EP 33 - Driving Business Growth: AI Sales Secrets

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Is AI listening to you in real time a bad thing or should we all be doing it? Anyways, that is one of the things that we're going to be talking about today on Everyday AI. This is your daily livestream, your daily podcast, your daily newsletter. It's everything going over what's happening in the world of AI and talking to experts to help us all understand and make use of it. One of those people that's going to be helping us talk about AI specifically in sales today is Tommy Slocum. He is the founder and CEO of the SD Lab. Tom, thanks for joining us.

Hey, great to be here, Jordan. Thanks for having me, sir. And excited to dive into the world of AI.

Oh, let's go. It's going to be a fun conversation. As a reminder, if you are listening to this later in the day on the podcast, Spotify, Apple, please leave us a review. Subscribe. But if you are tuning in live, please leave a question for Tom on how you can use AI in sales or just how you can use it in your everyday life. But before we get to that, let's talk about what's actually happening in the world of AI Quick. So a couple new stories to talk about before we dive in. Here's an interesting one, Tom. So a Google exec who was a former FDA official has said that AI should be used in AI regulation in terms of its use in healthcare. That's right. Healthcare AI usage should be regulated by AI. What are your, what are your thoughts on that?

That's interesting, right? To. To have it check and balance its own self. You know, obviously AI isn't to the point where it, it has expanded beyond its own capabilities. It does need its own prompts and things to kind of, you know, get it to run. So I think for now, like, if you can put that protective AI on top of the AI, it could work. But once this AI starts adapting, as Terminator has shown us some of the others, how would it regulate itself? Right. And how do you put those checks and balances? I still think you need like a human team to kind of balance that. But that's weird to have it, you know, check it. That's like putting coaches in the NBA finals or referees to referee the referees. It's like, hey, they're going to kind of help each other out.

No, some, some games that might be needed. Right. Speaking of what Tom said, make sure, make sure you're subscribed to the newsletter, your everyday AI.com, because there's actually a pretty big breakthrough in AI doing things that I shouldn't technically be doing. So you, you'll, you'll have to read about that in the newsletter. Our second piece, second piece of news. So a new report just talking about how rampant these new AI voice cloning scams are. They're on the rise. So you know, high tech con artists, well, you don't even have to be as high tech anymore because to be able to clone someone's voice and make them to say anything that you want them to, it's easier than ever before. And these scams are just, you know, becoming easier and easier to pull off. Tom, like what's, what's your thoughts on this? Is this something. Should we all be making backup plans to, you know, make sure that our friends and family know? Hey, this is, this is the safe word.

Yeah, right. You've seen that stuff going around. I've got kids, I've got an almost 12 year old and almost 6 year old, right. It kind of hit me, right, to be like, wow, kind of have that safe word in the family to register that you are actually talking to the real person. Right? Because they could imitate my father in law and have them call the kids at the school getting them to believe they need to be picked up or something. And yeah, you've seen some of these things play out in news reports and it's, it's very scary. You've got Biggie coming back making music, right? We now get the luxury of having Biggie, you know, in our modern day world kind of redoing songs like it's weird, it's weird. Ice Cube came out and was like, don't you dare like use my voice on anything. I will sue you. Right? Yeah, yeah, I think, I think he.

Said that's, it's demonizing. I think is what he said. He wasn't a fan, he wasn't a fan of it. So, so, so Tom, you mentioned you do have two kids. So I, I'm very interested in your take on this. So Khan Academy just released hours ago, their, their latest AI Tutor bot and they're really looking to reshape learning. So Khan Academy is, is probably the, the largest entity in the world in terms of online education and online tutoring. So there's, there, there's two sides of this with their new AI Tutor bot. So some people are saying this is great. This brings, you know, more affordable education to more and more kids. But also people are saying, well, should kids kind of be AI test subjects? What are your thoughts? And would you have your own kids use something like this?

