The Human Element in the Automated Age of Sales - Kristie Jones - Fractional C-Suite Retreat - Episode #64

Growing a business is hard, but it does not have to be.

Once a week, we take a break from the hustle and bustle in business to talk about innovations and what's new in the C-suite. This is the Fractional C-Suite Retreat, and I'm Joseph Frost. Pull up a seat at the fire, grab a drink, smoke a cigar, and just join me as we relax, learn, and get inspired. This retreat is sponsored by Your CMO, helping organizations grow with better marketing strategy.

Welcome.

Today's guest is a returning guest. She is author of a book that's coming out in September, Selling Your Way In. She's also consultant to CEOs and founders and owners about sales and how you can lead sales teams to grow your revenue. And then finally, she's a speaker and workshop facilitator. Welcome, Christy Jones. Glad to have you back.

Thank you. I'm happy to be back.

Alright. So it's been a little while since we chatted last. What is new in the C-suite that you think other C-suite people need to know about?

Yeah. I think, with the whole advent of automation, AI, those type of things, I think people are gonna be more important than ever. So I still believe that even though we're leaning a little bit towards the, I'll call it science of sales as and away from the art of sales, I think that's a mistake. And so I think the C-suite needs to understand that the most important thing in the sales department are the sales professionals that you hire. And so hiring top 10 percenters is still as important as ever and maybe even more important than it used to be. So don't be fooled thinking that you can hire maybe a B player just because all that tech stack and automation is in place and that they'll be able to do what a top 10 percenter can do.

Okay, so the science of sales, what does that mean to you?

Yeah, science of sales really means all the data, right? And so I think we've leaned really, really far into the science of sales. I think sales leaders and even the C-suite are starting to manage their teams via data and, you know, all of like, you know, listen to recordings, data from the CRM system, you know, BI, The AI and AI, all of that. I think we are, I think we're leaning heavily into that. I think if you look back and if you take a note from history, that history tends to repeat itself. I think the big bubble burst of startups back in the day, I think we did the same thing. We leaned heavily into software that when the cloud came about, all of those companies in Silicon Valley that everybody thought were, you know, that were going to make it. That didn't. I think we need to be— I'm going to call this a cautionary tale that the fact of the matter is people still need soft, soft skills, sales skills. And as I am interviewing candidates for my clients daily and I'm asking them the following question: What sort of professional and formal sales training have you been provided? More and more I'm hearing the answer: none. Wow.

Now, are you hearing the answer none from B players, or are there some A players still that are just natural and they're gifted and they can excel without the training.

No, I'm hearing it from everybody. The A players will tell me that as a result of their company not providing it, they went and sought it out themselves. So I talked to a candidate this morning who said that she went and did some medic training, and I said, who provided that for you? And she said, me. Her company was not providing any training. And so she went out and found it on her own. That's how I'm being able to— that's how I separate the players from the posers, as I call them.

Yeah, that's great. Gosh, I remember my first sales job. I graduated engineering and I wanted to get into sales and I went to work for a company that had no sales training. So I grabbed a book, Spin Selling, and started reading it and grabbed the workbook, first of all. So I started working it and lo and behold, I got better.

But yeah, right. Magic. Yeah.

Magic.

Spin was the first book. Book I ever taught as a sales leader as well. Neil Rackham.

Yep. Yeah. So then the art of selling then is what you refer to as the soft skills, is that right?

Yeah. I mean, all the things that, I mean, you know, all the things that are needed, the conversation pieces, how to do a proper discovery, how to do an interactive software demo, how to keep control of the sales cycle all the way through. The other problem that I'm seeing is that particularly in software sales, we are abdicating the sales cycle to the prospect after the demo. We are in complete control during discovery and demo, and then we hear the dreaded words, yes, great, we'll have to talk internally and get back to you. And then literally I'm like, you hand the baby over to adoptive parents who are not qualified to raise that child, and then you wonder why the deal doesn't close.

Yeah. Yeah. Are you a fan of a particular sales methodology today that you kind of base your work around?

Not necessarily. You know, again, I've been party to Sandler, to Medic, to MedPic, to value-based selling. I think, though, that someone needs to understand the methodologies in general. And I'm one of those, you know, I'm one of those folks that likes to take a little bit from everybody and put it together. And that's what I really would like sales professionals to do, which is be exposed to enough sales methodologies so that they can say, here's my personal sales processes. You know, here's what— here's taking my superpower and matching it with the processes to know that during the sales cycle or during prospecting or during closing, whatever it would be, that this is how I— this is how I'm going to play to my strengths within the process or the methodology itself. Yeah.

