Latest / The Relentless Pursuit of Winning Podcast / AI-Ready Leadership: What Changes When AI Joins the Team | Kristie K. Jones

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AI-Ready Leadership: What Changes When AI Joins the Team | Kristie K. Jones · The Relentless Pursuit of Winning Podcast

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  Two years ago we only had one throat to choke and it was a human.
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  important. That I mean that
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  Where does AI's job
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  stop and where does the human's job begin?
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  If you don't write that out and tell people you can use AI for this,
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  absolutely
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  Yeah.
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  not to be used for this. And at the
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  Right.
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  end of the day, You're still accountable for every executed decision,
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  regardless of whose idea it was.
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  How do you check objective judgment and discernment?
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  Because otherwise we're gonna be hiring these copy paste people.
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  And, now your company's really at risk because it's not being run by
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  the people you hired, it's being run by a system you purchased.
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  The thing that's the scariest about AI is it never thinks it's wrong.
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  Where there's risk, there has to be a human inserted in there.
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  Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of the Relentless Pursuit
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  of Winning podcast. My name is Rick Meekins.
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  I'm gonna be your host today and in our studio again we have Kristie Jones.
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  How are you today, ma'am?
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  Good, great to be back.
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  yeah, it's great to have you back.
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  It's great to have you back. We are gonna get into answering some questions about
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  AI and sales leadership and a whole bunch of other stuff.
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  Kristie's got some surprises for us coming up So can't wait to get into that.
• 1:17
  Folks, if you haven't done it already,
• 1:19
  I would be grateful if you would like,
• 1:21
  subscribe, and hit the bell so you get updates every time we drop a new episode.
• 1:25
  And without further ado, let's get to it.
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  So, Kristie, you've done this before.
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  So let's get let's introduce our audience to who you are.
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  So who are you? What do you do and why you do what you do?
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  I'm Kristie Jones. I'm out of St.
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  Louis, Missouri. I help early stage startups of VC backed,
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  bootstrapped, normally between about one and five million in revenue.
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  sort of moving out of maybe infancy stage from crawling into walking and running.
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  So trying to get everything formalized,
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  building out your sales team, helping you hire,
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  helping you get the processes.
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  Right now I'm spending a lot of time.
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  formalizing and documenting processes,
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  which everyone needs to be doing right now,
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  but also helping my clients figure out what should stay human and what
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  we should overlay with AI. So those are the big those are
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  the big conversations happening right now.
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  yeah, yeah. The AI conversation.
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  I was I was speaking to someone,
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  I think it was a week or two ago,
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  and she'd done like a whole bunch of research and in communications
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  and talking about how like that was evolving.
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  And so this conversation is like really,
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  really on point because it's it's like,
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  you know, we've we we're dabbling in AI.
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  We're doing more than dabbling,
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  we're running our companies, et cetera,
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  et cetera, but there's not a rule book,
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  you know,
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  Mm-mm.
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  on that. So since you're working with lots of companies,
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  I wanna know first and foremost,
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  I mean, what what are you seeing?
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  What are you seeing is is happening,
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  where people will
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  succeeding where people, you know,
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  kind of missing the mark.
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  I'm seeing people at every stage.
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  I got a call yesterday from a former COO I had worked with and he called and said,
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  Hey, he texted me and said, Hey,
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  I'm, want talk to you about AI.
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  And I'm like, favorite topic right now,
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  like wing wing, can we talk? and he called and said he'd been tasked with putting
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  together AI governance for the organization.
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  And I was like, So exciting. That's amazing.
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  And he said, Yeah, I don't know anything.
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  He's like,
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  Yeah.
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  I know like I don't know anything.
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  And he said, I don't even know where to start.
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  And I said, Well, good news. I just wrote a book.
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  It's not published yet, but I sent him the manuscript over yesterday.
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  And I said, Not, you know, not only I said,
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  it's not a how to book. You know,
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  it's not a how to implement AI,
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  whether it's build versus buy.
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  there's plenty of people out there talking about that.
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  I'm just not gonna be that person.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  I said, you know, I said what I'm talking about is what needs to change from
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  a leadership standpoint that we haven't thought about.
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  ~
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  Yeah.
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  affectionately saying, you know,
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  Two years ago we only had one throat to choke and it was a human.
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  And now, you know, we have now when something goes wrong or something goes right,
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  you know, understanding what piece is AI owned,
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  what piece is a human owned, and then how to,
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  you know, how to manage and lead a team that is no longer only human.
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  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it's a it's a different type of leadership,
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  you know, it's a different you know,
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  we're we're holding multiple entities accountable at this point.
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  From the perspective of being a leader,
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  from the perspective of of running a team,
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  you know, how do how do we really need to think differently?
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  You know, we talked you know, you talked a little bit about accountability,
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  but I mean it's it's more it's a it's a bigger paradigm shift,
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  I'm thinking.
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  Yeah, it's a very much bigger paradigm shift.
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  So with an analogy I'm using is we need to get out of the cockpit.
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  We've been driving the plane as leaders,
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  right? We were we were piloting the plane with our team in the back.
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  we need to now move out of the plane and into the control tower.
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  Right. We're gonna need bigger,
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  more visibility than we've ever had before.
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  And again, I think we think we have it,
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  right? All this data and all of the tools and all the dashboards,
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  but it's not gonna be about more data information.
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  Now we need to understand what our team is doing,
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  how they're using it, whether or not they're using what
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  I'm calling objective judgment and discernment,
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  you know,
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  Mm-hmm.
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  whether they're just, you know,
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  I'm worried about what I'm going to call the copy paste people,
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  right? That are just taking exactly what AI told them to do and going
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  to execute it without overlaying any objective judgment on top of it to understand
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  Mm-hmm.
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  that AI only, you know, A is as good as the prompt you gave it.
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  It only knows what it knows. So it may it may have access to all of your note taker,
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  right? Your AI note taker and all of the things in your CRM system,
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  or it may be attending group meetings.
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  But what it's not seeing yet, I do believe it will at some point,
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  but it doesn't get to hear tone.
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  It doesn't get to hear the side glance when,
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  you know, something gets said and you and I look at each other like this,
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  like, hmm, yeah, you and I will talk later offline,
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  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
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  right? Because we're not
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  in agreement about that statement.
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  It doesn't have the ability to do that yet.
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  And so that's why the human still has to be in the room and the human,
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  you know, during those meetings.
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  And then the human has to take the information,
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  which is okay again, like AI is a great start.
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  It's a
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  Yeah.
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  great, you know, it's a great thought partner,
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  but it's just somebody to bounce.
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  It's just, you know, it's just like,
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  let's go bounce some things off the wall,
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  right? Let's go have a brainstorming session.
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  It's your brainstorming partner.
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  But
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  Mm-hmm.
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  but you are, but you're aware of things because.
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  You know, you have feelings, you have emotions,
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  other people do as well, that it doesn't have yet.
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  And so if you're still leading,
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  you know, if you're like the example I'm using again,
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  because I'm the sales consultant chick,
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  is you know, emails may be getting better.
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  You know, outbound emails may be getting better,
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  the quantity may be getting higher,
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  but that doesn't mean that more deals are being sold.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  Right. So if an if a
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  Leader is still just looking at their CRM dashboard every morning and going like,
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  Good job team. Like, you know,
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  we made 20 more calls yesterday and we added two more deals to the pipeline.
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  But, you know, if your sales cycle is six,
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  nine, or twelve months or more,
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  you don't you won't know for a while.
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  So if you're just still rewarding behavior and activity,
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  then that you're probably starting to lead the wrong thing.
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  ~
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  Mm.
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  if you think back, again, I'm so old that if you think back,
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  we've done this before.
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  When there wasn't a playbook. If you think back to like when we went from on-prem
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  to cloud, right? There wasn't a playbook for that.
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  Mm-hmm. All right.
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  Like, you know, I'm sold
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  that we call the subscription model,
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  not SaaS. We didn't, we had to build that in,
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  you know, in real time when CRM systems came around.
