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EP351 Use AI to Save Sales Time Before You Hire Your First Rep · Profit With A Plan

• 0:15
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: The follow-up, prep, outreach proposals, and pipeline management all compete for that time that you should be spent, leading your business.
• 0:26
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So in this episode of Profit with a Plan, we're going to be talking about how solo CEO salespeople can use AI to save time now, know when they're ready to hire their first salesperson, and to avoid costly hiring and compensation mistakes.
• 0:43
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So if sales is running through you, this conversation will help you make the next move smarter.
• 0:52
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Hey entrepreneurs, are you working too hard for too little profit? Well, welcome to Profit with a Plan Podcast, where we help business owners grow smarter, increase profitability, and build a company that's worth more, whether you plan to keep it or sell it.
• 1:06
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I'm Marcia Reiner, Business Growth Strategist and Profit Booster behind Infinite Profit.
• 1:12
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Each week, I bring practical strategies, expert insights, and real-world steps to help you grow revenue, improve your margin, and build a stronger business.
• 1:23
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Today's episode is brought to you by Infinite Profit, where strategy turns into profitable growth.
• 1:29
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: But before we jump in, I have something special for you. If revenue has plateaued, or your marketing is just not producing the return it should.
• 1:40
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Please go check out and get the free Profit Booster Growth Map. In just a couple of minutes, it'll help you identify where you can bring in more qualified clients.
• 1:49
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And where profit leaks may be costing you money. So go get yours after the show, obviously, at ProfitBooster.biz. And by the way, there's no sales call required.
• 2:01
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Now, let's get into today's conversation. My guest today is Greg Grand. He is the founder of the AI Sales Leader, where he helps sales leaders and business owners use AI in practical, measurable ways inside the sales process.
• 2:18
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: He brings more than 30 years of enterprise sales experience, leadership experience, including building, major accounts like Google and Apple during his time at Celestia.
• 2:29
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: He also spent 8 years running G-Squared Advisors as a fractional CRO, helping companies improve sales strategy, leadership, and revenue performance.
• 2:41
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Greg has built the first AI certification suite specifically designed for sales leaders, and now he speaks to Vistid CEO groups about how AI is really doing, this inside sales team.
• 2:56
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So, Greg, welcome to Profit with a Plan podcast. I'm excited to have you on here, and I just love this topic!
• 3:02
  Greg Grand: I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me on, Marcia.
• 3:06
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Absolutely. Okay, so how did you get into sales, right? Were you selling lemonade at the corner?
• 3:11
  Greg Grand: when you were.
• 3:11
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I mean, how'd you get here?
• 3:14
  Greg Grand: Boy, this is the age thing. Newspapers, door-to-door, is actually how I started, you know. I was pretty young, 13, 14 years old, something like that. Never thought I would end up, you know, as a salesperson. It seemed kind of natural to me, I don't know why.
• 3:28
  Greg Grand: Anyway, so then I got distracted and went to school and got a degree in electrical engineering and thought I was going to be an engineer, and then when I went out interviewing for engineering jobs, they wanted to put me into technical sales roles, and…
• 3:39
  Greg Grand: You know, finally went over to the dark side, and then the story goes on and on from there, you know? But it wasn't planned. I thought I was going to be a design engineer, was the initial plan on the book, but life takes you in different paths sometimes, right?
• 3:52
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You know, and that's the beauty of it, right? I mean, I got into financial services and was always… every job I had had money in it, and but what I… what I really, truly loved was the… the growth and the marketing of the company, so I evolved after many failed attempts at trying to do what the… what the traditional folks wanted you to do. So, you know, it's… it's just… we… we're… we're pulled.
• 4:17
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And we have to go that way, which is why, I mean, we've spent, what, a couple hours now talking about different AI strategies and how they,
• 4:25
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Help out businesses.
• 4:26
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So, I love that you've put this into sales, so tell me a little bit about the… how you're doing that.
• 4:33
  Greg Grand: Yeah, so I think, you know, for myself, being an engineer, I've always been close to technology and enjoyed it, you know, and I think, for me, I haven't been as excited about technology, in 30 years, you know, because it's just… it's amazing right now.
• 4:45
  Greg Grand: So, in being a fractional CRO and working with many sales teams over the years, especially in the past couple years, me being so focused on AI, I realized there's just a huge gap out there. There's a lot of noise, there's a lot of tools, there's a lot of disconnected information.
