Embark on a journey of discovery with Dylan, a wizard of sales leadership, as he unveils the magic behind AI's transformative power in the sales realm. Tune in to learn how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the industry, not by ousting hardworking salespeople, but by enhancing their craft. Dylan demystifies the process, illustrating how AI can refine sales strategies and scripts, drawing inspiration from industry giants, and how it can sift through colossal data sets with ease, bringing a competitive edge to any sales team.
This episode is a treasure trove for anyone seeking to bridge the gap between human touch and technological prowess in sales and communication. We discuss how AI is reshaping our interactions, making authenticity a rare commodity in a digital world. Discover how AI isn't only for crunching numbers—it's redefining customer experience, matching sales reps and clients based on personality, fostering connections bound for success. Join us as we investigate how AI complements the irreplaceable human element, ensuring that the future of sales is not just innovative, but also inherently human.
Follow @urbuzzworthy on LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter. Get your copy of Buzz's best selling book, The Rule of 26 at www.ruleof26.com.
Embark on a journey of discovery with Dylan, a wizard of sales leadership, as he unveils the magic behind AI's transformative power in the sales realm. Tune in to learn how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the industry, not by ousting hardworking salespeople, but by enhancing their craft. Dylan demystifies the process, illustrating how AI can refine sales strategies and scripts, drawing inspiration from industry giants, and how it can sift through colossal data sets with ease, bringing a competitive edge to any sales team.
This episode is a treasure trove for anyone seeking to bridge the gap between human touch and technological prowess in sales and communication. We discuss how AI is reshaping our interactions, making authenticity a rare commodity in a digital world. Discover how AI isn't only for crunching numbers—it's redefining customer experience, matching sales reps and clients based on personality, fostering connections bound for success. Join us as we investigate how AI complements the irreplaceable human element, ensuring that the future of sales is not just innovative, but also inherently human.
Follow @urbuzzworthy on LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter. Get your copy of Buzz's best selling book, The Rule of 26 at www.ruleof26.com.
How do you think AI is going to affect how you handle sales for your company? Some say AI could replace the sales industry altogether, but I am very skeptical, which is why I decided to enlist one of my friends, dylan, to join me today and talk about it. Dylan is a fractional sales leader, trainer and recruiter who has managed over $22 million in revenue for his clients and trained over 500 sales reps. Let's see what he has to say about AI taking his job. Welcome to the Buzzworthy Marketing Show. Welcome to the show, dylan. How are you doing today? I'm doing great, michael.
Speaker 2:Good to see show Dylan, how you doing today. I'm doing great, Michael. Good to see you, dude. It's good to see you, man.
Speaker 1:It's been a couple of weeks since we talked last. For disclosure. Dylan and I have known each other for now almost a year now.
Speaker 2:We have been going back and forth for a long time. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:At least a year right, At least a year Sales call turned friendship. I guess yeah exactly, yeah, it is. It's amazing how all that works out. I don't even remember how you got my information. Maybe it might have been a LinkedIn outreach or something like that.
Speaker 1:But as we said in your bio man, you are the sales team guru right In that fractional space of helping people build fractional sales teams and stuff like that. But the last time when you and I talked, we were talking about AI and how it's impacting sales and you said some pretty cool stuff which I'm going to let you actually lead the conversation on that. So I'm going to just ask the simple question of like, how are you immediately right today, seeing AI affect the sales industry?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I mean, the way I look at AI is it's something that's going to help you do something more effectively and more efficiently. So thinking more in terms of how can this help me become a better salesperson, instead of the fear of like AI is going to replace me. It's like AI will replace people that are replaceable, in my opinion, like in all industries, right, Like, if you're someone who's not able to be replaced, AI can't replace you, if that kind of makes sense. So it's like, as long as you're good at your job, you're diligent and you're doing things that AI can't really do, I think your job is pretty secure. But if you're doing something that's something that is replaceable, then you are in fear of being replaced. But if you're a salesperson and you're worried about AI, I would just start to think of it and repositioning your frame of like.
Speaker 2:How can AI help me become a better salesperson? Like scripting, right, and the one thing that I really like to do is like who's your favorite voice that's famous in sales? Right, Like you can tell Chad GPT to be Oren Kloff. Right, Like you are now Oren Kloff GPT, and then all of the questions are now coming through the lens and the tonality of someone that you respect in the space. So you can start to reuse the Orin Klopp GPT a lot if Orin Klopp's watching this, but, like you are now Orin Klopp GPT. Now how would you explain this thing from a marketing perspective? Or how would you write this cold email script or this cold call script?