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  You know, the people who adopted the CRM system the fastest looked
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  the smartest until they didn't.
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  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The the the interest
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  And that's what I'm worried about.
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  Yeah, yeah, I can understand that.
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  I mean it's it's interesting because,
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  you know, there's there's I mean,
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  the examples that you gave, I mean,
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  we basically, you know, flew by the seat of our pants.
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  You know, it would the technology was coming and we're adapting as
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  as quickly as it's coming. You know,
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  and we're able to and here's the here's the here's the here's the thing,
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  you know, we're able to lead, you know,
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  from that perspective. We're able to provide that direction.
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  Here
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  you know, as as we're we've we've been around the sun multiple times,
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  you know, there there are other people that are coming up after us that
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  are born into this and adapt adopting it much faster.
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  So the question becomes as a leader,
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  you know, say 40s, 50s, you know,
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  whatever that's going to look like,
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  you know, what is upskilling look like for us?
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  And then what is upskilling our or training the
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  Yeah.
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  leaders that are coming up? What does that need to look like going forward?
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  Yeah, I'm so glad you asked. I have a list of competencies that
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  I'm sharing around this.
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  Yeah.
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  Let me go down the list for you and you can stop me and ask questions along the way.
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  number one competency, I think,
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  is what I'm gonna call systems thinking.
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  You know, so the ability to understand all of the parts,
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  and again, not maybe not even just sales,
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  right? But like, you know, how do things happen in your team on your team,
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  in your department, in your org,
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  in your company? And then, like,
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  what could break that? So, like I said,
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  like systems thinking to me is the control tower.
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  Mm-hmm.
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  not
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  piloting the plane. workflow design is a competency.
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  So, you know, formalizing, documenting,
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  mapping, building, monitoring,
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  written monitoring, you know, processes.
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  Like how is the work going to get done and by whom?
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  And who owns the responsibility for checking work?
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  decision leadership. So who's going to make these calls?
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  Things are happening so quickly that you have to be making decisions in real time
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  in ways that you
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  wouldn't before, like I'm thinking now about like even A B testing and how even
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  A B testing might be an old way of doing things at this point because things
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  are moving so quickly. ~
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  Mm-hmm.
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  so you're getting so much information thrown at you.
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  How are you going to make decisions?
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  Based on what information are you going to make
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  Yeah.
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  decisions? This one we have never talked about.
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  I've never had a conversation with anybody about how to coach objective judgment.
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  How
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  Mm.
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  do we teach and coach objective judgment to the people underneath us?
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  who are gonna have to have it in order to not copy paste what AI told them
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  and then just straight go execute.
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  Dig into dig into that one a little bit more.
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  Yeah, that one this one's gonna be tricky,
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  right? so here's how here's here's the playbook I'm giving people.
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  I'm asking them to think about changing one one thing very specifically.
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  Stop doing postmortems and start doing pre-meetings.
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  So we're the we just love to go like evaluate things after the fact.
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  Backseat driving is so much more fun.
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  But if your people are using AI to prep for the big meeting.
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  The big call, the big presentation,
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  and you're not having a meeting before that and asking questions like,
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  so what's the strategy? How'd you come up with that?
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  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
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  What
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  do you think could go wrong with that?
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  You know, it just takes somebody to show up to the meeting that
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  you didn't anticipate. It takes one dissenter that you thought was a champion.
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  You know, the and if you're only if you all you did was read what AI told you to do,
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  you know, like, you know, put the agenda together they told you to put together.
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  These are the questions you need to be asking.
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  This is the goal of the call. This is what success looks like.
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  And then something happens that you weren't anticipating.
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  And sometimes because you haven't really even been paying attention,
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  like you've been relying on your note taker,
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  right? Like, like, you know, like I'm still the old school girl.
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  I still have my notebook and I take take notes every day on my when
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  I talk to people. But my
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  Mm-hmm.
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  note taker is also on too, right?
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  I
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  I think.
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  use the note taker to send summary emails.
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  But when I when somebody asks me a question about something that happened
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  in the past, I grabbed my notebook.
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  Right. Because
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  Mm-hmm.
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  I still know that there's like some cognitive,
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  you know, there's a cognitive tie between me writing it down and getting it versus
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  Yeah. Yeah.
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  copy pasting the summary and going,
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  I'm gonna take out these three bullets and all the rest looks good.
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  And so
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  Yeah, yeah.
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  in like you'll need to say, you're gonna need to ask different questions.
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  Like, why did you decide that strategy?
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  If you were it, you know, what what give me two things that AI told you
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  to do that you decided not to do.
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  That you thought were a bad idea,
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  and why? Why did
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  Mm.
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  you change the strategy? That's gonna tell you if people are checking their brain
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  at the door or overlaying objective judgment on top of what's being told to them.
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  Wow. Wow. That's that speaks to that governance conversation that you were that
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  Yeah.
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  you you
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  were you were leading to, yeah.
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  Wow. That's that's so important.
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  Yes. Like yeah, Where does AI's job
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  That I mean that
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  stop and where does the human's job begin?
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  Like If you don't write that out and tell people like you can use AI for this,
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  absolutely
• 12:23
  Yeah.
• 12:24
  it's not to be used for this. And at the
• 12:26
  Right.
• 12:26
  end of the day, you're still accountable.
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  The next bullet point on my list there was well,
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  we already talked about accountability around that.
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  You're still accountable for every executed decision,
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  regardless of whose idea it was.
• 12:40
  Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. There's a there's a there's a huge training aspect
• 12:45
  I I hear as well because,
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  you know, it I th I feel like in a lot of cases,
• 12:51
  you know, people were trained wrong.
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  You know, it's like I was you know,
• 12:54
  one of the things I was thinking about is like what do we bring to a meeting
• 12:57
  now as as a sales rep. Y you know what I'm saying?
• 13:00
  And it's it's like, you know, we get the ideas,
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  as you said, you know, kind of pumped out of the system,
• 13:03
  you know, that it throws at us,
• 13:05
  but
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  I love the I love the going back and just checking.
• 13:09
  It's like where did you get this information from?
• 13:10
  What bad ideas, you know, did you toss out?
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  You know, I'd love to hear what new ideas respond,
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  you know, by you know, just you know,
• 13:20
  working with AI.
• 13:21
  on-prem to cloud,
• 13:23
  Mm-hmm.
• 13:23
  You know
• 13:23
  what I mean? Because, you know,
• 13:24
  just going back and forth, you know,
• 13:25
  with it, I mean it's gonna bring some ideas,
• 13:27
  some things we hadn't thought about.
• 13:27
  Sure. Yeah. Yeah.
• 13:28
  You know, it's a great challenge.
• 13:31
  So I mean, so if you're waiting till after things go south,
• 13:35
  you
• 13:36
  Yeah.
• 13:36
  know, to do your postmortem, but I mean,
• 13:38
  that's we've never had to teach objective judgment.
• 13:40
  You know,
• 13:41
  Yeah.
• 13:41
  as a result of that, I also have a chapter in the book about hiring differently,
• 13:45
  because we're gonna have to hire a different type of of employee going forward.
• 13:49
  You know, if you're not doing an in how do you interview for that person?
• 13:53
  How do you check objective judgment and discernment?
• 13:56
  Because otherwise we're gonna be hiring these copy paste people.
• 13:58
  And, you know, now your company's really at risk because it's not being
• 14:02
  run by the people you hired, it's being run by a system you purchased.
• 14:06
  Mm, mm, mm. do you do you have a process for like h digging into how
• 14:10
  we can identify the right people to bring in?
• 14:13
  Yeah, I mean, I'm asking a lot of questions,
• 14:15
  but I think most people are asking,
• 14:16
  and I and again, guilty as charged about,
• 14:18
  you know, 18 to 12 months ago.
• 14:20
  you know, what AI tools are you using?
• 14:22
  How are you using AI? I'm not doing that anymore.
