AI Outbound: What Top SaaS Teams Are Actually Doing in 2026
AI in sales is everywhere in 2025. Every vendor promises self driving GTM, AI SDRs, automated outbound and instant pipeline creation. Most of it is noise. The useful part is much smaller.
The real question for revenue leaders is simple.
What are top performing teams actually doing with AI today, and what does that mean for building a competitive GTM in 2026?
The 'death of the sales rep' is exaggerated
The sales rep is not dead. The hiring pattern has changed because AI now handles the repetitive work that used to sit on junior reps.
What is happening in real teams:
Traditional BDR and SDR roles are declining
Hybrid commercial and technical roles are rising, especially GTM Engineers
AEs are taking more targeted outbound responsibility because AI cannot replace context or judgement
The biggest shift is operational.
Outbound is being centralised inside GTM or Growth rather than inside each rep’s inbox.
This centralised model defines the winning teams:
ICP logic centralised
Sequencing centralised
Data and enrichment centralised
Trigger logic centralised
Reps focused on qualification and conversations, not process or admin
AI has not removed sellers. It has removed the low value work that used to slow them down.
Let's break down how this looks, channel by channel.
Email: AI is now competitive with human writing
Email is the channel that AI has changed most.
Human SDR outbound averaged roughly 2 to 4 percent reply rates in 2024. AI driven outbound has now closed most of that gap. Several SaaS companies now see AI sequences performing at the same level as human written sequences.
This is the workflow top performing teams actually use:
Human built ICP lists in Clay or LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Trigger scanning and enrichment inside Clay
Processing through OpenAI, Twain, Grok or custom prompts through Zapier or n8n
Sequencing inside Instantly, Outreach, SalesLoft, Lemlist or HubSpot
The tools vary but the pattern is identical.
Humans define the ICP and the logic.
AI executes the volume and the personalisation at scale.
This is why low quality automation agencies get poor results. Most of them automate without strategy.
The companies that win either hire GTM Engineers internally or work with specialist outbound agencies who build and maintain sophisticated workflows.
If you want introductions to the ones who actually produce results, email bill@katapult.amsterdam.
LinkedIn: behind email, improving fast
LinkedIn does not allow the same level of automation as email.
Manual personalised InMails still outperform everything else.
AI is useful on LinkedIn, but it sits in the support and writing layer, not the sending layer.
Teams that are winning on LinkedIn use a mix of these tools:
Taplio for AI written message suggestions
Lemlist LinkedIn AI for compliant first line generation
Clay plus OpenAI for context, insights and profile analysis
HeyReach for safe multi account outbound at scale
La Growth Machine for combined email and LinkedIn orchestration
Shield for analytics
The formula is simple.
AI writes.
Humans send.
LinkedIn stays clean.
LinkedIn AI outbound at the end of 2025 is roughly where AI email was at the end of 2024. It is getting better, but email is still the more mature channel.
Calling: AI co pilots are real and AI callers are not
AI callers exist, but they cannot replicate the quality of a capable human rep on any call that involves real qualification or real objections.
The real breakthrough is AI that supports reps live.
Gong has moved beyond simple post call analysis. It now provides:
live objection prompts
reminders to ask discovery questions
talk ratio corrections
competitor call outs when keywords appear
real time coaching overlays
This gives reps something they never had before.
A senior manager is effectively in their ear, guiding them through the call.
Teams using these tools see:
faster ramp for new reps
cleaner qualification
fewer bad calls entering pipeline
more consistency across the team
AI is not closing deals.
It is improving the quality and consistency of the humans who do the selling.
The GTM model that will win in 2026
Top SaaS companies are converging on the same operating model.
Human led selling
AI assisted execution
Centralised outbound operations
Reps focused on conversations
Non human channels managed by a shared GTM function
AI handling volume
Humans handling nuance
This is the co pilot era.
AI increases scale.
Humans maintain trust.
What the top SaaS teams actually use in their outbound stack
The highest performing teams do not use endless tools.
They use focused stacks that generate leverage.
Email and sequencing
Commonly used tools include:
Clay
Apollo or ZoomInfo
OpenAI, Twain, Grok
Zapier or n8n
Instantly, Outreach, SalesLoft, Lemlist
Lavender
Clay provides insight and automation.
The sequencer delivers the message.
AI produces relevance at scale.
Typical setups include:
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Clay
Shield
Taplio
Lemlist LinkedIn AI
LGM
Semi automated compliant workflows
AI supports the writing.
Humans execute the sending.
Calling
Teams that perform well on the phone use:
Gong or Chorus
Aircall, Dialpad or Kixie
AiSDR, Bland AI or Synthflow for limited experimentation
AI coaching during calls, not AI callers
Data and infrastructure
High performing SaaS teams share the same foundations:
Clean CRM data
Centralised templates
Automated enrichment
Lead scoring before reps touch anything
Guardrails that prevent AI driven spam
AI will multiply the quality of whatever system you already have.
If your system is sloppy, AI will simply scale the sloppiness.
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These insights come directly from data and workflow analysis across our fifty active SaaS partners.
If you want guidance on integrating AI tooling into your GTM stack or want introductions to agencies and GTM engineers who are actually producing results, email bill@katapult.amsterdam.