EP 60: Making More Sales with AI

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How can you use AI to make more sales? Well, here's the ending. We're going to skip to the ending. You can and it does help. All right, my name's Jordan. I am the host of Everyday AI. This is your daily livestream podcast. Free newsletter. What else do we have? We have a little of everything just to help everyday people like you and me keep up with what's going on in the world of AI. And not just that, but how we can actually use it. So we are going to talk AI and sales today. But before we do, let's talk about news. Let's talk about what's happening in the world of AI news. So make sure again to go to your everydayai.com. we send this out in our free daily newsletter. But let's take a high level look. So there's a new, new report today from Reuters looking at just the Silicon Valley race for autonomous AI agents and looking at if this is going to be the next big thing. So what is an AI agent? Well, think of it like this. You're chatting to ChatGPT or you're talking with Bard. What happens if it was an AI agent doing that or a series of AI agents? So that's kind of what these autonomous AI agents and kind of what the next big race in Silicon Valley is. It's to have kind of smart, smart AIs talking and working with other smart AIs. All right, so another big story that came out less than 24 hours ago. Wix, the CMS platform. So maybe you've heard of WordPress or Shopify or Squarespace. So Wix kind of in that same, in that same sphere. So they just announced new AI building websites with just text. So there's been plenty of platforms that have offered this, but not really, not really any of the big names. So WIX is kind of the biggest name so far in the C, in the content management system. Games to come out and just say, all right, you don't need our whole platform, you just need this text to speech and it's going to get you going. So more, more on that in the newsletter. Third story, not last, but definitely not least. So we're going to be talking about this a lot because even though it is 2023, we are here in the U.S. at least we are ramping up for the election cycle. So a new ad from the Ron DeSantis pack actually went against his Republican opponent. So the DeSantis pack using an AI Donald Trump voice to kind of make the former president saying things that he wasn't saying. So it's not the first time, it's not the last time. But this is one of the first cases where it's kind of in party using, using AI against each other. So if you haven't seen these ads yet, don't worry. We are going to be hit with so many deep fake AI ads. So that's, that's, that's a whole nother thing to unwrap. But let's instead talk sales. Talking AI and deepfakes and politics seems too much right now for 7:30am Central Standard Time. So let's bring on our guest of the day. Very excited to talk sales. So with that we have Sunera Malhotra from Bravo. Thank you for joining us.

Thanks for having me. I'm excited to talk a little bit more about sales and AI and what I've been doing with it. So excited to be here.

Let's go. I'm super excited as well. So I know Bravo, but maybe people know Bravo's former, the former name SendinBlue. So quickly, just tell us a little bit what Brevo is, what Bravo does.

Yeah. So we were formerly SendinBlue. We did rebrand a couple months ago. We are an all in one marketing platform. So everything from email to sms, web, push notifications, forms, landing pages, all under one roof. So if you're looking to send emails to your contact list, if you have an e commerce shop, if you have a newsletter going out just like you do, you could use Brevo to send that out. And we have a great platform, really, really intuitive, great design, easy to use. So we are an all in one marketing software.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Have it up on the screen here if you're joining us live. And thank you for those that are. A couple comments coming in. Brian saying good morning, Bronwyn saying good afternoon, joining us from South Africa in Rastapa. So thanks for joining us. So if you have any question whether about the, the Bravo email platform or just how they're using AI, please feel free to, to drop it to drop it here in the comments. So what's, what's kind of interesting and we, we kind of talked a little bit pre show about this is, you know, seems like no companies really have policies, you know, so Bravo is, is a little bit of a bigger company. I think I looked it up, you know, doing eight figures Eight figures in revenue. Right. So how does that work? You know, when a company doesn't have like that AI policy, it's just, you know, you're using the tools at your disposal to get your job done to the best of your abilities. But how does that really work? It's just like, all right, well, I'm gonna, you know, I know AI can do this, so I'm going to use it to, you know, improve, improve this metric.