• 4:58
  Greg Grand: But there isn't a cohesive way to really look soup to nuts from a consultative salesperson, or leader, or a CEO, trying to get from, you know, point A to point B.
• 5:09
  Greg Grand: in one thing. So there's sales training programs, there's sales coaching programs, maybe they have a bolt-on.
• 5:14
  Greg Grand: So I said, this doesn't exist in the marketplace, wouldn't it be great if there was a program that was AI-forward for consultative sales? Not just, here's consultative sales, here's an AI role-play tool, but hey, here's how you build your ICP, here's how you build your prospecting, here's how you do your research, step by step, in a very methodical, process-oriented fashion.
• 5:32
  Greg Grand: So, it didn't exist, so I built it.
• 5:35
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I love it. And you know, you mentioned something that is incredibly important to differentiate.
• 5:41
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: everything out there is bolted on. Everything out there is this little add-on thing that doesn't connect or talk, or work through, or figure out what everything else is doing with you. So it's amazing that you kind of built it as a through piece that really connects everything together.
• 5:59
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So, I love that idea.
• 6:01
  Greg Grand: One of the biggest issues, right, is because you have, and even myself, I was guilty, so I think that this, and this would be good for your listeners that are new to it, I spent a year and a half chasing the shiny nickel, right? Oh, I got this email, this one's gotta do this one. And I ended up saying, well, I want to check this out, but I don't have time to check it out right now. And I would be embarrassed to show you the folder, but I had a folder on my desktop of about 150, 200 different website links that I was going to eventually get to.
• 6:25
  Greg Grand: And then I do a trial on this one, and I… 5 minutes, right?
• 6:29
  Greg Grand: That's not the way to do it. The way to do it, that I found, is everything you're doing throughout your day, just think, is there a way AI could help me with this? Look at the problem, and can AI help as a force multiplier to get you to the solution? Versus trying to buy a tool that will solve a specific problem. Back up.
• 6:47
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Damn.
• 6:49
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Wow.
• 6:50
  Greg Grand: That was a big help for me.
• 6:51
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Amazing help. And so, when we're looking at how AI can help you in the sales process, give us some ideas of how the AI is actually helping you save time and actually dialing in your process.
• 7:04
  Greg Grand: Oh, gosh, it's… there's so many ways. I think the big ones that jump out to me, in particular, are client research.
• 7:11
  Greg Grand: Right, so if you look at a typical salesperson, what I would hear… I've heard for years is, well, you know, I couldn't have those calls because I spent 4 hours last week doing research.
• 7:19
  Greg Grand: So I was on a call, I was doing a training this morning, and the guy said, I have a call later. I said, okay, I want you to put this prompt in, and let's keep talking. Five minutes later, like, he had a dossier on the company, the decision makers, what their backgrounds were, new press releases, trigger events, 3…
• 7:37
  Greg Grand: Cold email attempts in a script and discovery questions. In 5 minutes.
• 7:42
  Greg Grand: Now, think about how long that would take to manually even think out, no less document it, and get it done. That's a day of work. So, if I look at…
• 7:52
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yeah.
• 7:53
  Greg Grand: Sure, so that's just research. Then there's the prep for the meetings.
• 7:56
  Greg Grand: Right? Then there's the follow-up from the meetings. Then there's managing your pipeline. If you're a leader.
• 8:02
  Greg Grand: How do you manage… how do you do the one-on-ones? How do you get all the reports set up? How do you run all this kind of stuff? A lot of this stuff can now be automated, so there is the time-saving things, but there's also the force multiplier of how you can get it done. So this program, this has been years of work.
• 8:17
  Greg Grand: But this years of work was in scattered documents in a Google Drive.
• 8:22
  Greg Grand: So the first thing I did is I had co-work organized 30 years of my life. And then I said, this is what I want to do. We built out the program, I talked to it, I use Whisper Flow, I don't type anymore.
• 8:33
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I can't type anyways, it's all…
• 8:35
  Greg Grand: I'm like a two-finger dude.
• 8:37
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Sure.
• 8:37
  Greg Grand: So, 6 weeks later, Claude did 700 PowerPoint slides for me.
• 8:41
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Wow.
• 8:42
  Greg Grand: So I… well, this was built in my head to complete this entire business from…
• 8:48
  Greg Grand: I'm gonna do this, finally, to having it up and launched, and selling it, 6 weeks.
• 8:55
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Wow.