So let's take AI for a minute and talk about all the things that AI is, well, some of the things AI is doing to enhance the sales function. And one of those I know about is kind of the AI listening where there are software solutions that will listen to your sales calls and give you some feedback on whether or not you talk too much or you were at the wrong tone or you missed—

Yep.

I signal. What's, what's your experience been with that type of technology?

I've had a great experience with that. I personally use Fathom, and I, you know, again, I think you should be using something from an— like, what I'm telling sales teams right now is that use them as efficiency tools, right? Use them for two— use AI for two reasons: efficiency, those kind of things getting better, summaries of your calls, questions that were asked during the call, all, you know, all being nicely summarized for you and, and put in your CRM system. As well as for research. So I've been a paid ChatGPT user for a while now. It is, you know, used to be back in the day, back, back in the day, like back in like around 2010 when, when Twitter first came on the scene, that's where I was going for news because it was real time, right? Because it was real time. You were getting, you know, you're getting real-time information in the moment of things that were happening on the ground, so to speak. And so that's sort of how I feel like I'm using ChatGPT. Again, I have a journalism degree, so I can't, and I like writing, so I don't think, you know, I wouldn't use it for that. I don't think anybody else should use it for that either, by the way. But what I do do is I say, hey, I'm trying to come up with a list of 10 things, fill in the blank, and I'm at 8. You know, give me 5 more and let's see if I can pick 2 from there. You know, tell me about this company, tell me about these people, tell me about the trends going on in this industry. You know, that kind of, you know, that kind of information is readily available. And I think we can use AI for that. And I just think it's gonna, we can just be faster. Here's my cautionary tale though for your audience is be careful how you're pricing product, particularly if you are in the software business, because as AI and automation increases and improves efficiency amongst your employees, if you're still selling seat licenses, if you will, or software licenses on a per-person basis, you're going to be in trouble because it may take 200 people today what it'll take 120 people to do tomorrow, what it'll take 60 people to do down the road. And if you're selling your product or service on a per-user basis, that's a recipe for disaster for you. So I'm already encouraging and seeing a lot of software companies switch to a more holistic pricing solution as opposed to per seat, because really AI should make us better faster and more efficient. So that means we might not need as many humans. Yeah.

Agreed. And people aren't thinking about that. And it's, it's part—

yeah.

Oh, we gotta lower our price because AI is making everything more efficient. We actually have to change your methodology completely for something.

Right.

Because of the realities. What are some other impacts you've seen AI have on sales and salespeople or sales training?

I think from a sales training standpoint, I haven't seen a ton of changes just yet. I still think that probably we should be using it more for, I'll call it, you know, on-the-job training for, especially for onboarding or testing. So I think we can absolutely be using AI to test people's knowledge. One of the things, you know, again, I spent 10 years in the learning and development industry. And, you know, within the first week after training, they've forgotten up to 90%, those who've been trained. And so I think you could use AI for refresher training and those type of, of, you know, like putting— excuse me, putting like folders together. So I'm thinking about even for me putting out a personal ChatGPT of all of the types of training. So when I build a sales playbook for a company, I'm thinking about making a ChatGPT so that they can easily access it and search the information.

Would you make custom GPTs for each company that matches their playbook? Is that what you're thinking?

Yeah, I, that's exactly what I'm thinking. A custom ChatGPT per playbook on, because I, most of my playbooks are custom built. And so, yeah, so again, much quicker, right? Being able to hit the search button and go, gimme the top discovery questions around budget, right? Instead of you have to go through the whole, PowerPoint that I put together, the PDF. I think that's going to be amazing. And even like, even for me personally, putting together a personal ChatGPT of, I'll call them Christie-isms, like all of my wisdoms and my tips and tricks that, you know, that I'm sharing during sales trainings. I think even putting together something like that that I put on my website and drive traffic to, you know, maybe it's, maybe it's gated or maybe at some point It's a, you know, I think for, for consultants like myself or other people, it's chargeable, right? Like, you know, for $24.99, you can get access, you can get lifetime access, and I'll keep updating it and putting new information in there. But those are things I'm seeing, like I'm seeing other consultants do those type of things. And as I started to see that, I was like, hey, I should put custom ChatGPTs together for the playbooks I'm making.

Yeah, that's really interesting. I haven't heard about that, but it makes a ton of sense in it. It's a, it's almost like a value add that's sticky.

But it doesn't take me any time, right? I mean, like, I'm literally going to upload my playbook into a customized ChatGPT for X client and then hand it over. Like, yeah, like sort of a gift with purchase, right? I'm going to hand it over at the end of our time together and just say, yeah, I mean, again, like, yeah, I mean, I can fold it into my pricing, if you will. But I think they're good. I mean, I can't imagine and and even 2 years where the physical playbooks I'm putting together, digital physical playbooks, if you will, the digital playbooks I'm putting together will be necessary. Like we still— yes, they'll be necessary from my perspective where I will still probably have to build them out and then I'm just going to upload them into a ChatGPT, a customized ChatGPT, and let people just search, just search for content.

