Opinion Archives - Act-On

High Five a BDR Today: How Outreach Builds the Next Generation of Marketers

Andrew Fields — Tue, 23 Sep 2025 12:34:00 +0000

Introduction

If you’ve scrolled through LinkedIn lately, you’ve probably noticed that business development representatives (BDRs) are taking a lot of heat. People are calling out the worst cold emails and outreaches they’ve ever received, and airing them out on social media, making it seem like that’s the norm.

As someone who leads BDR teams, I can honestly share that these posts don’t reflect the great work most BDRs are doing. I’d even argue the role is where so many amazing future marketers get their start. And for today’s marketers, there’s a huge chance to tap into BDR insights, use them to your advantage, and drive performance—which is why I say high-five a BDR, don’t roast them.

TL;DR: Marketers can gain powerful insights from BDR outreach. Every day, business development reps talk directly to prospects, testing messaging, subject lines, and value propositions in real time. These conversations reveal what resonates — and what doesn’t — across industries, personas, and buying stages. By collaborating closely with BDR teams, marketers can use this firsthand feedback to refine audience targeting, strengthen campaign messaging, and build content that truly speaks to customer pain points. In short, BDR outreach gives marketers a direct line to the voice of the customer — something no dashboard or analytics tool can fully capture.

What is a BDR?

A BDR, or Business Development Representative, is a sales professional responsible for generating new business opportunities — usually by identifying and reaching out to potential customers (often called prospects).

Here’s a quick breakdown:

Main goal: Fill the sales pipeline with qualified leads for Account Executives (AEs) or sales closers.
Typical tasks:
- Research and identify target companies or contacts.
- Reach out via cold emails, LinkedIn messages, and cold calls.
- Qualify leads by confirming interest, budget, and fit with the company’s product or service.
- Book meetings or demos for the sales team.

BDRs usually work at the top of the sales funnel, focusing on outbound prospecting (proactively reaching out to leads), while a similar role — SDR (Sales Development Representative) — often focuses on inbound leads (those who already showed interest).

The Skills BDRs Build That Marketers Can Use

A BDR’s day is filled with objections, objections, and more objections. That’s why they’re amazing at understanding the solution we bring to the table and how to adjust the messaging fast to fit those objections. If you haven’t worked in a BDR role, here’s a quick inside view of what they’re learning all day.

Pivoting quickly. BDRs know how to pivot messaging fast when a prospect throws an objection their way. They do this daily, which helps them understand how to adapt the message to fit the prospect.

Condensing complicated details. The need to send regular outreach messages pushes BDRs to turn complicated solutions into clear, simple value props. They can share the pivots they’re making on the fly with demand-gen teams, which helps keep messaging tight from the top of the funnel to the closing of the deal.

Creating customer empathy. BDRs are super tapped into your audience. They’re always gathering fresh feedback from prospects about your solution, and they use those insights to speak with emotional intelligence and real empathy about what’s happening in your future customers’ day-to-day lives.

Developing feedback loops. BDR conversations often spark insights that can lift your marketing. The best BDRs will share this intelligence with marketing, helping you build stronger campaigns and keep the feedback flowing. And to be fair, the best marketing teams will also ask for that feedback.

I always encourage our BDRs to stay curious, and buyer psychology plays a big part in that. It’s about understanding what matters most to prospects and what triggers their buyer cycles. Sometimes it’s as simple as asking those questions directly, and when the answers are shared with marketers, they can make that next campaign much more successful.

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High-Performing BDRs Are Strategic, Not Spammy

Recent social media activity might lead you to believe BDRs are KPI-chasing robots, hammering out cold calls and emails without much strategy behind the outreach.

The problem isn’t cold outreaches; it’s poorly done outreaches. Fantastic BDRs know the difference, and they’re actually very strategic. They A/B test messaging to see what resonates with their audiences, and they use intent signals to focus on buyers who are actively in the market for their solution.

In reality, personalized outreaches still open a lot of doors, and it’s nothing like what’s being shared online. For example, if everyone in your organization gets the same message because a BDR is multi-threading an account (that’s sales-speak for reaching out to several people at the same company at once), it will look like we don’t care. And the approach will feel spammy.

Our team, for example, uses ZoomInfo to understand exactly what prospects are looking for, which allows us to personalize our messages. We have default filters that highlight specific features or functions we can solve for, like lead scoring or customer journey. We can also zoom in to see whether a prospect is using a specific platform and customize the message based on their tools.

This intelligence helps a BDR send thoughtful messages or make meaningful calls instead of pushing out generic, spammy pitches. This kind of personalized approach feels very organic, rather than robotic. And it avoids the “commission breath” that makes prospects feel like they’re just another number on a call sheet.