• 8:57
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That's amazing.
• 8:59
  Greg Grand: in revenue after 6 weeks, right?
• 9:01
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yeah, the go-to-market opportunity for an idea is fantastic, but I love the fact that
• 9:07
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You are doing… so… so a proper salesperson
• 9:12
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: when they're building a relationship, right? They're not just selling a widget here, buy my shit, right?
• 9:18
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: They want to have that relationship with someone. They want to understand the problems that the company is having, the issues that they're having with their products that you can solve and come in. So that's where that research barrier just bogged everybody down.
• 9:34
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And… and what I've found, when I've played a little bit in it, when I've made my proposals to prospective clients, is I said, okay, tell me where, now that we know all this information, tell me where the… where the gap is that I could fill, right? So now he's guiding me, and I'm sure yours is, like, you know, light years ahead of my basic prompt, but…
• 9:54
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So that he can guide me to get to the results that will help the borrower, the client, the prospective client, latch on to the idea that I could help.
• 10:05
  Greg Grand: Well, you brought something that's really important there, and I say this, unfortunately, too often. So, let's face it, the reputation of a salesperson is generally not great, you know, there's always the used car salesperson, and I hate to say this, but this is the fact of sales today. I'd say over 90% of salespeople are what I call show-up-and-throw-up salespeople.
• 10:22
  Greg Grand: Yep. So they want to come in, and they want to pitch a deck, and they want to show you a PDF, and I'll tell any salesperson the best presentation is the one you never did. And I'm trying to teach salespeople how to, like, it's… you use the doctor's office analogy all the time. Do you go into a doctor's office, shake his hand, tell him back hurts, he gives you pills and sends you out? No. He moves you around, he asks you a bunch of questions. That's the rule of a consultative salesperson. So I can help. So, for instance, what I was talking about before.
• 10:45
  Greg Grand: I said to the guy, do you know the accountant? He goes, no. I said, well, why don't we go and ask AI what the top 3 pain points for somebody in this role, in this business might be, and what questions you could ask to uncover that.
• 10:58
  Greg Grand: Like, I don't even know if you could figure that out, just brainpower doing the research. Like, this is the kind of… so I… okay, that just saved me a half hour. I just saved… look at the salesperson we talked about before that just saved 8 hours of planning, right? That's 32 hours a month.
• 11:12
  Greg Grand: Annualize that. That's 400 hours of selling you got back by one freaking prompt!
• 11:17
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That's insane.
• 11:19
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That's insane. So, so that's amazing. So, it's gonna give you the client information, or the prospective client information, and the angle you can use to be helpful to that client, and make sure that they know, I've done my research, I'm valuable, I understand you.
• 11:37
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I have the solution for you, right? You're solving all the… all the…
• 11:42
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: all the Heisman's that you get, all the blockers that you get when you go into a sales call, right? Oh, well, I can't do that, or oh, you don't know me, or we're different, you know, and you're like, but I know you now, so…
• 11:55
  Greg Grand: Let's go to the next level, right? So you can set up that meeting, and you can say, what are the pain points, what are the questions, what are the potential objections I could get?
• 12:03
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Exactly!
• 12:04
  Greg Grand: And how am I gonna counter those objections? And you can just go down.
• 12:07
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Before they even ask them, right?
• 12:09
  Greg Grand: take it even to the next level, what we were talking about before I got in here, you build an AI role-play tool. You can create that meeting and role-play it before you even walk into the room, take that transcript, review it, and say, what if they did good, what they could do better, and then you, like, actually ran through the meeting.
• 12:25
  Greg Grand: And now you actually go into the real meeting, and man, you are dialed! It's like you already had the meeting before.
• 12:31
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So, here's… here's something that I'd love to throw out on the table. So… in…
• 12:37
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: years past, you know, you had salespeople, right? These are the… these are the people that really make business run.
• 12:46
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: But now, everybody needs to be a salesperson, whether you're in customer service, or you're leading the crew, or you're on the financial side, you're always
• 12:58
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: selling, right? So everybody, not just the sales guy, right? And the shiny suit and, you know, slick car, and everything, he's not the only person that needs these skills, right?
• 13:11
  Greg Grand: Everybody… I mean, look, I would say that's life. Like, everybody, you're selling all the time, whatever you're doing, in some capacity or not.
• 13:18
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: state you're selling, right?
