AI Took Over Her SDR Team — And They Got 73% More Productive | Sara Angell

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I'm Rahul, this is salespin. Outbound is not something I do. It's what I breathe. I run school of SDR. We have trained reps now placed across 50 plus SaaS companies and I'm the guy founders call when they want to build SDR teams that actually work. Kcup, payoneer, Epicor. The list is long, the work is real. I also built Blue, an AI coach per reps because no one else got it right. I sell, I train, I build every single day. This show is not for everyone. It's for the ones still on the phones, still writing cold emails, still figuring out how to hit coda in a system that's broken. You will hear from reps and leaders who are actually doing it and leaders who've actually been in the seat, not.

Just behind a dashboard.

No fluff, no guru talk, just the.

Truth and the tactics.

Let's break Outbound open and spin it our way.

Welcome everybody. Most SDR leaders still spend their days babysitting reps, begging them to update Salesforce and their follow up email. But the best teams have believed they have built a system that runs outbound like gtmops running, you know, paid media. Today's guest, Sarah angel made that shift. She did not build playbooks. She's now building AI and running them. Sarah is the former director, I might say of account development and user agents because now she's part of the AI GTM team which we'll be talking about in the, in the podcast today. She has paved the way for how SDR leaders run scalable, intelligent outbound programs. Welcome to the show, Sarah.

Thanks Rahul. Great to be here.

Please tell us about the new role. I mean, I'm very excited because I think I've been seeing that a lot more than I used to see earlier. What is AI gtm?

Yeah, so for me, I've kind of have an unofficial title at this point of outbound. Architect is what's been thrown around internally at usergems for me. And it really does speak to the way my, my roles evolved here. So I did start out as the kind of SDR leader really focused on, on people management. And just every success was measured by the way I was managing people. And although we had a couple playbooks built out, it wasn't really my focus wasn't on scalable campaigns or anything like that. It was, it was just on the actual SDRs. So what's happened now is my focus has really shifted to running this entire system, running these outbound campaigns, and running it with AI to basically create a program where I get to kind of control. I have a lot more control than I had before. When my focus is really on the people management, got to make sure that they have the skills that they know strategically, you know, how to find the right accounts, how to find the right people. Now it's shifted to where I'm doing all the work for them, basically all the background work that they used to have to spend all this time doing. So I can say, and that's where the control comes in, I can say who I want them targeting, where I want them targeting, where I want them focused. And I get to spend far less time on the people management point because it's taken me from having to teach strategy and train strategy to really focus on, you know, are they a good cold caller, can, can they send a good LinkedIn message, which is a lot less to train. So my job now is really to architect this system to make it predictable and efficient and scalable. And this way I don't have to babysit, you know, inboxes and slack threads. Like it's a lot less hands on. And my team's happy too because they get to spend their day doing the activities that actually produce results for them.

Tell me a little bit more about when you said, and I, you said this last time as well, that I'm not a babysitter anymore. Can you unpack that a little more?

Yeah, yeah. So really my team spends their time just working through tasks at this point. So really they just need to be proficient with picking up the phone, making the dials and they need to, you know, making the call and actually connecting. But I don't have to look, I don't have to make sure who are they sequencing, what accounts are they working. Like, are they putting people into sequence? Like I have no KPIs around that I don't have to watch out for those things. That is where most managers spend their time is making sure their team are doing those things, putting things into motion to keep that pipeline churning. I don't have to do that. I've done it all for them. So I just took have to make sure that they're just completing their tasks and that's it. So the babysitting time is over for me basically.

So looks like you have a very tightly knit playbook and given the kind of space you are also in, it kind of makes sense. But let's talk a little bit about the playbooks. I mean in your world where reps are not building plays, they're running Them, what do you think makes a great outbound playbook in 2025? And I'll give you a little context on this. Just recently, Jason Lamkin from Sastor talked about the kind of skill set which is also required for the sales reps in 2025. I we wrote about this in our two days today's newsletter as well. So I'm curious, given the new skill set, given AI leading the gtm, which was not the case maybe let's say a year ago, and given that, you know, we only have six months left in 2025, what makes a great Albon playbook?

