AI Has Killed Outside Sales | SOS Ep. 383

We break down how AI is reshaping outside sales and why the old linear sales process is collapsing under faster research and higher buyer skepticism. We share a practical way to use AI for speed without faking experience, plus the new “offer-first” reality that forces better prep, proof, and data. 
• why AI feels like a gold rush in sales right now 
• why AI tools cannot replace earned experience in live buying meetings 
• how ChatGPT can give confident but wrong answers and what that means for credibility 
• using multiple AI tools to cross-check insights and avoid bad inputs 
• the shift from linear selling to a value flow where buyers ask for the offer first 
• why discovery moves later and why pre-call planning matters more than ever 
• building proposals, ROI calculators, and real-world analytics instead of generic marketing material 
• why social proof, due diligence, and risk reversal now dominate the decision process 
• how fear of being wrong slows buying cycles and changes negotiation 
• why sales cycles are getting longer and why you must prospect more each year 
If you want to know how to harness the power of AI, then let me know. Reach out to me. You can click on one of the links below to schedule a consult, Mike, or you can email me Mike@survivingoutsales.com. But there's a sales scorecard that you can go to https://survivingoutsidesales.com/scorecard. That is survivingoutsidesales.com/scorecard. But if you want to have a conversation, I offer a free consult. It is the link is going to be in the bio. Let's have a conversation about where you are, where you've been, and where do you want to go in this new landscape of outside sales because it is a brave new world. 

Transcript

Bold Claim And Why AI Matters

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The Surviving Outside Sales Podcast, hosted by Mike O'Kelly, presented by Sales Builder Academy. The goal is to survive and thrive in all phases of outside sales, whether you're getting in, dominating, or getting out. Surviving Outside Sales. Now on with the show.