One of the things we've been doing is we've been taking these buyer persona studies that we do for customers. And it's a series of interviews that then we put into a matrix and we're able to identify insights around some core areas around triggers that start their journey, barriers they're concerned about, things that they're actually looking for, decision criteria, and the ultimate journey from start to finish when they select a product or service. And we're building GPTs with that information and insight report, and then using that as a testbed to run ideas by it. And the next stage is we are going to do traditional A/B testing. So take an email and figure out which subject line is opened more than the other. And we're gonna do that real work for a client. Then we're gonna do the question to the GPT. Which subject line would you prefer? And we're going to see if there's some similarity in responses. And if there is, then we know we don't have to actually do the A/B testing with the customers anymore. We could just do it inside the GPT if there's enough validation there. So I'm excited to see how that comes to fruition, using AI to enhance the productivity of your marketing department.

Yeah, I've got a friend and colleague who has built an AI application called Campaign Coach, and it's the same kind of similar, but for social. So you load in all of the information about your ICP and your, your persona, your ICPs, and then your personas, and then you load in your products or services, and then it spits out topics for social posts based on, again, based on buyer you know, tendencies or, you know, here's their— here are their fears, you know, here's what they— here's what they're ultimately looking for. And it'll give you— I mean, it'll give you like 50 social post ideas.

Yeah.

And then if you want, you could just tell it to, okay, write the post for me.

Right? Yeah. It's not— it's not quite there yet, but it's giving you the ideas. But that's— but yeah, I mean, I think those are the kind of things that, you know, one of the things that I still see sales professionals not doing enough of is creating their own content on social, you know, giving their point of view, having, having a point of view and sharing it with their audience. I mean, a lot of times they're resharing the company's posts or maybe somebody that they follow. But again, I think the difference between the top 10% and the other 90% is the top 10% understand that they are their brand and how important it is for them to personally brand. And the others are not doing that. I think, again, AI is going to make it easier for everyone to do that. It'll just be the people who have, who you know, who have the desire to do that. But it's, it's making all those things easier and easier.

Yeah. And I think the other part of the, the top 10% that are effective realize that, as you said, they are their brand. But it's they as an individual. And then they can become agnostic to a brand, which makes them a little more valuable because they can go from one company to the next company without losing that authenticity, the, the followers, the, the credibility because they've built their personal brands as opposed to just relying on the company brand and resharing their information.

I think. Yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah. You, they've, they've created a community. They have followers. They have people that know that they have a position and a voice on certain type of topics. And you're right. When you go to take your next role, you are gonna, yeah, that, that value that you bring to the table makes a huge difference.

Yeah, we had this conversation not too long ago with my CMOs where we're considering hiring outside sales talent to help drive more business for our CMOs. And the conversation circled around, well, who do you hire? How do you find a good salesperson that's going to essentially sell 25 CMOs to, you know, different audiences? And the answer was you want to find somebody that has a credible established network already that is going to tap in and find opportunities in their network. You're not going to hire a salesperson that's just going to go do cold calling anymore. You need at, at a certain level, you just need that experienced person who's got a network and is credible within it, and they're going to bring a new solution to their audience and not just go out and harass people trying to get business from people they don't know.

Yeah, I was talking to a group the other day and the facilitator asked me a similar question that you sort of did at the beginning, which is, you know, what's the next whatever? Like, what is it that the sales world, you know, the sales universe is going to be looking for? And I said communities. I— you can see it already, right? People are building— the influencers, if you will, in our industry are building communities. They're not, you know, they're not pimping products. Just like, you know, as you would see on Instagram or whatnot with, with other input, you know, those type of social or e-commerce type influencers. But they're building communities. And I think that's when you, you know, back in the day, unfortunately, you and I are old enough to remember the Rolodex. But remember, I mean, we ask people like, well, who's in your Rolodex? What if you brought your Rolodex with you? How important would that be? It's not about the Rolodex anymore. It's not even really about your network. It's about your community. And I think that AI can help the average person, if you will, build out a community.

Yeah. Certainly can help them be more efficient to be able to find the time to do it because it is a time—

Oh, it's a time suck.

It is for sure. Yeah. So tell me a little about your book coming up. What, what's the premise?