• 13:19
  Greg Grand: That's right, exactly, exactly. But yeah, I think that people are… it's just expected now, right, where there's that component.
• 13:27
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So, how does one, I always get, you know, I think I… how do I say this? So, I believe that… that knowledge gives somebody confidence.
• 13:38
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And I'm always a little uncomfortable with that cold sale, right? You know? When I'm talking to someone, I'm fine, but that initial phone call out, hey, would you consider
• 13:49
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: book in some time where I can show you what I can do for you. That has always been the…
• 13:54
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: the ickiest thing for me, right? I'd rather spend 8 hours messing with my AI agents than actually picking up the phone and making the call. So, do you have ways that AI could help give me the confidence to make that call?
• 14:10
  Greg Grand: You need an AI therapist, Marcia.
• 14:13
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I do, I do.
• 14:14
  Greg Grand: Well, I'll tell you, though, it's interesting, though, because I do that too, though. I mean, I do talk to AI about other things and things like that, so you can have that discussion, right? I gotta make these cold calls, I don't know what I don't want to do. But I think that there's two different things, right? So my focus is…
• 14:31
  Greg Grand: process, strategy, like, technology kind of thing. I'm not, like, the Tony Robbins guy, and I think that's kind of the path. Oh, no, no, I'm not talking…
• 14:39
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: mindset that I need someone to help me pick up the phone, but I've always found that
• 14:45
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: when I feel comfortable, when I feel like I understand the situation, then my
• 14:51
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: confidence steps up, and then I can.
• 14:53
  Greg Grand: Oh, sure.
• 14:53
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: thing.
• 14:54
  Greg Grand: Yeah, yeah, totally. But that's having knowledge, and the AI will give you the knowledge to get that comfort and power. And I think that the other thing, of course, is you have to be disciplined. The first thing is you've got to time block your prospecting. You have to do it.
• 15:07
  Greg Grand: whether you want to do it or not, look, prospecting's not fun, but you gotta do it. And I think the other thing with… I don't like the idea of cold prospecting, cold, cold, cold prospecting is tough. So, I believe prospecting, where it becomes effective, is when you're following trigger events.
• 15:23
  Greg Grand: So, things that, for your clients, if something happens, somebody gets promoted, or gets a new job, or goes somewhere, you have a reason to reach out. And I think providing value now, too. Like, if I'm prospecting, it's pretty rare that I'm trying to sell or set it. That's the annoying salesperson. Like, I don't know you, and you're gonna set a cold meeting. I, you know, I do a lot of stuff on LinkedIn, hey, you know, blah blah blah, I had this article, thought you might be… I'm eventually gonna ask them for a meeting, but, like.
• 15:48
  Greg Grand: especially if you're using LinkedIn, I'll tell you, the quickest way for me to block you on LinkedIn as a CEO is to ask me for a connection request and try and sell me something. I will block you. And I'll report you, too.
• 15:57
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That never happens to me!
• 15:58
  Greg Grand: No.
• 15:59
  Greg Grand: Never.
• 16:00
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Like, at least 25 times a day! Oh my gosh! And it's so funny, because you can see right through them. They make the profile connection, then I'm looking, going, okay, what do they want to sell me, right?
• 16:12
  Greg Grand: Or have you gotten a hey first name before? I got a couple of those.
• 16:15
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yeah! Oh gosh, that's great.
• 16:19
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That's great. But yeah, it's crazy how the sales process works, but…
• 16:24
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Or the current sales process that's not so good, that has had every one of us put up, you know, 4-inch thick cement walls around us to protect us from the salesperson, when that's not how you do it.
• 16:39
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: you know, I… there's gotta be a better way, and it sounds like you've kind of dialed it in to be able to showcase this.
• 16:47
  Greg Grand: So…
• 16:47
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Tell us about your consultative sales process and how and why it works with AI.
• 16:53
  Greg Grand: Yeah, so I think there's a lot of things as far as that process. So let's look at that, just, let's just go down the road of the cold prospecting. So, let's talk about what doesn't work anymore. What doesn't work anymore is sending out a thousand emails a week to strangers.
• 17:05
  Greg Grand: Yes. Especially if you're in a B2B environment. Maybe B2C, that still works, I don't know, that's not my space. So what you have to do now is you have to use a tech… not technology, but a technique called multi-threading. What multi-threading is you're using different channels to try and create familiarity and comfort with your prospect. So, the old
• 17:24
  Greg Grand: Playbook 2000 says, okay, I'm gonna build a 5-step sequence, which is just an automated, like, a drip campaign thing, and I'm gonna send them an email every 4 days, and hopefully they reach out. Well, now, chances are, you're not… email's not even getting through. If it's getting through, it's going into spam or other.
