AI Automation in Sales

Speaker 0: in the age of ai and automation, where do you think human salespeople add the most value, and how can business owners leverage this balance effectively?

Speaker 1: yeah. well, i think i gave the the story example of that market leading ai software. right? so, again, i think you can automate a lot of what is tedious, ren. so your call prep, you know, extracting your your call, data into your crm, your follow-up emails, your sequences. but i do think in the aji, still, like, you know, how you sell, you know, should be your strategic advantage. right? assuming everyone else has all the data, they have all the knowledge. right? it's not how you sell. and, again, that specific example as well too. so i would say use ai to be able to automate, you know, a lot of what is tedious, but then that's a great opportunity for you to show your selling skills when you're actually presenting to that person virtually or meeting them in person as well too. so i think, yeah, that how you sell should be a free sample of how you solve.

Speaker 0: and people in the end buy from people.

Speaker 1: that's the end of the day. yes.

Speaker 0: right? like, it's great if you have these ai tools, but who's am i gonna call? who's talking to me at the other end? do i like this person, or do they understand my business? those are the types of things that people are looking at. and do i trust them?

Speaker 1: yeah. i went to a, a startup pitch event a while ago, and there actually was a company that their product was, you could choose if you wanted a demo with a person or a demo with an ai. and they were developed with an ai. and the very first question ai asked was, how are you doing today? where are you located? tell me about your business. which, like, the three things you don't wanna say as a sales rep, you wanna know where they're located. yep. right? you wanna know we have some facts about their business. so, again, i still believe people buy from people, and that is gonna be even more important in this age of ai.

Speaker 0: yeah. and so since we're talking about ai, i might as well ask because people have been bugging me about inbound and outbound voice agents. and where do you feel they're gonna be fitting into some of this from a sales enablement process?

Speaker 1: yeah. it's interesting. so, a company i was previously with, one of the executives i was talking to, they were at, at a board meeting, with the vc investors that founded the company. and she was, obviously, these board members and vcs have investments in all these outbound, you know, automated sdr, functions. right? and she was saying it was kinda very, very hot topic that none of these investments have really added any value. so i don't know a whole bunch about this subject, but, again, i think kind of that automation around that outbound, i could see for email sequencing. right? but i think in terms of, like, actually call outbounding or outbounding or, like, you know, replicating human voice, i think we're still quite early days. so, again, i still believe that people buy from people and, you know, really, you know, use ai to automate what is challenging. but, again, i think that communication, when you're talking to someone, you know, should be, should be through a human.

Speaker 0: i agree hundred percent. and i think if you're gonna get a, eye involved, at least, from a voice point of view, make it clear. the things i would think of, and this is what i'm thinking about automating is, i'm at an event, i meet a bunch of people, either i take a picture or whatever, i connect with them, i will have that automatically picked up by my agent. it'll go out and do a little research and then call the person and say, hey. i am craig's ai assistant. i'd love to book a follow-up meeting with you, blah blah blah blah blah. you're not actually trying to sell. you're just and people will be like, okay. cool. especially when, you know, i deal with automation and whatnot. so it's kind of a, oh, that's interesting, versus i'm here to sell you, you know, your features. you just take away that tedious task where i'm automatically following up with these people i met, with an email, with a phone call, with a request for a meeting so that i don't personally have to do every little bit of that.

Speaker 1: yeah. well, again, they've they've met you first. right? they know who you are. you're not just a randy and greg who they met at a conference.

Speaker 0: but that's one of the things i find people are saying, you know, follow-up, follow-up, follow-up. but when you go to a networking event, follow-up is what people don't do. and these are kinds of tools that can say, alright. let's do our best to automate that or put that into a spreadsheet or do something where it's so much easier for the people to follow-up with the people you met now, versus, you know, you're sifting through all these cards. and what conversation did i have with this person? so there's things you can do that actually help the person and let the salesperson do the sales and be the human in the equation.

Speaker 1: yeah.