Turning BDR Insights into Marketing Results

BDRs aren’t marketers (at least not yet), but they can offer marketing a lot of information that makes the job easier. Your BDR team is surfacing objections in nearly every conversation. We deal with those objections and address friction points in real time. Marketers benefit from this intelligence because it helps them better understand customer behavior and improve campaign performance by leveraging a direct line to customer insights and feedback.

If you’re considering the best ways to tap into this intelligence, here are a couple of great starting points.

Sit in on calls. Join us for some calls to understand what we’re experiencing on the front lines. You will quickly get a feel for what your buyers care about. And it will sharpen your campaigns by allowing you to include insights straight from the customer’s mouth about what they need, want, and value most. As an aside, tools like Gong Engage can record and make these conversations searchable, adding another layer of insight for your teams.

Listen for tone. A live call gives you context you can’t get elsewhere, and that’s emotion. You can hear the urgency, annoyance, and curiosity, all of which fuel a stronger impact in your marketing.

For marketers, one of my favorite suggestions for improving impact is using your BDRs like a product launch team. Here’s how that can play out:

Give them plenty of training and enablement so they feel confident and effective when rolling out something new.

Team up with BDRs to test new messaging. For example, marketing might say, “We’ve tightened this based on the feedback we’ve heard—go give it a spin. Then let’s regroup, look at results together, and see what’s really moving the needle.”

Celebrate their impact on revenue, not just activity. Show the full story of how the BDR team’s efforts directly impact success across the organization.

At the end of the day, BDRs aren’t just buzzing around inboxes and making calls to hit metrics. They’re learning, listening, and personalizing their outreaches to spark the best possible conversations and results. And the insights they gather along the way are incredibly valuable for marketers and the work you’re doing. When you can tap into that knowledge and recognize BDRs as the foundation of great marketing, you can move closer to the results your team most wants.

Summary

This article explores how marketing teams can leverage the real-world insights gained from BDR outreach to strengthen their strategies. BDRs spend every day engaging directly with prospects — testing messaging, identifying pain points, and gathering instant feedback. These insights give marketers a goldmine of data to refine personas, sharpen positioning, and improve content relevance. By aligning closely with BDR teams, marketers can ensure their campaigns speak directly to customer needs, boost engagement, and drive higher-quality leads through the funnel.

Curious about more creative ways to generate and grow pipeline? We’ve gathered our favorite resources for you here.

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How Should Marketers Use AI Without Losing the Human Touch

Matt Sailor — Sun, 24 Aug 2025 10:47:00 +0000

Introduction

I feel like I’m living in two AI worlds right now.

In one, I’m having thoughtful, behind-the-scenes conversations with my co-workers about how marketers should use AI to its fullest potential. We’re exploring what’s exciting, what’s tricky, and how we’re all experimenting. On the other hand, I’m scrolling through social media, where the conversation is a little more … surface level.

You have folks who try AI once, get a weird output, and declare it useless. Then you have the other side of the spectrum: people who see it as the absolute answer to everything.

I’m finding the reality sits somewhere in the middle. AI isn’t going to single-handedly run your marketing strategy or your department (take a deep breath of relief, marketers!). But it does have some pretty amazing capabilities that go far beyond the surface-level em-dash conversation. Let’s start there, shall we?

TL;DR: Marketers today live between two extremes of the AI conversation — hype and skepticism — but the truth lies somewhere in between. AI isn’t replacing marketers; it’s enhancing what we do. Its real value comes from handling repetitive, time-consuming tasks like content audits, updates, and organization so we can focus on creative, strategic work. Humans still play a crucial role in judgment, oversight, and storytelling — areas where AI often falls short. The key is to experiment thoughtfully, learn from peers, and use AI to amplify your strengths rather than replace them. When used intentionally, AI can help marketers save time, spark creativity, and rediscover the fun in their work.

Going Beyond Surface Level Tasks

One of the most frequent conversations I’ve seen lately is the notorious em-dash debate. You’ve probably seen the social media posts declaring, “If you spot an em dash, it must be AI!”

But if you’re a writer, you know the truth. We’ve been using them forever. I’ve actually never met a writer who didn’t count the em dash as one of their favorite tools. If you want a laugh, check out this piece written from the em dash’s POV. Apparently, it’s noticed all the buzz on social media too.

And the same goes for the cliché intro line: “In our fast-paced digital world.” In a prior life, I taught English at the university level, and I can tell you plenty of human writers have leaned on that line.

