Outreach Made Easy: Why the Sales Rep Crossed the Road to Automation

Today, Scaling Smarter would like to welcome David Bush, CEO of bdr.ai. David brings 25 years of experience in helping to coach sales teams to scale their sales significantly. He's a real expert in this area, and he and his brother acquired this fledgling company last year and are now scaling it, basically All the things that they've been telling all of their sales teams to do, all the tedious work to be an effective sales team, they're now bringing technology to make that happen for them. Welcome to Scaling Smarter, David.

Thanks for having me, David. Just excited to be able to join up with you and have a good meaty conversation on how technology and AI and all the tools that are available are helping business owners, founders, CEOs, and sales team leaders to scale their businesses faster, easier, and better than they could do it on their own.

So tell me, give me a little bit, just a quick about your background and what made you think that this is the direction you needed to go with automation?

Yeah, I, I think that hard work. There's that old saying, I don't remember exactly who, I think maybe Abe Lincoln or somebody that said, if I was gonna go out there and cut wood, I'd go out there and spend the first hour sharpening the ax or sharpening the saw. And you can work really hard. and not get a lot accomplished. But if you work smart, you can get a lot more accomplished, and you can also spend time on the things that you really love to do rather than doing things that are maybe the things that we have to do to get the opportunity or to get the sales. So I think that it was through my own frustration with having to do a lot of work and then to have to train other people to do a lot of work. There's just a lot of repetitious boring, monotonous activities that are oftentimes associated with business development. And many people are just not doing them because they don't necessarily do them consistently enough to see the results, or they're just in a position where their technology or their strategy is off or their tactic is off. And so that's one of the things that, because I was able to do it manually and then I was able to take it and do it with technology, now I feel that I have the experience and expertise and education. to speak boldly and confidently with business owners, founders, and CEOs to say, hey, I know that this works. I've seen it, I've done it, I've trained other people to do it, and you can see the same results if you'll trust that process. So 25 years of experience. My brother and I, we bought the company in 2024, and it wasn't in a position where it was failing. It was actually something that was not scaling. So it was successful, but it just wasn't going to that next level of success. And we knew that we could bring our experience My brother has a lot of sales and marketing experience after 25 years in the direct mail industry and a big 8-figure exit in 2021 when he exited and sold his direct mail agency. He, he brings skills to the table. I bring skills to the table, and we're excited about the relationships and just the huge growth we've seen in the last 12 months since we acquired the company.

So tell me about that growth and what you've done to achieve it.

More than anything, we've worked hard at refining standard operating procedures. We put together processes and procedures, and then we've also just been a product of the thing that we talk to people about. So we're doing significant amount of outreach. We are developing marketing systems that are happening consistently, and we're driving inbound leads as well as following up with new opportunities using the exact same systems that we encourage others to partner with us on. It's not like we're doing something that other people don't have the opportunity to do. We've just been doing it consistently, methodically, predictably, so that we know we're going to get the result that we desire. Because business development, even though technology has been introduced, it hasn't changed a lot in terms of what's required. There's basic steps like you have to identify a list of prospects, right? So that's what most people— they don't even have that. They don't have a clearly defined targeted list So we went out there and found targeted lists of verticals that matched our ICP. And we really got major monotonically focused, monomaniacally focused, singularly focused on who are the people that are going to best be served by the services that we have to offer. And then we approached those individuals and we offered them value. We didn't go out there and sell and tell, we approached them with value. And a lot of those people received an automated message, but it was an automated message that was personalized at scale. So that they didn't see it as being an automated message. So we customized the messaging to the target market so that they would actually feel complimented, appreciated, edified, but also attracted to want to have a conversation. And then we made the follow-ups, and then we've consistently added value and attracted people to want to have a conversation with us. All of those things is where most people, when they're trying to scale their business, They're struggling with those things. And we did demos and we did presentations and we did referral partner conversations, and all of those activities generate results, right? They say that you reap what you sow. It's not you reap what you know. You could be the most fantastic expert in all the land. If people don't know what you do and why you do it and how it can help them, you haven't sowed much. So we went out there and we sowed value into people that we felt could benefit from the services that we offered. And then we made them an irresistible offer. And that's another area that we help clients with. Many people don't have an irresistible offer. Their offers are very resistible. And so we'd made irresistible offers. We didn't give the store away, but we created a sense of urgency and scarcity and exclusivity and reciprocity and comparison and showing them how we could do it better than other people at a better overall price point and a value point. Than other people. And we eliminated the risk with testimonials and we showed people social proof of other people that have done things with us that have had great results.

Mm-hmm.

Again, none of that stuff is new, David. You've been around long enough.

Right.

That's all pretty much basic information, but there's only one thing that people do predictably, and that's that they act unpredictable. And if they don't do those things on a consistent basis, their business is probably not gonna grow to the level that they want.

And that's probably the most important thing. If people follow a path that's consistent and they're consistently and dogmatically following that path, they'll achieve some level of success, even if the path isn't the best path, right? It's grit. It's not brilliance that gets people over the line.