Yeah, so I think I like to say it's when you look at what used to make a great sdr, that's what still makes a great outbound playbook. So you're looking for those signals on an account level and signals on the people level too. So when I'm talking about signals, I'm talking about like, you know, had they're looking for like they always used to, is there recent funding, is there growth within the company? All those kinds of things. So you, you have the intent signals too. Like have there been recent website visitors? And then on the people level, you're looking at, is this person new in role? Had they worked for, for a customer of ours before? Are they familiar with us? Is there a warm way to open this conversation? So that's what I'm thinking about when I'm building out these playbooks. And then the beauty of working with AI is, is that it can do some things that reps just can't do that it would just take so long. You'd be working maybe two accounts a week if you, if you tried to do this manually. But it can look at all of that all at once and then decide which areas should be the spent. Basically I build the parameters around and I say like, these are the things I want you to look for and then it goes and finds it. And I say like, this matters the most to me. You're seeing all of this, then bring those accounts to me first and I get to play with it that way.

I'll ask you a question, keeping in mind somebody, let's say, who's joining a company, let's say an AI company. Most of the companies are AI companies and they don't have a playbook so far. They're trying to build one at the same time. They don't have the liberty of let's say hiring a lot of talent, which, let's say a more mature team like you might have what would you tell them? Okay, what are the few things to focus on to build a very robust playbook in 2025?

I would say you've got to start with the structure first. There used to be this kind of figure it out mentality of, you know, hire a couple people and then send them off and let them figure it out. I think it's a terrible approach. So you really need to have the structure in place first so that they, they can expand from there. And I'd say, you know, figure out what, what is important to your industry, what's important to your buyers and start from there. And then always, always iterating to see, you know, things change over time. But really, I would say you have to hire someone to really own the outbound motion and not just like, okay, make dials. If you, if you're hiring SDRs to build your outbound motion, they need to be strategic thinkers and not just follow, follow the routine.

Interesting you mentioned that because I do get a lot of requests like these almost every day from founders who realize that, you know, they cannot obviously lead the outbound function or they cannot do the outbound themselves. They think, okay, let me hire a couple of SCRs who have a couple of years in the trenches and after a while what I see is they're kind of failing. Yeah, right. And you had a rep. Great. We talked about this, who was so calm on the call and people used to think he was AI and now you told me how he's now one of, one of the interesting transition which he has made is to AI prompt engineer. Tell me, tell me more about how do you hire these people? And I'm, I'm thinking from a point of view like these are founders who are trying to hire SDRs. What should they look for and how should they go about it?

So it's funny, I'm hiring, I'm hiring right now again. So it's very top of mind. And really what I hire for has changed a lot too over time. I used to look for more seasoned people who had a lot of experience because, you know, we're, we're still a scrappy startup and there's not a lot, a lot of time to give to like hands on training and stuff. I wanted people coming in who, who knew how to do the job and just could go and hit it. This has changed for me now because we have AI doing so much of the heavy lifting and because of everything set in place, I've found it's actually harder for me now if I hire someone More seasoned. Because it's kind of that old dog, new tricks situation where if you have an SDR who is used to doing things in the old way, um, it, it can be hard for them to adapt and let go of that. Like I said, like, I have the control now of how we run outbound. That can end up in a tug of war basically, of control. If they're used to, if they're used to producing based off of what they know to do and they're not willing to trust in systems put in place for them, then it can be a real, real control struggle. So now what I hire for is really, I'm looking for someone who, first of all, I'm comfortable sitting in front of an executive like that. I feel like I could put in a room with a bunch of CEOs and they're, they're, they're okay with it. So there's a certain level of maturity I'd say is something I'm looking for. And they don't have to have necessarily SDR experience, but they do need to have some sort of experience with the public experience working with other people. A comfort level, like comfort within their own skin to me is very important. And then we say here, this, that we look for that like, figure shit out mentality too, because there's not, there's not a lot of handholding here. So you need to be able to. And I think any founder, anyone looking for one or two reps to, to start things out, they need. It's a hard thing to look for, but when you see it, you know, it's instantly that this is a person that can be put in a situation and they're not going to sit on their hands and wait for someone to solve it for them. They're going to solve it for themselves. And that can look all different ways. The stories that I've heard. One of my favorite questions to ask on interviews is tell me about something about yourself that you wouldn't put on your resume. Isn't on your resume. That's a really defining point of your character and the things that come out from that. The way that that question's been answered is across the spectrum, like so many different answers I've received. But that's usually the question where I can see that, that mentality within someone. And I think it's the most important thing to look for.

