St John Dalgleish on Scaling What Works: Perlon AI's Case Against Plug-and-Play AI SDRs

Alex Theuma (0:03)

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So, Julian, welcome to the podcast. Good to see you.

St John Dalgleish (1:34)

Thanks, Alex. Good to see you too.

Alex Theuma (1:35)

Yeah. I want to go straight into, I guess, first question. AI SDRs are very much a lot of hype. I don't know if it's overhype. Obviously, you can comment on that. Are they actually working? You know, we've seen a lot of tools out there. We've tried some ourselves, some haven't worked, but yeah, we just kind of, are they working?

St John Dalgleish (1:56)

So I think the short answer to that for most companies so far has been no. If you look at how this kind of technology started and where it kind of was when it all first started to launch, back in 20, sort of 24, then they started to appear. These things were super basic. All of these tools were crap, right? Our tool was a very basic ChatGPT wrapper that generated an email and sent it.

I think as time has gone on, the tools have improved significantly. But what has also kind of been needed in tandem with that on the side is that the sales teams and the teams using them really need to be able to put in the effort, the work to iterate, to test, to do the things that actually enable that AISDR concept to work. I think a lot of the time, what's been the difficult thing for these sales teams to manage is the change, and to be able to actually dedicate enough time to really making those tweaks, to testing and iterating. I think the expectation has often been misaligned with the reality, because these aren't just plug and play, get it started. It's going to generate all your pipeline in a week type of tools.

I think for most companies, short answer is still no, because in the same vein, they've not put in the time to make them work. Because now, the tools and the technology is sophisticated, these things have got a lot better. 2025, they made some improvements, 2026, now these things are pretty cool in what they can do, but they still require that work and that effort.

Alex Theuma (3:28)

Yeah, I think that's like, I don't think I'm necessarily an exception here, maybe I am, but because of the space that I'm in, and running an AI event, also being an investor, and I'm very curious about new tools and new categories, anything that offers this promise of whatever levels of productivity or new leads, new meetings, et cetera. So very curious to, when I get out bounds myself or see these new things to try them out, but then you realize actually, okay, the tool looks great on the demo, but you've got to put in the time, you've got to put in the work, and then often, for me personally, that's where it's fallen down, because I've had these demos and I'm like to the team, this looks great, and then I realize myself, and maybe this is a mental thing that I need to get over, but also with my role as CEO, maybe it's me that should be using the tool, but actually to use it and to get something out of it, you have to put in the time, the training, you've got to be on it every day for a couple of hours, and often that's what's been the blocker for me personally, but then I'll delegate it over to somebody else, right?