Yeah, I'm super excited. I did not wanna write a how-to book. I started out writing a how-to book, by the way, and I was so bored with myself. And what I was writing, I was like, I'm like, no one's going to want to read this. So I say I've written a professional development book for sales professionals. And so one of the things that I have been seeing over the years is I believe that two things. One, a lot of sales professionals have not put themselves in the right sales seat on the bus in order to become a top 10 percenter. There are so many different sales roles out there, and I don't really think people understand what all of their options are. But I think it's even more simplistic than that. It's that I say that, you know, They're not picking the right sales role, selling the right thing to the right market, you know, in the right industry with the right company and having the right sales leader. And so what I'm finding is that more and more in the, in the kind of the world that we're living in today, people are not being intentional about their career in the same way that we're intentional about prospecting. Right. So we've talked, we've dropped some, we've dropped some, you know, buzzwords already today, you know, you know, who's your ICP and who are your personas and what are their problems and those type of things. So we spend a lot of time making sure that we're not gonna pick up the phone or send an email to somebody who we don't, you know, doesn't fit our ICP or isn't our persona. And yet we're not doing the same thing with our careers. We're not saying, here's my sales superpower, here are my sales secret weapons, here are the industries in which I know I play best in, you know, here's the, you know, I play best in the mid-market I prefer a service than a product. I prefer, you know, widgets over software. I don't— there's so many color combinations, if you will, that there are hundreds of sales jobs out there when you— thousands of sales jobs out there when you think about it that way. And so I wanted to write a book to help people get to the top 10% by putting themselves in the right positions to win. And so, um, the book has 3 sections, and the first section, it speaks to this entirely, which it's What the section's called, You Need to Get to Know Yourself Before You Get to Know the Prospect. And so I'm really talking to sales professionals, like those people who are thinking about going into sales, but also sales professionals that just are confused as to why they're not getting to the top and earning as much income as they could. But I think in a lot of ways they haven't, they're not, you know, the self-awareness hasn't sunk in. They haven't spent time being intentional about their career and proactive with their career. And actually just being quiet with themselves long enough to think about what are my sales superpowers? What are the secret weapons that I have? What do I do better than my competitors and my coworkers? And like, am I, you know, I love software people. Like, I love software. I interview software reps all the time and they're like, I love the software space. And I'm like, but there's so many different verticals within the software space. There's some, you know, you can be selling into SMB, mid-market, enterprise, you know, are you doing, you know, what's the average sale? Are you someone who has a million-dollar quota or a $4 million quota or a half-million-dollar quota? And you know, what, what sales stage do you want your company to be at? Right. Or what life, you know, what maturity do you want them to be at? Are you looking for an early-stage startup or they just got, you know, VC funding in their first million dollars? Or do you want to work with someone who's more established? So I just don't think people are taking enough time to think about it. The top 10% are. And so the book really spends a lot of time talking to the audience about, you know, what are the top 10% doing that the rest of you aren't doing? That you could be doing. Again, it's an intentional choice. And then I really also spend a lot of time as a former athlete. I spend a lot of time talking about the mental side of sales. You know, again, the top 10% are practicing their craft. They're eating right, they're getting exercise, you know, they're getting enough sleep. They're, you know, they're doing all the things about, you know, mindfulness practice. Their circle matters. You know, they're throwing back into the wild people that no longer serve them, meaning people who do not want to be on the journey with them. You know, for whatever reason, and that's fine. But I say, you know, people come into your life for a reason, season, and lifetime. And the quicker that you acknowledge that and kind of do an evaluation of, hey, you know, do I have the right people in my life in order to help me get to the top again, meaning you shouldn't be the smartest person in the room, you know, do you have people who are holding you accountable personally and professionally? So, you know, I wrote— so I wrote an entire book to help sales professionals get to the top. I love it. Thanks.

And I love they gotta, they gotta learn about themselves first. And it's kind of like changing the game a little bit. You can, you can rig your top 10%. You may not be a top 10% in this industry or this company, but if you know enough about yourself, where you excel, change companies, change industries, change product, and voilà, now you're able to be a top 10%.

Yeah, I mean, I do hiring for my clients all the time. It's 40% of my business is helping companies hire the right, you know, the top 10%ers, A-players, if you will. I call it project managing the hiring process. So we're not a staffing company. I just don't, you know, source a candidate and hand them over to you and wish you luck. I literally like, I actually do the interviews with you. I sit in on those and then I make recommendations in the offer and then I help you onboard them so you don't screw that part up. And I think so often I had a conversation with a candidate this morning And every other word out of her mouth was relationship, relationship building, relationship, relationship. And I said, you're not a hunter, you're a farmer. Yeah. You know, right? I mean, like, she's been hunting, but she probably doesn't really like it that much. Like, is she capable? Probably. Will she do it long term? No. She wants— like I say, she wants to raise the baby, not just give birth to it and hand it over to its adoptive parents. She wants to be there when they, you know, take their first steps. You know, ride their first bike, you know, graduate from high school, walk down the aisle. She wants to see— she loves that part of it. And so she was interviewing for a hunting job and I said, I think you're going to be better off and more successful in a, you know, in a farmer job. And she goes, well, I don't think I can make as much money. I said, sure you can, because if you only get to 60% of your earning potential as a hunter, but you can get to 95% as a farmer, you're gonna make more money.