• 17:40
  Greg Grand: Right? And if you even got through to the main box, you're gonna be like, who the hell is this person?
• 17:44
  Greg Grand: So, that's only one touch. I only believe email is just maybe they see the main aim. So, when I talk about multi-threading, I'm talking about using all the technologies and platforms. So, Monday, you are sending that email.
• 17:57
  Greg Grand: And then Thursday, you are connecting with them on LinkedIn, and maybe saying, hey, I saw we have 43 shared connections, thought it'd be good to know we're in the same space.
• 18:05
  Greg Grand: And you're gonna walk away. And you're gonna come back, and 6 days later, you're gonna send them an email. Hopefully you get a response. And then you're gonna go to LinkedIn, and then you're gonna make a phone call, and then maybe you're gonna send a handwritten card. So, you can use AI to map this out. You say, hey, I want to build a multi-threaded is the tag word. A multi-threaded sequence to this person. Here's their business, here's what they care about. I love if you have a discovery call or any kind of call. Like, I just did this this morning.
• 18:29
  Greg Grand: I had a call with this guy I was talking about before. In between calls, I took the transcript, I put it into Claude, and he wanted to talk again today, so I knew he was really motivated. And I said, I don't have time to analyze this, but give me 5 questions I can ask him on the next call.
• 18:43
  Greg Grand: Got done, popped it up, went in the call. I said, you know, we talked a half hour ago. I seemed so smart. I didn't even know what the hell was in Claude. But I got through the meeting pretty well.
• 18:51
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Wow.
• 18:54
  Greg Grand: You can use it to build all the messaging out. Now, the caveat, of course, is don't let the eye write for you completely, but if I wanted to do that, I could say, I want you to build me a 10 or 12-step sequence, which is important, because if you look at it statistically, back 5 years ago, to reach out cold, the statistic was it would take about 5 to 6 touches to get somebody to actually lock in and respond if there was interest.
• 19:14
  Greg Grand: It's, like, 12 now.
• 19:15
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Oh, I think it's higher.
• 19:17
  Greg Grand: Good day.
• 19:17
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: 17, 18 now.
• 19:19
  Greg Grand: Right, so while I'm.
• 19:20
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: it's really, really hard, because we've got that 4-inch wall… oh my goodness.
• 19:26
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: There was just a crazy earthquake.
• 19:29
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: It's still rolling here in Las Vegas, which is…
• 19:31
  Greg Grand: Gosh.
• 19:31
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Completely unusual. I thought my… I thought my computer screens were gonna fall off the desk.
• 19:37
  Greg Grand: So, sorry about that.
• 19:38
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: that. No, crazy.
• 19:39
  Greg Grand: Crazy. Okay.
• 19:40
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Hair on my arms are standing.
• 19:41
  Greg Grand: Nope, that was…
• 19:42
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: crazy. So barring the fact that a truck just hit the building, I'm doing okay. Good, good.
• 19:49
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So, yeah, so now that we have this 4-inch thick wall around us, I think that's what's extending it.
• 19:56
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Some of the things that I hear out there that are working really well in the sales process that I know that AI can help us get that information is what you've mentioned a couple times. Finding out a trigger event, right?
• 20:09
  Greg Grand: Finding outside.
• 20:10
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: something that has gone on. Hey, they just got in the newspaper, or their CEO was just recognized as something or other. And, you know, things like that. Sorry, my phone is now ringing because people are concerned.
• 20:25
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So yeah, it's… it's… isn't that a better way to warm up that introduction? And can't AI help you figure that out?
• 20:34
  Greg Grand: All day long, and that's the magic. Because now you have… okay, so I don't know you, and I just, like, okay, I do business with companies that are $1 to $5 million, and they're in the food and beverage space, like, whatever. I think that's your client profile, right? So… Right. Yeah, so…
• 20:48
  Greg Grand: But, so you can use AI to ferret that stuff out, like you said. Now, I… for that, you need… probably Sales Navigator, right? That's the best tool for that. But so, okay, so I reach out to you, hey, Marcia, I saw we have, I thought you looked… I saw your profile, you look really cool, I looked to connect with you. Or, hey, Marcie, I saw that blog you just did, and what you said about ABC really resonated, because I have this client, ABC, good to connect, maybe we should talk sometime.
