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Put an AI agent on the warm leads your reps ghosted, not on your A leads
Picked and checked by Olga Pearson, SalesUpLevel
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Reported: agent worked ~1,000 warm leads left untouched in Salesforce: 72% open rate, 10%+ response rate, $2.7M in deals closed that reps never touched and $3.5M pipeline nurtured. Separately: 15% of SaaStr's London event revenue came from this ignored segment.
Your reps force-rank leads in their heads and the B leads (ghosted contacts, old event attendees, people who asked for something and never heard back) get nothing. Point AI there first: it uses the CRM history so each email reads like a colleague following up, and humans take over the moment someone replies with intent.
By Jason Lemkin (@jasonlk on X; SaaStr @saastr), CEO and founder, SaaStr · Jason Lemkin on X ↗ · Sep 18, 2026
If you sell: run it before your 10am
- Pull every contact who raised a hand (asked for info, attended, visited pricing) and got no follow-up in 60+ days. Exclude customers and open deals.
- Write 5 to 7 short templates (under 75 words) from messages that already closed deals. Do not let the tool or vendor write them.
- Let AI personalize each one from the CRM history: what they asked for, when, what changed since.
- Decide before launch what the AI answers on its own (out of office, "send more info") and what goes to a human (meeting request, pricing, positive intent), who owns it, and a response time of a few hours.
- Review the first emails by hand, then tune daily (he reports 30 to 45 minutes a day for the first 60 to 90 days).
- Track opens, replies, meetings and closed revenue from this segment only.
Here is what our CRM says about this contact: [what they asked for, date, event or page, company, any notes]. They never got a reply from us. Write a follow-up email under 75 words from me, [name, role], that admits we dropped the ball in one short line, refers to exactly what they asked for, says what is new since then that is relevant to them, and asks one easy yes/no question. Use only the facts above. If the notes are too thin to make it relevant, tell me instead of guessing.
If you lead a team: roll it out
- Score leads A/B/C/D and give the agent the B leads; keep humans on A. Lemkin credits this "no lead left behind" lever as the biggest part of revenue going from -19% to +47% YoY.
Watch out for
- SaaStr has a strong brand and a 9-year CRM; your rates will be lower. $2.7M is a cumulative figure over months.
- Salesforce published a case study on the same numbers; we cite Lemkin's own posts, not the vendor story.
- Mind email rules and sender reputation; this is warm, opted-in contacts only.
Source: Jason Lemkin, Jason Lemkin on X, Sep 18, 2026. Results are as reported by the source; we did not measure them.
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