I mean, I think that's, that's a brilliant question, I might say, because now I'm thinking out loud, what would I put on my resume? Because I Mean, I know we all have a very active social life where everything is almost there, but. Yeah, for example, think about, you know, how we have. We talked about just a hair. I'm sure this is not the resume, and we can talk about it as long as you want. Interestingly, you know, I did one exercise with one of my co founders yesterday which I believed I would want to probably include in the SDR world, which is we were discussing how we are planning to change the brand name for various reasons, and we both asked each other, hey, name five brands which you admire and tell me why. You know, what. What kind of feeling does that invoke in you? And it was so interesting that the kind of brands my founder likes, what my wife, what my wife likes and what I like are totally different that that. Actually, the story which came out is it was true to who we are. That was a very interesting exercise because that. That tells me, oh, you know what? I did this exercise with somebody recently, and I realized, oh, man, this person has not traveled the world because most of the brands they are referring to and the way they're thinking about those brands are very local. So that also told a lot about, you know, how people think. Yeah, yeah. But I think your question is brilliant. I'm definitely going to include that in. And probably hiring a book, that's definitely going to raise a lot of questions, actually.

Yeah, I'm going to steal your exercise, too, because that's very interesting as well. Yeah.

Yeah. All right, so I'm going to go back to Jake because I think that that's the whole reason. I remember I reached out to you first because I remember I listened to his call and I'm like. And I still play his call for the same reason, which I told you earlier. I'm like, how can somebody be that card? All right, I'm sure there's something which you're doing right, and there's a lot of things which you're doing right. Tara, in your organization, I'd love to know your playbook. How are you running it? Don't give us the secrets, but give us the structure of what you're running.

The structure of what I'm running, again, it's all based upon signals. Right. And what we're looking for. So I'm looking at what are the strongest signals. Some signals I can look at can be standalone. They're really. They're that strong that we can just have it by itself. So our. Our product, our. Our company started out as a past champion, basically, champion tracking. When you have A champion who, who goes from the customer that worked for you, loves your product and goes and moves to a new company that is a part of your target icp. Right. So this, I consider this is a standalone solution signal for me and it's strong enough to run by itself. Then we have lots of other signals on the account level, on the people level that are great, that are signals to look at, but maybe not enough by themselves. So what I've done is I'm putting together all these different signals and I'm giving it to the AI and I'm telling the AI, like, look for these, these are the specific ones I want you to talk about. And then when you do talk about it, layer it together. You're going to give basically a shout out to two different signals in each email in a sequence. So you're not hitting them with everything at once, but you're trickling it throughout your outreach just like a rep would do. And this is how you can use AI to actually make it look human. And where you get responses where people are saying, well, wow, like you, I get, I get people complimenting my team. We've had shout outs on LinkedIn because people are so impressed with the personalization of wow, you really took the time to do this. And of course they didn't. But that's where I say, like, it's all done for them. So they can just make that connection. And they have in front of them why they're reaching out. And the why is what has always been the key for, for a good rep. Right. If you've done your research, you've got that good reason of reaching out. That's where you get that connection. That's where when you're talking to executives, they're going to stop and say, okay, like you took the time to figure this out. It's worth my time to listen to what you have to say. But they just don't have to take that time anymore.

Gotcha. I'm gonna, I'm gonna put you back into the architect hot seat because you mentioned about that and I just can't get it off my head now. Most leaders talk about playbooks and I remember, you know, back in the day when I first became an SDR leader, I copied somebody else's playbook and trying to see, okay, what can we, what can we inspire from this one and you know, the other one and mix and match. But I felt, you know, I had a hard time wiring that process into the day to day activities. But you have actually done a good job in automation and automating how your team is running them. Can you walk us through that system?

