I’ve spent much of the past 24 months working on bringing AI into organisations. Over the last year in particular, I’ve been focused on integrating AI into inside sales teams, from sales managers to SDRs responsible for outbound calling and email, as well as the teams managing pipeline and sales operations day to day.
In that time I’ve advised teams on tools that automate workflows and increase revenue, I’ve watched which tools actually stick, which deliver measurable value, and which are still overhyped or unwanted to begin with.
In this newsletter I’m going to give you a high-level overview of the key AI-powered software categories that I’m currently advising SMB B2B sales teams to explore. In the coming issues, I’ll dive deeper into each one with examples, case studies, pros/cons etc.
Let’s get into it:
AI & Automation Software Categories Transforming SMB Inside Sales
🔍1. AI-Led Lead Generation & Data Enrichment
What this enables: Personalised lead data generation aligned to your ICP, with live data enrichment.
Before AI, lead generation was largely one-size-fits-all. Most tools couldn’t automate leads for specific SMB niches or adapt to how teams actually define a good customer.
What surprised me most is how much AI has changed this. Tools now can provide personalised, daily up-to-date data. Two products I recommend are CALLM, which focuses on personalised lead data automation for niche SMB targets, and Clay, which supports teams that need high-volume, continuously refreshed lead enrichment for highly visible markets.
📞 2. AI Voice Cold Calling
What this supports: lead qualification and meeting generation
This is an area I initially underestimated. A client wanted to experiment with AI voice agents for outbound sales. We deployed AI-powered voice agents for cold calling and lead qualification, and they instantly booked meetings for our clients sales team.
Since then, I’ve noticed adoption across other SMB sales teams.
I assumed voice agents would be a natural fit for customer support teams in SMBs. However, the cost per call makes these tools difficult to justify for support use cases. Deploying them within the sales function, by contrast, changes the ROI equation.
Today, voice agents are best positioned as openers rather than full sales replacements. I don’t see them fully replacing enterprise sales teams. However, for companies that target smaller customers, they’re already taking bites out of the process.
As these agents become more capable, they’ll handle larger portions of the sales motion more effectively. This is an area I’m watching closely to see when voice agents reach the threshold where adoption accelerates rapidly due to improved capability and reliability.
If you are setting up your own voice agents I strongly advise using Retell over Vapi.
📧 3. Personal LLMs for Personalised Email Outreach
What this enables: Higher reply rates, improved deliverability, reduced manual sequence management.
Smaller SMB sales teams aren’t investing here yet. Instead, uptake is strongest among teams targeting higher-value customers and larger organisations, where the economics of deeper personalisation make sense.
One product example is Perlon AI, which offers highly personalised outbound email automation but typically starts at a four-figure monthly investment. For teams selling higher-ticket B2B products or enterprise-leaning offerings, this can be justified. For lower-ACV SMB sales motions, it’s often harder to make the numbers work.
🗒️ 5. AI Note-Takers & CRM Automation
What this enables: Reduced admin time and happier teams!
Tools that transcribe calls, summarise key points, and automatically update CRM fields, reducing manual admin for reps.
Example: Attio — call transcription and CRM updates built into the platform.
What stood out to me is how much value auto-updating the CRM adds. Salespeople are hired for their ability to engage customers, not for form-filling. Automating this reduces friction, improves data quality, and leads to happier, more effective sales teams.
I use Zoom and Otter’s note takers. Zoom is great because you can screen record.
🧾 6. Pre-Call Research & Prospect Briefing Agents
What this enables: faster call preparation and a safety net when there’s limited time for pre-call research.
Some teams use tools like SalesEcho, which delivers quick AI-generated pre-call briefings, summarising key details about a contact’s role, company signals, and recent activity, so reps have context before the conversation even begins.
You can use n8n and other agentic platforms but they can be tricky to set up.
🗣️ 8. Conversation Intelligence & Call Analytics
What this enables: insight-driven coaching, better rep training, higher conversion.
Tools that analyse call recordings to identify patterns, from objection trends to talk/listen ratios and messaging that consistently performs.
What this enables:
Coaching based on real conversations, not anecdotes
Faster identification of what messaging works
More consistent performance across the team
Example: Gong, which analyses sales calls to surface trends, risks, and winning behaviours that managers can use to coach more effectively.
📅 9. Automate Your Inbox
For automating your email inbox, there are several great options. Tools like Fixer.ai can organise your inbox and draft replies. You can also use Gmail’s AI polish to clean up rough emails and auto-personalise pre-written templates, or dictate your email into ChatGPT and let it write it up for you (I tend to use this for longer emails, or ones where I’m trying to figure out the structure). There’s a lot that works well here.
📑 10. Slide Deck Automation
What this enables: Quick polished presentations
I’m a big fan of Gamma and other AI proposal-generation tools. They’re incredibly useful for quickly spinning up presentations for potential customers. You can also use ChatGPT to generate proposal copy, which speeds the process up significantly.
And That’s it!
These are the tools I’m seeing teams actually use. I’ll break down a few of them above in more detail in future posts. I’ll go into more detail on some of the tools above in future newsletters, particularly those I’ve implemented directly within client workflows. I’ll cover what’s worked, what hasn’t, how teams are actually using them, and where I think each tool is best suited in terms of team size, function, and use case.
If you have tools you love, that you’re testing, use cases you want me to evaluate, or questions on implementation, hit reply and let me know!
Until next time,
— Louisamay Hanrahan
Really useful list, especially the point about AI voice agents becoming practical for outbound sales. One thing sales teams working across the U.S. also need to consider is time-zone coordination when scheduling calls and follow-ups. A PST to EST converter can make it much easier to align outreach between Pacific and Eastern Time. https://psttoest.com/