Latest / What is Business Development? / Episode 111: BD Tech...Agentive CEO, Usman Sheikh
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Or not.
- 0:04Speaker 2: Welcome to the Business Development podcast, brought to you by
- 0:07Speaker 2: the Global Business Development Association, delivering the strategies and tactics
- 0:12Speaker 2: to boost your career and corporate growth.
- 0:21Speaker 3: Hello BD pros, and welcome to the Global Business Development
- 0:26Speaker 3: Association podcast called What Is Business Development? Okay, folks, you've
- 0:33Speaker 3: listened to this podcast a long time. You know those
- 0:35Speaker 3: two letters A and I AI. We're hearing it again
- 0:39Speaker 3: today in this podcast, and we're going to see it
- 0:42Speaker 3: live in action and what it can do for you
- 0:46Speaker 3: as a business developer. But hey, before we get to that,
- 0:50Speaker 3: let's talk about something else that can do some great
- 0:52Speaker 3: things for your business development professional career, and that is
- 0:57Speaker 3: the Business Development Body of Knowledge. Grab a copy of
- 1:00Speaker 3: the book on Amazon today, it's available and Kindle. You
- 1:04Speaker 3: can get it in paperback version. It's even available in
- 1:07Speaker 3: audio version if you'd like to listen to the whole thing,
- 1:10Speaker 3: And when you make your way through the book, you
- 1:14Speaker 3: can then get your Business Development Professional certification online at
- 1:19Speaker 3: the GBD Association website. That's at GBD association dot org. Okay, folks,
- 1:28Speaker 3: let's get into AI again today and we're going to
- 1:32Speaker 3: do it talking about this new tool that's available to
- 1:35Speaker 3: us as business developers, and the tool is called a Gentive,
- 1:40Speaker 3: and our guest today is Usman Shake. Usman is a
- 1:45Speaker 3: Silicon Valley based serial entrepreneur and AI innovator focused on
- 1:51Speaker 3: transforming how enterprises generate revenue. He's the founder and CEO
- 1:57Speaker 3: of a Gentive. This is his third startup and the
- 2:00Speaker 3: world's first agentic AI powered revenue automation platform. Agentive automates
- 2:07Speaker 3: the entire B to B sales journey, from uncovering ICP
- 2:11Speaker 3: along leads and generating highly qualified opportunities in minutes to
- 2:17Speaker 3: mapping buying committees, delivering hyper personalized outreach and recommending next
- 2:23Speaker 3: best actions that move deals forward. So think of AI
- 2:27Speaker 3: agents working quietly in the background twenty four to seven
- 2:31Speaker 3: so your BD team doesn't have to do that. Wow,
- 2:36Speaker 3: that sounds very exciting. I can't wait to hear all
- 2:40Speaker 3: about it with our guest today. So let's welcome Usman
- 2:45Speaker 3: to the stage. Usman Shakespeare, welcome back.
- 2:48Speaker 1: Thank you, Tony, good to be here.
- 2:50Speaker 3: Well, it's great to have you back again.
- 2:52Speaker 1: Folks.
- 2:52Speaker 3: If you didn't hear the previous episode that we did
- 2:55Speaker 3: with Usman in twenty twenty five, he was just at
- 2:59Speaker 3: that time time unveiling Agentive to the world, and we
- 3:05Speaker 3: got a sneak peek at that functionality early on, but
- 3:08Speaker 3: now we're going to see a whole lot more and Usman.
- 3:11Speaker 3: For those that didn't hear the previous episode, could you
- 3:14Speaker 3: tell them a little bit about why you started Agentive?
- 3:18Speaker 1: Yes, indeed, so. My previous background, as you mentioned in
- 3:22Speaker 1: the introduction, was I've done three startups. This is my third.
- 3:26Speaker 1: I've been working on the intersection of artificial intelligence, meeting,
- 3:31Speaker 1: business to business, sales and marketing. My previous background to
- 3:34Speaker 1: that was SAP, the world's largest software B to B
- 3:38Speaker 1: software company, and I did product management. So I have
- 3:42Speaker 1: a distinction in this fact that I've actually built five
- 3:46Speaker 1: sales and buyer side systems platforms, and so Agentive came
- 3:54Speaker 1: about because I had been in the process of automating
- 3:58Speaker 1: the full cycle. That's my ambition to really help sellers
- 4:03Speaker 1: be able to discover things faster, to be able to
- 4:06Speaker 1: ease up and do their work in a much higher quality,
- 4:09Speaker 1: much faster with less stress. And Agentive came about because
- 4:14Speaker 1: with AI and agentic AI, we now have a new
- 4:17Speaker 1: opportunity to really kind of pull out the canvas fresh
- 4:23Speaker 1: and start looking at it, how do we automate the
- 4:25Speaker 1: full process? And that's how Agentive was born. And yeah,
- 4:31Speaker 1: so it's an exciting, very ambitious venture. As you mentioned,
- 4:34Speaker 1: you know, it looks at the full end to end process.