Yeah, that makes, that makes good sense. Do you use any assessments, recommend any assessments during the hiring process?

Yeah, actually I, I, I, I recommend an assessment period. So as part of my hiring process, which I do this, you know, I have the same steps with every single client. And after the formal interview, the, after we do phone screen, then the formal behavioral-based interview, After that, we do run them through a profile assessment. So I use a sales profile assessment from Wiley and Sons, the book publishers that you know them better as, out of Texas. And like, this one's a really interesting assessment. It's, I call it ACT meets Myers-Briggs. There's a verbal and a math section, like verbal ability, yeah, verbal reasoning, numeric ability, numeric reasoning. So it isn't about like how smart you are, but I wanna know that you're, you know, they have critical thinking skills and strategic thinking skills, and you can put your pencil to paper like you did in the, high school cafeteria and figure out what the most probable answer is. And then the rest is all about you, right? You want to swim with the sharks or swim with the dolphins? And for a lot of my clients, I have, I have a profile. I've taken some of the top A-players from SaaS companies across the space, and I built kind of a composite profile. So these are— this isn't a pass/fail. This is a tool in the toolbox. But, you know, I'm validating again, particularly when you're hiring for sales professionals. Because the Christieism for this is sales professionals are professional interviewees. Buyer beware. And, you know, that's why a lot of companies hire me, because I've been hiring sales professionals in this space since 2000. And so if you're unsure, like, we don't ever want you to rely on your gut and we don't ever want you to just rely on the answers that are given in the interview because these folks sell themselves on a day-to-day basis. And so they're going to sell themselves to you. The sales profile assessment gives you a little bit more of an objective view just to, just again, to make sure that who you think they are and what you think they're capable of is actually true. Yep.

Yeah, we use it for our CMOs to better understand them when we, before they become fractional CMOs with us. We have a framework of, we use both Kolbe and DiSC.

Oh, okay. Nice. I like it both. Yep.

When, when a prospective CMO comes in and is interested in becoming a fractional CMO, they take the Kolbe, they take the DiSC, and then we have a conversation about, based on their— where their assessment lands, some areas that'll be naturally a good fit for them as a fractional, areas that might be more difficult based on other fractionals that are successful. And it's a really good conversation, and it doesn't it's not a litmus test, but it's certainly informative. And where we'd like to take that is one step further is we would love to use it in the client engagement. Every client's a little unique, a little different.

That's right.

The hardest thing in our world is having a good fit between a CMO and the executive team. And if that fit's not there, usually it's cultural or otherwise. If the fit's not there, it's not competency. It's just something else, the engagements don't go well. But if it fits there, it goes very well and very long. So we think trying to match for some of the assessment fits would be a great way to do it. But it's hard to ask a prospective client to take this test before we match you with the CMO.

Yeah, but honestly, they should be willing to do that because making a fit mistake is not going to benefit them and will probably set them back, if anything. Somebody should be willing to do that in order to find the right, right fit, you know, fractional CMO for themselves.

What I would love, and I'm sure it's actually available, I just haven't found it yet, is for me to be on a conversation with a prospect for 30 minutes, not an intro call, and then for the AI to be in the background assessing them and then tell me this is the profile of this client and here are the CMOs that would be most likely a fit for that client.

I know, wouldn't that be— that would be genius, right? Oh my God.

We're trying to, you know, build it internally, but I think it would be so helpful to have an AI. You can learn a lot from conversations. Yep. Might have to ask specific questions to tease out the answers you're looking for during the intro conversation, but you can train that piece of it.

