Fireside Chat: Top 10 Ways to Leverage AI to Increase Sales and Productivity

So let's talk about landscaping.

How is AI changing the landscape?

You know, it's interesting and of course I'll give this from the perspective of an enablement practitioner that I've been for years now. It used to be, it starts with how about this? Everything has changed, right? And I think that it's a natural transition from the old way we used to do enablement to the way that we did it during COVID which was, you know, bringing everybody remotely to now it's even shifted to tools as you've seen. You know, look at something like what Mark Barky talked about earlier today with the bots and how that's changed. And then what hasn't changed though, Gerhardt, is the fact that it's still about people talking to people. And I look at AI, especially from the perspective of enablement, no different than I do with PowerPoint, with Word, with Excel. It is a productivity tool. Right. And so what does that really mean? I, I think when it comes to trying to leverage AI from a productivity efficiency and most importantly a revenue perspective from one side, it's changed the way that we streamline lead scoring, right. Right now an opportunity to prioritize, should I say leads based on the likelihood to convert, which now allows them, them being our sales folks, to focus on the efforts that will provide the most promising opportunities. Another way is the obvious of automation. And I'm not talking about just chatgpt, I'm talking about the plethora of tools now that will help all of us to automate those kind of repetitive tasks like data entry, appointments, scheduling, follow up emails. Now that will also free up our sales reps who now are spending so much time doing things that have nothing to do with closing or I won't say nothing to do with that won't really move things forward to now giving them an opportunity to focus on more of the high value activities, on things like building relationships with prospects, closing deals and then also on the back end of the teaching folks how to have conversations instead of giving presentations. And what I mean is we've always focused on how do we sell, sell, sell. And I think now what's happening in a shift because there's so much access to information and data out there, it's no longer about selling, it's about how do you help. And I mean I can go on and on, but I want to make sure that we stay aligned as well.

Gerhardt, so you wrote the book sales 3.0, sales enablement 3.0.

Yes.

And when you wrote that book that was what, four years ago?

Yeah, it's about three and a half years ago.

Yeah. Nobody talked about AI and the book doesn't have a chapter on AI.

Would you have imagined when you wrote the book that we are going this direction now where everything changes through AI?

I'll give you a yes and a no. My yes was that it was going to happen. Did I think it was going to be on the level that it is today? Oh, absolutely not. You know, you think about as a kid when we watch the Jetsons, all the things of video conferencing and phoning and all those that have become real now. And I think that was just the tip of the iceberg. Now it's one of those things where if you're not using it, why not? And if you're afraid of it, get over it. And then the last piece is if you don't get on board, you'll become similar to the dinosaurs and we know what happened to them. Right. And so my my is and my recommendation is if you are not using, I heard this from John Barrows just the other day when we're talking and I'll double down on it. If you are not using some form of AI every single day, you're already behind the curve.

And you're not being nearly as productive and efficient as you possibly could be.

Right.

And to go back to where I was before, things like, you know, real time analytics and that's an opportunity for sales reps to use real time analytics. Getting away from, I think I feel, and the old smiley sheets and butts and seats, right? But real time analytics and insights as well into their particular sales activities. Now that can help them to identify some areas where they can improve their performance as well as make those, as we all know, have to happen these days, data driven decisions. Right. And I want to talk to our sales leaders for just a moment. It also gives you an opportunity to personalize coaching. That means getting away from the proverbial of this is the way that we've always done it or even the way that they were taught and groomed to become a leader or a manager, depending upon where they are. Right. And now it's an opportunity to use AI to provide personalized coaching to these reps based on their individual strengths and weaknesses. Not broadly trying to peanut butter anymore, but really then giving an opportunity to analyze their sales activities, looking at their outreach, their emails, their calls, their conversations that they're having and then how are they now doing things smarter and not harder, which leads to that next piece around.

Building in more efficiency for the sales process. Right. And that's things like proposals and contracts and sales documents. I was in AE years ago. If I would have had something like this, oh God, I would have been in heaven. And also I wouldn't have had to work as hard the way that I worked. I'm not saying you don't have to work hard, but not nearly as hard as we used to. Right. Because you've got things that you can reach out and even as basic as chat GPT to use it as a framework around what you're building out your emails, you're building your campaigns, whatever they are, and even to go and use it as a sounding board. Hey, what's happening, as Mark said earlier today, what's happening in this particular vertical or industry? What questions should I be asking? And then what, what are the questions that I didn't even know to ask?

Well, and I certainly agree with you when you said that AI is going to improve our level of productivity, but AI is also a tool that can help your creativity. And it reminds me when you and I had a Fireside chat in Las Vegas in June at our CEO summit and you were.

Very brave to share your personal story.