• 14:24
  If you get that far
• 14:25
  Mm-hmm.
• 14:25
  down this down the interview path,
• 14:27
  on Zoom, I'm gonna give you a case study.
• 14:31
  I'm gonna give you a, you know,
• 14:33
  case study, a scenario of a deal that's in a pipe that is in the pipeline,
• 14:37
  and you've got the next meeting coming up,
• 14:38
  and I'm gonna tell you.
• 14:40
  To go, I don't care what AI tool you use,
• 14:42
  whatever you're comfortable with.
• 14:43
  Here's all the information. Go prep
• 14:43
  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
• 14:46
  for the meeting. We're gonna go off camera.
• 14:48
  We're gonna mute our phones. I'm gonna give you X number of minutes.
• 14:50
  You're gonna come back. You're gonna tell me what the prompt you used was.
• 14:54
  You're gonna tell
• 14:54
  Mm.
• 14:55
  me what AI fed you back. You're gonna screen share and show me what information
• 14:58
  you got from AI. And
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  Mm-hmm.
• 15:00
  then I'm gonna then I'm gonna say,
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  great. And then I'm gonna say,
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  okay, so come back with what I just said,
• 15:07
  the agenda.
• 15:08
  Mm-hmm.
• 15:09
  The questions you need to be asking,
• 15:10
  what success looks like, you know,
• 15:13
  what next actions are you trying to get out of the meeting?
• 15:15
  What's the goal of the meeting?
• 15:16
  And then come back to me. And then what's the difference between what
• 15:20
  AI told them to do and what they ended up telling me they were gonna do?
• 15:23
  That's how I'm gonna check
• 15:23
  Mm. Mm.
• 15:24
  it.
• 15:26
  What what do you do about I mean,
• 15:27
  one of the one of the things that we've always one of the ways that we've always
• 15:30
  hired is, you know, we we used our guts.
• 15:33
  You know, there were people that,
• 15:34
  you know, didn't necessarily have the skills and experience,
• 15:36
  but we knew, you know, through conversation,
• 15:39
  through listening to their thought processes,
• 15:41
  et cetera, et cetera, that they had the potential to learn it.
• 15:43
  Do we still use that approach?
• 15:47
  I'll be honest, I've never been a fan of the gut check.
• 15:49
  I've always been the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
• 15:52
  That's been my interviewing motto.
• 15:54
  And so, how have you used it? What has worked for you?
• 15:58
  Where did you fall flat on your face?
• 16:00
  you know, I like no longer, like again,
• 16:02
  like I don't think there's any place in the interview anymore for
• 16:05
  the role play because
• 16:06
  Mm-hmm.
• 16:07
  you can prepare for that, right?
• 16:08
  I mean, I can have my AI notes right in front of me.
• 16:10
  I can prepare for that.
• 16:12
  Yeah.
• 16:12
  in a you
• 16:12
  know in a way that I would not be preparing for it otherwise.
• 16:15
  and so yeah, I I think that you we're gonna have to be hiring a higher level
• 16:20
  of person, meaning their critical thinking skills,
• 16:22
  their objective judgment. We're gonna have to,
• 16:23
  Yeah.
• 16:23
  if you're
• 16:24
  not testing for that, you can.
• 16:25
  You know, I run people through a sales profile assessment in one of the category,
• 16:29
  one of the competencies is objective judgment.
• 16:31
  so like and I need now I'm gonna need like before maybe I could get away with
• 16:34
  a seven, you know, now I might need an eight,
• 16:36
  nine or 10, or maybe I need a nine or 10.
• 16:39
  on that. You
• 16:39
  Mm-hmm.
• 16:40
  know, and so I don't like I need to know that you're not that you're gonna,
• 16:43
  you know, look it over. I mean,
• 16:45
  I I can't tell, I mean, I use AI all the time.
• 16:48
  I can't tell you how many times a day I correct it.
• 16:50
  And it's irritating and it takes time,
• 16:50
  Mm. Mm-hmm.
• 16:52
  right? But I
• 16:53
  mean you're gonna have to treat AI like you treat a new employee.
• 16:56
  Right.
• 16:57
  Right. Where you're like, you when I'm onboarding a new employee,
• 16:59
  we're basically tied at the hip for three weeks,
• 17:01
  right? We're probably doing at least four hours of formal training a day.
• 17:04
  At the end of every day I'm doing a 30 minute debrief for the first three weeks.
• 17:08
  What did you hear today? What didn't make sense?
• 17:09
  What did we train on that you're like fuzzy on now that it's two days later?
• 17:14
  You're like we're, you know, we're forcing to drink out of the fire hose.
• 17:17
  And so if you think about onboarding an AI,
• 17:20
  not even just an even an agent,
• 17:22
  right? But like if you're thinking about onboarding AI,
• 17:24
  like I would say the same thing to a new rep.
• 17:26
  Like, hey, like, you I'm gonna get you on the phone on day seven,
• 17:29
  Mm-hmm.
• 17:30
  but here's what you're gonna know and what you're not gonna know.
• 17:32
  And if you get this question, you're just gonna abort,
• 17:34
  right? Hey, am I really
• 17:34
  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
• 17:35
  like if they ask you about pricing?
• 17:37
  Right. Like if I'm training an SDR,
• 17:38
  like I don't let SDRs talk about pricing.
• 17:40
  Well, I would have to if I'm having if I'm building an AI SDR,
• 17:43
  it can't talk about pricing. Even though pricing may be on our website
• 17:47
  and it may know, I have to be able to set a firm boundary that says you can't,
• 17:51
  even though you have that information or whatnot,
• 17:54
  you can't do that. And so
• 17:56
  Mm.
• 17:56
  look, but I think like it's it's gonna be it's you know,
• 17:59
  I just don't think leaders are thinking about I think everybody's still interviewing
• 18:03
  for sales reps and other employees the way that they've always been.
• 18:06
  I don't think their scorecard has changed.
• 18:07
  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
• 18:08
  I don't think their interview questions
• 18:09
  have changed. I don't think the,
• 18:10
  you know, practice test or whatever has changed.
• 18:13
  And I think that's a mistake.
• 18:15
  Yeah. Yeah. I I absolutely agree with that.
• 18:18
  I absolutely agree with that. I I it's it's just gonna come down to competition.
• 18:21
  You know, if you're not doing the things you need to do in order
• 18:24
  to stay competitive, you're you're gonna you're gonna lose.
• 18:26
  You're not gonna win. which is you know,
• 18:28
  which is which is the nature of the game if think about it.
• 18:30
  Did did we go through
• 18:31
  Well, I it's just a matter of time before
• 18:32
  something really goes wrong, right?
• 18:34
  That you can't fix after the fact,
• 18:34
  Right. Right.
• 18:35
  right? Like, you know, you lose
• 18:37
  a deal or it, you know, it changes an algorithm and it caught is
• 18:42
  a very costly mistake for the company,
• 18:44
  you know. And you know, we can get into the token discussion as well.
• 18:47
  But but I mean, like at some point,
• 18:49
  someone's gonna push the okay button on a decision that they didn't overlay judgment
• 18:55
  on, and it's gonna be costly.
• 18:57
  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Did did we make it through all of
• 19:01
  all of the competencies that leaders need to have or?
• 19:04
  We we made it for the what I call the core competencies under the
• 19:07
  Okay.
• 19:08
  topic of AI fluency. I'll run through these really quickly.
• 19:10
  Obviously, prompt literacy. And I am worried about the zillennials who've been text
• 19:14
  talking for so some some amount of time.
• 19:16
  output evaluation, right? 'Cause that's where that's where the rubber meets
• 19:20
  the road as a leader. It's not about the input anymore.
• 19:22
  It's about the output and the outcome.
• 19:25
  we're gonna have to make decisions now at a faster pace than ever about tool
• 19:29
  selection.
• 19:30
  Build it or buy it, which tools?
• 19:32
  Every day a new tool pops up. What does the team really need?