But I like what you said because I'm using assessments the same way. I'm using it to, to, to further up a larger conversation. So after they take the assessment, if I haven't— if we haven't had an opportunity to meet the person that they would be reporting to, then I absolutely bring in their supervisor at that point. Because again, as an example, one of the, you know, a couple of the, of the— I call them competencies, but the couple of the competencies they test for is manageability and independence, which are normally on the inverse, right? It's normally a diagonal one way or the other. So, you know, if they're a 7 on manageability, they're probably a 3 on independence, um, or vice versa. So for hunters, normally I see, you know, an 8 on independence and a 2 on manageability. And that's, you know, you want a little bit of that in your hunters, but then I have an opportunity to say to the supervisor, hey, it looks like Joseph needs a lot of autonomy and really likes his independence. So tell me, where are you gonna be comfortable with that being the case for him? And where is it that you're gonna need a little more transparency? And so right now we're starting to build out expectations in the interview process about what everybody's gonna be, you know, gonna be wanting and expecting, you know, and then I flip the script. I'll say, hey, Joseph, like, tell me about the best super— you know, based on your profile, who is the best manager you had and why? Right? And so I'm trying to make— I'm trying to, A, make sure there's fit between the two individuals, 'cause It doesn't matter if they're capable of selling whatever we're wanting them to sell at the level in which we want them to sell if there's not a fit between the two humans. And then really, you know, getting them a little bit of information about themselves, but making sure that I'm already starting to have those expectation conversations well before they ever sign an offer letter. Yeah.

So what are some of the ways you've seen the sales profession change the last couple years?

Oh my. Well, we've again, we've, we've leaned into the science of sales. And so a lot of, again, like a lot of automation out there around prospecting. So again, from an efficiency standpoint, initially it sounded like a good idea and this was probably even 7 years ago where automation started to come into play. Now it seems like perhaps it's a hindrance. It's very easy now, I think still because the ChatGPT and the AIs of the world are not as sophisticated as they're going to need to be. I think it's very easy to spot a ChatGPT-generated or AI-generated email a mile away. And again, I think that's putting— I think that's putting buyers at a little bit of arm's length. This is where I think the human part is going to have to come back into play. And I think like the other thing, and I guess I say affectionately, but I'm not really nice about it, like I think a lot of people that we're hiring, particularly at the SDR level, at that early entry phase level, they're just checking their brain at the door. Right there. We provided them so much tech, you know, like I call it the cool kid tech stack. Like they walk in and we've given them the cool kid tech stack. We've given them, you know, given them HubSpot or Salesforce. We've given them ZoomInfo. We've given them Navigator. We've given them Gong. Like we've given them all the cool kid tech stack. And then we wonder why when they get a reply to an email that they don't know what to say next. Yeah, but they didn't send the email. They didn't send the email. They didn't write the email to begin with.

Yeah. Who wrote this email? What was the subject line?

Yeah, I'm actually putting people through— I'm actually putting SDRs particularly, or if I'm hiring a full cycle seller, an AE who is a full cycle seller, I'm actually putting them through a writing exercise because the writing skills are atrocious. Like, again, I grew up with a journalism degree out of the journalism school. My son and I went to the same university, graduated from the same school, journalism school. And his writing skills are atrocious and mine are superior. And it's because he doesn't spend any time doing that anymore. Right? Like there were no, I mean, they're texting each other. They're, you know, they're communicating verbally over Xbox. And so like—

He could probably text much better than you.

Much better. Absolutely can. And I can't even use two hands. Right? I'm like, I'm still like hunting and pecking. My keyboarding skills are phenomenal on the computer, by the way. But as far as the texting thing, it's like painful for him because like, I call, I'll call him and he'll be like, Mom, that was a text. And I was like, but it's actually easier for me to call. But their writing skills are atrocious. And so, you know, AI, again, that's, it's allowing them to check their brain at the door. And then how are, how are we ever gonna promote these SDRs who had everything automated for them and all the emails were, you know, AI generated or whatever? How are we ever going to promote them to an account executive who's going to have to literally do a discovery call where we're not just reading a list of interview, like, you know, the good ones are not reading a list of interview questions, they're having conversations. And then how are we going to teach them to do interactive demos? Like, I'm really concerned. Like, I think Gen, like I call them the Zillennials, the Zs and the Millennials don't really like that I've grouped them together, but I just, I kind of like the Zillennials. But I think it's a true problem. And again, from a CEO perspective, as you're talking about, I think writing skills are gonna become more and more critical. And if you don't have writing skills or good communication skills and you've been doing text talk your whole life, I think it's gonna be problematic.

How have you seen the buyers change last couple years?

