AI for BDRs: How to use Outreach’s AI Prospecting Agent

For BDRs, prospecting has always been a time-intensive process. Researching accounts, identifying key decision-makers, and crafting personalized outreach messages can take up a significant chunk of the workweek—often at the expense of actually engaging with prospects. 

At Outreach, we’re focused on helping reps sell like the best rep. And for Andrea Youmans, Director of Product Marketing at Outreach, that means leveraging AI to make research and prospecting more efficient and more powerful for BDRs.  

Enter: Outreach’s AI Prospecting Agent, a powerful tool designed to support business development representatives throughout their sales workflow, by researching accounts, prospecting, and crafting relevant outreach emails. All so that sellers have more time for live sales interactions. In this blog post, we’ll walk through Andrea’s tips on how BDRs can implement an AI Prospecting Agent into their daily workflow, and her hope for the future of AI in sales.  

Why do BDRs need AI? 

AI isn’t just a “nice to have” anymore—it's become a standard tool in modern sales. Sellers who can embrace AI will see gains in their sales strategy over those who are slower to adopt. Why? Because prospecting takes up too much time—researching accounts that don’t convert, personalizing emails that go ignored, and making cold calls that lead nowhere. Real selling happens when sellers are able to hand off the busy work, get time back in their day to focus on building connections.  

Here are a few more challenges that sellers without the support of an AI tool tend to face in the daily workflow: 

Time-consuming manual research 

Reps spend 8-10 hours a week researching accounts and contacts before even beginning outreach. That’s an entire Monday gone in just research. Most of that time is spent gathering details that may not even influence the outcome of the sale. In fact, according to our State of Prospecting survey, 45% of sellers cite time spent prospecting as a top challenge. 

Lower-tier accounts often go untouched 

With limited bandwidth, BDRs focus on strategic (A and B) accounts, leaving C and D accounts unengaged for months. But those overlooked accounts can often tip the scale when it comes to revenue. They’re perfect low-hanging revenue opportunities. 

Scaling personalization is difficult 

Research is just the beginning. Once reps have gathered intel, they need to write outreach emails that get their prospect’s attention. Outreach these days needs to be punchy, relevant, and effective in a matter of seconds. So, the stakes are high for reps to get it just right – which often means there’s a lot of time spent crafting those messages and no guarantee of success. 

Sales teams have plenty of tools to tackle prospecting, but generic AI often does more harm than good—spamming prospects with irrelevant messaging and damaging brand reputation. Outreach’s AI Prospecting Agent is built different. It’s built to prospect like your best reps, with customizable workflows that adjust to your specific industry, offering, or buyer. Outreach gives sales teams full control—so AI works for them, not against them.  

How the AI prospecting agent works in daily workflows 

Sometimes AI can feel intimidating, and it's not always clear how it actually works in practice. For sellers looking to implement an AI prospecting tool into their workflow, we’ll break down how the agent works: 

1. Identify & Research  

This is usually where reps are spending the most amount of time: finding the right prospects by sifting through mountains of data and noise on the web. The AI pulls in third-party data signals—such as company news, product launches, funding updates, and more—leveraging CRM data and intent signals to surface key insights. This helps BDRs narrow down their search. 

2. Generate 

Using those insights, the AI agent crafts personalized outreach messages that align with the prospect’s current business context. It adapts based on data from previous interactions and the prospect’s unique situation. For example, instead of having to scour through LinkedIn to find out if a company has a recent product launch or relevant update, the AI will pull that data in seconds and craft an email for BDRs.  

3. Engage 

Marketing and brand teams can attest that there’s often tons of new content and messaging generated that gets lost in the ether and doesn’t actually make it into the prospect emails. AI ensures that reps use consistent, on-brand messaging by pulling content from Outreach’s Seller Content Hub, ensuring that communication is cohesive and in line with the brand’s standards. 

A practical use case? One enterprise customer uses AI prospecting to re-engage D-tier accounts that haven’t been touched in over six months. Their takeaway: even one opportunity out of a thousand is revenue their wouldn’t have had otherwise. Since no rep is actively working these accounts, the AI accent steps in to capture low-hanging revenue that would’ve otherwise gone unnoticed. 

What sets Outreach’s AI prospecting agent apart? 

With a growing number of AI tools in the market, what makes Outreach’s solution stand out? 

• Built into your existing platform: Unlike competitors, whose AI requires extra steps and separate systems, Outreach’s AI is fully integrated into the platform that your reps use every day.  

• Flexibility: Users can choose full automation or a human-in-the-loop approach for added oversight. 

• A foundation for future AI tools: At Outreach, we deeply understand prospecting workflows and what tools are necessary to transform sales execution. This foundation sets the stage for future AI-driven automation that’s perfectly aligned with your team’s workflow. 

3 tips for BDRs to maximize AI prospecting 

If you’re adopting Outreach’s AI Prospecting Agent, here are three key tips to make the most of it: 

1. Don’t set it and forget it 

AI is a tool, not a replacement. Always review generated messages before sending. Humans will always need to be involved. Even though you can make this agent fully automated, it’s important to have some checkpoints. 

2. Create a quick checklist 

Before sending AI-generated outreach, check for tone, accuracy, and personalization to ensure alignment with your brand. 

3. Use AI to expand, not replace, pipeline efforts 

AI helps work lower-priority accounts, but strategic accounts still require a human touch. 

The future of AI in sales 

As AI continues to evolve, expect to see even more automation in sales workflows. While today’s AI prospecting tools assist with research and personalization, future iterations may handle follow-ups and even early-stage conversations. 

Outreach’s AI Prospecting Agent helps BDRs/XDRs work smarter, not harder. By automating repetitive tasks, it frees up reps to focus on what truly matters: building relationships and closing deals.