Thank you.

Where you almost died because of a stroke and heart failure and had that near death experience. And then afterwards.

I recommended that you write a book about it. And then I get a text from you yesterday where you said, here's my book title. What do you think? Blinded by Stress, My Journey to Success that almost killed me. And I said, this is a terrific title. How did you come up with. And your response was.

AI?

Right. I, I started to build out the framework and then I asked it give me 10, 10 titles that match this particular piece that I was reading. And I was actually writing a blog around this and it was what came back. And it was one that just jumped off the page at me immediately. So while I didn't write it with AI, what I did was I put it into my voice and allowed it to see where I was going and said, how do I now give me a strong yet human and engaging title that will grab folks as they're walking through an airport. Right. You've got a few seconds, you go, whoa, I see that title. What's that about? And so what it did was essentially set the plate to make them even hungrier to want to read the story. Like I said, if I'm, if you're not using it every day, I don't quite understand why at this point it's right at our Fingertips.

So will it kill sales enablement jobs or revenue enablement jobs?

I think it's going to kill some, but I don't think it's going to kill enablement. I think what will happen is the people that don't know how to and don't leverage an AI successfully won't have a job because the way that we used to do it, if you, if you will, one no longer exists and secondly no longer works and we don't have the availability to go out and crowdsource the way we used to. But now we can even crowdsource on a broader, excuse me, a broader perspective, if you know how to get the tool to give you what you want. So that's why I go back to what I said earlier. It's a productivity tool, no different than word, Excel and PowerPoint. It's productive productivity enhancement for you, but you only get out of it what you know how to put into it.

We have an interesting question just popped up.

Joe is asking.

You know, we have heard about the benefits of AI and some of the challenges with the lack of oversight. What is the number one challenge in your eyes for companies to leverage cybersecurity that cannot protect themselves from hacking, to impersonate others visually or emails, etc. By the way, I like and use AI and I can see the benefits.

First of all, fantastic question. And to me, I always say that AI is incredibly, amazingly scary. And I don't think we know the answer to that one yet, to be quite frank, because I think that the game of AI, if you will, the space of AI is changing so fast. And that means that not only is the, the good part of it, but the way that people are using it in a bad way is happening today. And I think it's going to push things. Like I worked at netscope not long ago, right? And I look at them and I go, what are you guys doing right now to stay ahead of cyber crimes that are happening out there? And I think it's going to be imperative to make sure that we have, from the, the highest points up of government coming down, as well as going horizontally across the companies to continue pushing for a bit more oversight. I don't, I, I kind of struggle with that one. But from an oversight perspective, it's needed. Otherwise it's just going to be the Wild West. And, you know, especially talking about what's going on even in the political space right now that's going on with the election here in the Americas. Sometimes you look at things and go, is that real? Or is it not? So what it's done now is it forces us to scrutinize and do your research on whatever it may be before you send something out and confirm that it's something that's actually real and not something that was AI enhanced.

So what is the scariest.

Cyber crime right now that you know of?

For me, the scariest thing is that the fact that I can make anyone say anything. And what I mean is, remember, Gerhardt, you and I were talking about this not long ago. I took my corporate headshot, I dropped it into an AI tool and then I took one, a snippet of one of the podcasts that I had done and it literally animated that for me to talk in my face in my own voice. Now, let's look at the flip side of that. What if I wanted you to say something that was just absolutely egregious? We know you wouldn't, Gearhart. We know you better than that. Right, but what if we wanted someone to say something just incredibly egregious or something so out of character, but it's in their voice, it's flowing out of what looks as though it's that person saying, how do we now differentiate between those? You know, it's hard enough when in on social media where if anyone's ever been hacked and someone sends some out horrible message to your, to your community, they know you well enough to go, wait a minute, this is so out of character for this person. Let me reach out and let them know that they've been hacked. The problem with AI is people are not reaching out right away or fast enough. So now everything you've done to build a brand, whether it's an individual or a company, it's at risk.

So do you remember the cyber attack of on Caesar's palace that was last year?

Yes, vaguely, yeah.

So that's ransom, where they ask for $25 million.

Absolutely.

How can you protect yourself as a business against that?

Well, I think we've got to trust in the cybersecurity companies that they are working diligently to try and stay ahead of the hackers. Right. And it's going to happen at some point. It's just a matter of one, are you prepared for it, and secondly, do you have a contingency plan for when or if it does happen, that you can now at least communicate and collaborate and get that word out quickly and also try and shut that down as quickly as possible. And I don't mean shut down from the perspective of hiding it, but really from being able to negate it is what I'm looking at.

So do you have, are you prepared, let's say you get a call from your son crying and saying he needs $2,000 to bail him out because he got in a fight and.