• 21:11
  Greg Grand: I'm out.
• 21:12
  Greg Grand: what leaves a better impression? Like, it's a no-brainer, right?
• 21:16
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Definitely a no-brainer.
• 21:17
  Greg Grand: I'm not selling, I'm not asking for the meeting on that.
• 21:21
  Greg Grand: And then the next one, I may just say, hey, I saw this article, I was thinking of you. And then, when I get to that third or fifth one, I say, okay, obviously, you know, I want to talk with you about something, so… but I just, again, just don't rush, and I think that's the problem. You use Tuesday or Thursday at 1 o'clock. No, throw that shit out, it doesn't work anymore.
• 21:37
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Didn't ever work? That's what all…
• 21:39
  Greg Grand: I don't think so.
• 21:40
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: It's somebody that never was in a successful sales situation that said that that works, when you come in with the assumptive close of, like, oh, does Tuesday or Thursday at, you know, 2 o'clock work for you?
• 21:51
  Greg Grand: It's icky.
• 21:53
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: It is icky!
• 21:54
  Greg Grand: It's so icky.
• 21:55
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And that's where… that's where the consultative, direction attracts me. And, you know, I'm one of value, let me give value, let me show you that I know how to solve problems through value. Let me give you some ideas that you can play with. And if you like them…
• 22:13
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: then you're gonna see, oh, maybe she's got more ideas, right? And ways that you can help.
• 22:19
  Greg Grand: Yeah.
• 22:20
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: So I think that that's the power of sales in today's environment, is that… that relationship, that connection, but then the value. What can you give me? What can I… what can I do for you to show you that I can actually perform, right?
• 22:35
  Greg Grand: Because…
• 22:36
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: names… testimonials are, you know, I can dial those up.
• 22:43
  Greg Grand: Yeah.
• 22:43
  Greg Grand: No question about it.
• 22:45
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I know, right? So yeah, so… so how do we, so… so tell me a little bit more. I know that you've got this process, and it's about sales, it's about consultative direction, it's about the way that we connect with the audience, it's some tools and everything that we can use, but
• 23:03
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: we're using bolt-on AI, or now are we using things that are more interactive with my business and understand my business?
• 23:10
  Greg Grand: Oh, it's only that. So, I'm not the system integrator. I can guide you and tell you different integrations. I've done them, I've worked with clients putting together. This is about… there's different programs, right? There's a leadership program, and there's actual sales programs, but they are all about…
• 23:25
  Greg Grand: having you learn to use AI for your business specifically to increase sales for you, so you can beat your quota. Either your team's beating the quota, or you personally are beating your quota. So, for instance, let's look at the flagship project, which is the Certified AI Sales Leadership Program. So that's a 16-week program.
• 23:44
  Greg Grand: 2 hours a week, and every sales leader or CEO, CEOs do this as well, that have sales teams they're managing, you leave every week with 5 prompts. So, over the 16 weeks of working with me, just alone that, you are going to leave the program with 80 prompts that I've tested and built and are battle-tested, and they work.
• 24:03
  Greg Grand: Wow. Then we take those prompts, and then we build them to your… so we did one this morning. Guy had a meeting with the COO in 20 minutes. I said, what are you supposed to do? He goes, I don't know, he gave me this agenda. Okay, let's do it right now. And he came in, you know, he's gonna go into that meeting with, like, a four-play plan now. Is it perfect? No. Was it developed in 10 minutes? Yes. But what would he have walked in there without that? So I'm in there… so a lot of times what I'll do, I'm working with this one sales leader now.
• 24:28
  Greg Grand: And we do…
• 24:29
  Greg Grand: 90 minutes of training, and then we do 90 minutes just freeform, where I put my fractional CRO hat on. So I can say, this is what we did.
• 24:36
  Greg Grand: How do we nail this directly into your business and help your team? So everything I do is incredibly customized to the client and their business model.
• 24:45
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Love it. And where does that… so how does that improve the value of the company when they have this kind of system in play?
• 24:53
  Greg Grand: Sales go up.
• 24:54
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: they expect.
• 24:54
  Greg Grand: Sales. Higher sales, more efficient salespeople, which equates to higher sales. If I can give… here, if I can give everyone on your sales team a day back a week.
