Day in the Life of an ABM Marketer: Day #515 — Is Marketing AI Good, Bad or “Ballistic!”?

Two years ago, I got an email forwarded from the head of our inside sales team from a company pitching an AI tool that could — in theory — replace Sales Development teams. The idea? An AI bot would work leads and warm them until they were in the “ready to talk to sales stage” typically known as MAL (marketing accepted leads) or sometimes SQL (sales qualified leads).

At a fraction of the cost of a human Sales Development Representative (SDR), if a tool like this worked, we could save millions of dollars. We had 25 SDRs worldwide at the time and we’ll have 50+ next year. Never one to turn down an opportunity to play with a martech tool, :) I saw a demo and signed on the dotted line within a few weeks. If it replaced one SDR, it was worth the cost, so it was certainly worth a shot.

Fast forward 1.5 years — we’re getting rid of the tool, and I have some serious concerns about the abilities of these tools at all. But it wasn’t all bad — so I’ll go through the good, bad and ugly for those researching AI tools for sales development.

First off, in the ‘weird but true’ category; our AI robot is actually a fem-bot named Sarah Coleman. Her gender was picked by the company providing the tool — they strongly recommend that the emails sent be from a female…