What a gosh, man. I mean we, gosh, I was in grade school back in the 90s, right. We didn't, we were told by our teachers, you know, you'll never have a calculator in your pocket, you know, to do math. And here we are with calculators in our pockets. So I, I've used Chat GPT on a couple of my son's projects, you know, in sixth, sixth grade, right. We had to do a couple things and it like allowed him to grasp the concep. I think it's kind of cool. I think it can scale giving, you know, kids that, that, that access to tutors they might not normally have. Tutoring can be expensive. You have a real person coming, trying to adapt to schedules, things like that that, you know, if I could have a little bot running with me that my kid could lean on while he's navigating his homework, I don't see wrong with it as long as you can, unfortunately, you know.

Right.

Like teach your kid the right balance to it and the guidelines. But you know, I think it's kind of creative. I know being able to go through your homework and have this tutor guiding you, breaking down the concept, giving you examples in real time. I did online college, right. I did online college for three years. I worked in that industry and it was hard for those folks doing online because it's self taught. You're kind of all on your own. Your, your teacher isn't really there per se. Right. And so having a tutor to scale, that's like your, your talkative person. They're guiding you through the concept of the chapter of the topic you're learning and breaking it down for you. You know, hey, give me this concept in a fifth, you know, in a, in a five year old grade level so I can comprehend it. Yeah, I think it boosts people. The issue is, what I found is if you get too reliant on it, you actually learn nothing.

Yeah.

Deep in the world of AI for months and I gotta be honest, I almost feel it's making me dumber than it is actually me to learn things. Right. Because normally I'd have to push myself through that to learn that topic or that, that date challenge. Now, you know, Chat GPT I could just go in there and it's like done within seconds and I'm on to the next thing because I figured it out, right? Yeah, but I'm for it. I think it'd be really cool. Just again, needs to be regulated and keep an eye on.

Yeah, let's, let's jump straight into it. And, and thank you Professor Muhammad for, for the comment saying, yeah, business growth and AI an excellent topic. That's, that's what we're here for and this is exciting. So let's just jump straight into it. Tom, so you, you kind of mentioned like, hey, you're using these AI tools on a daily basis. Sometimes it feel they're a great help and sometimes it's like, hey, what am I learning? Right. So, so tell us a little bit, you know, what are you doing at SD Lab and also how have you been using AI so far?

Yeah, so some background, right. I'm founder and CEO of the SD Lab. Been about eight months. I got my beautiful sign right here.

Let's go.

You know, and yeah, so I do top of funnel consulting, go to market. Right. So I'm working with B2B clients and helping them prompt, up scale, optimize their, their sales function, you know, what are their processes, what do their tech look like, you know, and what are their, how are they empowering their team?

Right.

So I come in, we get under the hood and we make some adjustments. And AIs helped me in a lot, a lot of ways. Kind of being a one person shop, right. It's allowed me to expand my knowledge, get over some hurdles that, you know, five years ago, 10 years ago, some business owners starting would have really hard problems with, right. To, to get going. So I've used Chat GBT to, you know, write documents up for me, write out proposals, kind of give me the guidelines for certain things that I needed when I first started running my business because I kind of didn't have those things, right. I wasn't prepared. You know, I've been in sales for 16 years and done all these roles, but it doesn't totally set you up to run a business. Right? Yeah, little gaps there that you got to kind of fill in and chat GBT has done. So then I use Wingman by Clery, which you know, jumps into your Zoom, your Microsoft Teams, your Google Meets and it analyzes your phone calls, right. Your meetings that, you know, really helped me in being present in the conversation. Right.

Yeah.

You see, you're taking notes, you have to write stuff down, you have to take a moment. You know, if I go like this, I've broken concentration with you in the presentation. So having Wingman, it just records the entire call for me. And then, and then if I say certain keywords that I have in the back end prompted, it'll come up with suggestions. Right? Talk about a competitor, it'll pop up, give me like my, my spiel or my nuggets that I need to talk about when it comes to that. Right. And then on the back end it gives all the transcript and stuff.