Buyers are getting younger, right? So that is, I mean, that, so what their tolerance for certain things like that is better. They're allowing you to text them. Right. I mean, again, as the, you know, as the Gen Xers or the Gen, you know, or the millennials come into that, come into supervisory positions, they don't— they're not as, you know, they're IMing. Like a lot of my clients, like we're on Slack together. They mean, you know, they— the minute I join, you know, the minute I join as their consultant for a period of time, they're like, but you're on Slack and we're slackers. Like, oh my God, are we slackers? Like, like all day, every day. And it's, it's a horrible communication. I just did a training session with a client of mine out of Romania And so it doesn't matter what your language is, by the way. Internal communication is awful. But they were spending— they, you know, they were only coming into the office one day a week. They were coming into the office but one day a week. And the internal communication was all happening over Slack. It was completely impersonal. They were being, you know, you could be a little snippy, right, over Slack because, you know, you're not doing it face to face with someone. But I think that, but more and more buyers even, like, you know, I can see buyers putting you, like, you know, communicating with you on, I am on Slack, we're definitely texting. I'm hearing, I'm getting more voice messages than ever before. I used to be getting them mostly through LinkedIn, but now I'm getting them on Slack and I'm getting them on my phone. So I think there's more verbal communication going on. Less— again, like, I just think the written word is like, first off, people are exhausted with email. And, you know, so I just think how we're going to communicate with the buyer is going to change dramatically. I very rarely anymore— I mean, I work with a lot of clients throughout the year and I don't hear anybody get on a plane to close a deal at all. You know, like if they happen to be in the same city, if, you know, they happen to be at a conference together, But I think that like conference attendees like are back, like I don't know that they're pre-pandemic, but they're coming back, right? Like people wanna be in person. A former client or company of mine that I worked for as a W-2 employee back in the day, they had their annual conference here last week. Place was packed, packed, right? They can't get in, center of the country here in St. Louis. People came from all over. The in-person event was just as big as it had been when I was there. So I think those are the things that buyers, you know, buyers are looking to connect in a more human way, but efficiently, what— and like how they want to communicate.

Yeah, I think people want to connect. I don't know if it's the buyers. I'm curious to see how it works because marketing's starting to be almost completely AI-generated these days, like a lot of consumer marketing. There's humans behind it, but I just see it continuing to evolve to the spectrum that you won't be able to differentiate between a human-created article or piece of content from an AI. It's, you still can, but it's not going to be, it's months, not years away from being indistinguishable. And when it's there, will humans even care anymore? Like as a buyer, will I care? This was a solution that was produced by AI or by a human. Now, certain things maybe I care about, but some things I just wanna get the right answer at the right time when I need it.

I was gonna say, if you're adding value, does it really matter? If you're adding, 'cause what they really want is you to add value. Yeah.

Where's the value add? If the AI gives it to me, then fine.

Yep. Yep. That's really interesting. I've got a friend who's in marketing and he's still a little anti-AI and he's still a little more human, you know, human touch. But I don't, if, if it, like you said, if it continues to get better and better and better where it's almost indistinguishable, I don't think it's going to matter. I think it's all about, you know, am I getting the information that I need to get? And, you know, are you adding value? Are you, are you giving me a new perspective? I think the thing I worry about with AI is trends, right? Because I think the most, like, if you go back to Challenger Sale, right? What, again, the Challenger Sale failed in my opinion because it was too hard to implement. It truly required the entire organization to get on board. As opposed to just teaching medic to the sales department. You know, Challenger Sale involved the marketing department for sure. Like you couldn't do it without the marketing department, the customer success department, account management department, sales department. You know, you could leave some of those people out like the finance department. But in general, Challenger Sale required almost a full-court press from the entire company, which is why it was so hard to implement and why it didn't— why it failed. But they were on to something. They were right about the education piece. Right? Be a disruptor. Challenge your prospect. Challenge your customer. Tell them this is what you're seeing. You know, get ahead of the trends. Be the early adopter. See what's going on. Share that information. So I'll be curious to see, because I think that's where we add the most value when we're— when we as vendors are seeing trends like, like I told you earlier today, like communities, like I'm calling it right now, like communities are going to be where it's at. It's not going to be about your network. It's not going to be about how you're communicating. It's gonna be about building a community and a personal brand around that community. And so, but can AI get, can AI see the future trends like that and call them out and help people not miss the boat?

Right. Can AI make you more influential within your community?

I think it can do, I think it can do that actually.

Yeah. And if it can do that, and as, as somebody who's thinking ahead in their sales career, figuring out how to embrace AI and utilize it to make you more impactful and influential in your own communities is gonna make you more successful in the long term.