CRM Chaos And The AI Gold Rush

AI As Helper Not Shortcut

The Buyer’s New Value Flow

Offers First And Pre-Call Research

Social Proof Due Diligence And Fear

Longer Sales Cycles And Data Proof

Adapt Fast And How To Reach Me

SPEAKER_01 0:30

AI has killed sales forever. And I don't know if we're ever going to be able to make it back from what AI has done to it. Welcome to the Surviving Outside Sales Podcast. I'm your host, Mike O'Kelly. It has been in a wild couple of months because what has happened in the AI world is nothing short of remarkable. And if you are listening right now, or if you're watching this video right now and you are not focused on AI, and you're not focused on how to learn about AI, what to consume, what not to consume, what to do, and how to integrate that into your daily outside sales world, then you're going to be missing out. And it has never been more evident that the acceleration of AI has moved lightning years faster than I think people would have predicted. I know that if you are familiar with the Surviving Outside Sales podcast, you know that I founded an AI sales technology company. And the one of the discussions that we had when we started was the speed at which AI was going to take off. And this is much faster than we even thought it was going to be. It is completely changed the outside sales world. I kind of joke tongue in cheek, it has not killed outside sales. All right. But it will kill outside sales if you have done it incorrectly. And it's killing your outside, it's killing your prospects, or it's killing your prospecting because of what your prospects are using the AI for. So what you have to do is understand the AI. You have to understand the AI your buyers are using, and you have to understand the limitations, the misconceptions, the different process you're going to have to go through in order to gain your prospects' attention, in order to get them to buy. And look, I have to go through the exact same thing. I started noticing with some of the my prospects back in, I'd say October or November, and they were talking a lot about AI. And so I chatted with a client that I brought on. And my client, the first thing we did on the onboarding call, the client said, What type of AI are we going to learn in your coaching? I said, What do you mean? And she said, Well, AI is everywhere. Are we going to learn anything? And I said, Well, you know, there's a rhythm. It's for, you know, rhythm AI. It is for targeting, routing, prospecting. I said, other than that, I'm I'm not quite sure what you mean. Like I'm what I'm going to help you with, what I'm going to teach you are the fundamentals, the fundamentals of sales, the fundamentals of getting somebody through the sales process, getting them through the customer journey, the buyer's journey, and getting them to say yes to your product or service. What does I AI have to do with that? And she said, Well, everybody uses AI. So I just didn't know if you were going to have some type of AI course that goes with it. At the time, I kind of shrugged it off. And then I heard it a second time and I heard it a third time and I heard it a fourth time. And somewhere around, I really didn't have the bandwidth last fall because I was going through my coaching program and I was getting advice for building a community at school, which by the way was a disaster. I spent thousands of hours trying to set up my school community, working, learning the back end and setting it up, getting people to come on, doing the onboarding, all that whole stuff while I had a go high level. So it was a it was a lot. So just to kind of give you a recap, okay. If you've been listening to the show, if this is your first time, please indulge me for the next 30 to 45 seconds. If you've been a listener to the show, we're 384 episodes in. This has been going on for three to four years. So I've got some listeners that have been listening to me the whole time. All right. So the last couple months, I've had to switch CRMs three times. Okay. The first switch was to go from go high level to school. So what I did was I recreated all of my courses because there was no integration. I had to recreate all of my courses over on school. I had to create the community, I had to do the whole nine yards, I had to make sure I had the images. I it just took forever. Okay. It was a very painful process. And then I get on there and I realize that there are two or three inefficiencies. Well, I had been convinced by somebody that I pay to give me consulting. And what he was saying was, this is the new thing. Everybody's going to be on school, the whole nine yards. Well, then I fired this person, and then I went with somebody else. And the other person said, Absolutely not. People that are going to school are trying to catch a wave that's just not quite hitting what it's supposed to do. It is school is for the masses. It's not for people who are specialized. Like you're very specialized outside sales. You're not a general generalist, you're a specialist. So you've already got you've already got all the infrastructure with your CRM. Go back to there. So that's what I have been doing the last several months. And also kind of figuring out what is the whole rush, the gold rush to AI. Because right now, I will tell you, we are in a gold rush for AI. Okay. There is never been a better time to get on the AI train. But the AI will not replicate experience. And I'm going to tell you why. Okay. If you put in a bunch of prompts to Chat GPT, there's stories now coming out that ChatGPT is like a yes man. Okay. It it's going to do everything to make you seek your approval. Why? Because then you'll consume more, you'll consume more, then you're going to want to spend money to get a subscription if you keep hearing the same things that you want to hear. And locally in the news, there was a lawsuit where there was a woman who's being sued and she fired her lawyer and she used Chat GPT because ChatGPT kept giving the legal advice. The problem was all of the legal advice was incorrect. In fact, if you look at most of these AI systems and you look at the bottom, it says this AI system makes mistakes. Please verify. But you'll have people that say, no, this is what ChatGPT said, this is this, this is that. And that's a big problem. Okay. What is happening is twofold. What I'm seeing in a lot of the conversations I'm having with sales and business leaders is people are trying to take shortcuts. And what you should be doing with AI is amplifying, not cutting corners. You should be using it for efficiency, not for learning. You should not be trying to shortcut your way to experience using AI. What you should be doing is it should be a helper, it should be an assistant. It should not be doing everything for you because you haven't earned