LinkedIn·Thursday, 20 August 2026·6d ago

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗜 𝗦𝗗𝗥𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗱𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰. Reply rates down 40 to 60 percent from their own…

Andrea Balducci

Fractional Revenue Operations & AI Builder @ SiSu | ex. Sortlist (Deloitte Fast 50 winner)

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗔𝗜 𝗦𝗗𝗥𝘀 𝗶𝘀 𝗱𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝗰. Reply rates down 40 to 60 percent from their own benchmarks. Churn their vendors can no longer explain away. That is from GTMLens' State of AI GTM report for Q2 2026. The struggling names raised on one promise: replace your SDR team. Exhibit A: Artisan spent $2M on "Stop Hiring Humans" billboards. This week their CEO announced they are hiring a human BDR, and shipped a dialer so reps handle the human work while the AI does the rest. The quiet winners sell something else. Sending infrastructure (Smartlead, past $30M ARR). Data plumbing (Clay, raising at $1.25B). Orchestration (n8n). CRM-native AI catching up fast. Buried in the buyer advice, the line that matters most: for Series A teams, the report recommends building your own assistant on Claude plus n8n over buying a packaged AI SDR. Why did wave one crack? Three failures, per the report: → Deliverability burned by volume. → Replies converting 40 to 60 percent worse than a human SDR. → Firmographic filters sitting where judgment should be. Each one is a spot where the human was removed too early. I ship both kinds of systems at clients. The ones still alive augment a rep inside a workflow that already exists. The ones in my graveyard tried to replace the rep on day one. 𝗥𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗰𝗵. 𝗔𝘂𝗴𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝘂𝗿𝘃𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗱. Did your AI SDR experiment make it through 2026? Still running, quietly killed, or never bought the pitch? Sources in the first comment. #RevOps #AISDR #Outbound #GTM