Most "AI SDR" setups going around send email on their own. We don't recommend that for anyone selling into enterprise, and neither do Grok Bot's own docs. The setup below does the slow part (research, scoring, first drafts) overnight, and leaves the send to you.
Everything here comes from public, dated sources, linked at each step. We credit the people who built them.
The rule that makes it safe
Grok Bot's official Sales Outbound use case ends its starter prompt with one line: "Return a review list; do not send or enroll anyone." (source)
Keep that line in every version of this agent.
Step 1: Run it once by hand
Paste the official starter prompt into a Grok Bot chat, with your CRM connected:
Research the 25 accounts in this CRM view. Score them against our ideal customer profile (ICP) and recent intent, identify up to three relevant contacts per account, and draft email and LinkedIn outreach in the style examples attached. Skip anyone already in an active sequence. Return a review list; do not send or enroll anyone.
Attach two or three outreach emails you're proud of as the style examples. If you have no CRM, give it a list of company names instead.
Check every row. Fix what's wrong and tell the agent why.
Step 2: Make it look for a reason to reach out
A senior title isn't a reason to email someone. A signal is: a new sales or deployment job posting, a funding round, a product launch.
Alex Vacca's prospecting bot shows a cheap way to do this:
- each morning, check each target company's job board, a few site pages and the week's headlines against yesterday's copy
- send only the pages that changed to a small model, with one question: is this a buying signal?
- save the quote, the date and the link
- drop companies that fail your ICP with plain code, not AI, then score the rest
In his post, the ICP filter dropped 6 of 11 companies for being too big, and 5 of those 6 were hiring salespeople. A hiring alert alone would have emailed all 5. His bot never sends; it outputs a spreadsheet with the signal, date, link and the fact to open with.
Step 3: Sort before anything gets drafted
Every prospect goes in one of three buckets, from the Founder-Led Sales guide:
- KEEP: strong fit, real signal, a way in. Draft it.
- HOLD: good fit, but no clear "why now". Wait.
- DQ: already a customer, already in a deal, or do-not-contact. Never draft.
The SDRs guide adds a second check right before staging: the agent looks up each contact in your email and sequencing tools. CLEAR contacts get staged unsent. Anything unclear is a FLAG and waits for you.
Step 4: Make every fact carry a source
Krista Letz's free Outbound Prospecting template is a good model for the rules:
- every fact in a row or a draft carries a source URL, or stays blank
- it never builds an email address from a pattern
- it never invents a person, title, funding round or quote
- nothing sends without your explicit yes
You can import the template directly, or copy those rules into your own agent's instructions.
Step 5: Turn it into a nightly routine
Only once the hand-run output is reliable. The docs' advice: "create a nightly research routine that stops at the review list." (source)
Ask your agent:
Every weekday at 6 AM my time, run the prospecting process we just tested on the accounts in [list or CRM view]. Only report accounts with a new signal since the last run. Put drafts in my Gmail Drafts. Don't send, enroll or change the CRM. If a source is unavailable, tell me instead of using old data.
Then press Test on the routine with a small list before you rely on it. A test run does real work. (source)
Step 6: Turn repeated fixes into rules
If you correct the same thing twice, it's a missing rule. Both the SDR and Founder-Led Sales guides say the same thing: save it into the agent's skill so the next run gets it right.
What to keep for yourself
The send. The reply. Pricing. And any prospect the agent flagged.
Sources, checked Oct 19, 2026:
- Grok Bot use cases: Sales Outbound
- Grok Bot for SDRs, Stefan Markarian, Sep 24, 2026
- Grok Bot for Founder-Led Sales, Simon Lackowski, Oct 6, 2026
- Outbound Prospecting template, Krista Letz
- Alex Vacca's prospecting bot post, Oct 12, 2026
- Grok Bot skills and routines
Once a prospect says yes to a call, the free FDE Radar Playbook Kit has an account-research-before-first-call skill for the next step.