I think it's, you know, as an individual contributor to a larger team. Ultimately, it's really based on your judgment, your. You're going to judge whether this is the right thing, you know, the difference between right and wrong. So all of us are, you know, just doing what we think is right. If we do something that is or if we write something that isn't, you know, basically by company policy or guidelines in terms of our marketing strategy, all of that, obviously we're not going to write something that doesn't fit with that strategy. But we don't have a policy just yet. I know that a lot of companies don't. I have a lot of friends who work in different tech companies as well, and they don't have policies just yet. I think management at all levels and all companies is trying to figure out what a policy should include, what it's really going to do and how also to leave a little bit of creativity up to the individual contributors. At the end of the day, you know, you can't have this helicopter figure over you. And AI is helping us, and as a platform, we're incorporating AI into our products yourself. So I think that our company is a lot more flexible with that.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And it is tough. It is tough, you know, to have, you know, that, that first piece of, you know, company, you know, rules, you know, where we say, here's how we're going to use AI, especially when you're offering, you know, AI to your clients. But I will, I will put in a short or a short plug here. So if people are listening and you're wondering, how do I even start, you know, an AI policy, you know, episode 56, which I'll, I'll throw in the comments here. We did kind of go over that. I think it's extremely helpful. Helpful with, with John there. So let's, let's switch back because, you know, one thing that you mentioned there is you are offering AI to your clients now. So this is, I think you said, brand new, right? Kind of, kind of a little breaking news. Tell us about what Bravo is doing. You know, with AI for its clients.

Yeah, absolutely. So I just got news this morning that this feature has been released 100% to all Bravo users and of course new users who do sign up. So essentially this is our first large integration with AI and what it does is you can incorporate AI into creating your subject lines. So AI is a huge part of marketing. Marketers all over the world are using it every day to increase conversion rates, increase opening rates, all of that. With an AI based subject line, you can gain a little bit more inspiration rather than keeping the same monotonous subject line that you are getting in your inbox all the time. We get a ton of marketing emails anyways, so why not kind of differentiate it a little bit and try out the AI in there as well?

Yeah, absolutely. So it is, it is interesting because if you're listening, you might think like, oh, why something so small as an email subject, but as someone that's been doing email marketing for like 15 years, the email subject is so, so important and it matters, right?

It really does. And ultimately your subject line and your preview text are so important to grab your contact's attention and really get them to open the email. At the end of the day you're sending emails, you want them to be opened. You want your contacts or your clients to open the email and then read through the email. Possibly there might be a link in there somewhere where you want them to click that. Perhaps you're trying to, you know, sell a product, sell a service, whatever it might be. Your end goal is to get people to convert from either a free user or to a paid user. So at the end of the day, that's what it's all about. And yeah, subject line is like the initial starting point. Of course there's a lot more that goes into it, but that's like the first thing that your contact is going to see.

Yeah, so it's actually so important. We spend a ridiculous amount of time looking at, looking at subject lines even for our daily newsletter. So yeah, very, very cool feature that Bravo is launching here. So you know, you mentioned something about like opening emails, but that's even in your role in enterprise sales. That's something that you're even fighting with as well and using a little bit of AI. So talk about even just how you're using AI to help in your role.

Yeah, absolutely. So obviously being in sales, it's a lot more than just meeting with clients and showing them the platform. You want to be speaking to new people, you want to be speaking with people in all different verticals and industries. So a big part of that is cold sales. Unfortunately, no one has the privilege of just having fully inbound sales, although that would be the best case scenario. But when it comes to cold sales, you really need to be sending cold emails and getting the reader's attention or getting your target account's attention. So a big part of that is your sequence. Number one, what is your cadence going to look like? Are you sending five emails on day one or are you sending 10 emails over the span of a month? So I've been using AI to help me with number one, researching target accounts. So what is my target? I'll give it a little bit of criteria there. Annual revenue, size of size of the company, what kind do they, brick and mortar stores, are they E commerce, whatever it might be there and then of course going into where they're located. I like to focus on specific territories initially and then expand from there. But that's kind of the two step approach. Target accounts and then helping me with my sequences. Building customized personalized emails is so important. Your target accounts and your prospects are getting hundreds of emails a day from sales reps like myself. So I want to differentiate myself a little bit and I don't want it just to be the same email that they're getting already.

Yeah, you bring up a great point because especially if you are a decision maker at a company who might be making a decision on something as big as an email marketing platform for a large, you know, a large operation, they're, they're probably getting a lot of emails. Right. So what's one way that you've, you know, you've talked about how you're kind of, you know, using AI to help you, you know, analyze and you know, do some research and to best set up your sequences. What's, what's maybe an impact or a result that maybe you've seen so far? You know, whether it's, you know, hey, it used to take this process used to take eight hours, now it's taking two. Or I used to send to, you know, be able to create two sequences a day. Now I can create eight. You know, maybe what's one result that you've seen from, from properly using AI technology?