• 19:35
  workflow, workflow fluency. So again,
• 19:37
  Mm-hmm.
• 19:38
  what's the motion? What's the process?
• 19:40
  How much, how much design is needed,
• 19:43
  how much overlay is needed, you know,
• 19:45
  what happens when it breaks, who fixes it.
• 19:48
  And then then lastly, as we've already been talking about ad nauseam.
• 19:51
  AI skepticism. Like how do like
• 19:53
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
• 19:55
  how do you look at something and know whether
• 19:57
  Like I I said The thing that's the scariest about AI is it never thinks it's wrong.
• 20:02
  Hundred percent with confidence.
• 20:04
  Right. I mean, and even even humans will
• 20:05
  come in and be like, I think this is the right answer,
• 20:08
  but I'm not sure. Or, you know,
• 20:10
  I'm looking for some advice here.
• 20:12
  I have yet to have AI ask me for advice on anything.
• 20:17
  Yeah, or or or additional depth on hey,
• 20:19
  what do you what exactly do you mean by that?
• 20:21
  No, it's it's going down the road.
• 20:22
  No
• 20:23
  And it's it's it's like you said,
• 20:25
  I mean, it's scary. I mean, you put a presentation together,
• 20:28
  you know, and just assume that,
• 20:29
  hey, it's you it's using the the the requirements that you set up for it,
• 20:33
  but it doesn't it doesn't follow the instructions.
• 20:36
  You're just like what what is this?
• 20:37
  What were the why did I go through the process of building these instructions?
• 20:40
  Why did I create this prompt if you're not gonna follow it?
• 20:42
  Help me help me understand that.
• 20:44
  you think about like and i've been i've been picking on
• 20:44
  It's like, well I didn't feel like it.
• 20:47
  the zillennials a lot recently and they've been they've been picked
• 20:49
  on plenty but you know like when's the last time they wrote a paragraph
• 20:54
  you know with with with words written out not shorthand with punctuation like like
• 21:00
  you know ai will figure out some of that but the
• 21:03
  Mm-hmm.
• 21:03
  bottom line is like this like you know it feels like we need a whole
• 21:06
  new world of English and journalism majors right who know how to communicate
• 21:10
  via the written word and
• 21:12
  How the majority of us who are,
• 21:15
  you know, in a professional environment communicate these days,
• 21:17
  you know, half of us didn't grow up,
• 21:19
  you know, having to do that. You know,
• 21:22
  we didn't grow up with like, you know,
• 21:24
  those of us at the older end didn't grow up with tablets.
• 21:26
  We didn't grow up with computers in the classroom.
• 21:28
  We taught, we were taught cursive.
• 21:30
  You know, English was a major,
• 21:32
  you know, core of our education.
• 21:34
  And, you know, now you're talking about kids who communicate in shorthand
• 21:39
  all day long.
• 21:40
  on team even on Teams and Slack,
• 21:42
  right? Like they're
• 21:43
  Yep.
• 21:43
  not like we're not worried about punctuation or spelling things correctly
• 21:47
  or any of that. Well, that's gonna I mean all of those things are gonna impact AI.
• 21:52
  What what do you mean
• 21:52
  Yeah.
• 21:52
  when you say it's gonna impact AI?
• 21:55
  Well, you think you're you're talking to it like you talk to your buddy.
• 22:01
  Right?
• 22:01
  Right.
• 22:02
  With but your buddy has context because they grew up the same way or,
• 22:06
  you know,
• 22:06
  Right.
• 22:06
  know what know what you mean by a certain shorthand or whatnot.
• 22:10
  And AI is but but you know, it's for me,
• 22:13
  for then it's all about context for AI.
• 22:15
  And c and AI is just like just like it's never asked me for advice,
• 22:19
  it's literal. Right. And so it takes things literally and doesn't always make
• 22:24
  In inferences. And so my guess is when you're getting crap back,
• 22:29
  it's probably because you didn't give it enough information.
• 22:31
  Right? Like, you know, give me the call summary.
• 22:35
  Not like I need a different call summary for each of these three people because they
• 22:39
  have different roles. I noticed that Susan was seemed a little skeptical.
• 22:42
  So let's write hers, you know,
• 22:45
  with some, you know, from a point of view of trying to maybe win her over
• 22:49
  and give her some reasons to be less skeptical.
• 22:51
  Instead, we're just saying, like,
• 22:52
  Hey, give me a, give me the some the call,
• 22:55
  you know, give me the follow-up email based on the four P,
• 22:58
  you so I can send to the four people in the room.
• 22:59
  That's not laying objective
• 23:00
  Yeah, yeah.
• 23:01
  judgment over that. They'll do exactly what it told you to do.
• 23:03
  But it doesn't know that Susan was a little skeptical.
• 23:06
  It doesn't know that one of these people is an end user and the other one's
• 23:08
  an executive. And that they shouldn't all,
• 23:10
  and again, that's just us being lazy.
• 23:12
  We shouldn't, they shouldn't all get the same email necessarily.
• 23:15
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean I I guess it's how do you how do you feel about
• 23:18
  Yeah.
• 23:20
  you know, I'm I'm gonna I'm gonna move to a different side of the coin.
• 23:24
  How do you how do you feel about like hyper personalization when we're we're talking
• 23:27
  about like outbound sales, sales activities and we're using,
• 23:31
  you know, AI generated content for that?
• 23:34
  I think outbound's going away.
• 23:35
  I I think in general.
• 23:36
  Okay.
• 23:36
  So here's here's I mean, here's my extremist view.
• 23:39
  I think that we're gonna be shifting more to an inbound model.
• 23:44
  And not necessarily because marketing's doing such a fabulous job,
• 23:48
  God love marketing,
• 23:49
  Mm-hmm.
• 23:50
  but because because the buyer's journey is dramatically changing.
• 23:54
  I now think that marketing owns stages one and two.
• 23:57
  And here's why, and here's what I mean by that.
• 24:01
  If you're going out to do research and you're gonna use it,
• 24:03
  you know, if you're any if anybody who's comfortable with AI,
• 24:05
  you're gonna be using AI,
• 24:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 24:07
  which means the marketing owns the website,
• 24:10
  and the website and content and Facebook or LinkedIn or whomever is gonna have
• 24:16
  to have answers to the questions that the buyer's looking for,
• 24:19
  the buyer's gonna move on.
• 24:20
  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
• 24:21
  Right? So if marketing's, you know,
• 24:23
  so AEO, GEO, you know, product videos,
• 24:27
  explainer videos, you know.
• 24:29
  Answers to all the questions that somebody might have need to show
• 24:32
  up somewhere on your website. Because that's what that's what AI is gonna
• 24:36
  go pull from. They're pulling from Reddit is one of the major places they're pulling
• 24:41
  from. So if you're not on Reddit as a company or a person,
• 24:44
  that's a problem. They're pulling from LinkedIn.
• 24:47
  They're gonna go to the website.
• 24:49
  They're gonna see what other people,
• 24:50
  they may go to a G2, they may see what other people are saying about you.
• 24:53
  But I think that people are doing that gonna do more of their own research.
• 25:00
  And they're gonna qualify themselves in,
• 25:02
  go through their own discovery without you as a sales rep,
• 25:04
  and may not even want a demo. I think they're gonna come into the sales cycle
• 25:08
  in stage three. And here's another thing that leaders or sales leaders
• 25:12
  are not training their team for.
• 25:13
  How do we build trust and credibility and education in half the time
• 25:18
  we were given just a year ago?
• 25:21
  Mm, mm hmm, mhm. Yeah.
• 25:23
  And so I just I
• 25:23
  don't know that I don't know that I think with things moving so quickly,
• 25:27
  I don't know that we're gonna talk anybody into as I used to call like
• 25:30
  I don't think we're gonna I don't know we're gonna talk anybody into having
• 25:33
  a discovery call with us anymore.
