The speaker (Jason M. Lemkin) argues that AI sales agents outperform human SDRs, citing specific performance figures: an Artisan agent shows ~6% overall response (versus typical human SDR averages of 2–4%), and two empowered AI agents accounted for 15% of ticket revenue for a Saster event in London. He emphasizes training agents to add company-specific value and to be empowered to sell (not just follow up).
Questions this video answers
About 6% overall response.
2–4% (average for normal SDR).
15% of the ticket revenue.
January 5, 2026.
Chapters
Yeah, the 247 thing I'll get to. And it's part of why it works. So at scale, you'll see in those. In that chart I just showed. So I'll break it out a little bit Artisan overall. And we're live streaming, by the way, guys. So if you want the slides and all the data, you can also go on our livestream, but you can also keep taking photos. And for Artisan, that one has. It actually went up. It's about a 6% overall response right now. You know, average for normal SDR is 2 to 4. Qualified has inbound, so that's about the same 6%. And then Asian Force, we've said this has a higher open rate. I'll tell you why. It's our newest agent. It's also people we ghosted. So it kind of makes sense that they were like, you finally followed up with me. I'm like, sorry, my human wouldn't, but my AI agent would. So also, more importantly, I feel like I see people getting this wrong is not empowering their agents to sell. Especially you have something that is a low asp, Something like a ticket to Sasser. London is a great example. Between our two agents that I empowered to sell, they sold 15% of the ticket revenue for this event, which is kind of crazy, because in the past when we've had human SDRs try and sell tickets, I think they sold, like, literally, I could count on one hand. So at that volume and at that scale, I see people getting this wrong a lot, which I'll get into. But why does this work? Right? It's because all of these different platforms have different things that they're using to contextualize, to add value back to the prospect. So instead of making it too much about Saster, we really try and tune up our agents and train them so that all the value is about their company, what they're doing, and why they should be at something like a Saster. I think that's also important as you're training your agents or thinking about rolling this out, is that it should be about adding value, right? I don't know. I feel like somehow that got lost in all the outbound madness, but that should have always been the case, and it's definitely the case with AI.