- 4:38Speaker 3: Okay, so let's talk about that because you know, there's
- 4:42Speaker 3: so much about AI right now. There's so many tools
- 4:46Speaker 3: entering the market, so many processes and functions that we
- 4:49Speaker 3: as business developers need to execute. It's almost as, as
- 4:53Speaker 3: you know, the ecosystem of tools out there has become
- 4:57Speaker 3: more complex and less complex. So can you talk a
- 5:01Speaker 3: little bit about these stacks of functionality and how it's
- 5:05Speaker 3: kind of evolved and what Agentive is really solving with
- 5:09Speaker 3: all of that.
- 5:10Speaker 1: You're absolutely right, you know that is a huge problem.
- 5:13Speaker 1: We have now got so many tools. I was looking
- 5:16Speaker 1: at a guide yesterday which was showing about fourteen thousand
- 5:21Speaker 1: plus tools for sales and marketing technology, and therein lies
- 5:25Speaker 1: a problem and I've given that problem and name called
- 5:28Speaker 1: the Franken stack. And essentially, what companies are doing to
- 5:33Speaker 1: go through the full end to end cycle from identifying
- 5:38Speaker 1: their ideal customer profiles to developing opportunities to identifying who
- 5:44Speaker 1: they should sell to enriching contacts coming out and being
- 5:49Speaker 1: able to put a strategy and a game plan together,
- 5:52Speaker 1: create the outreach, and then run through the full engagement cycle.
- 5:58Speaker 1: They're using at least twelve to sixteen tools per sales
- 6:02Speaker 1: person or seller. Let's put it this way, and this
- 6:06Speaker 1: frank In stack. I don't know if you can see
- 6:08Speaker 1: my screen, but you know this is essentially a big
- 6:13Speaker 1: hurdle right now. And what is happening tony is that
- 6:17Speaker 1: we are taking that frankn stack and using AI to
- 6:22Speaker 1: automate it. So there's still those different disparate point solutions
- 6:26Speaker 1: that are now AI powered, So that means they can
- 6:29Speaker 1: work much faster, much quicker, much more intelligently, but they're
- 6:33Speaker 1: still working in their silos and they still have to
- 6:37Speaker 1: talk to each other. Eighty five percent of AI pilots
- 6:42Speaker 1: in the sales and marketing arena are failing, and the
- 6:46Speaker 1: reason they're failing is because we're going in and automating
- 6:50Speaker 1: these point solutions. And what I mean by that is that,
- 6:54Speaker 1: for example, we do the work of the sales development
- 6:56Speaker 1: rep or the business development rep and automate that without
- 7:00Speaker 1: taking it into account that there's a handoff to the
- 7:03Speaker 1: account executive to a customer success manager, and prior to
- 7:07Speaker 1: all of that, there's somebody who's doing prospecting demand generation.
- 7:11Speaker 1: So we have on the one hand, automated all those
- 7:15Speaker 1: different tasks, but at the same time we have amplified
- 7:20Speaker 1: those handoff solutions. And who suffers the most at the
- 7:23Speaker 1: end of the day, it's the customer. It's the end user.
- 7:26Speaker 1: The customer experience really becomes bad. There's a high volume
- 7:30Speaker 1: of a lot of spam so to speak, going out,
- 7:35Speaker 1: and the customer is lost in all these different handoffs.
- 7:39Speaker 1: Instead of you know, they have to go and give
- 7:41Speaker 1: the same answers to the sales rep. They then have
- 7:45Speaker 1: to give the sales same answers to the account executive,
- 7:48Speaker 1: the SDR. The same questioning happening, and it's a very
- 7:53Speaker 1: very horrible experience. On the other hand, if I may
- 7:56Speaker 1: go to the next light, we have developed regentive and AGENTA.
- 8:00Speaker 1: What it does is it actually brings all those different
- 8:03Speaker 1: tasks and processes under one roof, under one process. Now,
- 8:08Speaker 1: different roles can log into the system, but there's no
- 8:12Speaker 1: handoff of information or no handoff of intelligence that is
- 8:17Speaker 1: lost between going from one silo or one point solution
- 8:20Speaker 1: to the other, it's all within one system. It works
- 8:24Speaker 1: in a very unified manner and as a matter of fact,
- 8:28Speaker 1: one operator can run the full process end to end.
- 8:32Speaker 1: So if you remember the good old days, before all
- 8:34Speaker 1: these technology stacks came along, the seller had to do
- 8:38Speaker 1: the prospecting, the seller had to do the qualification, and
- 8:41Speaker 1: the seller had to do the selling and maybe broad
- 8:44Speaker 1: in a solution engineer to help them do the demo.
- 8:47Speaker 1: While we can actually go back to that, do it
- 8:50Speaker 1: much more intelligently, give a much more unified customer experience,
- 8:55Speaker 1: and do it all in one harmonious manner, so no handoffs,
- 9:02Speaker 1: and we can do it much faster with better intelligence.
- 9:05Speaker 1: And that's what I'm going to show you with a genda.