Yeah. I think there's, I, you know, I think, I think there's some scary things about it, right? And I think even the people who are developing it, you know, understanding, even the ChatGPT folks understand that, OpenAI. But I, but in general, You know, I mean, I start to think about medical, right? Like, what if my practitioner can see 40% more patients a day? Not that he or she would want to, but what if we could solve, like, what if you wouldn't have to come into the office, right? What if you don't have to see a patient in person because based on information, we could get enough information to be a little bit, you know, for things that we're not necessarily needing to see a practitioner for. I very rarely, like, I, my mom's been having a lot of medical issues lately and we've been like, we've seen 90% of the time we're seeing a PA or someone like that and we're not seeing the, we're not seeing the general practitioner herself. And, and I'm like, you know what I'm like, and some of the things, like some of the things we're doing, like, like she had this weird rash, nobody could figure out why, but they wanted to keep checking on her. And I'm like, well, why wouldn't we take a picture and just upload it? Yeah, yeah, right. Like, why does she have to come into the office for that, right? I mean, like, the telehealth thing, I'm like, why? You know, and if we're uploading a picture, then why don't they upload it to a software program that says, what the hell is this? Yeah, right. Because it wasn't any of the things that they just— they can't— they couldn't figure it out. Like, it wasn't reacting to steroids, and it wasn't reacting to Benadryl, and it wasn't reacting to creams. And like, so they kept wanting to see her, and, you know, and I'm like, okay, but do we really have to keep— I mean, they were literally taking pictures of her when we went in to put it in our chart. And I'm like, well, we can do that from home. So you start thinking about things like that, that you're like, you know, like, will we come a time where we really don't really have to go into the doctor's office very often? Which, by the way, is the place nobody wants to go because everybody's sick anyway.

Yeah, I think there's so much that's going to continue to change so fast in, in this marketing and sales area. That to your point, you just got to be, you got to be on top of it and embracing it to be able to be secure in the future. If you bury your head and pretend it's not happening, you're going to be way behind when it's almost too late.

Yeah, I'm still surprised at the number. Like when you see, like I sometimes I see surveys, surveys on LinkedIn or polls that people put out there, the percentage of people who are not like, you know, the, again, different levels, right? SDRs, almost exclusively using AI daily. You know, enterprise AEs, a little bit older school, not so much. And like you said, like, again, like, it will be interesting to see how those millennials who are growing up with this, just like they have a lot of other things as they progress in their career in the sales and marketing career, how are they going to think about using these tools in a different way?

And I hearken back to what you said at the very beginning of the show, like, B players aren't gonna become A players with AI, but AI with an A player can be amazing.

Life-changing. Yeah. Career-changing.

Career-changing for sure.

Yeah.

Well, Christie, thanks so much for being on the show. I really appreciate your time.

Interesting conversation today. I like it. I, I like the, and honestly, I like the market. I mean, I like that we have a little bit of a different perspective and, and being able to take the two, the two types of, of departments all under the sales umbrella, by the way, in my opinion, everybody, you know, those, they have to work simultaneously and in congruency in order for everything, everybody to be successful. But yeah, really interesting perspective on what's going on in the marketing world versus the sales world. Yeah.

And we're, we like to, we're big fans of sales and marketing alignment. Yeah. But I, I think of marketing as this big circle and sales is a smaller circle within marketing.

Yeah. No, again, like I, I said, you know, You can see if I, I'll see if I can get sign, sign you up for this, but I would like to change the marketing department's name to lead generation. What do you think?

Yeah, that would simplify it for sure. If that would, if that was marketing's sole role, which is what most people think of marketing as, especially in sales. But marketing is, to me, the simple definition for marketing is connecting prospects with products and services. And from that standpoint, it's a much bigger bubble. Yeah. Lead generation is a piece of it. It's tactic. Sales is a way to connect. Brand is a way to connect. There's a lot of things within it that I think fall underneath marketing.

Yeah. I agree. I, and the alignment is critical. And I, again, like, we couldn't do it without marketing. That's for sure.

Well, where there's a lot of gray areas in prospecting, what levels should the salesperson be prospecting? And at what level should the lead generation reduce the amount of prospecting. I think that's where AI can help both integrate better.

Agreed.

Well, great. When people wanna get in touch with you for any of your assistance, learn more about your book, or reach out about some of your services, what's the best way for them to contact you?

I would love for them to connect with me on LinkedIn. And when they do that, send me a note and let me know what your big takeaway was from our conversation today. But I love, I love growing my community on LinkedIn. And once you get there, you'll have lots of other opportunities to sign up for my LinkedIn newsletter. And I've got another, I've got a, you know, email list. So once you get to LinkedIn, you'll get access to everything, including the book.

Great. And we'll have that detail in the show notes. So look for it there. Well, thank you, Kristi, and thank you, audience. I appreciate you continuing to listen. And my producer makes sure I remind you to Download and subscribe if you haven't already. So thank you, everybody.

And that's a wrap. There's another successful episode of the Fractional C-Suite Retreat. See our show notes and more episodes at fractionalcsuitretreat.com. This podcast is sponsored by YORCMO, helping organizations grow, save time and money with better marketing strategy and fractional execution. Visit them at YORCMO.com. YORCMO.com, spelled wrong on purpose.