Yeah, and I, again, I'm no expert in this. I've just been playing around with it in my free time and trying to make myself more efficient. But I have seen a large, I think the biggest difference in my whole process in my day to day has been my target accounts. Getting those set up initially. You know, that takes A lot of time, it's a lot of work in researching the companies, researching their financials, taking a look what software is they're currently using that is really time consuming. So with AI, I've been able to kind of make that a little bit more efficient. AI is not at a point just yet where it can tell me every single software that a company is using in their tech stack. Hopefully one day they will be there because then my job would be way easier. But it has really helped in cutting that time down for the target accounts.

Yeah, absolutely. So I want to get back to that, but I do. We do have a couple questions coming from the live audience. Again, if you're listening on the podcast and you want to join us, we do this every Single weekday morning, 7:30am Central Standard. So Brian asking is, is Bravo a. Is, is Bravo a CRM?

Yes. So we are a full suite CRM. So we do have a sales management pipeline tool as well as a contact management tool all under one roof. So yes, full CRM.

Awesome. All right, Mark saying good morning. Thanks for joining us. Mark, Nancy asking Bravo Academy, what's that about? What is the Brevo Academy?

Great question. So Brevo Academy is basically where you can go and get certifications and learn about the tool itself. So if you are a one person team and you're going to be doing everything yourself, this is a great way to get situated with the product, what you can do, functionality, features and learn a lot about the ins and outs. As part of my onboarding, when I first joined the company, I did the whole Brevo Academy and it taught me everything I needed to know about the platform.

Love it. The great thing, I haven't even taken taken Brevos, but even if you're not a client or a customer, you know, on board, go through it because you can learn so much. Just, just great tips about email marketing from expert companies. Obviously another great question here and this goes to just a lot of AI tools in general. It's always hard. So obviously they just released this this morning. But do you know yet is it fully integrated into Brevo or does it require an API key?

So the subject line AI assistant is what it's being called right now. It is fully integrated. So you do not require an API key at this time.

Yeah. Awesome. That's good to know. Yeah, you never know until you sign up and then it's like, oh, I have to, you know, get an API key. And for some people that aren't very technical, it seems like, you know, a Big jump. It's, it's not terribly difficult, but great question. So I do want to go back with, with the whole research and competitive analysis piece because I think that when people think about using, you know, generative AI, even if it's just, you know, ChatGPT or Google Bard, you know, I think people just think of creating content and they think of writing like automatically. So with your use case, I think it's great because we spend so much time having to manually research things and to analyze, yeah, different products, you know, potential, you know, customers and clients. What's that process been like for you now? Because I'm sure there was a point where you were doing it all manually. What's that process like for you now that you have, you know, chat GPT to do all these things with you and kind of for you? What's that process? How's it different?

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I think it is a lot easier. I mean, sorry, I'll take that back. It is, it is different to a certain extent. Obviously. I'm a firm believer in that AI is not the expert just yet. I find myself having to double check, triple check, reprompt a ton. And again, I really want to get better at prompting AI tools, but it's become easier. But still, it's not at a point where I can just set it and forget it. So we're still pretty early into the whole AI scheme of things worldwide, but it's become a little bit more efficient though. We're not at a Stage where I think that, you know, I can do my job. So.

Yeah, yeah, it's, that's a great point. And that's even a great reminder of like, who this show is for. You know, no one, no one on here is an AI expert. We're all trying to learn it, you know, you know, as it comes out, as it develops, as it gets better. So that's, that's a great point. No one is an expert. We're all trying to, to learn and to make it work the best we can for us. What's kind of your, you know, because the job of a, of a salesperson is not easy. You know, you, you, you are sometimes doing marketing. You're, you're technically doing, you know, customer service, customer experience as well. What's a way that either you personally or maybe, you know, your, your sales team is, is starting to look to either continue to use AI or maybe something in the future?

That's a great question. And I, I can't speak for like the rest of my team. I think this hasn't been discussed on a larger level just yet. But for me personally, I, to be able to get to a point where my sequences are like, fully automated. Of course there's a lot of different components that go into that, but I do want to be able to, you know, put in my target criteria, not have to triple check that list. AI is going to tell me exactly which 50 accounts I need to go after, what software is they're using, and then I can just set it and forget it. So that's the ultimate goal. But at the same time, like, I do find that researching myself makes me a little bit closer to the accounts that I'm targeting, so I'm able to personalize it myself. So if I've used a product before, let's say it's, you know, if I'm going after Zara, for example, Zara does send a lot of emails and I've, you know, I've purchased from them before. I was in store the other day, shopping, whatever it might be, I can put in those personal experiences into my emails where AI most often cannot do that, at least with my tone of voice, all of that. So, yeah, it's a lot to think about.

