When I hear or read top voices saying they can replace BDRs with AI, I cringe. They rely on a high-volume strategy and leads to approach their Enterprise and SMB business. And to be fair, they are half right, but not in the way they think.
The narrative goes like this: automation handles prospecting, AI writes the emails, contact-level intent identifies who’s in-market, and now you don’t need humans cold calling anymore. The BDR role is dead. Time to restructure your revenue org and save big money.
But, alas, contact-level intent isn’t killing the BDR role. It’s killing the part of the BDR role that should have never existed to begin with. The mechanical, soul-crushing, low-value work that made BDR the highest-churn position in B2B. What’s left is the work that was always supposed to be the job. Things like deep research, contextual outreach, human judgment, and relationship building with the people who are in-market.
BDRs never should have been human spam bots, and contact-level intent is revealing what the role was supposed to be all along.
How AI Makes Contact-Level Intent Possible
Before contact-level intent technology, if you wanted to know which specific people at your target accounts were actively researching solutions in your category, you had two options. You could hire an army of researchers to manually track, across thousands of contacts, website visits, content downloads, job changes, and technology adoption signals. Or you could guess based on job titles and hope you got lucky.
AI changed this by processing behavioral signals at a scale, because enables the BDR to connect technology adoption patterns with hiring signals with web browsing behavior to surface the contacts who are in-market right now.
AI is monitoring millions of behavioral signals across thousands of contacts so humans can focus on the work that requires judgment.
But AI doesn’t replace BDRs. Because AI sucks at booking meetings, building context and turning signals into pipeline.
What Contact-Level Intent Eliminates
Contact-level intent makes little sense without BDRs, because the point of it is to eliminate the mechanical useless work that made the traditional BDR model unsustainable.
When you can see that Sarah Johnson, VP of Revenue Operations, changed jobs 47 days ago and has been researching marketing automation platforms for the past three weeks, you know she’s close from a decision or she’s evaluating.
It eliminates the hassle of MQL qualification and stops BDRs from being the human filter between marketing’s lead generation machine and sales’ pipeline.
Time-based re-engagement cadences are no longer effective. If the account isn’t showing signals, BDRs focus on accounts with activity and don’t waste time on those without signals.
It makes fake personalization at scale obsolete. BDRs have spent a lot of their time trying to research accounts just enough not to sound like complete spam. This ends when they are reaching out because they’re showing active buying behavior for your specific category.
What BDRs Do When They Have Contact-Level Intent
Contact-level intent identifies who’s in-market, but it doesn’t tell you where they are in their evaluation or what approach will resonate. A BDR’s job is to interpret what the signals mean about timing and intent, then craft an approach that matches where the buyer actually is. There is no AI that can automate that.
When a BDR connects with a contact 90 days before they’re ready to buy, they’re starting a relationship that pays dividends later. They’re the people who were helpful when the buyer was still figuring out what questions to ask or shared a useful perspective before the formal evaluation started. This is the work contact-level intent makes possible.
The Gold Era of BDRs
For the first time, BDRs can focus on investigation, context-building, human judgment, and relationship development.
The best BDRs want to understand accounts deeply, to reach out when it matters, to have meaningful conversations, and to be strategic account researchers.
BDRs in Contact-Level intent environments Takeaways
Companies running volume-based prospecting models measure BDR success by activity metrics: calls made, emails sent, touches logged. In this model, BDRs function as human dialers executing mechanical work that automation handles more efficiently. These companies confuse lead generation at scale with account-based marketing. When BDRs are already performing low-value mechanical work, AI replacement makes economic sense.
The BDR role shifts from activity-driven prospecting to signal-driven investigation. Instead of cold calling 500 accounts hoping to find someone in-market, BDRs focus on 50 accounts showing active buying signals. Instead of qualifying marketing-generated MQLs, BDRs investigate why contacts at target accounts are researching and build relationships before competitors arrive. The role becomes strategic account research rather than volume-based outreach.
BDRs interpret signals to understand why specific contacts are researching and what triggered the evaluation. They investigate account context by analyzing executive hires, company expansions, or competitive pressures. They craft contextual outreach that matches where buyers are in their evaluation timeline. They qualify real buying intent versus competitive research or noise. They build early relationships 60-90 days before formal buying cycles that accelerate deals later.