What is an AI BDR?

The problem an AI BDR solves

Most outbound teams do not have a selling problem. They have a preparation problem.

Before a rep can send a single useful message, someone has to decide which companies are worth approaching, find the person who actually owns the problem, and get a working email address for them. That work is slow, repetitive and invisible on a pipeline report — but it consumes the hours that were supposed to go into conversations.

An AI BDR takes that preparation layer. It runs continuously, it does not get bored on the four-hundredth company, and it hands your team a list of accounts and contacts that are ready to be contacted rather than ready to be researched.

What Iris actually does

1. Finds companies that match your marketIris works from your ideal customer profile — industry, size, geography, and the characteristics your best existing accounts share — and builds a list of companies that match it.
2. Watches for buying signalsRather than treating every matching company as equally worth contacting, Iris looks for signs of activity that suggest a company is in market right now. Buying-signal research is included with AI Outreach Agent and AI Sales Agent.
3. Researches the decision-makersIris identifies the people inside those companies who own the problem you solve, so outreach goes to a named role rather than a generic inbox.
4. Finds verified work emailsContact details are checked before they are used. Where a single source cannot produce a verified address, Email Waterfall checks several sources in sequence to improve the odds.
5. Runs outreach and follow-upsOn the outreach plans, Iris sends the sequence and keeps following up, so nothing stalls because a rep forgot to send step three.

Where an AI BDR fits in your team

Founder-led sales

If you are selling before your first sales hire, the constraint is your own hours. An AI BDR gives you a researched list to work through in the time you actually have, without hiring a full-time SDR to build it.

Small teams that are already selling

When two or three reps are splitting their week between research and conversations, moving the research off their desk is the fastest way to increase selling time without increasing headcount.

Teams entering a new market

Opening a new segment or geography means starting the list from nothing. An AI BDR builds that first list quickly, so you find out whether the market responds before committing a hire to it.

What an AI BDR does not do

Being precise about the limits matters more than the pitch:

• It does not close deals. Discovery, objection handling, negotiation and closing stay with your team. Iris gets you to the conversation.
• It cannot guarantee a contact exists. Where reliable data is unavailable, no verified email is returned. That is a data limit, not a settings problem.
• It does not fix a weak offer. Better targeting makes a good offer land more often. It does not make a poorly-defined one work.
• Personalised outreach is not on every plan. It is included only with AI Sales Agent — see the plan comparison.

Which plan gives you an AI BDR?

All four Genius Growth plans include verified work emails and Email Waterfall. They differ in how much of the work Iris does for you:

• Data Credits — you run the searches, paying for the exact number of credits you need. No CRM integration.
• Self Service — a workspace for finding companies and researching decision-makers yourself, up to 500 target prospects, with CRM integration.
• AI Outreach Agent — up to 1,000 prospects, with buying-signal research, decision-maker research and automated follow-ups.
• AI Sales Agent — the full set, including personalised outreach, reply qualification and meeting scheduling.

Frequently asked questions