I like Cuddly Koalas, but are they good for prospecting?

My wife recently started evaluating AI SDR tools for her company. After she talked with 11x, I asked her, so “what do you think?” She replied, “the AE just kept talking about automating our outbound and hitting lots of accounts.” The pitch didn’t land. Her company’s ICP didn’t match the value proposition.

Later that day, I forwarded her Brendan Short’s post about AI SDRs.

Why? Brendan’s 2x2 matrix creates a great starting framework for companies to evaluate AI SDRs (in their current utility). It reminded me of a adjacent analysis I conducted in January ‘24. I had pitched our CFO on procuring a vendor to capture prospect signals ahead of our Series B announcement. The PoV: there will be a big spike in traffic surrounding the funding announcement and we need to capitalize on this momentum to build pipeline (among other reasons).

I landed on two options - Koala and Unify. Neither option was perfect. Given that we did not have a PLG motion, most data was still going to be anonymous, which would make data difficult to action on.

I ultimately chose Koala because our target ICP at the time was large enterprises - thus, we weren’t going to get as much value out of auto-outbounding. Below is the analysis I did in Jan 2024 (note: these tools have evolved over the last year).

Koala has been very helpful in a few important ways:

Prospecting

An owned account started popping up regularly in my Slack notifications. This then triggered an outbound campaign to target specific personas at that account to get a meeting.

Deal Cycle Engagement

A new user from prospect account is testing. I receive a Slack notification and immediately engage them with value-add content to enable a successful POC

Alternatively, during discussions with champion, I look to see how engaged their engineering team is? Are they still testing? How much time testing? Who is testing? This will help influence strategy & approach with the champion.

Re-Engaging Accounts

This account went cold for 3 months as they were waiting for a fundraise prior to purchasing. I saw that they had finally re-engaged and used this as an opportunity to send value-add content to the prospect and re-start the deal cycle at the right time.

A few considerations when deciding to bring on a vendor to analyze intent signals:

• Top of Funnel Activity - the value of these tools depends on the amount and quality of top of funnel content your company puts out. If your company puts out minimal thought leadership / drives minimal traffic to your website, then these tools will not drive a ton of value.

• Overlap of technologies - the Sales tech space is becoming increasingly crowded with more overlapping technologies. I spoke with Common Room last week and they are claiming to offer many of the same web intent features and much broader set of signals. As a buyer, you will need to make trade-offs between breath and depth.

• Product Roadmap - piggybacking off of the point above, if you can get a peak into the company’s product roadmap, do it. This will help you understand which direction the company is headed and how they plan to deliver the most value to you in 6-12 months from now.

I use the case study of Koala and Unify to paint a more macro picture. AI SDRs are getting a lot of hype and they are incredibly valuable to certain profiles of companies. However, much like evaluating intent-signal providers, its important to evaluate these tools in the context of your company’s ICP and marketing strategy.

Bisous,

Julian

Please note: nothing in this article is endorsed by Metronome. These are solely my opinions.