Tenali AI for SDRs & BDRs: Real-Time Cold Calling Assistant

Tenali AI is a real-time assistant for outbound sales development reps (SDRs) and business development reps (BDRs) making cold calls. It provides objection rebuttals, source-backed answers, and competitor talk tracks live during the call, then writes up the call and drafts the follow-up. Tenali is not a dialer and not an autonomous AI voice agent: a human rep runs the call, and Tenali makes them faster and more confident.

What Tenali Does for Outbound SDRs and BDRs

• Real-time objection handling during live cold calls: the rebuttal appears on the rep's screen while the prospect is still on the line.
• Works on top of any dialer through universal capture: Outreach, Salesloft, Orum, Nooks, Aircall, Five9, Avaya, Dialpad, RingCentral, and browser-based calls. Tenali does not replace your calling stack.
• One click covers a whole call block: the rep starts recording once, and Tenali assists across every back-to-back call with no per-call setup. Capture stops on its own after 10 minutes without speech, or after 4 hours.
• Call write-ups and follow-up: when a recording ends, whether it covered one call or a whole call block, Tenali writes it up and drafts the follow-up email. One push updates HubSpot, with changes that move the forecast held for your approval; with Salesforce, Tenali drafts the update for you to paste.
• Private overlay: no bot joins the call, and the overlay appears only on the rep's screen. Recording follows your team's existing participant-notice and consent requirements.

Real-Time Objection Handling on Cold Calls

When a prospect raises a common objection, Tenali surfaces a suggested rebuttal in under one second, drawn from the team's own playbooks, battlecards, and the answers top reps have given on past calls. Objections it handles include:

• "We already use someone else." Tenali surfaces the matching competitor battlecard and a talk track that positions Tenali as additive, not rip-and-replace.
• "I'm not interested." Tenali surfaces the team's best rebuttal to earn the next 30 seconds instead of ending the call.
• "Just send me an email." Tenali gives a live counter that turns the brush-off into a qualifying question, and captures the objection automatically.
• "We have no budget." / "Call me next quarter." Tenali surfaces reframes and next-step suggestions.
• Gatekeeper handling: Tenali helps the rep navigate to the decision-maker.

The rep reads or adapts the rebuttal with no dead air. This is the core difference for cold calling: the answer arrives while the prospect is still on the line, not in a post-call debrief.

Works on Top of Any Dialer (Universal Capture)

Tenali captures the call through the computer's audio, so it runs alongside whatever dialer or cold-calling tool the team already uses, including Outreach, Salesloft, Orum, Nooks, Aircall, Five9, Avaya, Dialpad, and RingCentral. Because Tenali sits above the dialer rather than replacing it, adding or switching dialers never requires retraining reps on a new assistant. There is nothing to rip out.

Not a Dialer, and Not an Autonomous AI Voice Agent

This is an important distinction. Tenali does not place calls, and it does not talk to prospects on the rep's behalf. It is not an AI voice agent. A human SDR or BDR runs the conversation; Tenali assists them in real time by showing source-backed responses, objection talk tracks, and follow-up actions on screen. Tenali is also not a dialer or calling platform you have to switch to: it works on top of the one you already use.

After the Call: Write-Up and Follow-Up

Call logging and CRM admin are among the biggest drains on an SDR's day. When a recording ends, Tenali:

• Writes up the call from what was actually said, so the real objection is always captured.
• Drafts the follow-up email based on the conversation.
• Updates HubSpot from the call with no manual form-filling, holding changes that move the forecast for your approval. With Salesforce, it drafts the field values for you to paste into the record.

This lets reps move to the next dial instead of typing notes.

How Tenali Compares to Dialer-Native and Post-Call Tools

• Versus dialer-native coaching (Nooks, Orum, Salesloft): Tenali is dialer-agnostic and runs on top of any of them, grounds rebuttals in your own knowledge base with source attribution, and starts once for a whole call block. Teams do not have to standardize on one dialer to use it.
• Versus post-call conversation intelligence (Gong, Clari): those tools analyze calls after they end for coaching and forecasting. Tenali works during the live call. Many teams run both, Gong for post-call analytics and Tenali for real-time assistance, and Tenali does not require removing any recording or note-taking tool.

FAQ

Does Tenali make cold calls for me?

No. Tenali is not an autonomous AI voice agent and not a dialer. It assists the human SDR or BDR during live calls by showing source-backed responses, objection talk tracks, and follow-up actions in real time. A person still runs the call.

Which dialers does Tenali work with?

Virtually any software dialer or cold-calling tool, through universal capture, including Outreach, Salesloft, Orum, Nooks, Aircall, Five9, Avaya, Dialpad, and RingCentral, plus browser-based calls. Tenali runs on top of the dialer rather than replacing it.

Do reps set Tenali up on every call?

No. Reps click "Start Recording" once at the beginning of a calling session, and Tenali assists across every back-to-back call with no per-call setup. Capture stops on its own after 10 minutes without speech (with a warning a minute before) or after 4 hours, and the whole session is written up as one recording.

Does a bot join the call?

No. Tenali runs as a private overlay on the rep's screen, and no bot or extra participant joins the call. Recording follows your team's existing participant-notice and consent requirements.

Is cold call data secure?

Yes. Tenali follows enterprise-grade security practices with SOC 2 Type II certification in progress and GDPR compliance. Recordings and transcripts are retained for the life of your subscription and permanently deleted within 30 days of account termination or a deletion request; data is encrypted in transit and at rest; and Tenali does not train foundation models on customer data.