Using AI in Sales, with David Kreiger

Episode 65

Unlocking the Potential of AI in Sales: An Introduction

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping the sales landscape in profound ways, offering new opportunities to enhance productivity, streamline processes, and deepen customer engagement. On the latest episode of the Sell with Authority podcast, Steven Wessner, CEO of Predictive ROI, dives deep into this transformative topic with special guest David Krieger, founder of SalesRoads. They explore practical strategies and thoughtful insights on integrating AI in sales — not as a replacement for the human touch, but as a powerful augmentation that can help sales teams and agency owners close more deals and build sustainable pipelines.

Demystifying AI in Sales: Overcoming Common Fears

One of the most frequent concerns when discussing AI in sales is the fear that it will replace human salespeople. David Krieger addresses this head-on by emphasizing that AI isn’t about eliminating people; it’s about empowering them. “It will replace people who don’t use AI,” he states, underscoring that those who embrace AI will have a competitive advantage. Far from being a cold, impersonal force, AI can grant “superhuman powers” to sales professionals, amplifying their ability to engage prospects and nurture leads efficiently.

David’s approach challenges sales leaders and agency owners to roll up their sleeves and actively integrate AI tools into their workflows. Drawing parallels to the internet’s impact decades ago, he advises against resisting AI adoption and encourages a practical, hands-on mindset to fully harness its potential.

Implementing AI in Sales Processes: Where to Start and How to Pace Yourself

A key takeaway from the conversation is the importance of incremental AI adoption. Transitioning to AI-powered sales processes shouldn’t feel like a sudden, overwhelming pivot. Instead, businesses should blend AI tools into their existing sales frameworks at a manageable pace. This phased approach helps maintain the essential human element in sales interactions while reaping AI’s productivity benefits.

Krieger shares valuable advice on starting with the biggest pain points or productivity bottlenecks first. By focusing on problems before tools, sales leaders can identify the most impactful areas where AI can make a difference. This problem-first mindset prevents teams from becoming overwhelmed by the rapid influx of new AI solutions and ensures that tool selection aligns closely with business needs.

Furthermore, David’s experience building a nationwide distributed sales team highlights the synergy between talented people and smart technology. AI becomes a force multiplier, supporting top performers wherever they are located and helping them operate with greater efficiency and insight.

Balancing AI Integration with a Human-Centered Sales Approach

While AI excels at data analysis, automation, and lead generation, the conversation repeatedly reinforces that sales at its core remains a human endeavor. David stresses that successful AI adoption in sales should never come at the expense of genuine human connection. Maintaining a high-touch, personalized process is critical to building trust and converting prospects into long-term clients.

The episode emphasizes that AI tools should be viewed as assistants that free salespeople from mundane tasks, allowing them to focus more on meaningful conversations and relationship-building. This balance between efficiency and empathy creates a sales approach that stands out from competitors and future-proofs agencies against evolving challenges.

Maximizing Results with AI in Sales: Actionable Advice

To leverage AI effectively in your sales efforts, the podcast offers several practical takeaways:

• Start Small & Strategic: Identify key pain points or tasks that drain productivity and apply AI solutions there first.
• Blend AI with Human Skills: Use AI to augment your sales team, not replace them. Empower your people to leverage data and automation to engage prospects more deeply.
• Build Strong Sales Fundamentals: Ensure your core sales processes and team capabilities are solid before layering AI tools on top.
• Embrace Ongoing Learning: The AI landscape evolves quickly. Stay informed and adapt tools gradually at a sustainable pace.
• Focus on Helpfulness: Position your sales team and AI resources to be genuinely helpful to prospects, enhancing trust and authority in your niche.

Ready to Elevate Your Sales with AI? Take the Next Step

The insights shared by Steven Wessner and David Krieger provide a roadmap to not only embrace AI in sales but to do so in a way that keeps your process human-centered and effective. If you’re an agency owner or strategic consultant seeking to fill your sales pipeline with right-fit clients and future-proof your business, it’s time to start exploring how AI can become an integral part of your sales strategy.

Don’t get left behind as the sales landscape evolves. Reach out to Predictive ROI to discover how we can help you integrate AI tools into your sales process thoughtfully and powerfully — accelerating your business growth with the perfect blend of technology and human connection.

On this episode of Sell With Authority, I am excited to welcome special guest expert David Kreiger, the Founder of SalesRoads — a remarkable sales outsourcing and appointment setting firm. Get ready for an enlightening conversation as David and I dive into the realm of utilizing AI as an integral part of your sales process.