- 9:08Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I can't wait to see the demos and folks,
- 9:11Speaker 3: a lot of this what we're showing today in this
- 9:13Speaker 3: podcast is very visual. I'll try to do my best
- 9:17Speaker 3: talk through what we're showing on the screens so that
- 9:21Speaker 3: for folks that are just simply listening you can understand
- 9:24Speaker 3: what we're talking about. And I'll just kind of summarize
- 9:27Speaker 3: what Usman just mentioned because it's really music to my ears,
- 9:31Speaker 3: and I'm sure it is to a lot of you
- 9:33Speaker 3: listening here. As business developers, the top three frustrations that
- 9:37Speaker 3: we have are a we have extensive processes that we
- 9:42Speaker 3: as business developers need to follow, whether that's prospecting and
- 9:46Speaker 3: finding the leads, connecting with those leads and prospects, sending messages,
- 9:52Speaker 3: doing the research on LinkedIn, getting the numbers, the contact
- 9:55Speaker 3: information on a different platform. Ah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 9:59Speaker 3: It just keeps on going on and on and on
- 10:01Speaker 3: on all these different tech stack items. We need to
- 10:04Speaker 3: be involved in the different processes. The other thing that
- 10:06Speaker 3: frustrates us as business developers because again, as business developers,
- 10:11Speaker 3: we're involved through the entire customer journey, not just the
- 10:16Speaker 3: activation phase, not just the conversion phase, but also during
- 10:21Speaker 3: the success phase and during the growth phases and our
- 10:25Speaker 3: visibility drops, the handoffs that we have with the folks
- 10:30Speaker 3: and sales, and the conversion phase and then the customer
- 10:32Speaker 3: success teams. Those can be real risky transitions where things
- 10:37Speaker 3: can fall through the cracks, and that just creates a
- 10:40Speaker 3: horrible prospect experience or horrible customer experience, and we don't
- 10:44Speaker 3: want that. As business developers. We are the champions for
- 10:47Speaker 3: our customers. We're their advocates. We want a great experience
- 10:50Speaker 3: for them. We need them to have a great experience
- 10:53Speaker 3: because they are a source of referrals for exponential growth
- 10:57Speaker 3: of our company. And then the final thing is, you know,
- 11:01Speaker 3: it's just tough keeping up with all of these activities
- 11:05Speaker 3: just sheer volume wise, it could really drain you in
- 11:09Speaker 3: doing a lot of these administrative tasks that nobody wants
- 11:13Speaker 3: to do. I don't care if it's a BDR or
- 11:14Speaker 3: anybody nobody. Now, there is no business developer in the
- 11:18Speaker 3: world that ever said they love to enter data into CRM.
- 11:21Speaker 3: Everybody hates it because it's a low value task. Now
- 11:25Speaker 3: we have breakthroughs with AI and so with that, folks,
- 11:30Speaker 3: I'm going to bring up on the stage here we're
- 11:32Speaker 3: going to go back to screen mode for those that
- 11:34Speaker 3: are listening. Now we're looking at a live view of agentive,
- 11:38Speaker 3: the actual application and usman take it away here. Looks
- 11:42Speaker 3: like we're looking at the agentive managed ICP's functionality, right.
- 11:48Speaker 1: Correct, So, Tony, every good successful sales engagement starts with
- 11:54Speaker 1: being able to identify your ideal customer profile. And simple
- 11:59Speaker 1: as it may, it's a very very difficult task for
- 12:02Speaker 1: a lot of companies to identify who that is. And
- 12:04Speaker 1: if you take it down into the level of the
- 12:07Speaker 1: account executive of the SDR BDR, it becomes even more complex.
- 12:11Speaker 1: Some of them have just joined the company or maybe
- 12:14Speaker 1: selling into particular vertical and they don't know who their
- 12:17Speaker 1: ideal customer profile is. So the very first thing that
- 12:21Speaker 1: Agentative does is helps you identify your ideal customer profile.
- 12:27Speaker 1: And this sets the stage for everything that we're going
- 12:30Speaker 1: to stay we're going to show in a little bit now.
- 12:33Speaker 1: At the very start, when you log in, you're giving
- 12:36Speaker 1: your telling agentive what company you work work for. Our
- 12:40Speaker 1: first agent kicks in over here, goes and finds that
- 12:43Speaker 1: does research on your website, finds out who you sell to,
- 12:47Speaker 1: what you sell, what industry you sell to, and it
- 12:51Speaker 1: gives you out of the box a couple of recommendations
- 12:55Speaker 1: and who your ideal customer profile will be. So when
- 12:58Speaker 1: you sign up, the first screen you will come to
- 13:01Speaker 1: is your ICP screen, and here it says agentaive recommended
- 13:06Speaker 1: and it has recommended based on this particular company, different
- 13:10Speaker 1: type of verticals. Tells you what industries you should be
- 13:14Speaker 1: selling to, what could be your focus area based on
- 13:17Speaker 1: what your solutions have to offer, what should be the
- 13:20Speaker 1: annual revenue of your target customer, employee size, geography, average
- 13:25Speaker 1: contract value, and technographics, which is what are technology is
- 13:30Speaker 1: that your clients would be using. And it does so
- 13:33Speaker 1: for five different type of icps. You can agree to
- 13:40Speaker 1: any one of them, it will start generating a list
- 13:43Speaker 1: on that basis, or you can also create your own. Second,
- 13:47Speaker 1: what it does is it allows you to add a
- 13:50Speaker 1: description of your product. You can upload a white paper,
- 13:55Speaker 1: a product definition, a cheat sheet over here and this
- 13:59Speaker 1: will only help pits be better prospect for you based
- 14:04Speaker 1: on what your solution has. What are the values and
- 14:06Speaker 1: the problem while use it delivers and the problems it solves.
