A short YouTube interview (host Gerhard Schwartner with guest Troy Harrison) about applying the "five pillars to sales leadership" in the age of AI. Harrison frames AI as a powerful but fallible tool—useful for research and rapid content generation if paired with precise prompting and human oversight—and recommends written AI policies, training modules for sales teams, and measuring productivity primarily by time saved. The conversation includes an example of an AI-generated false article and ends with Harrison's contact information.
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Hi, my name is Gerhard Schwartner, and welcome to Selling Power tv. Today we have a special guest, Troy Harrison. He is a sales expert and a very talented trainer. And he also teaches the secrets to successful leadership. Welcome, Troy.
Thank you, Gerhard. Glad to be here.
You are talking about the five pillars to sales leadership. Now, we live in the age of AI. How should sales leaders think about this? Strategically and also tactically.
Sales leaders need to be cognizant of what AI is and what it can do, even if they're choosing not to make it a big part of their strategy. AI is simply a technology, and it's an evolution of technology that we've already had. Think of AI as you would the best intern that you've ever had. It has a tremendous IQ, it has 20 PhDs, and it has no street smarts whatsoever. Our role is to take that intelligence and the knowledge and education and transfer that into content that is meaningful. But that means that it requires proper prompting, just like you would with an intern. You've got to point an intern in the right direction, and then you've got to give it oversight. I'll give you a perfect example. Last week there was an article on the Washington Post website that talked about Tony's Kansas City. Talked about what a great barbecue restaurant it is. Talked about how Tony Bateo has been enjoying smoked meats and the flavor thereof since he was a child. He opened this restaurant with a limited menu. Wonderful article. Restaurants sounded great. There's only one problem. Tony's Kansas City isn't a restaurant. It's a current events blog for Kansas City. And I don't think he's ever even written about barbecue. This is obviously an AI generated article. So how does that translate itself into sales and marketing when we incorporate AI? First of all, I think AI is a great research tool. You can prompt AI to do some great research, but you got to do a little fact checking to make sure that it's researching the right things. Second of all, there's no excuse for any company not to have a vibrant active blog nowadays, because AI programs like ChatGPT or Claude, which happens to be my favorite at the moment, can write some terrific blog posts. There's no excuse for not having that content out there. There's no excuse for sales leaders not having good social media content for the same reason. But to do it correctly, first of all, you've got to be able to write a good prompt. A good prompt is more than one sentence. You've got to express what it is that you want. The output to be. You've got to talk about what writing style you want. And actually what I've started doing is actually copying and pasting an article that I have written with my own hands into Claude and saying duplicate my writing style. And then third, you've got to give it a word count. So you've got to give it all those parameters to come up with good content, refine that and then a lot of times you need your own hands. You've got to have the patience to understand AI is not a cure all.
And do you recommend that sales leaders actually create a written strategy for the use of AI and also create a training plan that ensures that salespeople are actually using it?
Most good sales leaders now have some sort of a social media policy for their salespeople that gives guardrails on what salespeople can and should talk about on social media. And honestly, I think the best social media policies have guidelines for how often salespeople should post content. Well, AI policy extends that to the next level. You know, AI policy would take your own social media policy and put an add in onto it that says here is how we perceive the acceptable use of AI because bad AI, even if it's not on a company page, bad AI can hurt your company brand. And then yes, I think it's reasonable to take it to that next level. Beyond that, create a training module that says here is how to use AI to produce content that is both on brand for us, on brand for you, and sounds like it's authentically.
Are there any metrics that you can attach to AI to see how much more successful you are in terms of productivity?
The only metric I personally have attached to it is time spent. If I can save a half hour over here, that's a half hour I can use to, you know, work with prospects, work my sales funnel. Here's the other thing. I think AI is such a moving target. I think that the metrics are going to be an evolutionary process rather than a revolutionary process.
How can people learn more about you and how can they get in touch with you?
Visit me@troy harrison.com, pretty simple. Or my email is just as simple. Troytroy harrison.com I'd love to talk to anybody who would want to work with me on this.
Well, my recommendation is if you're a sales leader and you want to convert your leadership style to a level that you haven't achieved, connect with Troy. He is a great teacher. Thank you Troy.
