how-ai-agents-close-400-discovery-calls-a-week-without-a-single-sdr
Growth
How AI agents close 400 discovery calls a week without a single SDR
How we wired an AI agent into our calendar, CRM, and call stack — and what conversion numbers looked like after 60 days.
Daniel Reyes
Head of Engineering
Leila Okonkwo
Head of AI Research
Why we stopped hiring SDRs
We'd hired four SDRs in two years. Each one took 6 weeks to ramp, another 4 to hit quota, and by month eight they were burning out or being poached. The pipeline they generated was inconsistent, and the cost per booked meeting was climbing past $400.
We made a bet: instead of hiring SDR number five, we'd spend the same budget building an AI agent to do the job. Fourteen weeks later, we were booking 400 discovery calls a week at a fraction of the cost.
How the agent works
The agent sits at the intersection of three systems: our CRM, our calendar infrastructure, and our outbound call stack. It doesn't replace the human on the call — it handles everything that happens before the human picks up.
Step 1 — Identify and prioritise
Every morning, the agent pulls the top 500 leads from our CRM ranked by qualification score (see our lead scoring post). It filters for leads that haven't been contacted in the last 14 days and haven't yet booked a call.
Step 2 — Personalised outreach
For each lead, the agent generates a personalised outreach message using company context, tech stack, and recent news. It sends via the highest-intent channel for that lead — email, LinkedIn, or SMS — with a one-click booking link embedded.
Step 3 — Follow-up sequence
If no booking after 48 hours, the agent sends a follow-up. It runs up to four touchpoints before marking a lead as inactive. The entire sequence is fully asynchronous.
"The agent follows up more consistently than any human we've ever hired. It never forgets, never gets tired, and never takes it personally when someone doesn't reply."
The numbers after 60 days
Metric | Before (SDR team) | After (AI agent) |
|---|---|---|
Discovery calls booked/week | 80 | 400 |
Cost per booked meeting | $420 | $38 |
Avg response time to inbound | 4.2 hours | 6 minutes |
Outreach-to-booking rate | 4.1% | 6.8% |
Show rate on booked calls | 71% | 79% |
What surprised us
The show rate going up was unexpected. We think it's because the agent sends a confirmation, a 24-hour reminder, and a 1-hour reminder automatically — something our SDRs were inconsistent about. Small things compound.
The biggest unlock was speed-to-lead. Getting to an inbound lead within 6 minutes instead of 4 hours is the single biggest driver of conversion improvement.
What the agent can't do (yet)
It can't handle complex objections mid-sequence, it doesn't know when a lead has gone cold for personal reasons rather than fit reasons, and it occasionally over-personalises in ways that feel uncanny. We review flagged conversations weekly and feed corrections back into the prompt layer.