• 25:34
  You know, I don't think the SD,
• 25:36
  I don't think so. Back to your hyperpersonalization,
• 25:38
  hmm, I don't think it matters.
• 25:40
  Like I think in this day and age,
• 25:43
  people understand what their problems are because if they're having some sort
• 25:47
  of an issue, they're feeding it into AI.
• 25:49
  AI is telling them what the problem is and probably also recommending some solutions
• 25:53
  right off the bat.
• 25:54
  What about what about so what does one do when bringing a new product
• 25:58
  to market though? You know, you've got something that,
• 26:00
  you know, AI doesn't necessarily have that,
• 26:02
  you know, that that breadth of information to be able to offer to the client.
• 26:06
  Client doesn't even know it exists,
• 26:07
  Yeah, you right.
• 26:08
  you
• 26:09
  know, just like, Hey, you know,
• 26:10
  we've got to what what's what do we do?
• 26:11
  You know what would
• 26:12
  yeah, first off, the marketing does own that.
• 26:15
  Like it has to be built out. You have to have all the you have to have
• 26:18
  all of the things that I just mentioned.
• 26:19
  ~
• 26:20
  Yeah.
• 26:20
  the thing the thing that's really working for my clients right
• 26:22
  now are conferences and webinars.
• 26:25
  So
• 26:26
  Really? Okay.
• 26:27
  conferences to get in front of,
• 26:28
  you know, conferences to get in front of the human,
• 26:30
  because humans are kinda starting to are gonna start to crave more
• 26:33
  and more human contact. But the webinar,
• 26:36
  because because AEO and GEO can pick that up.
• 26:39
  Mm-hmm.
• 26:40
  Right. And so, like, you know,
• 26:41
  those things seem to be working more and more.
• 26:43
  But I think, but again, like, so if you're going to market with a new product,
• 26:46
  then you better be everywhere with it.
• 26:47
  And you better be, you know, at the conference.
• 26:50
  That should be the main, you know,
• 26:51
  whether you've got a booth or you don't have a booth,
• 26:52
  that should be what we're talking about.
• 26:53
  You know, but
• 26:54
  Mm-hmm.
• 26:54
  I still think we're still getting a lot of leads from human to human contact,
• 26:58
  meaning webinars
• 26:58
  Mm-hmm.
• 26:59
  and conferences. but I think, you know,
• 27:01
  first off, the best place to start with a new product is your existing base.
• 27:05
  Mm-hmm.
• 27:06
  Right. Customers that you already have.
• 27:08
  Like those are always your best source anyway.
• 27:10
  But I don't have the answers to all these questions,
• 27:12
  but this is just what I'm seeing.
• 27:13
  And I think, you know, we new products are coming out all the time,
• 27:16
  particularly, you know, AI generated products.
• 27:18
  And they're doing, you know, they're doing a really good job of,
• 27:22
  you know, I think putting things out there.
• 27:24
  They things are just changing,
• 27:26
  right? So, freemium, you know,
• 27:28
  like, you know, are we gonna go back to trials and freemium?
• 27:30
  But without a hum what again, like,
• 27:32
  but without the friction.
• 27:34
  Of having to jump through my SDR's questions in order to get your free thirty
• 27:38
  day trial or whatever.
• 27:39
  Those are the things I'm thinking about.
• 27:41
  I think, you know, I think we're gonna have to do a little show and tell
• 27:43
  try it before you buy. People are
• 27:46
  Mm-hmm.
• 27:46
  gonna wanna, you know, touch it and then work through it and then bump
• 27:49
  you up against others.
• 27:51
  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense.
• 27:53
  That makes sense. That makes sense.
• 27:54
  I wanna I wanna jump into into the process engineering side of things.
• 27:59
  that was one of the competencies,
• 28:00
  workflows, and that sort of thing with with the sales leadership.
• 28:03
  And one of the things I'm thinking about is how do we create a so we're we're used
• 28:09
  to creating processes. We do we do that,
• 28:11
  you know, all day, every day. The
• 28:13
  challenge I think is the change with adding agents and you know understanding where
• 28:18
  and how the human in the loop needs to work.
• 28:20
  How do how do we do that? How do we think about that in a way that
• 28:25
  is going to enable us to get the accountability,
• 28:28
  you know, that you talked about further earlier,
• 28:30
  make sure that our team is trained.
• 28:32
  But then the the key thing to process engineering,
• 28:34
  in my opinion, is being able to make the adjustments,
• 28:37
  you know, as as we learn over time.
• 28:38
  How how do we do all that? How do we think about that?
• 28:41
  We first start by just laying it out.
• 28:42
  Like what I'm working with my clients on is I'm like,
• 28:44
  here's the process. What where are the risk?
• 28:47
  Where are the risk parts? Right?
• 28:49
  Those are all human, right? Where there's risk,
• 28:51
  there has to be a human in inserted in there.
• 28:54
  Where are the repetition parts?
• 28:55
  The parts that don't like again,
• 28:57
  like, you know, I've got an agent that attaches to my Granola,
• 29:01
  and on Friday at four o'clock,
• 29:02
  it sends me an email with all of the to-dos for the week,
• 29:04
  right? Okay.
• 29:05
  Mm.
• 29:06
  So, like, like, yes, it would be bad if I missed one,
• 29:09
  but I'm just really using that as a double check to make sure that
• 29:12
  I didn't miss anything. So, did I like,
• 29:14
  you know, can I check everything off the list?
• 29:15
  And then it has a the, you know,
• 29:16
  the little section says, these are ambiguous.
• 29:18
  I'm not really sure. I taught it to like don't guess,
• 29:21
  like put it in another section and then like flag like the most important things,
• 29:25
  dead you know, deadlines coming up.
• 29:26
  So that's low risk, right? Like my memory's good enough that I'd be like,
• 29:31
  aren't we missing something? Like feels like we're missing something,
• 29:33
  and I can go back to my note taker.
• 29:35
  Right. So that's not a big that's not a big risk for us.
• 29:37
  But
• 29:38
  Mm-hmm.
• 29:39
  everything like you're gonna like things are gonna change all the time.
• 29:43
  And so, but first off, like, do you have written processes?
• 29:46
  Like, what are you gonna feed AI?
• 29:48
  Right. If you're trying to put build something for AI to do and it's just coming
• 29:52
  out of your brain, and we don't have a step by step for it,
• 29:55
  you know, if we had a step-by-step,
• 29:56
  we could at least go to AI and say,
• 29:58
  here's the whole process. You own steps two through seven,
• 30:02
  11
• 30:03
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:04
  and 12.
• 30:05
  And 23 and 24. And here's
• 30:07
  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
• 30:08
  what, here are the outcomes of all of those.
• 30:10
  And then humans own the others.
• 30:11
  And then not only do the humans own the others,
• 30:13
  but the humans also own double checking all the ones,
• 30:17
  the numbers I just gave to AI.
• 30:19
  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
• 30:20
  And then, like, it's not set it and forget it.
• 30:22
  Then every month, every quarter.
• 30:25
  So again, who in your organization is responsible for looking
• 30:29
  at those decisions that were made two months ago?
• 30:34
  And now saying today, yeah, that doesn't make sense anymore.
• 30:37
  You know, or things went poorly.
• 30:40
  You know, things went like things went south.
• 30:42
  Like this didn't work as designed.
• 30:44
  And so
• 30:44
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:45
  maybe they can't have 11 and 12 anymore.
• 30:47
  That has to be a human.
• 30:47
  Mm-hmm.
• 30:48
  We we gave it to AI, it didn't go well.
• 30:50
  Now a human has to own it.
• 30:51
  Are we using the same sort of KPIs and reporting and that sort of thing that
• 30:56
  we would traditionally use when we're tracking our you know,
• 31:00
  our process performance?
• 31:02
  No. it's too easy. Like we're not,
• 31:06
  we care less about activity metrics and we care more about outcomes.
• 31:09
  Mm-hmm. Right.