But hold on, because we’re not just talking about incorporating AI for the sake of it. No, we’re tackling a crucial aspect—how to leverage AI while preserving the human touch that makes your sales process truly exceptional.

It’s a tall order, but an essential one for us to discuss.

I assure you that the insights, best practices, and wisdom David shares today are transformative. By applying these strategies, you’ll accelerate your results, break free from the feast and famine cycle that often plagues agencies and consulting firms, and propel your business development efforts to new heights.

What you will learn in this episode:

• How to harness the power of AI and blend it into your sales process — and — how to blend it in at your own pace
• Challenges that arise when an agency lacks sales fundamentals
• Sales fundamentals that you and your team need to have in place before implementing AI
• The connection between sales team performance and agency success
• Strategies for blending automation and personalization effectively
• Ensuring a high-touch experience while leveraging AI in sales

Resources:

• Website: https://www.salesroads.com/
• LinkedIn Personal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidkreiger/
• LinkedIn Business: https://www.linkedin.com/company/salesroads/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/kreigs

Additional Resources:

• Predictive ROI Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/

Full Episode Transcript

Using AI in Sales: Full Episode Transcript

Welcome to the sell with authority podcast. I’m Steven Wessner, CEO of Predictive ROI, and my team and I, we created this podcast
specifically for you. So if you’re an agency owner or a strategic consultant, and you’re looking to fill your
sales pipeline with a steady stream of right fit clients, and so that you can get the at
bats, you know, the leads with right fit prospects that you need in order to build
and scale, well, then you’re in the right place. Do you want proven strategies for becoming the known expert in your niche and attracting
all the clients that you need? Yep, we’re going to cover that.

You want to learn how to step away from the sea of sameness. So you actually stand out from your competitors and own the ground you’re standing on. Yep, we’re going to cover that too. Do you want to future proof your business so you can successfully navigate the next
challenge that you know is going to come your way? Well, absolutely.

We will help you there as well. I promise you, each episode of this podcast will contain valuable insights, tangible examples,
and best practices, never theory from thought leaders, experts, owners who have done exactly
what you’re working hard to do. So I want you to think practical and tactical, never any fluff. Each of our guests have built a position of authority and then monetized that position
by growing their audience, by nurturing leads, and yes, converting sales, but all the while,
they did it by being helpful. So every time someone from their audience turned around, there they were with a helpful
answer to an important question.

So the right fit prospects never ever felt like they were a prospect. I also promise you, every strategy that we discuss, every tool we recommend will be shared
in full transparency in each episode so you can become the known expert in your niche,
fill your sales pipeline with a steady stream, and of prospects who are never ever made to
feel like one of your prospects. Okay, so I am, to say that I’m super excited, maybe I should say beyond excited, holy bananas
excited, some sort of exclamation here because I am beyond excited for you to meet our very
special guest expert today, David Krieger. If you’re meeting David for the first time, he’s the founder of SalesRoads, a sales outsourcing
and appointment setting firm, and holy bananas, this is going to be one of those rock solid
awesome conversations because David and I are set to tackle how to use AI as part of
your sales process, but equally important, how to use AI in such a way that your sales
process still feels human centered with a personal touch. Okay, so I want to take that kind of high level, I want to take that a bit deeper by
highlighting a few of the takeaways from David’s expertise that in my opinion will be super
helpful as you and your team think about how to accelerate biz dev efforts within the next,
say, let’s call that a quarter or two.

So David and I are going to focus on how you and your team can first harness the power
of AI and then blend it into your sales process, but how to blend it in at your own pace. Because here’s the reality, everyone, if adding AI into your sales process feels like going
180 degrees in the opposite direction at breakneck speed, it would be overwhelming and candidly
not very effective. Second, David and I are going to work our way through what he sees as some of the sales
fundamentals that you and your team need to have in place before implementing AI or even
bringing on a sales team to help drive biz dev for your shop. Candidly, I wish I had a dollar every time I had a conversation with an agency owner
where they were proclaiming a bright, bold future for their agency because why? They just hired a new biz person to run point on sales.

Understanding AI in Sales

And then six months later, that person was gone. That situation is so incredibly common. Why? Well, the biz dev person couldn’t perform and hit their goals. And I would argue that oftentimes a biz dev person can’t perform because the agency itself
lacks the polished sales fundamentals and best practices.

Okay, so here’s our third and final takeaway. David and I are going to come in for a landing around how to use AI in your sales process
while at the same time keeping the process human centered and high touch. Yes, I agree. These are big takeaways and a tall order for this conversation, but an important one for
us to have. I promise you, if you take and apply the insights, the best practices in the wisdom David shares
with you, you will accelerate your results and escape the feast and famine of biz dev
that often plagues so many agencies and consulting firms.