Yeah, I love that. And we've actually had a few guests on the show so far, share about how their experience and sometimes even their first experiences working with AI, they had maybe an expectation that it was going to take kind of the human out of it. But you just had a great example there of how you can use AI or ChatGPT to actually bring more, more of the human experience and more of your own personal story and personal emotion into, into the fold. The, the more that you're able to do that, or just the more that people are able to do that. I think that there's a lot of great applications for AI, but how has that really benefited you so far? To be able to actually bring in more, you know, human, human touch, more human emotion into using AI? How has that benefited you so far?

Well, I guess it's always been the norm. Right. Is having that human connection, that human tone of voice, whatever it might be. Personally, a big part of why I was so hesitant to get into the whole AI sphere was because I was worried about, you know, what are the ramifications of using AI? Like, is AI going to take my job one day? Something that all of us, I think, in this generation are worried about, especially coming out of college, you're thinking a lot about, what am I going to do? What do I want my goal in life to be? At the end of the day, I think that it's tough to say how my experience has been just because I haven't had a lot of experience with it. I will say that AIs. I find myself double and triple checking a lot of what AI is telling me or giving or prompting me back, I guess. So it's not been the best experience. But we're still so early on. ChatGPT came out in November 2022. We're like not even a year into it. That was like the first big tool that gained a lot of public attention. Since then, a lot has happened, but we're still not at the point yet where I'm like, AI can personalize everything. It can have my tone of voice, it knows who I am as a person, it can write as if it's me. So at that point, I think I'll be a little bit more scared. But right now I think we're okay.

Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, something that you mentioned there probably resonates with a lot of people, you know, listening or watching with us right now. There is that point where you see a potential application for AI or for chat GPT in your role, and you have to think like, should I jump on board with this? Or is maybe that bad? Is maybe this going to introduce something into my department, into my company, where we find out, oh, yes, so much of this can be automated. So. So for other maybe people specifically in sales, who, when you say that they feel it and it resonates with them. And they're like, yeah, I get that. What would your advice be to them, to those people that are hearing this? And they're like, okay, it sounds like I can benefit from AI, but I'm not sure if it's, you know, if it's going to replace me. What would you tell those people in sales knowing now what you know about how, how much you can get out of it?

That's a great question. I think that what I would say is that it's never going to fully be you. You know, sales is such a customer centric and such a personal thing. You're trying to convince someone to buy your product. You're going to tell them all the reasons why, they're going to come back with all the reasons why they shouldn't be or why they don't want to. At the end of the day, my advice would be that AI is a tool that's going to help make all of us salespeople more efficient and make us more productive. It's going to aid in our sales process. It's never going to fully take over in my, in my belief at this point at least. But I do think that it's a tool that we should start leaning on a little bit more to help us perform better at whatever level we're at. Whether you're trying to get a promotion, whether you're trying to, you know, be the top revenue producing agent for the quarter, whatever it might be, AI is going to be a way to help you get there. And it's a big learning process. You know, all of us are still learning. It's trial and error. You have some free time to test things out. This is the perfect way to do that without having like severe ramifications in your job. Side projects also great way to test it out. Resume reviews, helping you write some bullet points for your resume. If you're looking for a new job, there's a lot that it can do to really help. And of course personal and professional is very different. But I do think that testing it on both sides to see the difference is useful.

Yeah, it's, it's so useful in that regard too. Right. Like we don't even have time to go down that road. But yeah, we always think like, how can we use it professionally? But yeah, there's been so many great examples of how people use it in their personal life. So Sunera, thank you so much for joining the Everyday AI Show. I think that you really took us on a journey kind of front to back on how people in sales can use AI and just start to use it. So thank you so much for joining the show.

Absolutely. Thank you for having me. It's been a pleasure and looking forward to hopefully another one down the line.

All right. Absolutely. So we did have a lot of questions about Bravo. Different questions about using AI in sales. So as a reminder, go to your everydayai.com sign up for the free daily newsletter. It's going to go out here in about three hours, so we're going to have more information even on Brevos, their new AI subject tool. It's all going to be in the newsletter, so make sure you check it out. Also, I got to plug this. It's our show so I can plug it. I think we are giving away six months of premium or ChatGPT plus as well as six private lessons. So, you know, maybe you heard some things that that scenario was talking about and you're like, that would be great if I could use chat GPT for that. But I just don't know how we got you. So thanks again and we hope to see you back tomorrow and every day on Everyday AI. Thanks.

And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating. It helps keep us going for a little more AI magic. Visit youreverydayai.com and sign up to our daily newsletter so you don't get left behind. Go break some barriers and we'll see you next time.