Speaker 2:Knowing the principles of someone that you respect in the sales space is actually going to help you script. Knowing the principles of someone that you respect in the sales space is actually going to help you really do your job faster and more effectively so you can get to selling faster, as well as like uploading PDFs so it can start to understand your sales metrics. Make you a harder, more intelligent person. Uploading a PDF Excel spreadsheets, Like you know. Look at my last month's numbers like what data, what findings can chat GPT find that I might not be able to find or takes me a lot of time to find?
Speaker 1:So I love that. I think it's like I mean, we keep hearing it over and over. The people who are in the know are saying, you know, it's the chat. Gpt and those types of AI are great for ideation, they're great for research and we almost sound like a broken record player, but it seems like a song we have to keep singing over and over again like row, row, row your boat, like it's a never ending song, because people keep getting barraged by marketing that's out there that says hey, we can replace your agency, we can replace your sales team, we can replace your setter, we can replace your sales team, we can replace your setter, we can replace your bookkeeper, I mean, the list goes on and on and on.
Speaker 1:And you know I've been going down the rabbit holes with these things because this whole season has been dedicated to AI and I want to be able to tell my audience like these are the things that I actually think that you can use to whatever it is, and I haven't found any of the ones that I suggest replace anybody. They augment, right. They're like you're talking about. You're using it to sharpen the ax of the salesperson, right. You're there to better the human being, and I think that if we could just get that out there marketers and I'm a marketer, so unfortunately I'm surrounded by marketers who love to ruin things for the rest of us, right, and I'm a purist, I'm a fundamentalist when it comes to marketing because I feel that that never changes, like if you read fundamental marketing books from centuries ago. The fundamentals have not changed. The tactics we use to exercise the fundamentals completely changed because how we communicate has completely changed. Ai is not going to uproot the fundamentals. I'm sure it's a lot like that in sales, huh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I mean like. So a good example of this is the more educated you are on AI, the more you can augment. The more you embrace it, the more you allow it to help. The more that you meet it with resistance, the more that it can replace it because you're not trying to you know, get with the times right resistance the more that it can replace it because you're not trying to. You know, get with the times right. Like if you think about like blockbuster and netflix right. Like blockbuster had the opportunity to buy netflix and like now everyone's going to continue to come in and buy, you know, vcr, um, dvds and things like that. Like you're either going to get with it and go along for the ride or you're going to meet it with resistance and maybe have a worseser outcome. So, understand how can you use our AI to augment what you do as a salesperson.
Speaker 2:What are the things that if I didn't have to take that much time, I could focus on? More revenue generating activities, right, that's usually like metrics, kpis, scripts, prospecting A lot of people struggle with. Like finding their ICP, like Ask, chat, gpt it can take so many data points, instances that would take you forever to do and like especially with marketing. I invested into a program with a buddy of mine, nick. He's a copywriter. Copywriters are nervous about AI because it can write copy for you, but he actually runs a program and a coaching program on how to use AI to become a better copywriter, how to fill in those blanks and understanding how to prompt AI right. The more educated you are, the more you can use it to your advantage versus disadvantage you are, the more you can use it to your advantage versus disadvantage.
Speaker 1:I think that that's so important to hear. Right, like professional copyright, copywriting is one of the few things that I think tools like JetGPT do really well. That and emails right. But it's still a matter of those who are good at it already. Right, they're making themselves better because there is a human element that the computer's not going to understand yet. Now there is the super intelligent, artificial super intelligence, asi, coming down the road and then you get the generative AI, which is like tomorrow, I think Any second. Now we're going to get the AGI coming in right, and those will change slightly. But again, I think that the fundamentals will be there, and the fundamentals of copywriting and the creativity.