- 14:10Speaker 1: And the third is you can add job titles over
- 14:14Speaker 1: here and you can basically start adding these job titles
- 14:20Speaker 1: as a way of identifying who you sell to. You
- 14:23Speaker 1: can do that through a Comma separated file and this
- 14:27Speaker 1: will now help you get down to the level of
- 14:29Speaker 1: individuals you'll be selling to. And lastly, you can also
- 14:34Speaker 1: if you're selling into named accounts, go into direct named
- 14:37Speaker 1: Accounts selling and enter the name of the companies. Once
- 14:40Speaker 1: you're done with that, it goes into what we refer
- 14:44Speaker 1: to as the scout as the lead scout and here,
- 14:48Speaker 1: based on the ideal customer profiles we've identified, it has
- 14:52Speaker 1: generated a list of one hundred and twenty four companies
- 14:57Speaker 1: and within those companies, five ninety seven opportunities. And based
- 15:02Speaker 1: on the average contract value that we agreed to, it
- 15:06Speaker 1: has also given you a total pipeline value estimated value
- 15:10Speaker 1: what your pipeline could be. Okay, that's great.
- 15:13Speaker 3: Could we just pause right there, because I think there's
- 15:15Speaker 3: a lot of great things that you just mentioned. I
- 15:18Speaker 3: just want to make sure that folks that are just
- 15:20Speaker 3: listening to this they're not viewing it. It looks fantastic
- 15:23Speaker 3: on video, folks, So if you're just listening, go to
- 15:26Speaker 3: the YouTube videos, go to the videos that we have
- 15:29Speaker 3: on our substack page, and you can watch this in
- 15:32Speaker 3: real time and it's very informational. But just for the
- 15:36Speaker 3: folks that are listening, what we saw were a couple
- 15:38Speaker 3: of the first screens and defining the ICP, the ideal
- 15:41Speaker 3: customer profile.
- 15:43Speaker 1: And what I.
- 15:43Speaker 3: Really liked about that, usman, is it not only looks
- 15:46Speaker 3: at your company, your products, your capabilities, but it starts
- 15:51Speaker 3: to define your ICP. And I think what's refreshing about
- 15:56Speaker 3: this is the AI could probably present a ICPS that
- 16:01Speaker 3: you never even thought about in different market segments, different
- 16:04Speaker 3: verticals that you probably never even considered. And so I
- 16:08Speaker 3: think that's one of the beauties of AI, is it
- 16:10Speaker 3: It can avoid you from getting into the horse blinders
- 16:15Speaker 3: mode of This is our ICP, this is the way
- 16:17Speaker 3: we do it. We're doing it for years, and meanwhile
- 16:21Speaker 3: you're not realizing you have some adjacent opportunities that you
- 16:24Speaker 3: could really exploit. And the other thing then that I
- 16:27Speaker 3: liked is that you can enter in the types of
- 16:30Speaker 3: personas that you typically engage chief growth officer. I saw
- 16:34Speaker 3: you listed there, maybe the VP of BD. You can
- 16:37Speaker 3: enter those functions in. And then now folks were at
- 16:41Speaker 3: the next screen, which is the agentive scout screen. So
- 16:47Speaker 3: as Usmann was saying, now you're taking that ICP, the
- 16:51Speaker 3: system is now identifying all of the leads out there
- 16:55Speaker 3: in the marketplace, right, that is correct.
- 16:58Speaker 1: Let me add one more thing to that, Tony, what
- 17:00Speaker 1: you just said those horse blinders. As you mentioned, right,
- 17:06Speaker 1: we're not just looking for ideal customer profiles, but we're
- 17:09Speaker 1: looking for ideal customers that are in market. And how
- 17:13Speaker 1: do we know that they're in market? Well, you know
- 17:16Speaker 1: if we're selling, for example, some kind of development operations solution,
- 17:24Speaker 1: then having a signal that tells us that this company
- 17:28Speaker 1: has a DevOps job opening will be a good indicator
- 17:32Speaker 1: that they are also looking to solve, you know, to
- 17:36Speaker 1: find solutions for that. So there's a lot of adjacent
- 17:39Speaker 1: indicators that you can enter into the ideal customer definition
- 17:44Speaker 1: and that will further help it streamline and identify opportunities
- 17:49Speaker 1: and prospects that are actually in market by looking at reviews,
- 17:54Speaker 1: by looking at job postings, RFP postings, et cetera. And
- 17:58Speaker 1: then only surface up those opportunities that are actually in
- 18:02Speaker 1: market and help you qualify them better. Right, saves a
- 18:06Speaker 1: lot of time.
- 18:08Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a fantastic feature. You know, as business developers,
- 18:12Speaker 3: we need to be very efficient in our outbound engagement
- 18:17Speaker 3: and we need to focus on those that are in
- 18:20Speaker 3: market or demonstrating the signals that they are or close
- 18:24Speaker 3: to being in market. So a what a powerful feature. Okay, great,
- 18:28Speaker 3: So tell us more about the agent of scout page place.