Yeah. So we do, we do automate a lot. I'd say most of our playbooks are automated but when I say automated, I mean they are automatically pushed into a sequence for the team so they're not having to do any of that. And then the emails are pre written by the AI and for the most part I have them set on auto. I've tested enough that I trust, I trust our AI to write well for them so they're not spending any, any time on any of that. All of that's automated for them. What's not automated, which I think maybe is even more important of what don't you automate now? And for us that's making the calls, making those connections. That's not something I think I'll ever trust AI for. Maybe I'll eat my words one day, but I'm not there yet. But making, making those calls, leaving voicemails, even all of that, like I still want them doing that, taking that time. And then LinkedIn, we don't do any LinkedIn automation because it's something that I also believe should, should be hands on. There's a lot to look at there. You know, we're not, we're not mass sending out connection requests to people, we're only looking at people that we have some mutual connection with and that's the only times that we're going to send a connection, connection and we don't always send a message unless we see something relevant again back to those signals. Then if we do have good signals to talk about then we'll send a message and personalize that way. But that's really where LinkedIn to me and the beauty of social selling is that it's really your chance to be yourself. And we have to. My team, part of what they do is posting and it doesn't have to be about user gems, about their job, just, just post. We want you to be a person. And so I don't ever want to automate those messages on LinkedIn because I want them to be goofy, I want them to be funny, I want them to be real because it's our chance to really makes sense.

And at the same time, I believe you might be selling to save leaders. Is that right?

Yes. We are sales, marketing, Sales and marketing. We're lucky like that. Yeah. Not everyone, not everyone has such an active audience on LinkedIn. I understand that.

Yeah. I think it's funny you said that because I think one of the one of the one of my own learning while selling to sales leaders or any, anybody in sales is because they receive a lot of message, a lot of messages. So they can easily spot what's a good one, what's a bad one, what's automated, what's not. So while the audience is active we have to also understand the risk that this audience actually knows a lot about AI and knows a lot about messaging. So it can become hard at the same time easy as well.

So it's true. You've gotta be really good. One thing when we're onboarding people I always tell em like with selling to sal sales and marketing it's like they, they can spot it. I'm like don't get rid of marketing jargon out of your head now. Just like you've got to stand out in a different way.

Yeah, funny. Tell me, tell me something you mentioned earlier that how you, how you have a system who is which is writing the emails for your reps, is that your own proprietary system or do you have like an AI SDR from some other company?

It's, it is our own proprietary but it is our own AI SDR outbound agent and again but it's, it's a, everything for us is very co pilot. It's working together so it's not, not replaced anyone on my team. It's not meant to. It's just really making their jobs easier. My and my efficiency gain is huge from that. So because they're working the way they're working with the, the AI has increased my capacity by 73% which when you're talking we all have scrappy startups, we have like small means when we're talking about hiring headcount and stuff like that. It's really, really powerful.

I'm kind of amazed with the way everybody's using AI especially you now leading the whole GTM function with AI. Tell me where. I mean I know it's very, it's too early to talk about this and I know some of the predictions from the past come true, some of them don't. But from where you are today, what do you think is going to change with the whole AI in the next six months?

Hmm. I think what I see is more and more people being in my position or in what was my position being pushed in this direction. Every, every company I talk to has an AI initiative. Like people are being forced to adapt and I think those who are resistant to it are getting left behind or will be very, very quickly. Whereas people that are more embracing and open and saying like, how can I, how can I use this? What are all the ways I can use it? And it's not just, you know, AI sdr. We use AI all over the place within our company to make ourselves as efficient as possible in whatever position we're in. So I think that's what it looks like. I think it looks like every role, figuring out how AI works for them. And if you're not thinking that way already, it may already be too late. You gotta get there. Because I think that's the expectation from the top now. And they might not even understand what that means. But it's, it's our job that, that kind of figure out mentality. It's like it's that time again for, for everyone. AI is completely evolving the way everyone's role looks. So you've got to, I think each person's got to figure out for them what that means for us SDR leaders. That means becoming an outbound architect, to speak. It means, it means really owning your outbound motion and becoming more strategic than your team. Taking, taking that off of them and putting it on yourself.

I'm going to back that up, back that statement up. I have a SDI leader friend whose role I just axed because she was managing the whole inbound team. Yeah, I mean, I think company kind of realized that, you know, it's been a while, it's a tight time. You know, they shlorah made the whole thing and I believe she had a hard time adapting to the AI because there was no need. And all of a sudden this shift happened. I think one of the, one of the interesting thing which I'm realizing is the shift is happening at a speed at which people are kind of finding it hard. So unless you're kind of not, you know, really consciously putting in effort, you're just going to be left behind. Because this is not one of those, and this is probably just my opinion, this is probably not one of those times when we, when we learned a software and we could say, oh, I know this tool. For example, back in the day, if somebody knew how to use outreach, they would probably be given a higher rating than somebody who did not. But today AI has so many different initiatives, so many different things.