Speaker 1:I keep telling people, like what you were saying, it's like you get the ideas. How would my idol do say these things? But that doesn't mean you just read that, because you're going to be inauthentic on your phone call If you're just taking the scripts that AI gave you. That's modeling what somebody else has already said it's ingenuous, that's it Disingenuous and it's unauthentic and authenticity and unauthentic authenticity is kind of a cliche word nowadays, but it is. I wish we had an other word that would um replace it, uh, so we can get back to it. But it's honest, right? Yeah, it's, it's real, and real people buy from people, right? And when people try to get robots to do things, now what do you think about like using AI in the follow-up sequences and the nurture sequences and and, and helping really personalize automation? That's already out there for those purposes?
Speaker 2:So one tool that we use that I absolutely love is called Clay C-L-A-Y. So essentially what Clay does is it uses AI, like you give it a LinkedIn profile, and it enriches it using AI for all of these data points, specific things that they have, like company accolades or like if they just got published in Forbes or Inc 5000, and it creates spreadsheet rows of like all this wealth of data to do prospecting for you. Then, as a salesperson, you can then use those custom fields to personalize messages. So you're using again AI to augment your personalization, your follow-up, to make it more relevant. It does the dirty work. You make it look good with your own sales expertise. And I was just going to say when you were talking, come back to me, but I was just trying to come across exactly what you're talking about.
Speaker 2:The more the AI is becoming apparent in conversation and in social media and responses, the more opportunity to stand out with actual human to human interaction. Right, like if you're on social media and you see on linkedin all most of the replies. Someone put that post in chat gpt and ask chat gpt to spit out a response and then they just copy paste it and send it and it's like super informative, dylan, like that's just not. I know that's not you. I can look at your profile and you don't use the word informative a lot. It was like you can actually now use AI to your advantage to be a human, because it's like, oh my God, thank God he's an actual human. Like right, right, I think that's a good point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, I think that. Yeah, I think that gen z, um is already showing the signs of unplugging. And going back to, you know, human interaction. I think gen x have embraced they're the generation that embraced um technology. I'm a gen Xer and we use technology in everyday life but we don't make it our life, we don't make it our personality, right?
Speaker 1:I know so many of my millennial friends that you know they're nothing without their phone. You know, and people, some people come to me and are like hey, I sent you. I was just with a friend in DC yesterday and I drove like two hours to be in this meeting and he, he slacked messaged me, or messaged me in Slack, however you say it, and I'm like, I'm like dude, I suck at Slack. It's like it's not part of my communication, like it's on my phone, but I didn't know that that group wasn't installed in Slack, I didn't know I had to right. So, like each generation I feel is getting is staying true to how they were brought up, right. But I think Gen Z is going to break that mold, like you said, and kind of come full circle in like, hey, I don't mind having a dial-up phone in my house, because that means, when I'm out with my wife, I can spend time with them, them.
Speaker 2:I just got a second phone for that. I have a second phone that's just call text internet that's it they got, they have.
Speaker 1:They have cell phones now that only have like a calculator, a text messenger and a phone. That's it, yeah, and it's a white. It's a white background of black letters, little, and I want to say some of them are flip and that's it. And I think that we're getting to that because of all the noise. Going back to what you said earlier when you were saying, you start sounding like everybody else. I think that's important that the audience hears that when people are asking ChatGPT or any of those types of tools, I'm going to use that as the generic because most people are using it. Chatgpt or any of those types of tools, I'm going to use that as the generic because most people are using it. So when you're working with ChatGPT, it's pulling.
Speaker 1:Everybody's asking the same question, right, if you're in an industry and you're trying to do X, y, z, so if there's a hundred Dylan type people out there going, how do I make my sales pitch better? Right, they're all asking the same question and they all, and a lot of them, have the same heroes. So they're all asked the same question and they all, and a lot of them, have the same heroes. So they're putting in the same prompts and the chat. Gpt is pulling from the same database and I think it's really important to understand that chat. That ai right now is it. It is regurgitating what it has collected. It is it is the freshman in college that looks things up and then synthesizes it in different words. It's not plagiarizing, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's not creating anything new. That's where the generative AI, which is knocking on our doors, might get there, but to me, I think that imagination is the human gift. It is what makes our soul, our soul. I don't want to get too woo on you here, but it is what makes our soul, our soul. I'm going to get too woo on you here, but it is what makes us human right. We all have feelings, and we can teach robots to have feelings, but it only knows the feelings we tell it to like or to have right. Where humans, we create things out of thin air, from our own experiences, and those have not been yet because we haven't been shipped yet, have not been cataloged in a database for AI to feed off of yet.