- 18:31Speaker 1: Yeah. So scout page is basically your list. This is
- 18:34Speaker 1: your list of target accounts. On the left side. We
- 18:37Speaker 1: see these target accounts over here that I'm scrolling up
- 18:39Speaker 1: and down. This is by companies and then in the
- 18:43Speaker 1: middle over here are your opportunities. So for each company,
- 18:47Speaker 1: it has generated certain opportunities and I can come in
- 18:51Speaker 1: here and I can look at the opportunity at a
- 18:53Speaker 1: header level, at a detail level. And on the right
- 18:56Speaker 1: hand side, I have this panel open and it is
- 18:59Speaker 1: telling me what is the national reasoning solution, how do
- 19:03Speaker 1: your solutions align with and why are they relevant to
- 19:07Speaker 1: the customer's pain points and what would be the urgency.
- 19:11Speaker 1: And as a prospector, I can very quickly go through
- 19:14Speaker 1: number of these different opportunities to decide which are the
- 19:17Speaker 1: ones I want to track. Once I track them, I
- 19:21Speaker 1: can then click open one of these and you can
- 19:24Speaker 1: see over here they are also these little flames or
- 19:29Speaker 1: these flame icons red, orange, blue, green, et cetera. These
- 19:35Speaker 1: are showing you what is the urgency of that opportunity,
- 19:38Speaker 1: so I can start them on that basis. And once
- 19:41Speaker 1: I click open one of these, now it's going to
- 19:44Speaker 1: help build out a complete account plan. Right, this is
- 19:49Speaker 1: my opportunity account plan. So let me go into this.
- 19:55Speaker 1: I'm on the first page which is giving me set
- 19:58Speaker 1: of details. Again, it starts of the reasoning and rationale, Tony.
- 20:03Speaker 1: One of the things I want to highlight over here
- 20:05Speaker 1: is that everything in agentive is looking at the market
- 20:09Speaker 1: from your company's lens, So there's nothing generic over here.
- 20:14Speaker 1: So for example, in this particular case, the background looks
- 20:17Speaker 1: at your prospect. In this particular case, this company areble,
- 20:21Speaker 1: and it looks at it from the company that is
- 20:24Speaker 1: selling to that company. What's in it for that company
- 20:29Speaker 1: and how does this relate and what is the relevance
- 20:32Speaker 1: to this. It gives me a background, and it builds
- 20:35Speaker 1: out a complete sales play over here. What are the objectives,
- 20:39Speaker 1: what is the target's profile, key personas you would be
- 20:43Speaker 1: selling into, what could be your messaging focus, the sales motion,
- 20:48Speaker 1: proof points, and it goes on to even list out
- 20:52Speaker 1: the solutions. And this is also a very important point
- 20:55Speaker 1: over here, because as we know, sellers in complex sales
- 20:59Speaker 1: invironments where there's a big portfolio of solutions might be
- 21:03Speaker 1: familiar with three to four solutions, five solutions, but there
- 21:07Speaker 1: might be twenty other solutions in my solution portfolio that
- 21:11Speaker 1: are relevant to this particular prospect, but I haven't thought
- 21:15Speaker 1: of those. So again, the horsblind review versus that of
- 21:18Speaker 1: taking the full portfolio and matching it with the entire
- 21:23Speaker 1: needs of your customer, and in doing so, we make
- 21:26Speaker 1: sure that there's no money left on the table because
- 21:29Speaker 1: just because I didn't know that there was a new
- 21:31Speaker 1: solution from a company I had just recently acquired that
- 21:35Speaker 1: would actually meet the demands of my customer very nicely,
- 21:39Speaker 1: but because I, as a seller didn't know it, I
- 21:41Speaker 1: didn't add it into my prospect list, right, So this
- 21:46Speaker 1: covers that part as well. It further goes on to
- 21:50Speaker 1: show me a Swart analysis, a complete description of the opportunity.
- 21:57Speaker 1: It's for some reason not building out over here, but
- 22:02Speaker 1: we'll come back to that. And it also does value engineering,
- 22:05Speaker 1: where it looks at the priorities and challenges, the costs,
- 22:09Speaker 1: the solutions to sell, and the value and benefits that
- 22:13Speaker 1: you'll be able to deliver. The technographics sections helps me
- 22:17Speaker 1: understand what technologies they are using, because that could be
- 22:20Speaker 1: also a great indicator for where I sell, because I
- 22:23Speaker 1: could be selling adjacent to a particular technology, and then
- 22:28Speaker 1: here I come into the buyer group and I should
- 22:34Speaker 1: be able to show you this in just a quick second.
- 22:37Speaker 1: If you unshare the screen, I'll bring this up in
- 22:40Speaker 1: a section.
- 22:40Speaker 3: Sure While you do that, I'll just refresh for folks
- 22:43Speaker 3: that are listening in. Again, you're not seeing the visuals,
- 22:46Speaker 3: but the UI is nice and clean.
- 22:49Speaker 1: I like it.
- 22:50Speaker 3: And you know what's great about this again, the horse blinders.
- 22:56Speaker 3: You're eliminating this issue of horse blinders where let's face it,
- 23:00Speaker 3: you're busy. Your company is producing a lot of products contents.