the right, you haven't earned the skills necessary to have those conversations. Because here's the thing: you're not going to be able to use AI once you get into a buying meeting. When you're sitting there across the table from somebody, and all of a sudden something happens that goes against the script, that's where your experience, that's where your level of preparation comes into account. It's not, oh, well, I have a better AI model than you. The AI, think of the AI tool is to get you the get your foot in the door. The AI, excuse me, the AI tool should help you to develop your skills, but you have to develop them. You can't just shortcut your way to it. By the way, the different AI systems are designed differently. Chat GPT, it's think of it as a scraper of the internet. Okay. So here's the problem. If there are some bad prompts online, there's bad information, ChatGPT is going to scrape it. It's going to pull it. Chat GPT is great to brainstorm, to kind of give you ideas, to get you out of your, to get you over the hump of, you know what, I just don't quite sure know exactly what I want to do here, you know, and you put in certain prompts and it's going to give you an idea. For me in my business, I use several different types of AIs. And I'll kind of walk through a couple of them right now. I use, I do use Chat GPT just for general information, just kind of brainstorming, but I also cross-reference them. So I use Claude, I use Mana, I use Perplexity, I use one of Alex Hermozzi's AI assistants. I use Eleven Labs as well. And then, of course, there's Rhythm AI, but I'm no longer in the field. But it's a great tool for routing, targeting, and prospecting. But I use all of those different AIs every single day now. And but you have to bounce, bounce them off of each other. Well, that takes a lot of time. Okay. So you don't want to just have one of the AI sites give you the information. Now, what you don't want to do is you don't want to repeat the same prompt in multiple AIs, because what's going to happen is you're going to get really confused. But it's really important to understand that AI is going to be your helper. It is not going to do all of the lifting, it's not going to do the heavy lifting. When it comes to sales, when it comes to negotiation, you're going to have to develop those skills. Okay. But this is also what has happened, though. I talked about the the seller side. Now let's talk about the buyer side. Okay. The buyer side has also changed. And what you're looking at right now is I know you can't see this if you are listening to the podcast, but I'll kind of walk it through the best I can. So on the left hand side, you have the old way of selling, the old way of kind of prospecting and getting somebody to become a client. And on the right hand side, you have the new, the new way, the value flow. Okay. So the old way was very linear. It was very up and down. It was very predictable. You just focused on certain things. And that is prospect, discovery, consult, offer, negotiating, decision, onboarding. Pretty linear, pretty standard, pretty boilerplate. Okay. That means you could prospect, you can go through your discovery, do your consult, extend an offer, negotiate terms, they would make their decision, and then you'd bring them on board. And with the prospect, when they were investing time, that meant they were making a definite decision. Okay. They had, you know, hey, I invested, you know, six weeks talking with this program. I better get my money's worth. I'm telling you right now, prospects are willing to walk away from sunk cost, their sunk time and effort. They're willing to walk away if they don't believe that there is any clarity and they're going to get a better result. No, gone are the days of, and this is coming from the field, and this is also from me being a business owner where I deal with, I still deal with outside sales reps, outside sales vendors all the time. It doesn't matter anymore. That's not how buyers think. Buyers want to get it right, they don't want to be right. So there is no such thing as, well, I invested two weeks. I might as well just get something. That's gone. Those days are over. So the whole, well, I'm just gonna wear them down. I am going to use as much, I'm gonna take as much as their time. So they have to say yes because they've invested everything. Nope, that's not what is happening at all. Okay, on the right hand side, you have the new way, which is the value flow chart. And this is where AI has really disrupted sales, I would say, in the last six to eight months. And that is because you go from prospect before you went from prospect to discovery. Now it is prospect to they want the offer. When you walk in the building or you reach out to them, they're just like, How much is it gonna cost? Give me an offer. They want all their cards on the table before you start to go into, before they start to invest any time. So here's how it looks here's how it looks. Now I'm just gonna go for the podcast audience. It's prospect down to offer, down to negotiation discovery, down to social proof guarantee, down to a wait period for due diligence, down to a decision, down to onboarding. Okay. So before it was prospect, discovery, consult, offer, negotiating, decision, onboarding. Now it's almost flipped, whereas they want to get the offer up at the beginning, and then what they do is there's little arrows going to the right. They want multiple proposals. Okay. And what this means for you as a sales professional is you have to do more pre-call planning. The old days were the discovery was where you could do a lot of your information. So you could do a lot of cold calls, you could do a lot of door knocks, you could walk into places, and you wouldn't have to do as much research. Nowadays, you have to do so much research before you walk in there. You have to now present things to them. You can't just walk in. You have to have offers ready, you have to have ROI calculators, you have to have so many different things prepared, ready to go. You didn't have to eight, nine, 10 months ago, for the most part. But here's the difference. The reason why this is happening is the first thing that people are doing when you walk in the building is they used to Google you, which Google is very primitive, but now they're using Chat GPT. So the first thing that happens is they go to ChatGPT and they're like, hey, let's say you came from a company called Widgets Inc., okay? And all of a sudden somebody comes in from widgets inc and they say, you know, hey, my mic with widgets inc. And all of a sudden, guess what they're doing? They're going into ChatGPT. Tell me what widgets inc. How big is widgets inc? The whole nine yards. Here's the problem your buyers don't know as much about AI, they're not as savvy about