Foreign. Are you still running in circles trying to figure out how to actually grow your business with AI? Maybe your company has been tinkering with large language models for a year or more, but can't really get traction to find ROI on gen AI. Hey, this is Jordan Wilson, host of this very podcast. Companies like Adobe, Microsoft and Nvidia have partnered with us because they trust our expertise in educating the masses around generative AI to get ahead of and some of the most innovative companies in the country hire us to help with their AI strategy and to train hundreds of their employees on how to use Gen AI. So whether you're looking for ChatGPT training for thousands or just need help building your front end AI strategy, you can partner with us too. Just like some of the biggest companies in the world do. Go to your everydayai.com partner to get in contact with our team or you can just click on the partner section of our website will help you stop running in those AI circles and help get your team ahead and build a straight path to ROI on gen AI.

Yeah, so I want to talk about that because this is a new, a newer concept I think, but with AI it makes a lot of sense. So we opened the show talking like, hey, like even right now, should I have an AI listening to this interview and giving me tips and saying, hey Jordan, you're talking too much or hey, ask Tom about this.

Right?

So it's sounds like a crazy concept to have AI listening and thinking about what you're saying in real time. But what you're saying is so far it's actually helped you focus in being more present.

Right? That's it, right? I, I, I, I don't have to stress about what I said in the call. I can go back at the end and recapture it. Right. Understand what the next steps were, you know, what did we leave in that call? And some are even taking a step further where they're using AI to look at body sentiment. Right. It's not just what's said, but is the person actually attentive during your demo, you walk out of the call, you're thinking, you're jazzed, you've got this deal in the Pipeline and you read the body analysis and it's showing you they actually weren't engaged in your conversation. Right. As much as you thought because they were looking elsewhere, their body language was slouched. So there's a lot you can do and it just relieves you, especially in the sales function, to just be present in the call because there's way too much to, to over handle, like acknowledge. Look at that. The AI just is in that background. Be present, have a conversation and if you forget anything or a topic comes up that you know you normally need support in, those things will trigger accordingly and, and give you the, the ammo during that part of the conversation. So I sure it changed the life for me as a founder and kind of going through this motion, I got to, I gotta amplify what I do. Right. I gotta look like I'm a 10 person company by being one person. And so for me, AI has definitely made a difference. I think for sales folks, especially SDRs, it frees up a lot of time. You know, you could do some personalization. If you've got some big C suite people that are pretty prominent online, you can go in there and say, give me some research on this person. Right. And it will give you an entire lay of the land. What are they talking about? What podcast have they been on? You know, what are their pains? And then you can go write a great email. Right?

Yeah.

How cool is that? Yeah.

So I think, I think you have a lot of very applicable use cases of AI for a lot of different people. So I want to talk about a couple. But first let's talk about something that you mentioned. So starting your own company, right. It's daunting. You know, I, I started, I started my company four years ago before we had all of this generative AI. And, and I think it would have been a lot different. So what are some, so maybe some people who are listening and they're entreprene, they have a side hustle that they're trying to grow through your experience. Maybe give people one or two very specific use cases of how you've used AI that helped you as a small business owner, as an entrepreneur grow.