• 31:09
  Because
• 31:11
  I can send more emails now, I can send more personalized emails now.
• 31:14
  That doesn't mean my close rate has improved.
• 31:17
  So the
• 31:18
  Right.
• 31:18
  you know, the things that matter,
• 31:20
  so leading indicators versus lagging indicators,
• 31:23
  like the leading indicators I think mean a whole lot less than they used to,
• 31:27
  and the lagging indicators mean a whole lot more.
• 31:31
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 31:31
  And so
• 31:32
  it's not just about how many emails that you sent,
• 31:34
  it's about how many deals did you close.
• 31:39
  But I mean, looking at the the overall process though,
• 31:41
  so it's gonna be so we're gonna get outcomes from whatever,
• 31:44
  you know, stages, steps in the process that we're gonna have.
• 31:47
  we should be able to check those against,
• 31:50
  you know, a benchmark that we have,
• 31:52
  for example. I mean, is that is that still gonna be the case?
• 31:55
  Are we gonna just feed everything into like AI and say,
• 31:58
  hey, you know, this is this is what we're seeing.
• 32:00
  What are you seeing? Or what is what does that process need to look like
• 32:03
  for the for the leader? I mean,
• 32:04
  this is critical.
• 32:05
  Yeah, I absolutely think that.
• 32:07
  So first off, if your company has not d made a decision about the,
• 32:12
  I'll call it the major AI tool that you're going to use.
• 32:14
  So whether
• 32:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:15
  that's open AI, anthropic, perplexity,
• 32:18
  like what's going to be the single source of AI truth in your organization?
• 32:21
  Because first off, you're at a big risk if everybody's using something different
• 32:26
  and sharing your secrets with AI and you don't have an enterprise version of that,
• 32:31
  big mistake.
• 32:31
  Mm-hmm.
• 32:32
  So if you haven't done that, that's thing one.
• 32:34
  And then
• 32:34
  Yeah.
• 32:35
  thing two is you need to connect it to all your systems.
• 32:37
  I mean, the gentleman that I talked to yesterday who's now in charge
• 32:39
  of AI governance, I said, you're gonna connect that.
• 32:41
  They're using Claude. I said, and it's not Claude Cloud,
• 32:43
  Mm.
• 32:44
  by the way,
• 32:46
  it's Claude Coworker Code. And I said,
• 32:48
  I think cowork will be fine for you at this stage.
• 32:50
  So, but you've got to connect connect cowork to your CRM system,
• 32:55
  your ERP system, your inventory system,
• 32:57
  your like all the things.
• 32:59
  Yeah.
• 33:00
  And so
• 33:01
  You know, like yes, we're still gonna have dashboards,
• 33:04
  and but I'm with you. Like, why wouldn't I leverage AI?
• 33:08
  You know, this is what I think I'm seeing.
• 33:10
  What do you think you're seeing?
• 33:11
  Like he and I talked yesterday,
• 33:13
  like here's an example. He said,
• 33:15
  you know, they're they sell a thing,
• 33:17
  not a not a software. So they sell a a widget and they sell lots of widgets.
• 33:22
  And he said, We need to figure out this was an easy one.
• 33:26
  I'm like, he's like, we need to figure out who hasn't ordered in
• 33:28
  the last two months.
• 33:30
  and you know figure out how to reach out to them and with a suggestion
• 33:34
  on what they should be ordering based on trend.
• 33:36
  And I said,
• 33:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:37
  would you know how long it would take an AE to do that?
• 33:39
  Like like when when AI can do that in a heartbeat.
• 33:44
  And I said, but I
• 33:45
  Mm-hmm.
• 33:45
  wouldn't have AI write the email or push the send button.
• 33:48
  What I do is have AI do the analysis and then send that document to the AE and say,
• 33:54
  here are the companies, here's what they should be buying.
• 33:59
  In the next 30 days,
• 34:01
  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
• 34:02
  you reach out. Like maybe again,
• 34:04
  maybe it's not even an email. Maybe they're gonna make a phone call because they
• 34:06
  already have a relationship. These are existing customers,
• 34:08
  but they're
• 34:09
  Yeah.
• 34:09
  not again, these aren't 12, this is not SaaS,
• 34:11
  right? This is not 12 month, you know,
• 34:12
  this is not three-year contract paid annually.
• 34:14
  So, but you know, in order to keep track of all of the widgets that they sell
• 34:18
  and all of the customers they have and try to figure out who hasn't purchased
• 34:21
  in the last 60 days, and if so,
• 34:23
  then what should they be purchasing?
• 34:24
  AI is a perfect partner for that.
• 34:26
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:28
  But I told him, I said, but he they don't get to write the email.
• 34:30
  Because think about that. If I'm a customer and I get an AI generated email,
• 34:34
  I'm gonna be not happy. Like I have a relationship with you.
• 34:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 34:37
  So, like, you know, those are the kind of things where I get worried about,
• 34:41
  you know, younger generation who doesn't understand the value of
• 34:45
  a relationship with someone who might be in their forties,
• 34:48
  you know, thinking it's okay to have someone else,
• 34:50
  something else write and send that email.
• 34:53
  But these are your customers. This is your bread and butter.
• 34:56
  Do you do you think customer expectations will will go down though?
• 34:59
  I mean, as as we're seeing more AI generated crap that's being put out there?
• 35:05
  I think there'll be a little more tolerance,
• 35:07
  but I think it's certain things,
• 35:09
  right? Like if I'm a customer and I get that,
• 35:11
  how does that make me feel? That doesn't make me feel like an important customer.
• 35:15
  I mean, you you really you couldn't take a couple minutes to pick up
• 35:17
  the phone and call me or sh or personalize that email about that.
• 35:21
  You know,
• 35:22
  Mm-hmm.
• 35:23
  like would we expect it from a cold,
• 35:25
  from a cold outreach? Maybe. Like maybe we'll accept that from a cold outreach,
• 35:29
  but that's but you gotta be very careful about.
• 35:32
  I think you're gonna be very careful,
• 35:33
  particularly about customer success and account management and the
• 35:36
  and people who keep what they catch,
• 35:37
  as I call it. You know, when you've got an exit
• 35:39
  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
• 35:40
  when you get to keep the account that you brought in,
• 35:42
  there's a different level of expectation about that relationship.
• 35:46
  yeah. yeah. It's gotta be. It's gotta be.
• 35:48
  It's it's a human to human relationship.
• 35:48
  Mm-hmm.
• 35:49
  You know, there's trust established,
• 35:51
  you know, with the person along with the company.
• 35:53
  Mm-hmm.
• 35:53
  One of one of the one of the reality checks I think is important.
• 35:57
  So one of the things that you talked about a number of times was just,
• 36:00
  you know, the speed at which we need to operate.
• 36:02
  The challenge that we see sometimes is where there's an expectation to move really,
• 36:08
  really quickly, but reality.
• 36:10
  we know that things don't happen as quickly as we expect them to happen.
• 36:14
  What's what what's a what's a good line of thinking around this?
• 36:18
  What do what do we need to do as leaders?
• 36:21
  Just you need to be aware. And I would say,
• 36:23
  like, you need to build a community.
• 36:25
  like, you know, again, I'm consuming content at some ridiculous pace.
• 36:28
  Well, between like fall of last year when I started to really dig in,
• 36:33
  and like th two or three months ago,
• 36:35
  I was consuming everything. Like every webinar I could get my hands on,
• 36:38
  every article I could read, I dug into all the things.
• 36:40
  But now, now I have the trusted,
• 36:42
  now I figured out who I trust,
• 36:44
  right?
• 36:45
  And so I'm letting a lot of that noise go by the wayside.
• 36:48
  And I've dialed in to probably five-ish companies slash people that
• 36:54
  I truly believe are figuring it out ahead of the rest of us.
• 36:58
  And so
• 36:59
  Mm-hmm.
