CaptivateIQ is a leading incentive compensation management (ICM) and sales performance management (SPM) platform that helps companies design, automate, and optimize their compensation plans. As the company moved aggressively upmarket into enterprise, their BDR team needed to match that ambition with sharper targeting, more relevant outreach, and a scalable infrastructure that could keep up with the pace of change.

A talented team with uneven results and a manual playbook

When Kristen Wisdorf joined CaptivateIQ as Sr. Director of Business Development and Inside Sales, she inherited a BDR team with strong fundamentals but inconsistent execution. The business had just made the decision to move upmarket, and the team was learning new messaging, new personas, and a new enterprise motion all at once.

Performance was uneven. A handful of top performers carried the team while others struggled to find the right accounts and the right message. Kristen recognized the pattern immediately as she had spent 15+ years building and scaling BDR teams, including nearly a decade leading 500+ SDRs at memoryBlue. She knew what good outbound looks like, and she knew the gap wasn’t talent. It was infrastructure.

“We had really strong people,” Kristen says. “But performance was a bit uneven. One or two BDRs were hitting 400% while others weren’t hitting quota. I wanted to build more linearity — so the whole team could perform, not just a couple of standouts.”

The core issues were familiar to any sales development leader scaling into enterprise: BDRs spending too much time on manual list building and research. Outbound messaging that pitched features rather than teaching and challenging prospects. No centralized system to prioritize which accounts were worth pursuing and when. And a stack of point tools — including 6sense for intent — that didn’t talk to each other.

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Three pilot AI campaigns

Kristen started with what she already knew worked: UserGems’ signals data. CaptivateIQ had been using UserGems previously and the data had already influenced real pipeline. That track record earned the right to experiment further.

“I think the best partnerships are the ones that grow and evolve together,” Kristen says. “Our BDRs liked using UserGems in the original form, and we had pipeline from it. So why not experiment AI with a partner that’s already proven?”

The Gem-E pilot was intentionally narrow. Rather than turning on AI across the board, Kristen and her team chose three specific campaigns where they could measure the impact cleanly:

• New Hires: contacts matching CaptivateIQ’s persona who had recently started new roles at their target companies.
• Past Champions:  former CaptivateIQ users and evaluators who moved to new companies
• Closed-Lost Re-engagement: accounts that had shown real pain but didn’t convert, re-approached at the right moment

Gem-E handled the research, personalization, and email writing for each campaign. BDRs reviewed the output — the messaging, the contact selection, the reasoning behind each pick — through the UserGems AI Chrome Extension, which showed them exactly why a contact was surfaced and why the email was written a certain way.

The initial skepticism was real and Kristen expected it, but the proof came from the people BDRs care about most: their prospects.

“Messaging is personal. When implementing AI, BDRs can feel like you’re taking away their voice, or asking them to send something they don’t trust. But when prospects started replying and saying, ‘Hey, I’m replying because this {Gem-E} message is so good.’ The proof was real, and it was right in front of them." - Kristen Wisdorf, Sr. Director, Business Development & Inside Sales, CaptivateIQ

"UserGems is the engine for our BDR workflow. It turns your BDRs into thoughtful sales professionals. You remove the manual, administrative layer and give them real, relevant signals so they can focus on actually selling — which is why people want to be BDRs to begin with." - Kristen Wisdorf, Sr. Director, Business Development & Inside Sales, CaptivateIQ

From ideas to go-live in one week

Once the pilot proved that AI for BDR was effective, Kristen expanded quickly. The Customer Expansion play for her Account Development rep, Charlie, went from idea to live in about a week. Using conditional logic, Gem-E adjusted messaging based on whether a parent account was already a CaptivateIQ customer — a nuanced motion that would have been too complex for a BDR to execute manually at scale.

“It’s no longer ‘this is too complex for a BDR to execute.’ Now it’s ‘how can I use UserGems to operationalize this and scale it?’ UserGems allows us to take all of our creative ideas and actually put them in practice - and do it quickly. We had this expansion campaign idea and a week later, it was live. That’s a real unlock.” - Kristen Wisdorf, Sr. Director, Business Development & Inside Sales, CaptivateIQ

Expanding to scoring and the “AI brain”

The team is now evaluating UserGems’ Account Scoring, building toward a model that combines intent signals, marketing engagement data, website visits, and CRM activities into a single, custom scoring model built on CaptivateIQ’s own sales history.

Their BDRs have already asked for email notifications when an account’s grade changes — a sign that scoring is becoming the heartbeat of their daily prospecting workflow.

Meanwhile, the marketing team has connected the motion, running ABM plays in sync with BDR outreach, with a shared account list as the foundation.

"BDRs are not going away because of AI. Gem-E just makes super BDRs. The right BDRs will be supercharged with the right tech. UserGems AI helped showcase their skills because they were able to get into more relevant conversations with prospects. We got better quality meetings, better opportunities, and longer phone conversations." - Kristen Wisdorf, Sr. Director, Business Development & Inside Sales, CaptivateIQ

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The Gem-E pilot delivered tangible, directly attributed results within 10 weeks:

• ‍2x reply rates — Reply rates nearly doubled during the Gem-E pilot compared to previous outbound campaigns‍
• 15 opportunities — Created in 10 weeks directly from Gem-E campaigns, with clear attribution back to UserGems‍
• $1.3M in pipeline — Real, tangible pipeline from the trial campaigns alone

But the numbers only tell part of the story. The qualitative shift was just as significant:

• BDRs promoted from the team into closing roles were the same ones who leaned into the Gem-E pilot first — a signal that AI adoption correlates with seller growth
• The entire BDR team is now hitting quota, not just a few standouts — the "linearity" Kristen set out to build
• Coaching conversations shifted from "make more dials" to strategic, account-level discussions using UserGems data
• The team expanded from 3 pilot campaigns to running plays across New Hires, Past Champions, Closed-Lost, customer expansion, and event outreach
• CaptivateIQ is now evaluating UserGems account scoring as a full 6sense replacement

“Oh, there’s some attribution to UserGems? No — these opportunities came because of the UserGems campaigns,” Kristen says. “Like, real, tangible results.”

"UserGems really does supercharge coaching. When I sit in one-on-ones with BDRs, we can pull up UserGems and look at their accounts and have really thoughtful, strategic conversations. 15 years ago, it was ‘go make more dials.’ That just doesn’t work anymore. UserGems supercharges coaching, but it also supercharges results." - Kristen Wisdorf, Sr. Director, Business Development & Inside Sales, CaptivateIQ