Yeah. So number one, right, is the call recording stuff that changed the game for me because trying to do that in the beginning of having to have every call on Zoom and try to process what happened, it was daunting. So now kind of having this virtual assistant to recap my calls and look over everything kind of frees me up. It's like kind of like having a Va. Hey, here's a call recording. Break this down for me. That's doing that, right? The other part is like in my CRM, using some things in your, your, your contact management system, right? Again, if you're starting a business, please get a CRM. There's a lot of options. They're, they're super inexpensive. You don't have to go to Salesforce HubSpot. There are some things but like get a CRM and then in that CRM, right. Use things that can give you predictable pipeline, right to where you can start looking at some common factors. Once you get, you know, some conversations going, you can start to analyze your, your highest scored stuff. So that'll open up lead scoring, right. You can use like latest and then that helped me. Right. And once it's got about, you know, 30, 40, 50 meetings under my belt, I kind of started understanding where things were going, where I was losing things. And so in your forecasting, in your lead scoring, it'll prioritize kind of where your attention goes. Because as a founder and as you get into it, you know this, every minute of your day matters and what are you doing with it and where are you putting it to? So if you've only got an hour to prospect for that day, you know, to keep your pipeline going, where are you going to put it? Exactly? That's, that's one. Gong Chorus is a cool one, especially if you have a sales team and you want to monitor, not monitor, but empower them in their phone calls, in their conversations, their demos. Gong and Chorus are really great. Same with Wingman, right. That they'll come in, they'll manage the conversations, they'll kind of give you the insights you need to, to navigate those calls. Especially for founders, most of them are technical founders, so they have a hard time transitioning to the founder led sales motion or knowing how to go into the sales motion. So having these call recordings, review the game tape, baby, right? Look at it like, learn how you're talking to your clients. I have a friend right now who can get the top of the funnel, the meetings on the book, but it's struggling on that backside on closing. Right. And understanding that portion. So having a call recording tool and an AI tool to break down your transcripts, give you some insights, makes it better, right? Will push you. Yeah. So those are some things that, you know, I, I used when I first started chat. GBT is great for personalizing outreach. If you do want to go to that executive, you can go look them up, kind of get yourself a good Sales message, it can create you cadences. I use Reggie AI shout out to Amelia and Elliot, right? That it writes sequences, man. Listen, quick story, two seconds. Back in the day, right? I'd have to manage all my messaging for my team. Every Sunday night I'd spend a few hours writing new cadences, new sequences they could leverage, and it was time consuming. Now, using AI like Reggie AI or just chat, CBT as a whole, you can get a sequence written for you that'll give you the appropriate days between your outreach. You know, all these things that most founders, they've never been in the top of the funnel. I'm very fortunate. I've got a leg up. I prospected my entire life. That part of my business is not hard, right? Most it is. They don't know how to go to market. They're asking for coffee meets. They're asking other founders to just pick their brain on their product. Right?

Oh, you love that. You gotta love that, right?

Yeah.

Everyone. Everyone wanting to pick the brains. Tim, thank you. Tim, thanks for the comment saying, you know, hey, never thought of, never thought of doing research on an individual. That's a great, great use case. Jupiter, thank you for the comment saying this is quickly becoming one of my favorite live streams on the Internet. And it's on LinkedIn. Go figure. Jupiter, shout out.

Thank you.

So, so, Tim, you know one thing, and my wife actually says this all the time. She says everyone's in sales. Like. Like in the end, even, even if you' an sdr. So, you know, if you're not a sales executive, we're all trying to convince someone or some company to do something. So. So in, in your experience, you know, what is the best and maybe even for the everyday person who hasn't even used a lot of AI and maybe they're not super familiar, what would you recommend as the one best way to use AI to convince someone or to sell something? I know that's a tough question, but. But you've been knocking them out of the park so far.

I think it's about the personalization and the relevance. Right. Again, use it to kind of get into the world of your buyer. Right. I go in and look at, you know, what, what is a VP of Sales, Chief Revenue Officer completely focused on? Like what keeps them up at night. Now I can go tailor a sequence and a cadence kind of to that topic. Right. Or I can go into a great demo discovery call because I had it pull together the entire Internet database to kind of tell me what this person is focused on. What podcast have they been on recently, right. It enriches that conversation versus me manually trying to pull all that through. And some tools are now doing that. They're giving you pre meeting recaps given by AI that as you go into the call, it's already given you that stuff. Right. Some of those bullet points. And so that's what I recommend is, is use it to dig into your buyer or a specific individual. That's, that's my best advice is it does. It could scrub the entire Internet. And if you upgrade now, mind you, if you're on chat GPT, there are two levels. One is very limited to prior to 2021. So you will run into roadblocks. And if you want an ego boost, go ask it if it knows about you and it'll hurt your feelings because it's like, I don't know who this person is. Like, cool. So it is very limited. But then if you go and upgrade right to the bigger one, it does have live web browsing. So it does. You know, you could put in the LinkedIn profile and say, give me some things around this person that would highlight kind of their concerns, what they're looking to do. And then you can tie that in or bring up a podcast out of left field and say, Jordan, I love last week when you were on that podcast talking about xyz. You know, we are completely in alignment. Can't wait to show you in this call how we'll tie into that kind of focus you have right now. Let's get into it. And they're like, oh, shoot, okay. You know, so it enriches that.

