In sales development, a human touch stands out
Atlassian research finds sales development representatives use AI to automate routine tasks but retain human oversight to maintain customer relationships and refine sales strategies.
Eight SDRs across three regions were interviewed in August 2026 to assess how AI has altered their roles, revealing that representatives now rely on AI for repetitive tasks such as account research and drafting outreach emails. This shift allows them to focus on higher-value activities that require human judgment, such as evaluating sales strategies and refining messaging based on rapid feedback from customer interactions.
SDRs manually review all AI-generated content before it reaches customers or account executives, ensuring no automated communications bypass human oversight. The role remains a critical entry point in sales pipelines, with SDRs qualifying leads and feeding Sales Qualified Leads to AEs, though AI has accelerated the qualification process by reducing research time from hours to minutes.
An intern at Atlassian built a system to relay Salesforce inbound lead alerts to Slack in real time, improving response times and conversion rates after leadership had prioritized the project for four years. The internship project demonstrated how new hires with limited experience can quickly implement AI-driven solutions to enhance team workflows.
Atlassian’s internal AI tool, Sales Sidekick, provides SDRs with call scripts, account histories, and discovery questions during calls, but representatives retain full control over decision-making and execution. SDRs emphasize that skills like humor, objection handling, and relationship-building remain uniquely human and cannot be replicated by AI, reinforcing the irreplaceable value of human interaction in sales development.