You, you need to go to the ATM now and meet him.

Yeah. Well, first of all, my son's 65250. I doubt that they're going to be able to grab him. But just in case, actually, we have had this conversation as a family and we have a particular phrase that no one outside of our family will know, nor will we ever share it for this very reason. If we got those unknown calls that come in and someone saying, hey, I need this right away and I need it today. If you cannot provide me with that phrase, I know it's not my family and I know it's been generated.

Sorry, if. A safe word. We have a safe phrase, a safe phrase.

Yeah, absolutely.

Can you tell me what it is?

Yeah, sure. I'll tell everybody right now.

It is, it is scary. But also I think that with, with every.

Opportunity like AI development, there is an equivalent threat. So the question I have now, when sales enablement managers.

Improve their role through AI, how do they teach their team, their sales team or customer success team on how to use AI safely and confidently?

I think there's a couple of things. One is, as we've always done, make sure that you do your research and work through the leadership team.

Right.

And make sure that they own the adoption, the execution, but most importantly, the positive modeling of whatever tool that you're rolling out, whether it be a process, a program, a platform, a tool, et cetera. The other is make sure that you can validate this. We've got a huge community inside of enablement. Reach out to our peers and let's find out what they're doing. If they've got use cases, if they've got customers that can come in and talk on behalf and really talk from a practical application perspective, not theory. But here's what I've seen done, here's what we're doing. And again, similar to with AI, don't go recreate the wheel, go out and leverage your network and also make sure that, as I say over and over, do your homework. Because it's becoming increasingly more difficult to separate between what's real and even what real means anymore.

So you have been in the corporate world and you have been a consultant when.

And now you're also doing sales kickoffs and keynotes.

Correct.

What is the number one theme that companies are looking for. When you come in to do a.

Keynote, it's a couple things. One, it's what we're talking about now, and that is how do you leverage AI to drive efficiency, productivity, and also revenue? Ultimately, the other piece is, and I'm so glad this is finally starting to come top of mind, and that is. Why is it that everyone can see your level of stress? But. But you. Because we get so locked into what we're doing on a daily basis and doing things the way we've always done it, and especially as executives, we get to a point where we get comfortable of living at a. I'll call red line of stress. Everyone else sees it, even it led to my stroke and everyone else saw it but me. So if I can help those. To identify those pieces, whether it be on. On the HR side of what they're doing, the sales side, or across an organization, because stress is invariably going to happen. It's a matter of how you manage it and how you mitigate it.

Yeah. That reminds me, yesterday we have Josh hudsonpiller. He's the president of CEO Life, and he talked about his own personal experience growing a company at very rapid growth rates and being totally overstressed and jeopardizing his health. I know. I had a conversation with a sales manager. He's out in Seattle. Three years ago, he joined a company and he was the number one salesperson who became the number one sales manager who grew the team to about 100 people in three years. And he gained 85 pounds because he, you know, compensated by overeating and not sleeping enough. And I had to quit. I had.

Success does not always equate to positive things all the time. Right. I didn't realize until I had my stroke that one in every four people over the age of 25 in the world, not just in America, but in the world, will have a stroke at some point. And most of it is stress reduced. Excuse me, stress induced. So while we're doing all these things and we're being productive and we're being effective, also be good to yourself.

Absolutely. Always look out for number one. You are the performer. And you need to be mindful that the performer is more important than the performance.

Absolutely. Never allow what you do to overtake who you are.

That's wonderful. I want to call Stephanie back in because I realize we are already three minutes overtime.

We are over time. But I mean, what a great conversation that so many of us need to hear. So many of us. But I do know that we probably need to head into our final. Oh, I guess it's not the final networking, but.

And Joe just said, roderick, we will do this as well with our family. For everything that is good, there will be people that use it for evil. I think. Great, great comment. And we, we need to be more vigilant as we move into the future. It's not just about productivity, but I think that, you know, I'm just reading a new book called the Swerve, and it talks about the various philosophies from the Greek philosophers to the Roman philosophers. And.

Mankind has always been obsessed with what is a good life? Is it happiness? Is it success?

Is it money? What is it?

I think that people need to answer the basic question. Number one, what makes you happy? Number two, what is success? How do you define it? And number three, how do you get there and you want to do this under the umbrella of what is a good life? And most people have no clarity. They think that hustling is a good life.

You know, it has a time limit to it and things really quickly. That's why I have my four Fs, as we've talked about before, my four Fs that, that are paramount to me. Faith, family, friends, and fun. And unfortunately, as adults, executives, et cetera, we tend to forget how to. And the importance of fun. If you can do anything and take this out of this chat, put more fun back into life.