Revolutionizing Sales with AI: Transforming Your Business with Rilla Voice | #121

Hello everyone on the Homefront. Jeff Duden here. And today I want to explore an essential topic for any franchise how technology is reshaping franchise operations. Whether you're just getting started or scaling up, tech integration is no longer optional. It's crucial for staying competitive. From AI driven customer service to integrated POS systems and supply chain optimization, franchises that embrace tech are the ones pushing the boundaries of what's possible. Recently I had an incredible and insightful conversation with Sebastian Jimenez, the co founder of Rilla Voice, a company that is using AI to transform how sales teams operate and are managed. What stood out to me from our discussion is how technology is changing the sales process. By making every interaction measurable and actionable, Sebastian and his team are capturing millions of face to face sales conversations and using AI to analyze them, giving businesses a data driven edge that was previously unheard of.

And I said, what if we could go there and capture all these conversations and give Heineken 8 times more data about their consumers that they don't have today? And then I thought, well, that's not just Heineken. 85% of commerce in America happens offline. People think of Amazon, ebay, they're so big. But if you think about E commerce, e Commerce is basically 15% of commerce. EBay, Amazon, all of what you buy online is only 15% of commerce. Most commerce in America and around the world still happens face to face. You know, somebody going to a store, going to a restaurant, going to a home and talking to another human being face to face, right? Like I was like, okay, so that's not only Heineken. How many conversations does Coca Cola have? And then I started thinking, why stop at field marketing? What about the, they have field salespeople that go into the restaurants and the stores to try to talk to, to the buyers there. And then I thought, why stop at food and beverage? What about the people who sell windows, plumbing, siding, doors, H vac, electrician? What about the people who sell pharmaceutical devices? Devices, right. What about the people selling retail stores? You walk into a retail store and I started thinking about the whole universe, which is what you described. There's 12 million outside sales and service people in America. 10 billion conversations face to face every month. I thought if we could go out there and make all these 10 billion conversations part of the historical record, then maybe we could, we could attempt to build something as magical as Google did once back in the day where they made the Internet index. Well, what if we could make the same, what if we can make the same thing happen for offline commerce to give the same power that Google has to understand customers to to all businesses around the world.

So the idea that you can capture every sales conversation, analyze it and give real time feedback to improve performance is a game changer for any franchise. This technology allows you to see what's really working and more importantly, what isn't right over the kitchen table when you're making a sales call. One of the key insights from our chat was about how top performing salespeople balance their conversations. By talking less and listening more, they build trust and uncover what the customer truly needs. Now let's talk about how this technology can be applied to various aspects of franchise operations. AI driven Customer service Artificial intelligence is already transforming customer services and franchises. From chatbots to AI driven call centers. These systems can handle routine inquiries 24, 7, allowing your staff to focus on more complex issues. AI doesn't just automate, it learns from every interaction, becoming smarter and more efficient over time. Imagine having AI that can predict customer needs, flag issues, or even coach your customer service team based on real time data from previous interactions.

That's 20,000 people a month that you guys are talking to every single month. 20,000. And then she said, yes, that's about average. And I said, how many markets are like you and Heineken? Because that was just one little tiny market. And she said about 200 nationwide. And I said 200, that's 4 million people a month that you guys are talking to, if the math is correct. And she said oh yeah, that's about right. Yeah, that's, that's about right. Four million people, I said. And then I realized that those 4 million conversations they were being had, people were talking about they would try the product. It was like doing in store demos, like trying the product, saying what they think and leaving. And none of them were captured. And at the same time I realized Heineken was spending like hundred, like hundreds of millions of dollars every year on social media analytics, on surveys, focus groups, market research to try to understand their consumers a little bit better. And from all those sources of combined from online sources, surveys, all these different data sources, they were getting like, you know, maybe like 500,000 points of interaction every month. So I said 500,000 points of interaction with consumers online, 4 million offline. That's eight times the amount of data. Right? And it's much more relevant because there's no, there's no robot, you know, there's no bot, you know, it's real data because it's a person talking to you face to face. It's a real conversation.

In the same way, Rilla's AI is analyzing face to face sales interactions. AI powered customer service platforms can capture customer interactions across multiple channels or omni channel, whether it's in store, online or over the phone, and provide you with insights in the moment that help improve the customer experience. It's not really just about solving problems faster, it's about preventing them from happening in the first place. Another critical piece of tech that's helping franchises thrive is cloud based point of sale systems. These systems give you real time visibility into sales data, inventory levels, customer behavior and all across multiple locations. The power of an integrated POS is the data that it provides. You can optimize inventory management, reduced waste and offer more personalized service to your customers based on their purchasing patterns. Much like Rilla's ability to track sales conversations, an integrated POS gives you the visibility you need to make data driven decisions. It's all about having the right tools in place to adapt quickly to changing circumstances and customer needs. Lastly, technology is revolutionizing supply chain management. AI tools are now able to analyze purchasing patterns, predict demand, optimize inventory management more accurately than ever before and for cheap. These systems help franchisees keep the right stock levels at the right locations, reduce waste and increase profitability.

We are not the first or last company to attempt to do this concept of, you know, capturing face to face conversations, recording them and doing this concept that we call now the virtual ride along. Okay, There was companies that tried this before and like Microsoft once tried this and they, and it didn't work. There was a guy who had a startup in 2008 or 2009 that tried to do this for car dealerships back in the day and it didn't go and it failed. There's people that have tried this for, for many different, many different markets, verticals. There's still people like that have tried that. I don't know, I don't know. I don't believe there is any other company other than Rilla that has figured out how to do it because it's. And that's another lesson which is it's not like people think like you think like Mark Zuckerberg, right? You see like how successful it was and people sometimes think like, oh my God, I wish I came up with that idea. Oh my God, I wish I came up with Amazon like back in the. It's like a lot of people did come up with it by the way. It's not like nobody ever made any money with an idea. By the way. The only people who make money with ideas are pat are patent lawyers that come after your ass because they're so like this. There's nobody who makes money with an idea. People make money on. On making the idea the reality. And I learned that from stand up. That the idea for the joke is not what counts. It's the laughter and being able to get the repeated laughter every single time in that process. And that's not just the idea. That's like you have great experiences, you meet interesting people, you hear interesting things. That gives you the ability to have great ideas. You go and try out those ideas and then you listen to the failure very intently. Why it didn't work this time, why it didn't work that time. And that, that is the hardest part of the process is being able to make failure your teacher. Because failure is the best teacher there is if you're willing to be a student and not shy away from it. And so Rilla is the only company so far with this concept that was able to figure out all like we figured out every possible way to. Not to. To. To make this fail. We failed on every single possible way that there was to fail this company. And we just kept going, okay, that, that's all we did. Everybody else who has tried this has failed in one of the ways that we also failed. But they gave up.

Sebastian's story of how his company used repeated failures as learning experiences to create a better product reminded me of how supply chain optimization works. It's about trial and error, refining processes and using data to continually improve. And you can't do that until there's volume running through it to analyze whether you're managing a single franchise location or a network. Technology allows you to streamline operations and reduce inefficiencies. The key takeaway from my conversation with Sebastian is that tech integration is not just about automation. It's about using the data to make smarter and faster decisions. Whether it's AI driven customer service, cloud based POS systems, or supply chain optimization, tech is the backbone of modern franchise operations. And if you haven't already started thinking about how to integrate tech into your franchise, now's the time. The franchises that succeed are the ones that leverage these tools to their full potential and get out front solving problems that they didn't even know they had yet. Let's keep growing together. Thanks for tuning in and as always, keep pushing forward. Thanks for listening.