So these so-called AI dead giveaways don’t really hold up. AI detectors are unreliable, and any “telltale signs” you see now will likely disappear as users get better at prompting and editing.

What we’re really seeing is people engaging with AI at a very surface level and then posting about it on social media. And don’t get me wrong—I’m not mad about it (See? Humans really do really love their em dashes). But I do think we can have a more intelligent, nuanced conversation about its potential to transform us as marketers and expand what we can accomplish.

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How Marketers Should Use AI

I’ve found that AI’s real potential isn’t in pounding out a 1,000-word blog post. The opportunity is to push past those surface-level tasks and into something more.

We recently did some AI training here at Act-On, and I realized much of AI’s value lies in keeping the fun parts of your work for yourself and letting the robot handle the ones that aren’t so fun.

For example, can AI do content ideation? Yeah, of course it can. But that’s something I actually want to do. So it’s more about looking at your workflows and asking: What are the things in my day that are manual, time-consuming, and not really that enjoyable? Those are the places where AI can step in to make your job more fun.

Here are some ways marketers should use AI:

Content audits and categorization. I once spent an entire summer manually reviewing and categorizing hundreds of blog posts. AI can now take on much of that work. It can scan your backlog, group content, find gaps, and suggest updates in far less time (and budget) than we’ve done in the past.

Adding structured updates. If you create content, updating and refreshing it is part of the job. Adding FAQs to old blog posts, for example, is the kind of repetitive, rules-based task that AI can handle well.

Organizing content assets. AI-based organizational tools might not be perfect yet, but they’re getting closer. Some of these tools can help you customize workflows, clean up messy file systems, and make your content assets much easier to find.

Supporting internal thought leaders. Teams are also using AI to scale content creation. Our team, for example, set up a tool that helps SMEs turn their expertise, industry knowledge, and real-time insights into short blogs. The AI adds structure, strengthens connections between ideas, and makes it much easier for internal experts to share their perspectives more often.

We’re at a point where we, as marketers, can control our destiny a bit and use AI to make ourselves and our creative work much more efficient, without handing over the best parts. It’s also a great opportunity to stop giving up the parts of your job you love most and start giving it the parts that slow you down.

_{ChatGPT can be a powerful tool, but it’s up to us to use it where it’s needed, not when humans are still better equipped for the job.}

Where Do Humans Still Fit?

In the background, there’s some fear in marketing about which parts of our jobs AI will replace and where humans still fit. One thing I’ve noticed is the level of oversight AI requires.

For example, right now it’s built to agree with you (finally, a co-worker who thinks all of your ideas are brilliant!). But it also can’t use human judgment to recognize when something is off.

Recently, I was reviewing historical data to understand which forms in our content generated the most leads. The dataset included many different form titles, including “book a call” (which appears throughout our website) and forms tied to eBooks.

After AI analyzed the data, it decided that eBook forms outperformed the others by a landslide. That just didn’t make sense. Looking closer, I realized it had lumped “book a call” in with “eBook” forms, which skewed the results.

It’s a small example with a big lesson: No matter how you use AI, you still need a human to catch the errors. Left unchecked, AI will swear up and down that an eBook form and “book a call” are basically the same thing. And of course, as humans, we know they definitely are not.

How to Spark Better AI Conversations in Your Team

If you want to step away from the surface-level discussions into something deeper with your team, here are a few things to consider:

Find the people who are already doing interesting things with AI. They might be another department in your company, or individuals in your professional network. Invite them to share their processes. For example, what are your demand gen peers doing with AI? What are your content and creatives doing?

Follow thought leaders experimenting with AI in your space. And avoid the ones that are basically posting “Just tried AI once; here’s my TED Talk.” You’re looking for marketers who explain the “why” behind their workflows, rather than just the wow factor. Want some inspiration? Check out Act-On’s LinkedIn feed where we regularly reshare and highlight top voices in AI.

Experiment in small groups. With AI, it’s natural to feel cautious since we’ve all heard big promises before. That’s why it helps to stay curious, try new things out, and keep a healthy dose of skepticism without writing it off too quickly. One way to do that is by experimenting in small groups. Partner up to test new tools and workflows, then share what works and what doesn’t with the larger team to discover new uses.

Final Thoughts

As marketers, it’s important to keep our curiosity alive. Not every new AI tool will deliver value, and I have my own list of experiments that definitely missed the mark. But what matters is staying intentional. Marketers should use AI in a way that protects the parts of the job that are best left to a human, and the parts that sparked your love for marketing in the first place. Because when you bring AI into the right parts of your process, you can create stronger results for your team and continue experiencing joy in your work.

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