• 36:59
  I'm gonna let them go try it first,
• 37:01
  right? Like I'm like, you know,
• 37:03
  the early adopters, and I think I,
• 37:05
  you know, I think I was an early adopter,
• 37:06
  but I'm not doing some of the things that other people are doing.
• 37:09
  But I'm like, I'm watching what they're doing.
• 37:11
  Like, again, why would we, why would I want to make the same mistake when they've
• 37:13
  already made it and they can, you know,
• 37:15
  advise me? But people who are being honest about that,
• 37:18
  like the people you should be following,
• 37:19
  are the people who saying, Whoo,
• 37:21
  gave over the SDR team to AI and here's what happened.
• 37:24
  Right? I mean, ironically,
• 37:25
  Yeah.
• 37:27
  Anthropic is hiring a ton of AI or a ton of human SDRs.
• 37:32
  the number of I the number of SDR job postings on LinkedIn is down 61% year to date.
• 37:38
  But the people who are hiring them are the people you would least suspect.
• 37:43
  The AI companies are the
• 37:44
  Huh, that says something right there.
• 37:46
  ones hiring human SDRs. But I don't think they're hiring human SDRs to
• 37:50
  do the human the job that human SDRs did three years ago.
• 37:54
  Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
• 37:54
  I think these
• 37:55
  people are more project managers,
• 37:58
  oversight managers.
• 38:01
  They're the conductor of the orchestra.
• 38:02
  They're not playing the tuba.
• 38:03
  Mm-hmm,
• 38:05
  mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
• 38:06
  Which means, which
• 38:07
  means goes back to the, but that person's gonna have to be smarter than they were.
• 38:11
  Because before we just wanted the SDR to follow the script,
• 38:14
  right? We didn't really want them to think.
• 38:17
  We almost wanted them to check their brain at the door a little bit.
• 38:19
  Like, here are the
• 38:20
  Right.
• 38:20
  questions and here are the answers you're supposed to listen for.
• 38:23
  And if you hear
• 38:23
  Right.
• 38:24
  if three of these four answers are what you're what you we wanted to hear,
• 38:26
  then you get to set the appointment.
• 38:28
  That doesn't take a lot of objective judgment or critical thinking skills.
• 38:32
  But
• 38:33
  Right.
• 38:33
  now I think that SDR job is gonna be.
• 38:36
  much more advanced because they're gonna be responsible for some agents.
• 38:42
  Mm, mm. Give give me an example.
• 38:44
  What what what could that look like?
• 38:46
  the agent sources. So the agent picks the,
• 38:49
  you know, target list. The agent goes out to,
• 38:51
  you know, Apollo or Zoom Info or who might make pick your poison.
• 38:56
  And they determine that. They give you the,
• 38:59
  like, you know, here's here's the touch cadence,
• 39:01
  let's just use an old word cadence.
• 39:02
  And here's how we, you know, here's how it should be done.
• 39:05
  And then the then the SDR is gonna be gonna say,
• 39:08
  yeah, that sounds a little old school.
• 39:10
  Why don't we, before we do anything,
• 39:13
  Why don't we follow them on LinkedIn?
• 39:15
  And why don't you suggest some time some posts that you see that
• 39:19
  I should be commenting on? And then let me go in and warm like warm them
• 39:24
  up a little bit with some comments on LinkedIn.
• 39:26
  And
• 39:27
  Mm-hmm.
• 39:27
  then let's talk about maybe what's the communication we should draft once maybe they
• 39:31
  connect with me or they respond to a comment I had on LinkedIn.
• 39:35
  Like more in you know using more intense signals,
• 39:39
  intent thought process.
• 39:41
  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
• 39:41
  So because AI is
• 39:42
  gonna kind of take they could they'll probably take the old playbook a little bit,
• 39:45
  but then then the SDR can insert them and say,
• 39:48
  no, like, you know, why don't you just alert me when there's a post that
• 39:52
  I should be like, send me the link to the post that I should be commenting
• 39:55
  on and let me go in and comment on that.
• 39:55
  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 39:56
  So like it's
• 39:58
  almost like the SDR has their own assistant.
• 40:01
  Right, right. That's I'm that's helpful.
• 40:03
  I mean, just the just the the prospecting prospecting part of that is is huge.
• 40:08
  I guess with even with follow up and just,
• 40:11
  you know, guiding the the lead through the through the sales process.
• 40:14
  I mean, that's gotta be that's gotta be simplified a bit,
• 40:17
  you know, rather than just kind of just like plugging we can,
• 40:19
  you know, start to it can start to identify trends and that sort of thing that
• 40:22
  we might not see, you know, just as just as humans because there's a whole bunch
• 40:26
  of data.
• 40:27
  Right. Well, I mean again, like even just through the sales cycle,
• 40:29
  thinking about like when is something when should something really move from stage
• 40:32
  two to stage three? A lot
• 40:34
  Yeah.
• 40:34
  of times it's a very subjective,
• 40:36
  right? Like the like I I got most of the information out of stage two.
• 40:40
  You know, like I'm getting getting some positive vibes.
• 40:43
  I'm gonna move that to stage three because as sales reps,
• 40:46
  because there's pressure to do so,
• 40:47
  right? Because all of a sudden we're
• 40:48
  Mm-hmm.
• 40:49
  getting an al you our manager's getting an alert.
• 40:50
  This has been in stage two for twelve days longer than the average or whatever,
• 40:53
  and now where's there's pressure to move it forward.
• 40:55
  But but
• 40:57
  The thing that AI does bring to the table is some objectivity.
• 41:01
  Right?
• 41:02
  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
• 41:03
  Like based on the other five things in stage three in your pipeline,
• 41:07
  this one doesn't qualify.
• 41:08
  Mm-hmm.
• 41:09
  Like, here are all the things that I'm seeing on these stage three deals that
• 41:12
  I'm not seeing in this one. It's not ready to go yet.
• 41:14
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 41:15
  Right.
• 41:16
  And it doesn't have the pressure.
• 41:17
  AI doesn't have the pressure from the manager.
• 41:19
  It doesn't have a quota to hit,
• 41:22
  and it doesn't have a mortgage to pay.
• 41:24
  Right, right, right. That makes sense.
• 41:26
  That makes sense. I th I think is I I think this is gonna be really this episode
• 41:29
  is gonna be really helpful helpful for leaders as we're pushing forward into this.
• 41:32
  I wanna ask you, I d I don't think I asked you the last time you were on the show.
• 41:35
  the name of the show is called the Relentless Pursuit of Winning Podcast.
• 41:38
  And the challenge that we have sometimes is not the definition of winning,
• 41:42
  but it's rather that maintaining that relentless pursuit.
• 41:45
  You know, so my question for you is
• 41:48
  What would you recommend to our audience?
• 41:49
  How how what kinds of things can they do,
• 41:51
  should they do in order to be able to maintain that relentless pursuit?
• 41:55
  I think the circle matters, right?
• 41:56
  Do you have people in your corner who are,
• 41:59
  you know, encouraging you, cheering you on,
• 42:03
  telling you they're proud of you,
• 42:04
  you know, giving you the high five?
• 42:05
  Like, you know, it's easier to sales is a high rejection sport,
• 42:09
  right? I mean, every day, right?
• 42:12
  Like it's it could be really, it could be real draining.
• 42:15
  But do you have people
• 42:15
  Mm-hmm.
• 42:16
  who say, like, you know, even though that,
• 42:18
  even though that didn't happen,
• 42:19
  like that was a really good question that you asked?
• 42:21
  Like, even though you didn't get the right answer,
• 42:22
  you didn't get the answer you wanted.
• 42:24
  That was a really
• 42:24
  Mm-hmm.
• 42:24
  good question. Like that was a really challenging question.
• 42:26
  So, like, who are you surrounding yourself with?
• 42:29
  Because to me, the people who I surround myself with who are also in
• 42:33
  the process of relentless pursuit,
• 42:34
  we're all like, we're all giving ourselves the high five,
• 42:38
  patting ourselves on the back,
• 42:39
  like that didn't work out. The next one's going to.
