In sales, consistent prospecting is the lifeblood of a healthy pipeline. Deals in your current pipeline will inevitably fall through or get delayed, so if you stop feeding the pipeline with new leads, it will eventually run dry. Many experts advise maintaining roughly three times your sales <\/p>\n\n\n\n
quota in pipeline value to account for natural attrition (Why Your Pipeline Might Be Drying Up and What To Do About It<\/a>). That means reps must continually generate fresh opportunities; otherwise, solely relying on the deals in play today puts future revenue at risk. In short, prospecting must be an ongoing habit \u2013 not something you do only when your pipeline is empty (Kaizen and Feeding the Sales Pipeline With Cumulative Prospecting)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Below, we provide a deeper analysis of the challenges of manual prospecting, specifically tailored to different sales roles, along with real-world examples illustrating these difficulties. We focus on Sales Development Representatives (SDRs), Account Executives (AEs), and Enterprise Sales professionals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Manual prospecting \u2013 researching prospects, cold calling, and cold emailing without automation \u2013 is labor-intensive and fraught with obstacles. Each sales role experiences these challenges in unique ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n SDRs are on the front lines of outbound sales, often tasked with high-volume outreach to generate leads and meetings. This role faces unique pressure and repetition that can hinder effectiveness and morale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. High Volume of Outreach Required<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n SDRs are typically expected to perform a very high number of daily activities \u2013 from dialing calls to sending emails. It\u2019s not uncommon for SDRs to be responsible for 100+ touchpoints per day in high-volume environments (Field Guide: Surviving Your First 90 Days as an SDR)<\/a>. One benchmark showed reps sending up to 100 emails per day (with only light personalization) to hit their numbers (Benchmarks for metrics that matter to an SDR or BDR team)<\/a>. Since cold outreach often has low response rates (~1\u20135% for cold emails), the sheer volume is necessary to yield a few conversations \u2013 but it\u2019s exhausting. SDRs often struggle to balance quantity with quality. In fast-paced tech startups, high-volume prospecting is common; in industries like finance or medical sales, reps might target fewer prospects more carefully but still feel the pressure to \u201calways be prospecting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Difficulty Personalizing Messages at Scale<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n With so many prospects to contact, personalizing each message is a major challenge. Crafting tailored emails or call scripts for dozens of prospects daily is nearly impossible without cutting corners. As a result, SDRs often resort to templates and generic messaging that fail to resonate. Real-world example: Hubs, an online manufacturing platform, found their BDRs were spending excessive time on LinkedIn and manual emailing, yet still sending largely boilerplate outreach, leading to low open and reply rates because messages lacked personal relevance. Data backs this up \u2013 only 5% of sellers consider bulk, non-personalized emails effective (40+ Sales Follow-up Statistics For 2024)<\/a> and 59% of buyers say sales reps don\u2019t take time to understand them (50 Sales Statistics that Reveal How Great Teams Sell)<\/a>. In high-touch industries, personalization is even more critical, but deep research for every contact is daunting, so SDRs often trade personalization for scale, hurting engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 3. Repetitive Nature Leading to Burnout<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The SDR role involves a highly repetitive routine \u2013 call after call, email after email, typically with low short-term success rates. Hearing voicemail or no response most of the time can be demoralizing, leading to burnout. SDR positions notoriously have high turnover, with one study finding 39% annual attrition. Many entry-level SDRs burn out within a year, given the stress of constant rejection and monotony. This burnout also hurts team culture and performance. Industries with longer sales cycles (like enterprise software or medical devices) can be even tougher on SDRs, since months may pass before results materialize.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 4. Time Wasted on Unqualified Leads<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Manual prospecting means SDRs often kiss a lot of frogs \u2013 many leads they contact will never convert. Without advanced filtering or automation, SDRs can sink hours into chasing leads without budget, authority, or genuine interest. This is both frustrating and inefficient. An overemphasis on quantity exacerbates the issue: if management pushes for high activity metrics, reps might mass-prospect anyone remotely plausible, leading to pipelines cluttered with bad leads. Focusing on quantity over quality results in poor downstream conversion and wasted effort by AEs on unqualified leads. In highly regulated sectors (finance, healthcare), chasing the wrong leads can be especially costly, as irrelevant outreach may burn bridges and erode trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n AEs are responsible for closing deals and managing opportunities \u2013 but many also must do their own prospecting. When that prospecting is manual, AEs often face the following difficulties:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. Balancing Prospecting with Closing Deals<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n AEs juggle two critical functions: prospecting for new opportunities and closing the deals in later stages. Prospecting (cold outreach, follow-up, initial calls) is a very different activity from closing (running demos, proposals, negotiations), so it\u2019s challenging to do both well. Sales trainer Jeb Blount points out it\u2019s easier to spend all day servicing existing customers (who are already engaging) than to face the rejection-prone work of cold outreach. As a result, prospecting often takes a backseat when an AE gets busy closing. Real-world scenario: an AE devotes an entire quarter to closing deals, then wakes up in the new quarter with an empty pipeline. This feast-or-famine cycle is all too common. Industries with lengthy processes (healthcare, enterprise software) magnify the problem because deals require significant attention, leaving little room for new outreach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 2. Lack of Time for In-Depth Research<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n AEs often lack the bandwidth to deeply research each prospect or account, especially while managing active sales cycles. They have proposals to draft, meetings to attend, and forecasts to update, leaving only snippets of time for prospecting. One AE noted he tries to spend an hour per day prospecting but often finds himself \u201cunable to dedicate any time\u201d on busy days. Studies show reps can spend up to 70% of their time on non-selling tasks, so thorough research (e.g., reading a prospect\u2019s 10-K filing) rarely happens. This leads to less-personalized outreach, which enterprise buyers often notice. In complex technical sales, missing details can doom a deal; but manually doing in-depth account research for each lead is daunting when you\u2019re also trying to close your existing pipeline.<\/p>\n\n\n\nChallenges of Manual Prospecting in Sales (By Role)<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Sales Development Representatives (SDRs)<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Account Executives (AEs)<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n