And what a lot of people do is that they go out there and they take technology and they apply technology into their business development processes without personalization, With having a good qualified list, most people that are using technology to scale is that they're oftentimes spamming their TAM. They're spraying and praying, selling and telling. They're not sharing and caring and following up. If you can take that model and you can flip the script so that it's constantly being a go giver and being a value creator and attracting people to want to work with you, there's a bountiful supply of opportunity out there. You just have to get the fish to chase the boat, and most people just don't know how to do that with technology. Because of 25 years of experience and expertise and education, we know how to do that. And now we're using technology to help others to do the same.

So how tell me how you're using AI and to really accelerate this model?

Yeah, definitely in the following and doing research. That's a big part of just working with clients to help them to find their target audience. What is the target market for their particular marketplace offering or their services and products? And a lot of times their target market is way wide. They're trying to. dominate the ocean before they have mastered the puddle. And so what we're doing is that we're using AI to show them different strategies of how they could go out there and really own a small particular area and then expand upon that once they've dominated that particular area so that they're not becoming the master of all things and an expert at none of them. And that's oftentimes where it's hard for small business owners and even some of the bigger business owners. It's hard for them to think about what it is that they do above and beyond what's normal, and they think that they can serve everyone. So finding the list, sourcing list ideas and value creation strategies using research and basic AI, having conversations. We also build out digital outreach playbooks. We've developed some customized strategies using AI where we'll actually go in there and craft a new LinkedIn profile using best practices. Being able to develop out a 25-point digital outreach playbook over a 90-day period of time that's customized to the target market. And then we've been able to put together automation so that when somebody is responding to you, if you're using our platform, you can use AI to customize your responses. So we built ChatGPT right into our platform. So as you're interacting with people on LinkedIn, rather than using LinkedIn to have conversations, use our platform and you can utilize saved replies. You can use AI chat messages. They're going to help you to customize the content to get a better reply rate and move those people forward. Also using AI and dialing technology and voice recordings, and we're using transcripts to be able to improve outbound dialing and just showing people what's wrong with why they're not developing their business. It could be their skill sets, it could be their scripting, it could be their approach, it could be the presentation Getting to too much data rather than talking about the needs of the client. So all those are just a few of the strategies that we've been able to leverage.

Can you give me a couple examples of clients that you've worked with and the value that it's brought to them?

Yeah, a couple of them would be just from a small to medium-sized business that has got a sales team of maybe 5 sellers, and they're at a point where they need to hire another business development rep. To feed leads or to feed opportunities, or maybe there's just a lot of opportunities on the table, whether it's from past clients, whether it's from past prospects, but the account managers or the account executives or the senior sellers, they're just running out of time to be able to do a lot of the follow-up and the business development activities. So they're going to go out there and they're going to spend $50,000, $60,000, $75,000 on a business development rep. Or they're going to outsource it. They're going to hire virtual assistants or something that's going to be expensive. So we take that opportunity and we come in and we say, why don't we use technology, BDR.ai, which stands for Business Development Rep powered by AI technology sequencing and automation, and let's automate some of the activities. So we give each one of the senior sellers an account and we synchronize it with their LinkedIn account and their email. And we build out digital sales funnels where we have outreach campaigns that are going out to target market, ideal client profile list prospects. And then the technology is acting as that business development rep. Those account managers or account executives, they don't have to do the heavy lifting and you don't need a full-time business development rep to the tune of $50,000 to $75,000 to do all that outbound. The technology will do it for you. So LinkedIn interactions on the profile, comments, AI suggested comments. That's another one that we didn't mention earlier. Just giving me ideas so that I don't have to think about what would be a good comment on this particular post that I'm trying to build a relationship with this prospect. They've posted something and I want to come up with something clever to say. Doing that over and over again is exhaustive. And it's also something that's very repetitive and people just don't do it. So our system is actually taking that and it's taking individual prospects or maybe past prospects that we were able to source and bring those people into their LinkedIn outreach. And now it's building relationship and it's nurturing those conversations and building more opportunities that are more inbound that are coming right back into the sales rep. It's not having to go to a 3rd party or 3rd person. And that one example, for maybe a couple thousand dollars a month, they were able to eliminate the cost of potentially a $5,000 to $7,000 a month spend and marketing costs and training and people time and all the stuff that goes with bringing on an actual human being. We were able to replace that entire business development rep role with automation and a couple thousand dollars.

Yeah, that's huge. And I'm sure there's a lot of people that are listening to this That are facing the same kind of challenges right now. So let— I always ask this question: if you didn't have any budget limitations and the technology was there to do it, what problem in the world would you solve?

I think the best problem that I could solve right now is that there's a tremendous amount of information and resources and tools, but there's not necessarily the technology to operate all of those things. Many of the different owners and founders and CEOs that I talk to are struggling from tech stack creep, where they're just compounding one tech stack on top of another. And even though each one of those tech stacks come with their own AI interface, they're not communicating with each other.

