Before we get into the capacity vs capability discussion it’s probably worth saying up front that I am a salesperson (and the CEO of SkillBuilder.io).  To put a finer point on it, I have been responsible for sales, sales teams, channels, partnerships, product launches, and everything in between (in addition to being a Chief Product Officer) for 20+ years.  Why does this matter?  Because most AI salespeople are being developed by a bunch of folks who have never held a quota and that matters.

Depending on engineers to build AI salespeople is like having a team of architects design a skyscraper but asking them to build it without ever setting foot on a construction site. Sure, they understand blueprints, materials, and engineering principles, but they’ve never laid a brick, managed a crew, or dealt with on-the-ground challenges like weather delays or equipment malfunctions. Designing AI for sales without real sales experience is the same. Engineers can create the algorithms, but they miss the daily realities—like reading a client’s hesitation or knowing when to push for a close—that only a salesperson understands with lived experience or LOTS of detailed feedback that’s nearly impossible to get at the speed of sales conversations and cycles.  And if I put on my technical hat, the speed to which your products or services change and your competition evolves (more on this later) make it nearly impossible to have a training data set that can sustain more than a couple of months in relevancy for fine tuning how a conversation experience powered by AI can be effective.

So, what does this all have to do with capacity and capability?  It’s to highlight that engineers are getting pretty good at adding sales capacity (especially for qualifying deals) where AI can live on a webpage and take inbound conversations but are not exactly adding capability (the ability to do things like differentiate against competition, shape solutions, etc) that will lead to closing deals faster.

One way to think about the differences between Capacity and Capability:

• Capacity refers to the number of hours available for making sales calls, following up with leads, or nurturing prospects. In a traditional human sales team, capacity is limited by the number of salespeople and the hours they can work.

• Capability, on the other hand, is the effectiveness of those hours. A highly capable salesperson can close deals efficiently, but even the best can only work so many hours in a week.

So why aren’t today’s AI SDRs enough?  They are likely to be very weak after the qualification phase of a chat and adding lagging, internal data or more clever UI is not likely to make a real difference.  Sure, you could make them hybrid chat experiences (where humans can intervene) but now you are going backwards on capacity AND you are still limited in capability beyond the employee likely to leave within 18 months.

This isn’t a small challenge or a cheap one. According to industry estimates, a mid-sized company (500-1,000 employees) typically has 5-15 salespeople, while larger organizations can employ 50-200.  That’s a serious budget line item:

• Average costs: Onboarding, training, and compensating human SDRs is costly. According to HubSpot, the average cost to hire a sales rep is over $15,000, with training costs adding up to $10,000 per rep per year. Salaries for salespeople focused on demand generation or capture can range from $50,000 to $120,000+ annually, depending on the industry and location.

• Time: Onboarding sales reps takes an average of 3-9 months before they can begin contributing significantly to revenue. This lag time in training and skill development adds friction to scaling with human reps.

• Turnover: Sales has one of the highest turnover rates across all industries, often as high as 35%, further driving up the costs of scaling sales teams.

This is the obvious reason most investor inboxes are getting crushed with AI SDR SPAM.

Unlike human SDRs, AI-powered salespeople have limitless capacity and that’s where engineers shine building solutions.

• 24/7/365 Operation? No problem. AI salespeople don’t need rest. They can work across time zones and manage multiple conversations simultaneously. This ability to scale without adding headcount gives organizations an immediate advantage, especially for handling inbound leads and managing follow-ups.

• Cost efficiency? We got that! Deploying AI solutions can result in significant savings. The cost of implementing an AI system is generally a one-time setup followed by a software subscription fee, far lower than the combined salary, training, and overhead costs of human sales teams.

• No burnout or training lag? Yes we can! AI doesn’t need onboarding and can be deployed immediately, avoiding the long ramp-up period that human salespeople require. Additionally, AI doesn’t suffer from fatigue or burnout, so its "capability" remains consistent.

But, and this is a big one coming from a revenue leader, if you only increase capacity and not capability eventually you won’t hit your sales numbers and it’s likely you won’t recover as faster moving competition continues to enter the market.

So, that’s where capability needs to shine through.

While human SDRs excel in long term relationship building (something that distinctly benefits service providers), AI’s capability shines when it comes to handling real-time tasks that require speed and processing far beyond a human’s capability.  Let’s talk about the big one, competitive differentiation, something we think constantly about at SkillBuilder.io for the following reasons:

89% of B2B buyers say that a vendor’s ability to provide “unique, valuable insights” is a key differentiator in their decision-making process (Gartner).

Companies with strong competitive differentiation are 2.2 times more likely to experience above-average profitability ( Deloitte ).

Only 14% of buyers believe that the salespeople they engage with can differentiate themselves from competitors ( RAIN Group ).

A 10% improvement in product differentiation can lead to a 40-50% increase in customer retention ( Forrester ).

Over 50% of deals are won by the vendor that educates buyers with new and unique perspectives ( Corporate Visions).

71% of sales professionals say that price becomes a factor only when there is no clear differentiation ( HubSpot ).

Sure, connecting all your product and company data matters but knowing how that compares in real-time to what would be easily discoverable competition by a prospect on the web via ChatGPT , Perplexity , or Gemini is likely the bigger opportunity.

So, while today people are thinking capacity, and there are dozens of options, the real opportunity for AI is capability and unless you have walked the mile in a salesperson’s shoes you may want to dig a little deeper on AI SDRs before you buy.

Like the idea of real-time competitive differentiation and building capability and capacity?  Get in touch.

‍