An SDR costs about $72,000 a year once salary and benefits are counted. A CellCog AI Employee researches your prospects, writes outreach that is personal because it actually did the research, follows up on schedule, and keeps your pipeline reporting current, for a fraction of that.
*A shift is a focused block of work, roughly 2,000 credits (about $20 at standard rates). One shift every working day, 250 days a year, comes to about $5,000 a year; actual cost scales with how much it works.
Five things a sales development representative does every day, handled on demand.
Build targeted lead lists from your ideal customer profile, researching each company and contact before anyone gets an email.
Write one-to-one outreach grounded in real research on each prospect, not a template with a first-name token.
Send from dedicated sending domains with built-in volume caps, address verification, and suppression handling that protect your main domain's reputation.
Track every thread, follow up at the right interval, and stop the moment a prospect replies or opts out.
Keep a live view of prospects contacted, replies, and meetings booked, with honest numbers you can check.
Copy, paste, and adapt. Each one comes back as a finished artifact.
“Here is our ideal customer profile: B2B SaaS, 11 to 50 people, US-based, selling to finance teams. Build a list of 25 target companies with the right contact at each and a one-line reason they fit.”
Delivers: a researched lead list with fit notes
“Research these 10 prospects and write a personalized opening email for each, referencing something real about their company. Keep each under 90 words.”
Delivers: ten researched, individually written outreach drafts
“Design a 3-touch follow-up sequence for prospects who did not reply to the first email: timing, angle for each touch, and when to stop.”
Delivers: a follow-up playbook with draft copy
“Give me a pipeline report for this month: who we contacted, reply rate, positive replies, and which segments are responding best.”
Delivers: a pipeline report with segment breakdown
“We are up against a competitor in this deal. Build a one-page battlecard: their pricing, their strengths, where we win, and the three questions to ask the prospect.”
Delivers: a one-page competitive battlecard PDF
Founders hand off list building, research, and first-touch outreach, and spend their selling time only on prospects who replied.
Small teams get a steady outbound motion: researched lists, personal outreach, and disciplined follow-up, without adding headcount.
Agencies run researched, personalized outreach programs for many clients at once, each from its own sending domain.
Knowing when to lean on a person is the whole point.
Cold calling and live discovery calls are human work. The AI SDR fills the calendar; a human takes the call.
Multi-stakeholder deals and pricing negotiations need a human account executive.
Conferences, dinners, and handshakes still belong to people.
Hiring an sales development representative is valuable, and expensive. Here is how it compares for the production-heavy parts of the job.
| Human SDR | CellCog AI Employee | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | ~$72,000/yr fully loaded | ≈ $5,000/yr* |
| Availability | Business hours | Works shifts on demand, any hour |
| Ramp-up time | 2 to 4 weeks | Instant |
| Output formats | A few document types | Reports, PDFs, slides, spreadsheets, images, video, audio, dashboards, interactive apps |
| Scalability | One person, one task at a time | Parallel tasks |
| Sick days and turnover | Yes | Never |
| Onboarding | Recruiting and training | Goals, access, and approvals |
| Research depth per prospect | A few minutes each, when time allows | Genuine research on every single prospect |
| Follow-up discipline | Depends on the day | Every thread tracked, no prospect forgotten |
| Sender reputation | Your main domain at risk | Dedicated sending domains with caps and verification built in |
*A shift is a focused block of work, roughly 2,000 credits (about $20 at standard rates). One shift every working day, 250 days a year, comes to about $5,000 a year; actual cost scales with how much it works.
Yes. Outreach goes through dedicated sending domains with pre-warmed mailboxes, address verification, daily volume caps, and automatic suppression of unsubscribes and bounces, so your main domain's reputation stays protected.
The model is quality over volume: the AI SDR researches each prospect and writes each email individually. Small, well-researched batches that a real person would be glad to receive outperform blasts, and the volume caps enforce that discipline.
You describe your ideal customer profile and connect a lead database if you use one. It sources candidates, researches each company, and only reaches out to contacts that genuinely fit.
Follow-ups stop immediately and the reply lands in the AI SDR's inbox for a considered response. Meetings and calls hand off to you, with the full thread and research notes attached.
Those are dedicated sales platforms priced for enterprise sales teams. A CellCog AI Employee does the SDR work and everything around it: market research, battlecards, pipeline reporting, and content, at self-serve pricing.
An SDR costs about $72,000 a year once salary and benefits are counted. A CellCog AI Employee works in shifts of roughly 2,000 credits (about $20 each); one shift every working day, 250 days a year, comes to about $5,000.
Click "Hire your AI employee" to sign up and hire one in minutes, or use "Talk to us" and our team will help you set up your AI SDR.
Give it your ideal customer profile and get back a researched lead list with personalized outreach drafts.