Client invested in an AI SDR tool, but after 6 months, it still wasn’t embedded into daily SDR/AE workflows.

Budgets wasted on pilots with no measurable pipeline ROI.

During assessment, employees revealed they were using personal AI tools outside approved workflows.

Inconsistent outreach, shadow data, no CRM visibility.

No consistent outreach motion, playbooks, or workflows for SDRs to follow across the funnel.

Inconsistent pipeline generation, limited ability to scale prospecting efforts, and lack of visibility into SDR performance.

SDRs fail to capture key qualification data or communicate lead context to AE. When SDRs fail to properly qualify leads or pass incomplete context, AEs are forced to restart discovery, leading to inefficiencies.

Leads drop off after handoff, poor meeting-to-opportunity conversion, and misaligned sales follow-up. Waste of AE selling time and lowers close rates due to poor meeting quality.

SDRs manually research leads and personalize messaging, reducing output and response quality. SDRs may not use AI tools effectively to surface high-fit leads, leaving AEs with a lower-quality pipeline.

Slower outreach velocity, inconsistent personalization, and lower reply rates. AEs spend more time disqualifying bad-fit leads, reducing focus on active selling.

SDRs focus only on immediate lead conversion, ignoring long-tail pipeline opportunities. Without a structured nurture strategy from SDRs, warm leads that are not immediately ready to buy are left unattended—limiting the AE’s future pipeline and forcing them to over-focus on short-term opportunities.

Missed future deals, underutilized intent signals, and low pipeline maturity. AEs experience inconsistent pipeline flow and face pressure to close underqualified leads. This results in missed quarterly targets, longer sales cycles, and reduced forecasting accuracy.

Leadership tracks bookings or revenue only—no visibility into SDR effort metrics like replies, connect rate, or no-shows.

The founder, who lacked a sales background, was tracking the wrong metrics and missed an opportunity to coach SDRs effectively, and missed opportunities to improve conversion stages.

SDRs operate without clear territories or account prioritization based on intent or ICP fit.

Time wasted on low-fit accounts, inconsistent coverage of high-value targets.

SDRs rely on inbound lead flow or outdated lists instead of structured outbound campaigns. The founder hadn't experienced a sales driven culture where multi-pronged engagement strategies were deployed successfully.

Unpredictable pipeline, reduced lead quality, missed opportunity to learn how when the outreach channel isn't working, to pivot to another, harnessing the power of multiple approaches.

SDRs struggle with overly complex sequences, disjointed messaging, or tech stack overload. AEs' feedback was that they were spending too much time dealing with the tech stack and not enough time selling.

Drop-offs in prospect engagement and SDR underperformance. * AEs began to feel that the process and tech stack were a burden instead of a tool to accelerate commissions.

Outreach focuses on product features rather than pain points or value outcomes. AEs & SDRs struggled with Value Selling principles and felt most comfortable with pitching versus consultative selling by harnessing the power of discovery questioning techniques.

Low engagement and reply rates due to messaging that wasn't engaging target audience members.

SDRs guess responses to objections without a shared framework or guidance. AE's unpreparedness for objections undermined the rep’s confidence and credibility.

Lost meetings, credibility issues, and poor SDR confidence. AEs experienced stalled deals and lost opportunities.

SDRs are unclear about their responsibilities, advancement, or success metrics. Without growth plans, SDRs lack motivation and don't learn AE-aligned skills like qualification, objection handling, or deal setup.

Low morale, poor performance, and high turnover. * Limits SDRs’ ability to prep leads for deeper AE engagement, reducing sales efficiency.

SDRs skip CRM steps or leave incomplete data, making pipeline tracking unreliable. SDRs and AEs use different data hygiene practices, leading to poor visibility and pipeline tracking.

Leadership lacks visibility into outreach outcomes and follow-ups suffer. Inaccurate data hampers AE forecasting, slows follow-ups, and causes misaligned outreach.

