By KYN AI Advisory Team — AI implementation specialists, Singapore
To set up an outbound agent for a five-person sales team, do seven things in order: fix the contact data, define who you target and what you say, write the rules the agent follows, build a review queue, set send caps and suppression, run a small pilot, then measure and widen. Expect most of the effort to go into data and rules, not into the model. A pilot of 100 to 200 contacts tells you more than any plan.
What should be true before you start?
An agent amplifies what is already there. Check three things first.
- One list of record. Contacts live in one CRM or sheet, not four. Duplicates are merged.
- A clear target. You can say in one sentence which companies and which roles you want, for example "finance managers at Singapore logistics firms with 20 to 200 staff".
- A real offer. One thing you sell, with a price range you are willing to state and a next step, such as a 20-minute call.
If any is missing, fix it before building. An agent writing to a messy list about a vague offer produces polished noise.
Step 1: How do you clean the contact data?
Export the list. Then:
- Merge duplicates on email and company domain.
- Mark every contact with a status: new, contacted, replied, customer, do not contact.
- Record the source of each contact and the date you got it. You need this for consent.
- Remove customers, partners and anyone who asked to stop.
This takes a day or two for a few thousand records. It is the cheapest step and the one that prevents the worst mistakes, such as pitching a current customer.
Step 2: How do you define the target and the message?
Write a one-page brief the agent reads on every run.
- Who qualifies: industry, size band, country, role.
- Who does not: competitors, existing customers, sole traders if you do not serve them.
- The offer in two sentences.
- Three proof points you can back up. Name clients by industry only if you lack permission to name them.
- The call to action: one question or one proposed time.
- Tone rules: short sentences, no hype words, no claims you cannot document.
Keep it short. A brief the agent can follow beats a brief a person admires.
Step 3: How do you write the rules?
Rules sit in code and configuration, not only in a prompt. A prompt can drift. A rule is enforced.
| Rule | Example | |---|---| | First line must cite a source | Draft rejected if no URL or record attached | | Length | Under 90 words | | No price in a first touch | Draft rejected if a currency symbol appears | | Steps | First touch, then follow-ups at day 3, 7 and 14, then stop | | Stop on any reply | One reply from a contact pauses all steps | | Stop on unsubscribe | Contact added to suppression list across every channel | | Quiet hours | No sends outside the recipient's local working hours | | Daily cap | A fixed number per inbox per day |
Write the stop rules first. They protect you when something else goes wrong.
Step 4: How do you build the review queue?
The agent drafts into a queue. It does not send. Each item shows:
- the contact and company;
- the draft;
- the one fact it used, with a link to the source;
- the rule checks that passed;
- buttons: approve, edit, reject with a reason.
A named person approves. The approval is logged with the actor and time. This follows the pattern in setting approval gates for high-risk agent actions. Rejection reasons feed back into the brief, so the same mistake does not repeat.
For a team of five, assign one approver per week on rotation, or give it to the person who owns the target segment.
Step 5: How do you set sending limits and consent checks?
Sending limits protect your domain. Google's email sender guidelines ask all senders to authenticate with SPF or DKIM, and ask them to keep the spam rate in Postmaster Tools below 0.10%, never reaching 0.30%. Bulk-sender requirements, including DMARC, begin above 5,000 messages a day to Gmail accounts.
Practical settings:
- Authenticate the sending domain.
- Use a subdomain or separate inboxes for outbound so a problem does not reach your main business email.
- Start low per inbox and raise the cap weekly while watching bounces and the spam rate.
- Include a clear unsubscribe option in every email.
Consent depends on the recipient's country. In Singapore, see the Spam Control Act 2007 for email and the PDPC's Do Not Call Registry guidance for telephone numbers. Check the rules for Hong Kong, Indonesia and Malaysia before you send there. Get legal advice for anything that is unclear.
Build a send step that checks the suppression list and the consent status. It runs before every send and cannot be skipped.
Step 6: How do you run a pilot?
Pick 100 to 200 contacts from one segment. Run for two to three weeks.
- Review every draft.
- Label every reply by hand and compare with the agent's label.
- Record minutes spent on review per 100 drafts.
- Record bounces, unsubscribes and complaints.
Stop the pilot if bounces climb, complaints appear, or the agent mislabels an unsubscribe. Fix the cause, then restart. A pilot that finds three problems did its job.
Step 7: How do you measure and widen?
Track four numbers per segment:
- reply rate;
- share of replies that are positive, as labelled by a person;
- meetings booked;
- cost per meeting, including review time.
Compare against your own last quarter, not a vendor benchmark. Vendor figures come from their own platforms and different audiences.
Widen in this order: more contacts in the same segment, then a second segment, then a second channel such as WhatsApp. Add sampled review only for draft types that a person approved unchanged nearly every time over four weeks.
What does the agent cost to run?
Model cost per task is small. From KYN's live systems, outreach with one checkable first line is about S$0.02 per email, and sorting a reply is about S$0.01. Those figures are from our systems, depend on the model and text length, and exclude sending tools, data sources and the build. The larger costs are the build, the data cleaning and the reviewer's time.
For a monthly view, see AI sales agent cost per month for a small business.
Where KYN fits
KYN builds the data model, the rules, the draft queue and the reply desk as one system in a cloud account in your name. Named accounts use the cloud provider's identity service, with no shared logins. Agents have their own restricted accounts, every action is logged with the actor, and outbound messages wait for a named person.
The first 14 days are a review of your stack and interviews with your team. A full build ships in under 90 days. Rights in the custom code and configuration pass to you on full payment. See sales systems, integrations and security.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to set up an outbound agent?
Data cleaning takes days. The brief and rules take about a week of work. A pilot runs two to three weeks. Plan on roughly a month to a first measured result for a narrow setup. A full system with CRM integration takes longer.
Do we need a new CRM?
Usually not. The agent reads and writes to the CRM you have, if it has an API. If your records sit in spreadsheets, moving them to one database first is part of the work.
Who should approve the drafts?
A named person who knows the segment, on a weekly rotation in a team of five. The approval is logged. The approver can reject any draft and must give a reason, so the brief improves.
Checked 30 October 2026.
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