Refer a client → earn $500–$3,000.  Ends 07/10/2026.  See how →
← All case studies
Case study · Sales Ops Automation

4.2× SDR throughput. $22K spend. $180K annualized payback.

How a mid-market B2B SaaS company eliminated 12+ hours per week of manual sales ops work, automated lead routing and follow-up sequencing, and quadrupled SDR output — under their own brand, in 6 weeks.

Industry B2B SaaS · Mid-market
ARR at engagement ~$18M ARR
Timeline 6 weeks
Engagement $5K — Discovery Sprint
4.2×
SDR throughput — same headcount, same tools, same CRM.
The only thing that changed: 12+ hours of manual ops work per week was handed to an AI system that doesn't sleep, forget, or make data entry errors.

The SDRs were doing ops work, not sales work.

This B2B SaaS company had a 4-person SDR team with solid pipeline hygiene goals and a CRM that had become a source of anxiety rather than leverage. Every morning, the team started with an hour of manual cleanup: sorting leads by tier, logging call dispositions from the previous day, updating fields that should have been updating themselves.

The routing rules were in a spreadsheet. Follow-up sequences were semi-manual — templates existed, but someone still had to trigger them, track timing, and flag leads that hadn't responded. Pipeline reports took 3 hours to pull every Friday because the data was never clean enough to export directly.

Leadership had tried fixing this twice — once with a consultant who delivered a process document, and once with a RevOps hire who got pulled into other work. By the time they came to Clearfield, they had 12+ hours a week of ops burden distributed across the SDR team and a head of sales who was ready to either hire a dedicated ops person or solve it with software. We gave them a third option.

An AI ops layer that runs inside their existing stack.

We built a three-component AI operations layer on top of their existing HubSpot CRM and Apollo.io outreach stack. Nothing was ripped out. The SDRs didn't change how they worked — the work that didn't require humans just stopped needing them.

  • Intelligent lead routing: AI-scored lead intake assigns ICP tier, territory, and SDR owner on arrival — no manual triage. Scoring model trained on 6 months of closed-won data.
  • Automated follow-up sequencing: AI monitors sequence state per lead, triggers the right follow-up template at the right interval, and pauses on reply — all within HubSpot, logged natively to the contact record.
  • Pipeline hygiene automation: Daily reconciliation job audits the CRM for stale deals, missing fields, and outdated stages. Produces a clean report and auto-updates where the rule is deterministic — flags exceptions for human review.

Everything runs under their brand. The automated sequences come from the rep's email address. The pipeline reports carry their company header. Clearfield is invisible.

"I actually forgot it was running for the first two weeks. I kept waiting for something to break. Nothing did. The CRM was just... clean."
— Head of Sales, mid-market B2B SaaS client

What the client received at handoff.

01
Lead Scoring Model
ICP scoring model trained on 6 months of closed-won / closed-lost data. Assigns fit tier (A/B/C) and routes to rep on contact creation. Includes retraining runbook.
02
Automated Sequence Engine
Trigger-based follow-up automation integrated natively into HubSpot sequences. 4 cadence templates (cold, warm, re-engage, post-demo) with AI-personalized subject lines.
03
Pipeline Hygiene Bot
Daily job that audits CRM field completeness, deal stage staleness, and missing contact data. Auto-fills deterministic fields; flags exceptions with one-click resolution.
04
Weekly Pipeline Dashboard
Auto-generated pipeline report (PDF + HubSpot dashboard) delivered every Friday at 8am. Clean data pull with pipeline velocity, coverage ratio, and SDR activity metrics.
05
SDR Ops Runbook
Step-by-step documentation for how each automation works, when it triggers, and how to override or extend it. Written for the SDR team, not engineers.
06
Full IP Transfer
All code, scoring models, templates, and documentation transferred to the client at completion. No ongoing dependency on Clearfield to maintain or expand the system.

Six weeks, three phases.

Week 1
Discovery Sprint
Audited the existing sales stack (HubSpot, Apollo.io, Slack), interviewed all 4 SDRs and the Head of Sales, mapped every manual task and its weekly time cost. Identified the 3 highest-leverage automation opportunities and scoped the build.
Weeks 2–3
Build: Routing + Sequences
Trained the ICP scoring model on historical CRM data, built and integrated the lead routing automation, and implemented the 4 follow-up sequence cadences with HubSpot native triggers. QA'd against live contacts before activating.
Weeks 4–5
Build: Pipeline Hygiene + Dashboard
Built the daily pipeline hygiene bot and the automated Friday reporting pipeline. Ran parallel with manual process for one week to validate accuracy. Zero discrepancies in week 2 — manual process turned off.
Week 6
Handoff + Documentation
Delivered full runbook, recorded walkthroughs for each automation, transferred all IP. Ran a 90-minute SDR team training session. Dedicated CSM available for 30 days post-handoff for questions.

Before and after the automation.

Metric Before After
SDR throughput (qualified activities/week) ~48/week (4 SDRs, manual ops burden) ~200/week — 4.2× increase
Manual ops time per SDR per week 3+ hrs (lead triage, logging, sequence trigger) <15 min — 92% reduction
Lead response time (inbound) 2–4 hrs (manual triage + assignment) <4 min (automated routing + first touch)
Pipeline report prep time 3 hrs/week (manual data consolidation) 0 hrs — fully automated Friday 8am delivery
CRM field completeness ~64% (missing data common) 97% (hygiene bot fills or flags daily)
Annualized time recovered (team) ~650 hrs/yr ($180K+ at fully loaded cost)

The SDRs stopped being ops coordinators and started selling.

The most surprising outcome wasn't the throughput number — it was the shift in team morale. Within two weeks of launch, the SDRs stopped starting their mornings with CRM cleanup and started starting their mornings by reading the qualified lead queue that had already been routed and first-touched overnight.

The Head of Sales called it a "headspace unlock." The SDRs were doing the same volume of outreach with more focus and less friction. The CRM was clean. The pipeline report was waiting in their inbox on Friday mornings instead of taking three hours to produce.

The $22K engagement generated $180K+ in annualized labor recovery. That's an 8× ROI — not counting the pipeline impact from faster lead response times and higher contact rates.

"The ROI conversation with the CFO took about four minutes. I showed the before/after time audit and the Thursday afternoon pipeline report that used to take me three hours on Friday. Done."
— Head of Sales, B2B SaaS client
  • 4.2× SDR throughput — same team, same tools
  • 12+ hrs/week of manual ops work eliminated across 4 SDRs
  • Lead response time: 2–4 hrs → under 4 minutes
  • CRM field completeness: 64% → 97%
  • $180K+ annualized labor recovery on $22K spend
  • Full IP transferred — team owns and runs it independently

Want this built for your sales team?

The Discovery Sprint is the same first step we ran here — one week, a written blueprint of your highest-leverage sales ops automation opportunity, $2,500 fully credited toward any full engagement. Or if you want to talk it through first, book a 30-minute audit with no commitment.

No commitment on the audit. Discovery Sprint is fully credited if you build.