No clear bridge between marketing efforts (e.g., content, events) and SDR outreach. AEs are left with cold or off-message leads when SDRs don’t leverage marketing campaigns or positioning.

Leads go cold, missed nurture opportunities, and wasted campaign spend. AEs must rebuild narrative, causing longer sales cycles and lower trust with prospects.

SDRs either spray generic emails or spend hours customizing each touchpoint. SDRs using generic messaging generate low engagement, leaving AEs with disinterested or confused prospects.

Low conversion rates or low output, both hurt pipeline. AEs face lower conversion and win rates due to poor initial prospect framing.

Intent data purchased or collected is not integrated into SDR outreach workflows. SDRs overlook or poorly act on intent data (e.g., Bombora, 6sense), so high-fit accounts don’t reach AEs at the right moment.

Delayed or missed outreach to warm leads and active buyers. Missed revenue opportunities and loss of deal momentum for AEs.

SDRs lacking proficiency with tools like CRM, sales engagement platforms, data enrichment, and conversational AI slow down the sales process and create disjointed handoffs to AEs.

Underutilized tools and wasted software spend. AEs waste time correcting SDR errors, lose visibility into lead context, and often requalify leads themselves—leading to slower pipeline progression, reduced AE efficiency, and missed revenue targets.

SDRs collect objections, pricing feedback, or ICP insights, but no one acts on it. Insights gained from SDR outreach aren’t passed to AEs or leadership, so customer pain points are under-leveraged in later-stage sales.

Missed learning opportunities and unvalidated GTM assumptions. AEs miss strategic insights to shape discovery calls and positioning, weakening close rates.

SDRs generate meetings, but few become qualified pipeline. SDRs book meetings that rarely advance to opportunities, leading to a weak pipeline for AEs.

Wasted meetings, inflated activity metrics, and poor AE satisfaction. Inflated pipeline metrics with minimal closed-won outcomes, undermining revenue forecasting.

Founders or teams outsource prospecting to third parties with no visibility or system in place for building. Outsourced SDRs deliver low-context leads, creating misalignment with AE needs and target account nuances.

Zero internal knowledge of messaging performance or buyer feedback. AEs see longer sales cycles, poor demo-to-deal ratios, and deal loss due to weak lead context.

Founders hold key messaging and positioning insights from founder-led sales but don't translate them to SDRs. Founders don’t pass their deep product, story, or objection-handling knowledge to SDRs, and by extension, AEs suffer from weak pipeline.

SDRs operate disconnected from proven messaging and miss the mark with ICP. AEs receive prospects without alignment to the founder’s vision or market fit, increasing friction in later-stage sales.

AEs are not receiving enough qualified meetings from SDRs to fill pipeline effectively.

AE productivity drops, slowing down new business growth and extending sales cycles.

Prospects frequently miss meetings with AEs, indicating lack of urgency or poor qualification.

Wastes AE time and reduces pipeline velocity, harming close rates.

Information passed from SDR to AE lacks depth or consistency.

Poor context forces AEs to restart discovery, increasing friction and lowering win rates.

AEs are sourcing their own leads due to lack of SDR support.

Diverts AE focus from selling to prospecting, reducing deal flow and closing efficiency.

AE pipeline contains too many unqualified or stagnant deals.

Leadership loses confidence in sales projections, affecting investment and planning.

AEs conduct strong discovery but deals fail to advance.

Slows down sales velocity and reduces bookings despite pipeline appearing healthy.

AEs win a small percentage of opportunities, even when pipeline appears full.

Decreases revenue efficiency and increases CAC.

Confusion over responsibilities, lead quality expectations, and follow-up timing.

Leads to finger-pointing and operational inefficiency, harming performance of both roles.

CRM updates, notes, and follow-ups eat into AE selling time.

Reduces time spent on high-impact activities like closing and multi-threading.

AEs receive minimal support to improve skills or reflect on losses.

Performance plateaus and win rates stagnate.