• 25:04
  Greg Grand: What is that? How much can that make you?
• 25:07
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yeah. That's it. Yeah, that's…
• 25:09
  Greg Grand: When you look at the cost of the training, it's like a round… Yeah, it's like the cost of the training, it's a rounding error in that case.
• 25:15
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yeah, wow, okay. So you're teaching process, you're teaching systemization, you're teaching actual improved sales opportunities, right?
• 25:27
  Greg Grand: When results.
• 25:28
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: do it.
• 25:28
  Greg Grand: results. Not so much… opportunities lead to results. So yes, I'm going to help them build a pipeline, but I'm also gonna help them build the pipeline with real deals.
• 25:36
  Greg Grand: That makes sense, that are based off of people that really need help. Not selling on hopium.
• 25:42
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Hopium, that's a good one. Yes, hope is not, not the, not the answer, right? It's not the plan. So, I love that. Okay, so when someone comes in.
• 25:51
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And you mentioned 16 weeks, so that's 3 months, no, 4 months, so that's, that's a long time to be involved before you start to see results. Do you see results come in sooner?
• 26:03
  Greg Grand: But you… right, so the reason I do it that… I can do it… I've done it multiple different ways. I like it in 16 weeks because it's a lot, even an hour, it's a lot to cover. So I have one client I'm doing right now, we have a shorter time frame, and we're doing it in 8 weeks.
• 26:18
  Greg Grand: We're doing 2 hours a day. So I just did that this morning with somebody. Well, they've got 8 prompts they need to run.
• 26:23
  Greg Grand: And they need to try and digest all this, and come back and learn another… so I believe that the reason a lot of training fails is because there's no reinforcement, and because they get dumped an enormous amount of information, and then nobody follows up. So I like to give…
• 26:37
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: cricket, either.
• 26:38
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I don't know how to put it into.
• 26:39
  Greg Grand: So, right, so I say, here's a training, here's the prompts. You're gonna come back, and you're gonna send me the prompts, and we're gonna work through them to see how they worked, and we're gonna help you build that out.
• 26:48
  Greg Grand: So, for instance, first week is your operating system. Next week might be how to use disk behavioral analysis. The next would be how do you build a prospecting campaign. The next would be how do you do a discovery call, all with AI prompts to walk you down that road from the first call until the sales closed.
• 27:04
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Wow.
• 27:05
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Okay, so you're really giving them the full system. It's not just how to make a cold call, or a sales call, or how to write an email. It sounds like you're putting the pieces together for them so that this can be on… on a wash, rinse, and repeat, and then once they have this system, everybody can go through it inside of the company, so when
• 27:25
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Someone calls with a customer service problem, the customer service agent knows how to have the conversation to see if there's any other opportunities that can.
• 27:35
  Greg Grand: Right, and then you build that database that it can go back to, right? Every time a customer service, you're gonna take your… you're gonna take your call transcript, and you're gonna put it into our custom AI, whatever it is, and it's gonna analyze it and come up with three different opportunities you can go back to and try and sell them. Or, better yet, you've got this meeting, this is the business we've done, this is what's happened in their business in the last 6 months. When you talk to them, make sure you bring up these three things, because they could be new opportunities for you.
• 27:58
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Yeah
• 27:59
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: That's great. And all this is based on knowledge, right? The more information you have about the person you're talking to, the more trust you're building with them, the more, faith they have that you know their business, because that's the biggest fear
• 28:17
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: in the buyer's side is that they think, oh, I don't think this is gonna work for me, right? I don't think you can do what you're saying you can do. And the more information you can provide them gives them that faith that, yeah.
• 28:34
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: Maybe you can do this. Maybe this… maybe your company can solve this problem that's been bothering me.
• 28:40
  Greg Grand: That's right, and you bring up something that's super important, though, and I think that it just bears, you know, for your listeners, too. It's like, you know, I kind of go, it's what's old is new, right? So, people buy, and you said something that sticks. People buy from people they trust and like.
• 28:55
  Greg Grand: So the prospect that I talked to this morning, it was very interesting, and it really reinforced this concept. The guy had done his research on me, he heard me on a podcast, he'd looked at my website. He knows who I am.
• 29:07
  Greg Grand: We talked about what he was looking to do.
• 29:10
  Greg Grand: And after 40 minutes of talking with him, I realized that he was just trying to see if, like, he knew I was qualified to help him. He just wanted to see if there was a vibe, and we got along.