AI. So they're probably just using Chat GPT. And as I mentioned before, ChatGPT has incorrect information. I have been on coaching calls with several of my clients, and I ran through this exercise where what I did was I said, okay, tell me your products or your service, and we're going to put in, please analyze the pricing, please analyze where your products are in the market. Out of the 25 or so examples where I did this, only one had the correct pricing for the product or service. One. So this is the problem that the modern buyer is going to run into. And this is something you might be running into. Okay. You're going to go into talk with a prospect, you're going to go into talk with an account, and they're going to chat GPT and they're going to make a decision based off what they see. Okay. You have to walk in there and you have to give them more than what they might find on Chat GPT. That is the name of the game nowadays. You have to come with multiple proposals. You have to come with multiple pieces of information and not the stuff, not the BS stuff your company gives you. Okay. Not that marketing crap. I'm talking about real real world, what's in it for them. Okay. You need to have analytics. You need to have deep dives. You need to give proposals. So on the flip side, when you're using AI, you now can write proposals. Every every client, every client you go into the building, you can write a proposal. You can write a proposal. And there are mobile printers. You can get a mobile wireless printer, get a mobile wireless printer for your car, print out a proposal before you walk into the new account. There you go. Now you've got a couple proposals analyzing the market, analyzing their products versus what they're they're using, finding their soft targets. That's how you can utilize AI. But hold on, let's get back to, I'm going to get back to the buyers for a second. Okay. So what's happening is you have to walk in the building and you have to now assume that the moment you hand your business card, the moment you call, the moment you try to schedule an appointment, they are going to chat GPT and they're trying to see if it's worth it or not. You don't want to get your doors blown off without getting an opportunity. You have to set yourself up for success. Sending them to your company's website will also not do it. This is one of the things that I talk about in all of the sales builder courses is building your brand, you know, sales builder, uh sales authority builder. That's part of the sales authority builder. You need to get your own website. You need to build your own website. You need to have it be a landing page where you then send all of your traffic to you control the narrative. That's the key nowadays. The old way, the linear way, and I'm raising my hand. I'm a little bit of a dinosaur. The way that I used to sell was the old way, the linear way, which was storm the gates, ask great questions, and then I could figure out in real time what my angle was. I don't believe you're afforded that opportunity anymore. And working with my clients, testing this boots on the ground, it's true. You have to come in with more because, again, there are more salespeople than ever. There are more companies than ever. Excuse me, you get bombarded more than ever. And that's as a buyer, buyers shut down when that happens. And everybody still sounds the same. I'm not going to go into it right now, but I got the worst opening text message ever. It's it's as if this kid had never, excuse me. It's as if this kid had never been taught anything about cold outreach. It was the most generic text message on the face of the earth. Very condescending. If this kid had done any type of discovery, he would have known who I was and what industry that I came from before he asked the questions that he asked. It it just rubbed me the wrong way as a buyer because this guy just, you know, you know, did the whole like, oh, give me 15 minutes of your time. Absolutely not. Absolutely not, because you didn't take five minutes to research who I was, what industries I have worked in, because if you would have, you would not have made the statements and asked the questions in the text message that you did. It just prove it just proves to me you didn't put the work in. So I'm not gonna reward you for 15 minutes. I'm sorry. And that's how a lot of buyers are. A lot of buyers aren't going to take 15 minutes out of their day, which is very valuable, and give it to somebody who has not shown that they can think like a buyer, they can think like a business owner. All right. So you got to get the prospect, you have the offer, and you have to have multiple proposals, and then you can start the negotiationslash discovery phase. Okay. That's where you can start asking questions. So here's the bad part, okay? You have to make some assumptions flying blind. You know, discovery is really where you could find a lot of the information. Discovery now is almost the third, fourth, or fifth step, whereas before it used to be step really number one. You know, once you found your ICP, once you found your target, the discovery was your first step. Now, unfortunately, it's not. It's like step three, four, five. Okay. Then after you do the negotiation discovery, that's when the the 711. Although I I saw, I saw a um, I saw somebody in the business world talk about 711.4 is gone. So if you don't know, 711.4 is in order for people to buy and feel really confident and comfortable, they have to see seven hours of your universe or your company or products universe. They spend now seven hours doing research at a with 11 different touch points of some sort across four different avenues, mediums. It could be internet, it could be in-person, it could be text message, it could be email, it could be YouTube, it could be social media, very four different. But now, with everything that's happening with AI, somebody that I trust in the business world says that's 711.4 probably now is closer to 20, 11.4. They just need people need to consume more these days to feel better. And it's almost like, and this maybe this is part of AI, or maybe it's just a trajectory of what's happened in the business world. But what's happening is people don't sometimes trust, or people are not as trusting their, I guess, instincts, their gut, like they used to. I'm not sure. What it is. I'm not going to spend 40 hours. That's way too much, or 20 hours. That's way too much. But the social proof guarantee, you know, seven points of contact. There's also a wait period for due diligence. People are not as apt to move quickly. They're using AI to double check, triple check, and quadruple check their work because they want to make sure there's such a fear of making a mistake now. In the old ways, buyers used to buy stuff, and if they made