Yeah.

And Jason Lemkin just talked about this in his newsletter yesterday where he's talked about how the role has evolved so much. Now if you're not looking to hire people who do not know AI at a very deep level.

Yeah.

You should not just hire them.

Yeah, I, I agree and I Think it's as leaders too. You. It's that you gotta get comfortable again with being uncomfortable. When. When our company said, we're making this move towards AI and we're building an AI sdr, you can imagine I had a. So how long do I have a job? Like, if you're replacing my team, what's going on? And I had probably. It's funny because I. I say this now, but I was one of the most resistant to AI people everyone kept talking about. I was like, I don't want anything to do with it. I. I was kind of late to the game, but then I jumped full in. You know, I like, said, I really want to understand this. And I really, like, I want to get in there and understand what it can do and how I can use it. And I think it was uncomfortable for a while. For a while I was like, I have no idea what my role is now. I have no idea. It was. It was very confusing. Everything was vague. Even talking with. With my boss was. We were having conversations around it of, like, what does this look like? What is it becoming? So I think when you're in those kind of transition times, it can be very scary and it can be very uncomfortable. But if you keep having that mentality, trying to understand and just learning again, which I think can. Can be hard when people have become comfortable with doing things a certain way. But once. Once you get there, the opportunity is immense.

Yeah. And I can see why you felt that way, because I remember when all these AI SDR companies came in, we all saw what happened. We're like, oh, my God, you know, And I can assume that this was for you. Now we are going to become one of those companies.

Yeah, we are now.

Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. And. And I think it's a good thing the way I think about this, because why not? You know, why. Why do I have to do the job which. Which. For which, you know, I'm not using really my intellectuality? And I think one of the things I want to talk about this recently, I think there was a. There was a study which was done by, I don't know, Howard or somebody where they said, hey, you know, AI is making you dumb and not smart. I'm like, have you. Have you.

I saw that one too.

Yeah. I'm like, have you. Have you ever done the work with AI? Do you know how hard it is to get something which you want from AI because it's not going to shoot results just because somebody says, hey, give me an essay or give me A podcast I should do, etc. So you have to do a lot of research and that requires a lot of work. I don't think so you can do that unless you really know how to think.

Look, and what I use today, it has made my life easier, but it's also been. It was training a new employee, you know, I had to work. I continue to work, work with it all the time. And that's how I treat it as like this is. It's an ongoing like, just like I have to continue to work with my team. I have to continue to work with the AI and continue to have it improve and also keep up with the ever changing. We know like that part of Outbound will never. That part won't change the fact that everything's always changing and what works this week may not work next week. So really you have to embrace of like that you are managing another thing here and work with it. Feed it, feed it. And you're right, it's not easy. It doesn't give you so many times you're like, what is this? I thought this was supposed to help. And what it's spitting out is just nonsense, but it's just teaching a baby.

Yeah. Tell me some of the favorite AI tools you have and if you're okay to talk about that. The one you use at work, apart from user terms, of course.

I mean, honestly, same as everybody else, I use GPT all the time. Really. It's like a constant tab on my screen that I'm going to. Outside of GPT, I played with AI. Every tool that you have is now incorporating AI. So I play with it in other places. But I find having trained my GPT so much and worked with it, that it's actually more efficient to me for me to go there rather than to do it in some of these other tools that have just thrown it in and it's not. Doesn't seem quite ready to me. And I think we see that a lot. And I think that's also creating partially the distaste you see with some people of AI like actually helpful because I think a lot of companies are throwing it out before it's ready.

Hey Sarah, thank you so much for being here. I think it was a really fun conversation and as I, as I mentioned. But we have something more. I mean, I do have rapid fire for you. Let me know if you're ready. It's gonna be a little spicy. Okay. I'm gonna ask you a question which you normally do not answer in a podcast or put that on Your resume.

Goodness. All right, I'm ready.

All right. One SDR playbook. You will never, ever run again.