Speaker 2:I hope not. But yeah, I mean to your point like it's a tool. A CRM is a tool. A dialer is a tool. Sending software is a tool. Software is a tool. Slack is a tool. A dialer is a tool. Sending software is a tool. Software is a tool, slack is a tool.
Speaker 1:So if you just add it to your toolkit, you're just going to be more well-equipped. I love it. I love it, and I think that that's what you're seeing a lot of is like I was just making a presentation I did in Dallas last week and I used Prezi to make it. I usually do. I just love the interaction with it and the movement, but then they have AI in there, so I was able to pull in my outline of my talk and pick a template that I liked, a theme that I liked, and it said, okay, here you go, and it got to be about 60% of the way there.
Speaker 2:Which is a time saver Right. Huh, I use a software called Gamma.
Speaker 1:It does the way there, yeah, which is a time?
Speaker 2:saver Right? Huh, I use a software called Gamma. It does the same thing. It's like a I just saw Gamma AI with like Google Doc type situation and you can like give it a prompt and it will visualize. It'll just make it look nice.
Speaker 1:Now does it work pretty well, because the way that they advertise it is it does all the work. Advertise it, is it does all the work.
Speaker 2:What do you think of it? It does a good chunk of work. Okay, you have to tweak it right so it does AI, and then you have to make a human.
Speaker 1:I love it, yeah, I think I just ran across gamma a couple weeks ago about two weeks ago actually and I haven't played with it yet, but I was thinking that would be good for some simple slide decks. You know to. If you're doing, if you're using, like google slides or, um, oh, shoot, microsoft powerpoint or any of those types of things, I'm like, okay, this could be a quick way of getting a bunch of a bunch of slides together that you only need say, you know a dozen, maybe two dozen slides for a quick, you know, talk or something like that. So it's good to hear the feedback that it's, I think, say, a dozen, maybe two dozen slides for a quick talk or something like that. So it's good to hear the feedback that it's, I think it's a lot of the same. How many times have you seen the apps now that are like use AI to write a book in 15 minutes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's going to be a good book.
Speaker 1:It is horrific. I'm like this is good. I mean I'm an author, right and so, as an author, it is. I'm like this is good. I mean I'm I'm an author, right and so, as an author, we want to see what tools can speed us up, right? Um, because there are things that you don't want to have to do the research and iterate sometimes and stuff like that and for the most part it they absolutely suck Like. Don't spend the 250 or 1500 dollars, whatever they're offering to help you. If you think you're writing any length of book, you know past 30 pages, I would say so. So anything past an ebook you're not writing in 15 minutes. You will rewrite most of it if you know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:Now, I'm sure, who are letting it write whatever it's going to say. Go and make sure it sounds okay and then push it out as their own. But those people are going to get sniffed out very quickly.
Speaker 2:Well, there's like tools now, kind of like plagiarism tools, where you can put it in and it will tell you if it's been written by AI.
Speaker 1:Some of them, yeah. So there's AI now. So I have a friend who has a long form content creator, right, and it actually passes those tests for blogs and articles. So I think, for every sniffer out there you're going to have, they're going to get better, right, and that's. That's just the way the human you know, uh, the human nature, if you will, right, he's like you're gonna have the people who are like I want to sniff out the fakes, and then the other people are like we're gonna beat the, we're gonna beat the system, right. It's gonna go back and forth, which makes the technology better. Actually, if you think about it, right, if, if it can, if, if you can get an ai to write in a way that an AI sniffer can't, it is more human-like, yeah, right, but I also think that comes down to the inputs you put into it. So if the laser you are, the more apt you are to get sniffed out, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Now one of the things now that you brought up, go ahead your expertise and your knowledge of how to utilize AI Right.
Speaker 1:Mindset and all that good stuff, right, like how? Yeah, like your lens, your lens is your lens, and nobody's had the experience, the exact experience, as you've had. There are many that have had similar experiences, but none just like yours, right, and our expertise is a culmination of random things that happen in the universe, right, and that's what make us so unique, right? So I agree with you there. Oh man, I just had thought of another one when you were saying that, but I love the point that you made there.
