Try OnsaI’ve been obsessed with a concept lately that most people in sales are completely overlooking: “Sleep Time Compute.” While everyone else is busy arguing over which prompt writes a better cold email, the real winners are building systems that do the thinking before the human even logs in.
In this post, I’ll break down why the next generation of ai sales tools isn’t about faster chat boxes, but about “sleeping agents” that handle your heavy lifting while you’re off the clock.
In the world of LLMs, “Sleep Time Compute” is the idea of “warming up” a model on relevant data before a user even asks a question. Instead of waiting for you to type a command and then making you wait 30 seconds for a response, the AI anticipates what you’ll need.
It’s the difference between a researcher who starts working only when you give them a task, and a partner who has a dossier ready on your desk before you’ve even had your first coffee. For sales teams, this is the holy grail of efficiency.
I’ve recently started using a curated “Pulse” of ChatGPT news and ideas, and honestly, it has completely replaced my scheduled tasks. Instead of me hunting for information or setting reminders to “check X” or “research Y,” the feed brings the most relevant insights directly to me.
This is exactly how we should be thinking about our sales workflows. Why are you still manually checking LinkedIn for job changes or scanning news for “buying signals”? A proactive agent—a “sleeping agent”—should be doing that in the background, processing those queries so that when you open your CRM, the insights are already there, pre-digested and ready to act on.
Most ai sales tools are reactive. You give them a lead, they write an email. But the tools that actually scale revenue are the ones that operate autonomously.
Think about the “Sleep Time” model: 1. Anticipation: The AI predicts which leads in your pipeline are most likely to churn or upgrade based on real-time data. 2. Pre-computation: The AI drafts three different versions of a follow-up based on a recent industry shift it detected while you were asleep. 3. Cost & Speed: Because the “thinking” happened during off-peak compute times, the output is ready instantly and costs less to produce.
At Onsa, we’re building with this philosophy in mind. We don’t want to give you another tool to manage; we want to give you an agent that works the night shift so your day shift is spent actually closing deals.
The shift from “AI as a calculator” to “AI as an agent” is happening fast. If your current stack requires you to do all the heavy lifting—finding the data, cleaning the list, and triggering the AI—you’re essentially working for the machine.
The goal is to have a “Pulse” for your sales pipeline. You want a system that pre-warms your leads, analyzes the intent, and presents you with the “best next action” rather than a blank “compose” box.
The takeaway? Stop looking for tools that just “use AI” and start looking for tools that use AI to save you from thinking about the boring stuff.
P.S. If you’re tired of being the one doing all the “compute” in your sales process, give Onsa a spin. Let our agents handle the sleep-time heavy lifting for you.
Q: What exactly is “Sleep Time Compute” in a sales context? A: It refers to AI processes that run in the background (often during “down” time) to research leads, analyze market signals, and prepare drafts so that sales reps have everything they need ready the moment they start their workday.
Q: How do proactive ai sales tools differ from standard automation? A: Standard automation follows “if-this-then-that” rules. Proactive AI tools use LLMs to interpret context—like a news article or a LinkedIn post—and adjust sales strategies or messaging without a human having to set a specific trigger for every scenario.
Q: Will these “sleeping agents” replace sales development reps (SDRs)? A: No, they replace the “grunt work” of the SDR role. By handling the research and initial data processing, these tools allow SDRs and AEs to focus on high-level strategy and human-to-human relationship building.