How Top SDR Teams Are Evolving with AI – Ep. 33

Elric Legloire ran SDR teams at Chili Piper, earning three or four promotions in two years, before leaving to advise companies on his own. Working solo, he says, is what lets him see the same handful of problems repeat across every industry. His take on promotion: it doesn’t come from being the top performer, it comes from visibly improving the playbook and coaching the people around you. When he hires, he runs a role-play and watches how the candidate takes feedback, because someone who pushes back on coaching early rarely takes it later. On AI, he thinks the panic about SDRs disappearing has it backwards. Thirty thousand more SDRs were added globally over the past year, and OpenAI and Anthropic are now hiring reps to go after their biggest accounts. What has actually changed is the day itself: prospecting used to eat about a third of the week and now runs closer to 80%. He also tells clients to expect a full year before outbound turns into revenue, once you account for the sales cycle, hiring, and ramp. The episode wraps up with practical advice on asking better discovery questions, building SDR programs from scratch, and how sales professionals can stand out by focusing on genuine curiosity, empathy, and solving real customer problems.