• 42:41
  So I'm always about first and foremost,
• 42:43
  like your circle matters. ~ and
• 42:45
  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
• 42:46
  I think the other thing I would say is you can't be good,
• 42:49
  you're not gonna be good at everything,
• 42:50
  right?
• 42:52
  So have you identified your superpowers?
• 42:54
  And how about double down on those?
• 42:57
  Like if you double down on your superpower,
• 42:59
  like I always like again, I so old that like when I first read Good to Great,
• 43:03
  right? They basically were like,
• 43:05
  you can take a B skill and make it an A skill,
• 43:07
  but you're never gonna take a D skill and make it an A skill.
• 43:10
  Like, unless it's
• 43:10
  Mm-hmm.
• 43:11
  just new to you, right? But if you like,
• 43:12
  if it said something like, you know,
• 43:13
  like, I was just never a science girl,
• 43:16
  like, even if I wanted to like science,
• 43:19
  which I did not.
• 43:20
  But I didn't like because I
• 43:20
  I mean.
• 43:20
  didn't what I didn't get it. I didn't like it.
• 43:22
  I wasn't good at it. Right.
• 43:23
  Mm-hmm.
• 43:23
  And so like I'm never gonna, I was never gonna be an A student.
• 43:26
  But I loved words. And so,
• 43:31
  you know, AP English was my thing.
• 43:33
  I became
• 43:33
  Mm-hmm.
• 43:34
  a journalism major. I just doubled down on what I already enjoyed and was good at.
• 43:39
  So I think it's much easier to relentlessly pursue something.
• 43:43
  Like, you know, right now I'm learning to play golf,
• 43:45
  right? Like
• 43:46
  Mm.
• 43:47
  I'm I just read a book.
• 43:48
  I'm taking lessons on Friday, trying to play twice a week.
• 43:52
  You know, I'm like, I'm working on like I spent two weeks just working
• 43:55
  on my pitching. You know, like
• 43:56
  Mm-hmm.
• 43:56
  I, I, again, as a competitive person,
• 43:59
  like, I don't want to be the one in the foursome that holds everybody back.
• 44:03
  Mm-hmm.
• 44:03
  I don't want the next group of four waiting on me because I have to
• 44:06
  hit twice as many shots as the people I'm playing with.
• 44:09
  I am relentlessly
• 44:10
  Mm-hmm.
• 44:11
  trying to get better at golf from everything,
• 44:13
  everything I can think of, right?
• 44:15
  I'm reading a book.
• 44:16
  going to lessons, I'm practicing on my own.
• 44:18
  Like I don't mind going to the cour golf course by myself to do nine by myself.
• 44:21
  Like I want to get better. You know,
• 44:23
  Mm, mm.
• 44:24
  and so like I
• 44:25
  think, you know, I think if you're trying to want if you're you're
• 44:27
  not going to relentlessly pursue anything that you're not passionate about
• 44:30
  and that you don't want to improve.
• 44:32
  So,
• 44:32
  Yeah.
• 44:33
  you know, find like minded people.
• 44:34
  Like I got a whole new, you know,
• 44:36
  I used I played tennis tennis competitive for 20 years.
• 44:38
  So I had to go find a whole new group of of golfers.
• 44:42
  Right. I didn't
• 44:43
  Mm.
• 44:43
  have those people in my circle.
• 44:45
  I, you know, I knew a couple people,
• 44:46
  but I made a decision I wanted to get better and I wanted to play golf.
• 44:49
  And so I started to have to ask,
• 44:51
  you know, I started asking everybody,
• 44:52
  like, do you guys golf do you golf?
• 44:53
  Because not everybody talks about it,
• 44:55
  right? They don't always talk about the that,
• 44:56
  you know, like, you know, and so now I have like a new little circle of people who,
• 45:02
  you know, are play, you know, play at a good enough level that they're
• 45:05
  not holding up the next group.
• 45:06
  I love that. I love that. I love that.
• 45:08
  Yeah. That the the circle thing really resonates with me.
• 45:10
  I mean both both, but I I I like the circle thing.
• 45:13
  just the the ability to bounce ideas,
• 45:15
  get more information, you know,
• 45:16
  get shared experience versus just,
• 45:18
  you know, just what I've got in my in my little brain.
• 45:21
  So I love that. Thank you. Exactly.
• 45:21
  It's the iron sharpens iron, right?
• 45:22
  I mean, winners wanna spend time with other winners.
• 45:24
  Exactly. Exactly.
• 45:25
  They just do, right?
• 45:27
  Exactly.
• 45:28
  Even if the even if how they're winning,
• 45:29
  like even if they're winning at doing something completely different than
• 45:32
  how I'm winning. Like it's
• 45:33
  Yeah.
• 45:33
  just it's the feeling you get when you're around those people that
• 45:36
  you wanna keep up.
• 45:37
  Exactly. Exactly. last question for you.
• 45:40
  tell us your book is coming out Give us give us a little bit of a synopsis,
• 45:43
  what we can look for.
• 45:44
  Yeah, I'm hoping actually the book will come out by the end of October.
• 45:47
  really it's broken into three sections.
• 45:49
  So The Sales Leadership Gap And the first section is all about like,
• 45:52
  where are we? Like, and why does why would we want to change our leadership style?
• 45:56
  Right. I'm gonna give you the why.
• 45:57
  Like, why does it matter? Why would we need to do that?
• 45:59
  And then the second section is some of the things I shared with you.
• 46:03
  So I'm calling it the leadership inventory.
• 46:05
  Like, here are the
• 46:05
  Mm-hmm.
• 46:05
  10 things that you need to have competency around.
• 46:08
  And then the next chapter is pick the two that you don't.
• 46:12
  that you don't have any competency around.
• 46:13
  And I'm giving you some suggestions about how to build that competency.
• 46:16
  and then, and then really I go into hiring.
• 46:18
  Like how does that, you know, how does it then now that you've got the competency,
• 46:21
  I'm assuming you're gonna go do the do the work.
• 46:23
  Now that you have the competency,
• 46:25
  what does it look like now to lead your team?
• 46:27
  That includes hiring, that includes accountability,
• 46:30
  changing how you're holding them accountable,
• 46:32
  that you know, that includes design and systems thinking.
• 46:36
  you know, and then the last chapter is the whole like let's put it together
• 46:39
  and what do you need to do in the next ninety days to be in a much different place
• 46:42
  than you are today.
• 46:43
  Mm, mm. Sounds good, sounds good.
• 46:45
  And it's October this year, not next year,
• 46:47
  hoping yeah, I'm hoping this year.
• 46:47
  right?
• 46:48
  Yep. It's it's at the proofreader now
• 46:50
  and I got the first cover draft.
• 46:52
  So I'm hoping hoping we can pull this off this year.
• 46:55
  Amazing, amazing. Send me a cover draft if if you can.
• 46:57
  ~ we'll put that up with your show notes.
• 46:58
  Yeah. Yeah. Okay,
• 47:00
  if someone
• 47:01
  great.
• 47:01
  wants to keep in touch with you,
• 47:03
  someone wants to, you know, get updates on on when the book's coming out,
• 47:05
  what's the best way to do that?
• 47:07
  Ping me on LinkedIn and send you know,
• 47:09
  make a connection, send me a note,
• 47:11
  tell me what you took away from this,
• 47:12
  and then my website is kristiekjones.com There's a book tab at the top
• 47:16
  and you can keep track of what's happening with the book along the way.
• 47:20
  Amazing, amazing. Kristie, thank you so much.
• 47:22
  It's been such a pleasure talking to you again.
• 47:25
  Thank you for having me on again.
• 47:26
  I appreciate it. I always I always love talking shop with you.
• 47:29
  Awesome, awesome.
• 47:30
  Thank you so much. And folks, thank you so much for watching or listening
• 47:33
  to another episode of the Relentless Pursuit of Winning Podcast.
• 47:35
  We'll catch you next time.