Speaker 1:But is there, besides scripting and maybe the research you said? I love how you brought up the like, put in your data from a month's worth of calls and maybe even the recordings and transcriptions and all that other stuff, and go and then start asking the AI questions about where do you see positive trends, where do you see negative trends? If you were this sales coach, what feedback would you give me? I love all of that stuff, right there. Is there anything else that we should be either adopting now in AI with our sales process, or maybe looking here in the near future to see come from AI to help us with sales?
Speaker 2:So a big thing is like how marketing like marketing and sales right, because everything is data driven the more data that you have, the better decisions you can make inside your business, right? Some of these things that you can get from chat GPT, given the data that you provide inside your business, right, some of these things that you can get from ChatGPT, given the data that you provide, it can actually drastically increase your revenue. So a big like an actual use case that we've done recently is we have a client of ours we work with fractionally. They have a Typeform application. It's got like 12, 14 questions and essentially you're able to download all the Typeform responses in a specific time period. So we do it on a month by month basis. So we can start to understand that.
Speaker 2:Okay, analyze all these responses, right, some are multiple choice, some are short answer. You upload the CSV, you tell chat GPT, you know, find commonalities right, like what percentages of which answer are we receiving? And then we can go back into the HubSpot CRM from the revenue that we closed, go back and correlate. Okay, the large subset of our revenue is coming from applications that have these answers. Now, when these answers are coming into our funnel and these applications are being submitted, we can better route those applications to the correct salespeople so we can actually optimize our revenue based on the data that people are giving us and our understanding of how important those data points are. So by doing that, we increased revenue by like 20 or 30% when we started to implement that just knowing more Because we were like, oh, whatever they say is, their revenue is our leader indicator.
Speaker 2:But actually it was a different answer that we weren't even looking at because Chachi PT was able to analyze that and it was like 85% of our clients from that month said this answer and it had nothing to do with revenue. It was like a goal what is your goal with working with this company? And all these people had this similar answers to it. It was a short answer question, it wasn't a multiple choice. So we started, we turned it into multiple choice so that we can start to track it and push people towards a desired answer in the funnel. And that was all because ChatGPT, because I was not gonna go through like 3000 type form responses and be like give it to ChatGPT, you do the dirty work and I'll make the right decisions based on the output.
Speaker 1:You're giving me an idea. Now tell me if this exists. Yeah, is there a way to take that information and then do like matchmaking for the right prospect to the person, the best personality to talk to on the sales call?
Speaker 2:Over time, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh my gosh, how cool would that be Talking to salespeople that you actually will get along with, right? That was actually one of my best sales call. Yeah, that'd be. It's actually a good idea.
Speaker 2:You would need to assess the salesperson on a specific questionnaire to then categorize your salespeople and then understand over time what applications probably what salespeople are having the highest close rate.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, and you could do one of those personality tests. There's a new one that's like based on nine type personality types, uh, and I can't remember what it's called, but I'm sure it'll come to me and I'll. I'll text you when I, when I think of it, but then. But then you can ask some like qualifying questions in in a conversational type of piece on the survey side for the client when they're doing their questionnaire, right, and then it's like, okay, now you are qualified, you hit that 85% answer that you guys were looking for what personality type would be best for that? And then shoot them over to that person.
Speaker 2:Yeah so they're having.
Speaker 1:They're both having a better conversation, right. That is, you know, maybe they're a helper, right? And it's like oh, you're a number two, you're best suited to talk to sevens and fives Okay, cool, boom, they get those. And then it's like oh, you're a driver, okay, the people who like need a kick in the pants, those are the people you need to talk to because you do that really well, right, like that would be, really. I mean, this is like kind of more, probably more of a mid-market enterprise level type of tool, but I mean, how cool would that be.
Speaker 2:And I think the big thing is like that's a cool use case. But I think the overarching thing to think about if you're running a company or running a sales team, ask more because you have more functionality and capability. Right, like I would have never prompted my brain to be able to understand that large data set without a tool like ChatGPT. So I mean, the biggest problem with data is that you're just. You don't know how to implement it or how to understand data. I'm sure that all everyone listening to this call has a wealth of data set that you have in your CRM and your marketing and your whatever. Think about how you can start to ask more of that data, given a tool like ChatGPT that can do it in like 30 seconds. You're just opening Pandora's box of capability because you now have this supercomputer at your fingertips to be able to analyze data more than a human being can, and it might take them like a month to do that data analyzation where this takes 30 seconds. So ask more, you know.