Spray and pray. So I'll admit it. I'm guilty. I've done it too. I think every, you know, most, most SDR leaders have, but the, you know, spraying the C suite with generic messaging, everybody in the same sequence and just hoping that volume gets you there. Never, never, never again. I honestly, we. We went the volume route at one point and we ended up getting blacklisted by Gmail and having to completely start mailboxes over again. It's something I don't wish on my worst enemy. Terrifying experience and really, really difficult. So no, never, never the volume game ever again.

All right. One thing, which you wish AI tools never do.

I think one thing AI tools should never do. I mean, I'm gon cold calling. Cold calling and, and LinkedIn messaging. And I think we've seen it. I think we've seen that, you know, it's. It's not it. Nobody likes it and it's easy to spot and the cold calling. Just creepy. Come on.

I mean, unless we can copy and, you know, clone Jake.

Yeah, exactly. Poor Jake. I think I told you before, poor Jake was accused on so many cold calls of being AI that it became an ongoing joke. And now he's our AI prompt engineer. So he's. He has become a somebody.

Somebody. Somebody did it finally. He's living the dream.

Exactly. The SDR success. I don't know if this is exactly what you're asking, but I think there is culturally a thing in, in SDR teams, a lot of times of encouraging a lot of ego in the role for successful SDRs. And I have seen every single time when that, when that happens or if you have someone on your team with a lot of ego, it can be the poison to your team. I think this role is looked at as a sales role, but I don't think really successful, long term successful, consistently successful SDRs are the ones with the least ego. And you see it in. In people like Jake with that calm and be the ability to make a call like that and reach reach people like that, because they're not in it for them. They're genuinely curious.

Amazing. All right, final two questions. If your reps could only run one play, just one play this quarter, what would it be?

Past champions. Honestly, we continue. It was our original product and we continue to have such consistent pipeline from it. It's just a huge source for us. If it was taken away from me, I don't know what we do. So that's my one for sure.

So you're drinking your own champagne for sure.

Yeah. Yeah.

All right, final question. How do you know when a playbook is falling?

When it's falling, failing.

Sorry, my bad.

No, no, you're good. You're good. So you. Part of. Part of this kind of new world that I live in is. Is the constantly monitoring. I spend more time, like, coaching my playbooks and seeing how they're performing than I do listening to my team's cold calls. Like, that is where I live as a manager now and just looking. So just like. For me, just like anything else, we use outreach. So I'm. I'm looking in our sequence performance just like I would if it was a rep, creating their own sequences. So that's. That's how I see it. I'm monitoring all the time. And then within our product too, I'm monitoring. As far as the signals we're looking for, is it. Is it working right for us? What's our reply rates looking like, what's our actual opportunities created, bottom line looking like? So I think if you stay close to it and you have a cadence, I think that's really important too, having having your own cadence to monitor these things. And if you're lucky, like me and you have a great ops team working closely with them to keep an eye too, you can catch it pretty quick.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Sarah. This was. This was literally a masterclass for me. I think most teams are still running outbound, like in 2020, 2018, and you're running it like GTMOPS, and now you're training AI to do this at scale. Where can people find you? And some of the work for the usergens.

Yeah, hit me up on LinkedIn, please. I love connecting with people. I'm also in different SDR leader groups. So, like, SDR leader of USA is one that I love. Really useful Slack community there too. But you can LinkedIn me. You can find user gems@usergems.com but, yeah, I'm open. Anyone who wants to talk.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Darrell. And this was really fun.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. We'll have to do it again sometime. I'm looking forward to see the next phase of evolution for y' all too.

Thank you. We'll definitely keep you posted.

All right, thanks so much.

Thank you so much. Bye.

I'm Rahul, this is Salespin. Outbound is not something I do. It's what I breathe. I run school of SDR. We have trained reps now placed across 50 plus SaaS companies and I'm the guy founders called when they were want to build STR teams that actually work. Kca, payoneer, epicor. The list is long, the work is real. I also built Bloom, an AI coach for reps because no one else got it right. I sell, I train, I build every single day. This show is not for everyone.

It's for the ones still on the.

Phones, still writing cold emails, still figuring out how to hit quota in a system that's broken. You will hear from reps and leaders who are actually doing it, and leaders who've actually been in the seat, not.

Just behind a dashboard.

No fluff, no guru talk, just the.

Truth and the tactics.

Let's break outbound open and spin it our way.