About Jonathan
Jonathan Chemouny leads Sales Development for Europe at ElevenLabs. Before that, he spent years in classic SaaS, including at Intercom. At ElevenLabs, he has no official job title, like everyone else on the team. He is responsible for pipeline sourcing across the entire European continent, with a team that prospects face-to-face with large accounts, organizes workshops, and pitches at conferences.
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Most sales teams dream of having 95% of their pipeline come from inbound. Jonathan Chemouny says that when he arrived at ElevenLabs in that situation, he understood it was a problem to solve.
In this episode, we talked about what AI is actually changing in outbound, why the SDR of the future will be out in the field, and how ElevenLabs uses its own products to prospect.
Here’s what I took away:
1) 95% inbound is fragile.
When Jonathan joined ElevenLabs just over a year ago, inbound represented almost all of the pipeline. The problem: the moment there’s a slowdown, you’re immediately impacted. You can’t build a predictable business on inbound alone. Today, in Europe, outbound accounts for 45% of pipeline volume. Last month, it was 50-50. At the same time, total pipeline volume tripled, if not quadrupled.
2) The SDR of the future gets out from behind the screen.
Jonathan hires more experienced profiles than what was traditionally expected of a SDR. He wants people who can pitch to large accounts, visit prospects on-site, organize workshops, and present ElevenLabs at conferences. He gives concrete examples: one member of his team presented to Kering. Another presented to several airlines at a trade show. When a candidate tells him that what matters to them is booking meetings, that’s a red flag.
3) The KPIs that matter: opportunities, ACV, and percentage of outbound.
Number of emails sent, number of calls made: Jonathan no longer tracks those. What he cares about is the number of opportunities created, the size of the deals sourced, and the share of outbound in the mix. Outbound is where you control your destiny and the quality of what you go after.
4) AI makes SDRs significantly more productive. It doesn’t replace them.
The promises from AI SDR companies claiming that pipeline will arrive on its own, automatically, with no effort required: Jonathan says it doesn’t work, and that everyone who has tried it has seen that. What AI actually does is amplify SDR productivity. He uses the electric bike analogy: you go much further with the same effort.
5) At ElevenLabs, the demo is the prospecting message.
Jonathan sends voice notes to prospects generated with a clone of his voice via ElevenLabs. The message: “I wanted to invite you to a demo, but the demo is right now, because what you’re listening to was recorded with ElevenLabs and a clone of my voice.” He also builds mini-sites on Lovable for each target prospect, with ElevenLabs integrated directly. And he developed a voice agent that prospects can test themselves: a 5 to 6 minute conversation that ends with a booked meeting.
6) Their AI SDR handles inbound, in real time, in every language.
When ElevenLabs launched a new model a year ago, the team was too small to absorb the inbound volume. They built an AI SDR capable of qualifying leads in real time, in any language, 24 hours a day, and routing them to the right account executive. Qualification accuracy is at 100%. Before, a lead who reached out on a Friday evening had a meeting scheduled for the following Wednesday. Today, it’s Monday morning.
7) No job titles at ElevenLabs. Everyone is GTM.
Nobody has an official title. Everyone on the sales team is “GTM.” It removes hierarchy, frees up initiative, and gives the same weight to a junior SDR and the equivalent of a VP. And the unexpected bonus: when prospecting, prospects confuse GTM with General Manager. Open and reply rates are significantly higher.
Find Jonathan on LinkedIn : https://www.linkedin.com/in/chemouny/
Enjoy,
— Jordan
