What does SDR stand for?

Sales development representative. It is the role that finds prospects, contacts them and books meetings for a salesperson or founder who closes the deal.

Is an AI SDR the same as a chatbot?

No. A chatbot answers questions on a website. An AI SDR goes out and contacts named prospects, follows up and books meetings.

Does an AI SDR replace a salesperson?

It replaces the finding, sending and follow-up part. Someone still has to run the meetings, write the quotes and close the deals.

Getting customers

What is an AI SDR?

An AI SDR is software that does the work of a sales development rep: it finds prospects, contacts them, follows up, answers replies and books meetings. SDR stands for sales development representative, the person whose job is to turn cold names into booked conversations for the people who close deals.

Updated October 2026

What an SDR does, and what the AI version does

A human SDR has one goal: a qualified meeting on the calendar. Along the way they build lists, send emails, make calls, follow up, read replies, and hand good conversations to a salesperson. An AI SDR does the same list of tasks with software.

Job	Human SDR	AI SDR
Find prospects	Searches databases and sites by hand	Finds named people from a description of the buyer
Contact them	Writes and sends emails, makes calls	Sends emails, can place calls
Follow up	Tracks who to chase in a sheet or CRM	Runs the schedule and stops when someone replies
Handle replies	Reads each reply and writes back	Reads and answers, or flags it for you
Book the meeting	Offers times, sends the invite	Offers times and books on a calendar

Software never gets busy and never forgets the third follow-up. That is the main advantage. The main limit is that it has only what you tell it about your offer.

How it works, in order

You describe who buys from you and what you offer. The software finds people who fit and checks they have a way to be reached. It writes a short message to each one. It sends from a mailbox, spaced out over the day, and follows up on a set schedule. When a reply arrives it decides what the reply means: interested, not now, not interested, wrong person, unsubscribe. It answers or books the call, and it stops contacting that person.

Good ones also stop for people who book or opt out. A tool that keeps emailing someone who already said no is a spam tool, not an SDR.

What an AI SDR does not do

It does not run your discovery call, negotiate a contract or decide your pricing. It does not know your market better than you. If your offer is unclear, it sends an unclear email to more people faster. Write down who buys and why before you turn anything on.

It also needs a real sending setup. Email from a shared pool of senders is a weak point, because the reputation of other users bleeds into yours. Rocketship sends from your own Gmail or Google Workspace address instead.

A fictional example

Marlow Roofing, a three-person roofing contractor in Boise, wants more commercial property managers. The owner, Dev, tells the AI worker: property managers at multi-building apartment complexes within 40 miles. It finds named managers, emails each one from Dev's Gmail, follows up a few times, and answers a question like "do you do flat roofs?" using details Dev supplied. When one manager says Thursday works, it books it on Dev's calendar. Dev shows up to the meeting.

Nothing here needed a hire. What Dev did supply was the one-sentence buyer, a few facts about his work, and his calendar.

Where Rocketship fits

Rocketship is one product that gets a business customers. Its AI workers send, reply and book on their own by default, and you can review anything. Sequences stop when someone replies, books or unsubscribes, and one-click unsubscribe is on by default. Each new inbox ramps up gradually to 60 cold emails a day.

Launch is $24.99 a month with 50 leads, Frontier is $79 a month with 200, and Mission Control is $1,499 a month for teams working about 6,500 leads. Builder, Launch and Frontier start with a 7-day free trial, card required.

Compare the cost with a person on how much an SDR costs and AI SDR vs a human SDR.