• 29:20
  Greg Grand: Like, it was almost to the end, and I was like, what do you want to do? He's like, well, I'm already sold on you, I just wanted to see if we got along. And I'm like, there's just that other thing, it's about the human connection. That's the one thing, yeah, I can't do. It can give you the data
• 29:32
  Greg Grand: But the human still needs to be there.
• 29:35
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I love it. And that is so important, because I promise you, listeners, you're not the only one out there selling your shiz.
• 29:42
  Greg Grand: There's…
• 29:43
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: There's a lot of competition out there, and.
• 29:46
  Greg Grand: Yes.
• 29:46
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: What do they… how do they differentiate you, right? They get you to a short list because you've got the competencies, but then they're looking for that connection, and that's where… where you've got the confidence, right? You've done your research, you're ready to go, and you can solve their problem.
• 30:03
  Greg Grand: And that's what's magic about what we do.
• 30:05
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You're it.
• 30:06
  Greg Grand: And that's the magic about it, and probably every… all your listeners, too. Like, you know, I mean, I started my business to help people, and you did, too, right? And it's really cool when you can go in and impart the knowledge and the time that you've spent to figure it out, and really change the business owner's life. It's a really magical thing.
• 30:22
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I love it, I love it. Okay, well, we can go on for days and days and days.
• 30:26
  Greg Grand: I need to…
• 30:27
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I need to check and see that there's no hole in the side of my building, so I want to make sure that that's on there, too. But, Greg, where can listeners find out more about you and your program, and the way that they can really save hours and produce an increase in their sales?
• 30:44
  Greg Grand: Sure, yeah, so the best thing, if you want to just find out about me, go to LinkedIn, Greg Grand, G-R-E-G-G-R-A-N-D, and for the programs, to understand a little bit more about what I'm doing with teams, TheAISales Leader, T-H-E, the AISalesLeader.com, and see everything about all the programs, and how they work, and I've got workshops, and all kinds of blogs, and good information. If nothing else, go check it out, because there's an enormous amount of just free information on there to check out.
• 31:09
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I love it. So, like, what's some of the free things? What's your favorite free thing that you have on there?
• 31:14
  Greg Grand: Well, normally what I'll do with most of the people I'm talking to is I'll do, like, a free 30-minute, just, overview of where their organization is. Call me up, no cost, just say, this is where we are, this is what we're thinking about doing with AI, or not, you know, and just having a basic exploratory call to see, because I don't… just like you, I don't know if I can help everybody. Sometimes it might not be a fit. So where it always starts is understanding, but it's not a sales call, this is just to kind of, like, understand where are you with AI?
• 31:39
  Greg Grand: And then share some information, and if they want to have further discussions, that's cool, but just basically informational if you want to pick my brain for a half hour.
• 31:47
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And, you know, listeners, you can tell right away that Greg is an easygoing kind of guy that's gonna give you some straight talk, and it's just gonna… he's gonna go, hey, here's an option for you, right? And so, I love that. It'll be…
• 32:01
  Greg Grand: Great talk is what I do, that's for sure. Yeah. Not a lot of fluff here.
• 32:05
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: No, no fluff, no fluff, I love it. All right, well, thanks for tuning in today, listeners. I hope you found, some practical ideas that you can put into your business right now to grow a more profitable and valuable business.
• 32:18
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And since sales is the blood of the business, this is what drives everything, you do not have a business unless you're able to sell.
• 32:28
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You have an expensive hobby. You know, this is… this is definitely the path that you want to check on, and why not use AI to streamline it, give you back some hours.
• 32:39
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: and increase the probability that your sales will be higher. Go take, go check out Greg's stuff. Definitely, definitely worth it.
• 32:48
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: All right, and before you go, if you want a cleaner path to more revenue and stronger profit, go grab my free Profit Booster Growth Map. It'll quickly show you the top 3 opportunities to grow revenue and stop those profit leaks that may be holding your business back.
• 33:06
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: You can go get it anytime after the show at ProfitBooster.biz.
• 33:12
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: And if this episode gave you value, be sure to share and, with somebody who, who other business owners who might need to hear it. And don't forget to subscribe.
• 33:21
  Marcia Riner | Profit Booster®: I'll see you on next week's show with more strategies to help you grow smarter and profit stronger. So until then, make your plans and profit with them. Thanks so much, Greg, this was fun.
• 33:32
  Greg Grand: Thank you.