Mm-hmm.

So if I was to solve the problem and if we had an open checkbook, I would be focusing in on that one problem is how can I get more, whether it's AI agents or some form of task-related focus where it's like, I don't have to just go collect information. Because right now there's a lot of people that are bringing content from AI, but they don't necessarily have the AI to complete the task with that content without having some significant investments and spends. And so I'd make it more scalable. You asked about different examples. We also work with a lot of solopreneurs, coaches, consultants, people that want to run a lifestyle business and not have to be a manager of multiple employees. I think that's going to become more and more attractive to people that want to be more free in the marketplace. But there's not necessarily a single source solution to bring all of those pieces of the AI pie together. And I think that's the, the next iteration. I know a lot of the bigger players are trying to come up with more of kind of an all-in-one. single deck or single platform. But that's— it's a big, it's a big bite to chew off. But as they said, I'd rather nibble on greatness, or I'd rather choke on greatness than nibble on mediocrity. So we got the checkbook open, we might as well go for it all, right?

Yeah, I like that. Yeah. Now, what do you have a book recommendation?

Book recommendation and any particular topic?

No, I just— one that you think everybody would Benefit from if they listened or read it?

Yeah. I wrote a book called Live the Extraordinary Life. Live an Extraordinary Life is something that I wrote based on my own principles, and you can find it at theextraordinarylife.com. It's not about AI, it's not about technology. It's more about designing an extraordinary life, which could obviously include business in with it. But I'll give a little plug for my own personal book because—

Sure. Yeah.

People, I wrote it as a passion project. It's not even a revenue strategy for me. It's more of a I wanted to give something to people that could benefit from my 52 years on this earth, and I could share with them some of the things that I went through to— I use the acronym LEADER, and I'll summarize it quickly. It's live your calling. If you're not working in the area of your calling or you're not spending time in the area of your calling, you're probably not feeling fulfilled. So, that's the first L. The second one is engage in your dreams. So, some people have just given up on their dreams, and I'm a really big believer in following your dream. We talked about My son's a college football player and he got a chance to live out his dream by just pursuing something that was important to him. Agreeing to make hard choices is the A. Many people think that success and significance is achieved without hard choices. Deciding to fail forward. I've had a lot of excitement and success, but I've also had some good failures to learn from. And then expanding your perspective. Like the quote says, it's not what you know that gets us into trouble. It's all the things that we know for absolute certain. That just aren't. And then the final one is in the area to resolve to achieve your goals. So nothing that's earth-shattering, but the stories that I share, it's personable to me. And I think that it would encourage some people that maybe have fallen into complacency or they've fallen into that ordinary life, or maybe they've gone through some failure like I did and they just need a little encouragement.

Okay. Good words to live by. I am going to ask you one more question because you're in a really good position to think, to provide some perspective on this. AI is evolving so darn fast. Where do you see the world in relationship to AI in the next couple, 2 or 3 years? Forget about 10 years, just impossible to look out that far, but maybe in the next 2 or 3 years. And what advice do you have for people in that, in relationship to AI?

Yeah, there's a, there's a life quote that I quote inside the book and it's by a gentleman by the name of Jim Rohn. And his quote is, if you fail to create your own plan, chances are you're going to fall into somebody else's plan. And guess what they've got planned for you? Not much. Or they may have a lot planned for you. And so if you don't start creating a plan now of how you're going to use AI and how AI is going to help and augment your life, it will start augmenting your life in a way that it seems. And it might be at the, the controls of somebody else who's using AI to influence you in a specific direction. What I would say is that I'm an amateur on AI when it really comes down to the big picture. There's many other experts that could tell you, you know, what's going to happen in the next 2 to 3 years of AI. I've spent a lot of time studying the idea of living an extraordinary life. And if you don't start thinking about what you want to be, do, and have, and what are the things that you're going to compromise on, or what are the things you're going to sacrifice, what's going to happen is that you're just going to start reacting to life, and AI is going to start telling you how to live your life. And that may be okay with you, or it may not be okay with you. And you might get to the point where you say, You know what, I allowed AI or technology to drive me down a direction that I didn't want to be in because I just had a level of apathy and I didn't really think about doing anything different. What are your values? What are your beliefs? What are the things that you're holding true on? And then how can you use AI to augment that rather than telling— or not telling AI to have free rein and tell you what you're going to do with your life?

Okay. And how, if somebody wants to get ahold of you, what's the best way to do that?

Yeah, bdr.ai has all of our contact information and has the opportunity to communicate back directly with us. If you just fill out the contact form, we'll get that information and respond back to you. You can also go to davidbushonline.com where it has all of my social media. It's got the link to the book and it's also got a link to bdr.ai on there. David Bush Online is my personal website, but everything else, bdr.ai.

Okay, great. And we'll put all those links in the show notes. David Bush, thank you for being on Scaling Smart.

Thanks, David. Appreciate having me.