- 23:05Speaker 3: It's very difficult for business developers to stay up the
- 23:08Speaker 3: speed on all of the products that your company has,
- 23:12Speaker 3: especially if you're a large, complex enterprise company. And I
- 23:16Speaker 3: think that's really valuable usman, because what that allows you
- 23:21Speaker 3: to do is then before engaging that prospect, you can realize, Okay,
- 23:25Speaker 3: I'm really strong on these products. I have those, I
- 23:28Speaker 3: understand those. I'm very solid. These other six that Agentive
- 23:34Speaker 3: identified as possible solutions, ooh, well, those look like opportunities.
- 23:40Speaker 3: But I'm not too comfortable on those. I probably need
- 23:43Speaker 3: to reach out to one of my internal partners, bring
- 23:45Speaker 3: them into the call. Maybe that's your sales engineer, Maybe
- 23:49Speaker 3: it's a technical expert. It could be a customer success
- 23:51Speaker 3: person that has a lot of experience with that product.
- 23:54Speaker 3: It could be an external third party that you could
- 23:57Speaker 3: bring into the discussion as well. And that way you
- 24:02Speaker 3: are coming in well prepared for the discussions with your prospect,
- 24:08Speaker 3: so that no matter what turn you take in the discussion,
- 24:12Speaker 3: you have prepared fully for all of the options that
- 24:18Speaker 3: you can present to them. And you know, we just
- 24:21Speaker 3: did a podcast recently with Steve Radford. He just published
- 24:25Speaker 3: a wonderful book, and you know, Steve was talking about
- 24:29Speaker 3: I really love this tactic. He said, every time you
- 24:31Speaker 3: go into a prospect engagement, not necessarily a sales call,
- 24:34Speaker 3: but every time you should have your KPI. What's the
- 24:39Speaker 3: thing I'm trying to shoot for as an outcome from
- 24:41Speaker 3: that meeting? And what's a minimum thing I need to
- 24:44Speaker 3: achieve from having that meeting with my prospect? And then
- 24:47Speaker 3: the third thing, this is really groundbreaking, was he said
- 24:50Speaker 3: you should always have a reach goal, like what's one
- 24:53Speaker 3: thing that Wow, if the discussion with your prospect ends
- 24:58Speaker 3: and you achieved that, it would be a home run,
- 25:01Speaker 3: it would be knocking it out of the park. It
- 25:02Speaker 3: would accelerate the discussion so much more. And that's where
- 25:06Speaker 3: I think this agentive tool of identifying all the products
- 25:10Speaker 3: and solutions in your company could really enable you to
- 25:14Speaker 3: look and identify, oh, Okay, yeah, those two solutions, those
- 25:17Speaker 3: should be a slam dunk. Oh, this one be a
- 25:19Speaker 3: nice reach, and I think it could really help my prospect.
- 25:22Speaker 3: And that way, you're not only going in well prepared
- 25:25Speaker 3: with the right teammates, with the right solutions, but you're
- 25:28Speaker 3: going in with the right goals.
- 25:32Speaker 1: Ousman.
- 25:33Speaker 3: It looks like you have another screen up now, and
- 25:35Speaker 3: it's called the It looks like it's titled Reduce Idle Days,
- 25:39Speaker 3: Real Time Orchestration. And then for folks listening, it has
- 25:43Speaker 3: a bunch of profiles for individuals kind of looks like
- 25:47Speaker 3: their LinkedIn pictures, you know, the little round circle and whatnot.
- 25:50Speaker 3: So you're actually looking at real people and these are
- 25:54Speaker 3: folks within the account, right, I mean, these are your
- 25:57Speaker 3: prospect account champions and whatnot. Can you tell us a
- 26:00Speaker 3: little bit about what we're looking at here?
- 26:01Speaker 1: Yeah, So remember we entered those job titles. Now those
- 26:05Speaker 1: job titles have been actionized, and what is happening over
- 26:08Speaker 1: here is gone ahead and pulled out individuals that we
- 26:11Speaker 1: would sell to and created a buyer group for that opportunity.
- 26:15Speaker 1: And if I scroll on that, it tells me the
- 26:17Speaker 1: name of the person, the job title, and it also
- 26:20Speaker 1: tells me why they matter in the context of this
- 26:23Speaker 1: particular opportunity, their likely responsibility, and if I were to
- 26:28Speaker 1: click and it breaks it into three columns, those people
- 26:31Speaker 1: that are advocates. How does it know that because we're
- 26:35Speaker 1: doing psychometric profiling, so the equivalent of a Myer's Brakes
- 26:39Speaker 1: or a disc profile. We're conducting that kind of analysis,
- 26:43Speaker 1: and based on that analysis, this personality, the mindset of
- 26:47Speaker 1: that person is more of an advocate of another could
- 26:51Speaker 1: be that of a connector, and yet a third of
- 26:54Speaker 1: a challenger. I can click into one of these individuals
- 26:58Speaker 1: and it will bring up that individual and it will
- 27:00Speaker 1: show me in detail, what are the attributes of that person?
- 27:05Speaker 1: How should I engage with them? What are the pros
- 27:07Speaker 1: and columns of egaging, reasons to reach out? What are
- 27:10Speaker 1: their top priorities and pain points? How do I get along?