a mistake, great, they made a mistake, they moved on, they didn't think about it. But now the way that they're thinking of themselves is hey, I don't want to make a mistake. So every person along like if you have multiple people involved in the buying decision, now everybody's using probably Chat GPT. Okay. They might be using Claude, they might be using Manus, they might be using Perplexity, they might be using some of these others, but they're pretty much going to be using AI. So you have to make sure that you understand kind of the ecosystem and kind of get ahead of it. All right. So that wait period for due diligence, that could be referrals, references, testimonials, again, chat GPT, AI, and then market verification. They really want to know if what is what they're saying is accurate, if is it true? And then they'll come to a decision. And they're not making snap decisions anymore. Again, it goes back to that just because they invested time does not mean that they're going to make a quick decision. The sunk cost fallacy of time is gone. You know, buyers will walk away, even though they've invested 100 hours in researching a product or service. They'll walk away if they believe it's not going to get them the desired outcome, if it's not going to get the desired result. So that's gone. So that's a due diligence period where they're also testing to see, okay, what happens if this doesn't work? And that's a big fear in 2026. And it's going to be forever. People could lose their jobs if they make a wrong choice, if they make a wrong decision. So when you're selling to somebody, understanding the psychology behind their biggest fear was if I stick my neck out and I bring this in and I put my name on this approval and this goes south, will my boss fire me? That is, that is now I teach that with my clients. And I'm like, you need to start asking that question internally when you're talking to a prospect, or just flat out ask them, say, hey, you know, if let's say, for instance, you you you come on board with my product and it doesn't work out. What do you think, what what do you, what do you fear would happen? Like what's your what do you think would happen, what you fear would happen, and having that open, honest discussion. People like honesty, they like having an open discussion. They do, because it also moves the ball down the field, and that's part of the discovery. So now it's prospect, you've got multiple offers, multiple proposals, negotiation, social proof, due diligence, then they make a decision, and then finally they get to onboarding. And so what this means is the sales cycle is going to be longer. I'm gonna repeat that. The sales cycle is going to be longer. So, what does this mean? You have to prospect more than you did. And every year, you're probably gonna have to prospect 10 to 15 to 20% more than you did the previous year because the buying cycles are slowing down. And this is across multiple industries. I have clients in seven different outside sales industries. And the buying decisions are slowing down in every single one of them. I know as a buyer, like I move very slow now. I used to move very quickly. I don't move very slowly anymore. I now bring it to a committee. I now use, I get, I get something, and if the client, or I'm sorry, the person comes to me with the idea and they have not used AI yet, I'm gonna throw it into one of my AI models and I am going to run an analysis. Because the data doesn't lie. And that's another thing, too, is one key factor is data is one of the most important things that's driving business decisions now and moving forward. There's not as much gut instinct because so many people have been wrong so many times before. So the data doesn't lie. And now with AI, people are using analytical models. So a couple things to think of. You you can't BS, you can well, you should never BS your way through it, but you can't BS your way through this anymore. Okay. AI will expose that. As long as you know that, build it into your process, great. Understanding that everything is gonna be data driven. So if you can't show the data, buyers aren't gonna make aren't gonna make the decision, they're not gonna make the choice. Can you verify what you're saying and can you verify it's working? That is the that is what AI has done to the outside sales world. It really has killed the old way. And if for those outside sales grinders pounding the pavement out there, I salute you. If you are not getting on this, if you're not getting on this new way of how the sales process works, you're gonna get left behind. I hate to say it. You're gonna get left behind. And the saddest thing to see on LinkedIn is when there are, you know, 45 to 50 to 55, 60-year-old sales professionals who have their open-to-work banners for six, nine, 10, 12, 20 weeks, and they can't find a job and they don't understand why. It's a new world, it's an artificial intelligence world. And you have to adapt, you have to learn how to adapt and harness it while simultaneously still developing your skills. It's an absolute wild time. And the last several months, I have been navigating this with clients, I have been navigating this with myself, I've been redoing all of my infrastructure. All of my infrastructure now has is being built with AI. You know, I've I rebuilt five websites in a month. Five. Before it took me, I worked with a developer, paid almost four thousand dollars for Michael Kelly.com about I don't know, was that 2021, four years, five years ago? I think it was five years ago, or maybe it was 2022, four or five years ago. I worked with a web developer, paid four grand, and it took three months, three and a half months to get the website going and live, and one month I've built five websites. That is the power of AI. And being able to harness the power of AI is very important. If you want to know how to harness the power of AI, then let me know. Reach out to me. You can click on one of the links below to schedule a consult, Mike, or you can email me Mike at survivingoutsales.com. But there's a sales scorecard that you can go to surviving outside sales.scorecard. That is the technical side, that is the ability side. That is understanding where you are in your sales career, understanding how you're gonna get to where you need to go. That is surviving outside sales.com slash scorecard. But if you want to have a conversation, I offer a free consult. It is the link is gonna be in the bio. Let's have a conversation about where you are, where you've been, and where do you want to go in this new landscape of outside sales because it is a brave new world. And for those who are willing to be open minded to utilizing the tools that are available to us, the sky is going to be the limit. So hope everybody has a great, fantastic uh day. Cheers.