of their week listening to calls, doing role plays, and identifying areas to improve. Meanwhile, reps spend most of their time researching accounts, building prospect lists, and writing emails.

With this fundraising announcement, we’re excited to also announce two new assistants:

• The AI Coaching Assistant helps reduce ramp times and increase conversion rates. It transcribes and scores every call to understand areas to improve your talk track. It also simulates conversations with realistic AI roleplay so you can practice before talking to real prospects. The Coaching Assistant drastically reduces management overhead and ensures excellence across large teams.

• The AI Prospecting Assistant helps scale best-practices of your top rep. It conducts in-depth research on target accounts, builds lists of prospects, and drafts emails to them. The Prospecting Assistant analyzes data from calls, notes, and opportunities in the CRM as well as online research from LinkedIn, job openings, landing pages, etc. to help land high-converting leads and save you hours a day.

Many customers are already seeing amazing results from these assistants ranging from a 50% decrease in ramp times, to countless hours per week saved by both managers & reps, and even 2x converting leads.

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Our AI Sales Assistant Platform (ASAP)

We’re launching these assistants as the initial building blocks of our AI Sales Assistant Platform (ASAP). The future of AI in sales will feature highly skilled sales reps leading teams of AI assistants, all integrated through the ASAP. These assistants work together seamlessly, eliminating the need for reps to manually connect disparate tools. Most importantly, the human rep is at the wheel - they drive strategy, build relationships, and empathize with prospects.

The Dialing, Coaching, and Prospecting Assistants are tightly coupled so reps don’t need to think about fragmented tool stacks and they can focus on the thing that matters – the prospect. For example:

• Buying signals, account summaries, and emails drafted by the Prospecting Assistant show up directly in the dialer to inform your talk track
• The Dialing Assistant automatically detects follow-ups and referrals in calls so the Prospecting Assistant can target the right prospects at an account
• The AI roleplay is trained directly on calls from the dialer. After a real call, you can even “try again” on a simulated AI version of that prospect
• Prospect personas are shared across each of the assistants, providing a unified experience for analytics, battlecards, roleplay, and targeted campaigns

And as we add new assistants to ASAP, expect to see the same level of attention-to-detail, tight integration, and raw productivity gains.

How we’re different from AI SDRs:

• Reps use and love Nooks. We empower reps - we don’t replace them
• Reps are creative and make decisions. Our AI assists reps and does their busywork
• We help reps focus on live conversations over async email and LinkedIn messages

Thank you to the Nooks community

We’ve been able to execute on this vision because of an overwhelmingly enthusiastic community of customers, partners, investors, and colleagues. Their “Nooks Love” is positively contagious. 

Everything we do is to help our community to get more value and be more human. So, join us as we refocus selling on human connections. 

Join the Nooks team – we’re hiring across the board. 

Or, join us as a customer and see how the AI Sales Assistant Platform can transform your selling experience.