So I think, I think this is a great way to. As long as we don't have any other just, just super hot comments or questions come in. I'd love to end on this, Tom. So, you know, you've mentioned Chat GPT from the beginning of the show to the end. I think that for people who are really serious about learning and leveraging AI, Chat GPT seems like, you know, a good, a good spot to start. So you mentioned, you know, kind of the free version and then the paid version. And obviously the paid version really opens, opens the doors to a lot of possibilities. So if you were to say to anyone listening out there, you know, maybe they're like, oh, I don't need ChatGPT or hey, I don't need to learn it. How would you convince them based on your experience? No, you should be using Chat GPT and here's how it helped me very specifically with, you know, with my role or Growing my company. How would you convince someone?

I have them give me an example. The best way is show and tell. That's how I look at it and everything. Anytime there is apprehension, you know, there's people that aren't ready to do anything, I just show them and it blows their mind, right? Like, Jordan, what is the biggest challenge that you're facing, you know, right now with a magic wand? And you're like this. I'm stuck here. Cool. Let me show you something real quick. I'm gonna prompt this into chat gbt. I'm gonna put this in here. Watch my response to you and what I can get from you. And I give them that and they're like, holy crap. And I'm like, I'm telling you, like, it's a powerful tool if you want it to be. It's, it's a supporter, it's a friend. Just don't lean into it. Like I said, it can make you kind of dumber because you get, you don't push yourself as much right. To learn these things. So, you know, keep that balance. But I, I laid by show and tell. I'm just going to show you an example. I'm going to walk you through. I thought I blew my wife's mind. My wife didn't know what it was, and she was doing something for my son's school project. And I said, come here, let me show you this. And I just had it create me, like, like a subject name or a title for his report. And she was like, whoa. And I was like, I put in the keywords what we're trying to focus on. And here's eight titles you can give that report. And like, my son loved them all and was like, I want that one. And I was like, well, there you go. Now my wife's like, dude, I love this thing. And I'm like, it's just got to show people if you're confident and you use AI and you're good with it, like, show people how you're leveraging it. Like, let them see it. Like, like I said, I'll talk to them about how I'm using it. And I'm like, other founders and consultants are like, tom, how are you moving so fast? And I'm like, I'm leaning into this. And they're like, well, wait a minute. I can't get the prompts to work for me. I can't get it to do what I need it to do. Jump on for a 30 minute call. I walk them through that and they're like, What I'm like, yeah, yeah. It's really just talk to it like a friend, you know, put the prompts in, keep it very tight. You gotta tweak. It is not perfect. Yes. And all of this to end on. There's still a need for human touch. AI is not capable in replacing us just yet. But you know, you've gotta, you know, juice it up a little bit, tweak it a little bit. But it could be a resource for you. It doesn't have to be a scary thing. Take use it. Go learn for sure. I started doing it to learn. Books like podcast break down the idea. You know, speeds you up, it gives you what you need and cuts out all the fluff and the other stuff and just gets down to the nitty gritty for you.

I love it. So much value in 22 minutes this morning from you, Tom. So you mentioned kind of show and tell. So he's been showing us a lot of what he's doing behind the scenes and we're going to tell you about it in the newsletter. So if you couldn't type notes fast enough or if you didn't have an AI listening to this conversation for you and giving you feedback like Tom is doing, don't worry. Go to your everydayai.com Sign up for the newsletter. We're going to be sending you a lot of these resources that Tom was talking about, some of the different tools that he's using and techniques. Tom, thank you so much for coming on the show. Bright and early west coast time, may I add. Thank you. Thank you for joining, really appreciate it.

Absolutely, brother. Thanks for having me.

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