- 27:15Speaker 1: This is in a section called sales affinity. That matches
- 27:19Speaker 1: my personality to that of the person I'm selling to,
- 27:24Speaker 1: why I should connect, and it goes into further defining
- 27:27Speaker 1: what are their priorities and goals, key performance indicators, challenges
- 27:31Speaker 1: and pain points. How to sell a lot of information.
- 27:34Speaker 1: On the one hand, but remember this is an AI
- 27:37Speaker 1: power tool, and what we are showing you is a
- 27:40Speaker 1: lot of the background work that needs to go in
- 27:44Speaker 1: to essentially be able to engage with these people. Now
- 27:47Speaker 1: I have this buyer group, it is already pre recommended,
- 27:51Speaker 1: so all that time that sellers spend in trying to
- 27:54Speaker 1: understand who they need to talk to has been shrunk
- 27:58Speaker 1: and already brought up over here, we can further come in.
- 28:02Speaker 1: We have the ability to remove people from this group.
- 28:06Speaker 1: Or there's a little search engine built over here where
- 28:09Speaker 1: I can put in the name of a person. I'll
- 28:11Speaker 1: just put in my name for example, and conductor search,
- 28:16Speaker 1: and you will be able to find that person and
- 28:18Speaker 1: add them into the buyer group. We also have a
- 28:21Speaker 1: Chrome extension to LinkedIn, and if I were on LinkedIn,
- 28:24Speaker 1: I could find that individual and I could add that
- 28:28Speaker 1: person directly into this particular group. And so once I
- 28:33Speaker 1: find that individual and I add them in, let me
- 28:37Speaker 1: just do it on this one, because I think I'm
- 28:40Speaker 1: using a dev system on that one, and you will
- 28:47Speaker 1: see that I will be able to come in, find
- 28:49Speaker 1: a person, add them into this particular group, and I
- 28:52Speaker 1: will be able to prone add and remove individuals from
- 28:56Speaker 1: within a buyer group.
- 28:58Speaker 3: Yeaw, this is fantastic, usman. We've been recording now for
- 29:03Speaker 3: about fifteen minutes as you walk through the different functionality
- 29:07Speaker 3: in AGENTIV, and fifteen minutes probably just covered about fifteen
- 29:14Speaker 3: hours worth of work that I would typically do as
- 29:17Speaker 3: a business developer. Understanding my ICP, understanding all the different
- 29:21Speaker 3: products that are applicable to that ICP, finding adjacent markets,
- 29:26Speaker 3: and then understanding who are the individual personas within the
- 29:31Speaker 3: target accounts that I can approach, what are their psychometrics
- 29:35Speaker 3: and psychographics that I can use to then go in
- 29:39Speaker 3: very well pared to first of all identify who would
- 29:42Speaker 3: be my best champion, Who is the decision maker, who
- 29:45Speaker 3: are the best connectors? Those are the people I need
- 29:48Speaker 3: to reach out to, and I know how to do
- 29:50Speaker 3: it because I know how they think, or I have
- 29:52Speaker 3: a pretty good darn idea how they think. Usman, this
- 29:55Speaker 3: is amazing. I know we only have a couple more
- 29:57Speaker 3: minutes left in the show. I would love to just
- 30:00Speaker 3: sit here and watch for hours the functionality of agentive.
- 30:04Speaker 3: Keep working here. I think one thing is also very
- 30:08Speaker 3: important to stress, especially for the BD leaders that are
- 30:12Speaker 3: listening to this show. When you use a tool like this,
- 30:15Speaker 3: you know a lot of people are saying on LinkedIn
- 30:17Speaker 3: and in social media, Oh, you know, it's the end
- 30:19Speaker 3: of the BDRs. BDRs are going to go away. We're
- 30:21Speaker 3: not hiring BDR because it's a junior function. Here's what
- 30:24Speaker 3: I say to all of that. If a tool like
- 30:27Speaker 3: a gentive allows you to bring in more junior people,
- 30:31Speaker 3: has business developers Okay, Now they're now doing high value
- 30:35Speaker 3: task where BDRs typically typically did lower value task doing
- 30:41Speaker 3: all these fifteen hours of research for their business developers
- 30:46Speaker 3: as a business. As a BDR, they were doing a
- 30:48Speaker 3: lot of this manually. Now you could take that sign
- 30:50Speaker 3: entry level person they know with a tool like Agentive,
- 30:54Speaker 3: it's coaching them through the entire process. You can bring
- 30:58Speaker 3: in a lower cost perhaps hired energy person that's entry level,
- 31:03Speaker 3: and now they don't need to be an expert on
- 31:05Speaker 3: the entire enterprise and haven't worked at the company for
- 31:08Speaker 3: ten years to know all of the different products. They
- 31:10Speaker 3: don't need that. This tool is giving them all the
- 31:13Speaker 3: products that are applicable. They don't need to have worked
- 31:15Speaker 3: in the industry for ten fifteen years building up a
- 31:18Speaker 3: rolodex and a network of people. They know intimately how
- 31:21Speaker 3: they think and how they put, No, you don't need
- 31:25Speaker 3: to know that you have a tool like Agentive that's
- 31:27Speaker 3: doing all that research for them for these relatively entry
- 31:32Speaker 3: level of folks. Now that can be extremely powerfully enabled,
- 31:36Speaker 3: but not just for the entry level folks, for your
- 31:40Speaker 3: folks that are more mature and more advanced in their
- 31:42Speaker 3: career as well. So extremely powerful usman, any final little
- 31:48Speaker 3: teasers you can give us about Agentive that you haven't
- 31:51Speaker 3: shown us already, you just want to show in the
- 31:53Speaker 3: next minute or two.
