An AI SDR (AI Sales Development Representative) is software that qualifies leads and books sales meetings without a human doing that work manually, either by reaching out to prospects (outbound) or by engaging visitors already on your website (inbound). An AI SDR replaces a specific, repeatable piece of the sales development job: finding or engaging prospects, qualifying them against criteria like budget, use case, and timeline, and booking a meeting on a sales calendar. Two main types: 1. Outbound AI SDRs (11x, Artisan, AiSDR): draft and send personalized emails or LinkedIn messages at scale, then classify and respond to replies. A human still owns the target list and messaging strategy. 2. Inbound AI SDRs (Qualified, Drift, Voksha's AI Website SDR): engage visitors already on your website in real time, chat or voice, ask qualifying questions, and book a demo or capture contact details. The AI typically hands off to a human once a lead is qualified. Closing, negotiation, and complex objection handling are still usually done by a person. For the full breakdown, including voice vs text AI SDRs and real adoption data, see the complete guide linked below.

What is an AI SDR?

Quick Answer

An AI SDR (AI Sales Development Representative) is software that qualifies leads and books sales meetings without a human doing that work manually, either by reaching out to prospects (outbound) or by engaging visitors already on your website (inbound).

An AI SDR replaces a specific, repeatable piece of the sales development job: finding or engaging prospects, qualifying them against criteria like budget, use case, and timeline, and booking a meeting on a sales calendar.

Two main types:

1Outbound AI SDRs (11x, Artisan, AiSDR): draft and send personalized emails or LinkedIn messages at scale, then classify and respond to replies. A human still owns the target list and messaging strategy.

1Inbound AI SDRs (Qualified, Drift, Voksha's AI Website SDR): engage visitors already on your website in real time, chat or voice, ask qualifying questions, and book a demo or capture contact details.

The AI typically hands off to a human once a lead is qualified. Closing, negotiation, and complex objection handling are still usually done by a person.

For the full breakdown, including voice vs text AI SDRs and real adoption data, see the complete guide linked below.