- 31:54Speaker 1: Yeah, three things very very quickly. So you just mentioned
- 31:57Speaker 1: the sales coach, and up at the talk right hand side,
- 32:00Speaker 1: we have this thing called the sales Coach, and if
- 32:02Speaker 1: I were to click on it, it will actually play
- 32:05Speaker 1: an audio podcast of the entire opportunity, which I can
- 32:09Speaker 1: download on my MP four. I can take it while
- 32:12Speaker 1: I'm driving to the appointment or listen to it on
- 32:14Speaker 1: my mobile phone, and it will actually coach me through
- 32:17Speaker 1: this opportunity. Second, it allows me to maintain a little pipeline.
- 32:24Speaker 1: This is not meant to replace the CRM, but it's
- 32:28Speaker 1: meant to complement it. Every seller needs to know what
- 32:32Speaker 1: they're working on today, what's around the horizon, and it
- 32:35Speaker 1: helps me balance and build my rolling pipeline. And lastly,
- 32:40Speaker 1: I want to point to what is our engaged feature
- 32:44Speaker 1: where you can go through that entire buyogroup. We identified
- 32:49Speaker 1: have pre cast emails which are pulling from the opportunity,
- 32:53Speaker 1: which are pulling from the psychometrics of the person, those KPIs,
- 32:57Speaker 1: those priorities, the behavior mindset of the individual, and it's
- 33:04Speaker 1: writing out these emails so I can sit in and
- 33:07Speaker 1: Agentive provides the email addresses as well, so I can
- 33:12Speaker 1: actually be sending emails. And finally, if I had send
- 33:15Speaker 1: email button, it'll take that email and directly paste it
- 33:19Speaker 1: into my Outlook or Gmail and send it from right here.
- 33:24Speaker 1: So again makes it very very easy for me to
- 33:29Speaker 1: actually conduct my full customer life cycle engagement through one platform. Wow.
- 33:37Speaker 3: Well, folks again, if you're just listening to all this,
- 33:40Speaker 3: please take a look at the videos and you can
- 33:43Speaker 3: see all the screens from the Agentive tool that usman
- 33:47Speaker 3: was presenting to us. You can also see my head
- 33:50Speaker 3: shaking and disbelief throughout the entire demo on the amazing
- 33:55Speaker 3: capability that we saw today. This is incredible, the ability
- 34:00Speaker 3: to save so much time and increase the value that
- 34:04Speaker 3: we deliver to our prospects, in our customers, in our discussions. Osman,
- 34:09Speaker 3: how can folks get their own version of agentive and
- 34:14Speaker 3: how can they connect with you?
- 34:16Speaker 1: Yeah, so Agentive. Our website is b beeagentive dot com.
- 34:23Speaker 1: Go there you can start reading up about it. Very soon.
- 34:26Speaker 1: We are coming up with a freemium version so people
- 34:29Speaker 1: will be able to log in sign up using a
- 34:32Speaker 1: credit system. You'll be able to look up and build
- 34:35Speaker 1: your own lists and your own bio groups. Also go
- 34:40Speaker 1: to substack. We are under Adgentive chronicles and Tony. This
- 34:44Speaker 1: is a really good resource because we are actually chronicle
- 34:48Speaker 1: chronicling reil life use cases, actual customers that are using
- 34:53Speaker 1: tools like Agentive, actual real life problems and how they
- 34:57Speaker 1: go about solving them. And then LinkedIn name Usman, USMA
- 35:01Speaker 1: and Shake Sagikhe and then Agentive also linked LinkedIn. Follow
- 35:08Speaker 1: us on.
- 35:08Speaker 3: That please well Usman, thank you for joining us again
- 35:12Speaker 3: on the show. I can't wait to have you back
- 35:14Speaker 3: to again. Blow my mind with all of the capability
- 35:19Speaker 3: that Agentive has. This is so exciting folks to see
- 35:22Speaker 3: the future of business development play out, and tools like
- 35:26Speaker 3: this are not reducing the number of business developers the
- 35:29Speaker 3: number of business developers is exponentially increasing. Why because it
- 35:33Speaker 3: enables us to deliver more value to our prospects and
- 35:37Speaker 3: customers and Usman, thank you so so much for delivering
- 35:42Speaker 3: so much value and capability to our profession today and
- 35:48Speaker 3: we can't wait to have you back on the show
- 35:49Speaker 3: again soon.
- 35:51Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Thank you Tony for having me here.
- 35:55Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to the Business Development Podcast. US
- 36:00Speaker 2: a free community of corporate partners and business development professionals
- 36:04Speaker 2: advancing the art, science, and ethics of the business development
- 36:08Speaker 2: profession at Gbdassociation dot org.