So without further ado, welcome to the sell with authority podcast, David. It is great to be here, Steven. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited for this conversation. I’m excited for the conversation too, as you know, in the green room.

I could hardly contain myself because I think this is such an important topic for our audience. And I’m grateful to have your smarts to lead us through that. So in for our audience to be able to learn directly from you. So thank you for your generosity and saying yes. Before we dive in, share, take us behind the curtain here and give us maybe a couple minutes
of context around your path and journey.

And then we’ll dive into what it will probably feel like a barrage of questions coming your
way. Yeah. So I started on sales road. So we’re a business to business appointment setting lead generation company 16 years ago. So I was in business school.

The Role of AI in Sales in Agency Growth

And I spent my time there trying to think of, you know, a great company to start. And I had a background in inside sales. And I started reading about the distributed model of call centers where people worked
out of their home offices instead of a centralized location, which was novel, 16, somewhat novel
16 years ago, not so novel now after 2020. But the reason I love that model, and this is what we’re going to start touching on with
AI and some of the processes, is that at its core, sales is a human endeavor. And having great people on your team is the number one fundamental building block to building
a great sales motion.

And even with AI, that is the core. But the reason I wanted to go distribute, the reason why I wanted to build a company
around work from home at that point was that I realized I could tap into the best salespeople
wherever they left. And why constrain myself to one area in Philadelphia, where I started the company, when I could
have the United States as my landscape to recruit the best people. And so that was the beginning of my journey is building a company where we could really
recruit amazing talent, amazing people, and then leverage the processes and culture that
we’ve developed over the last 16 years to create rockstar sales processes for our clients. Amazing.

Okay. So thank you for that context. And I love how you mentioned one that at its core, sales is obviously a personal process. We’re not trying to take nothing in this conversation is going to be about how we can stick in the
robots and remove the people, right? And then you mentioned being able to tap into the best salespeople across the country.

So not just Philly, but around the country. So that tells me that you’ve been able to, over the last 16 years, recruit some really
great talent as part of this process. So this is going to be, or excuse me, as part of the, your team and the company. So amazing. Okay.

So as we start thinking about AI and harnessing that power, let’s start with maybe some of
the immediate objections that you typically hear when kind of broaching that subject. And then we’re going to go more into the how to. So, so give me some of the common objections that you hear like over and over. Yeah. So, you know, I think that, that people are scared of AI right now.

Key Strategies for AI in Sales

And they’re worried that it is going to replace people and replace salespeople, replace SDRs,
which is, you know, the people who do cold calling prospecting, you know, building that,
that initial outbound motion for clients and agencies to create leads and predictable revenue. And so I think, you know, the biggest concern out there right now is, is this going to replace
me? Is this going to replace my company? And so there is a lot of fear, I think, around, around AI and what I would encourage people
as they are thinking about AI is that AI, first of all, and we’ll talk about this more,
I’m sure, but I don’t think it’s going to replace people. This is the adage that I’m hearing a lot and I agree with it.

It will replace people who don’t use AI, right? So as salespeople and agency owners who use AI will replace salespeople and agency owners
who don’t use AI. But I don’t think it’s going to completely replace people. It will augment them. It will make them have superhuman powers.

But again, humanism is the word in there. And so the thing I think is really important and the thing that I’ve been thinking about
since I’ve seen it, you know, start seeing the power of AI, you know, six months ago
or so and I’m, is that I have to just embrace this. I know that this is going to be part of everything we do the way that the internet is part of
everything we do. And if we decided not to embrace the internet back in 99 or 96 or whenever you first saw
the internet, where would you be right now? So I think the first that, that I think people just have to start using the tools.

We’ll talk about how to use them well, and I don’t think it’s going to replace people,
but you’ve got to start rolling up your sleeves, thinking about it, figuring out ways to use
it for your agency, for your sales process. Because it is going to be the reality of everything we do moving forward. I think this is going to be great. And this conversation for, for many reasons, and I love how you just put on, put a fine
point on that. It’s not going to replace you, that there is fear, but that if we.

use AI and use it in the appropriate way is going to augment bolt onto the sales team
and then give those superstar performers is going to give them additional superpowers
and that’s an amazing thing. Okay, so as we think about well, how do you think we should break this down because I’m
really curious about like the roles that you see AI playing and then also I’m really curious
about the AI tools that you see playing those roles. So how do you think it would be best to step into that conversation and then also this
other piece blended in at your own pace. So how do you suggest we tackle that kind of big thing? Yeah, so I think we can maybe talk about ways to look at where you can start leveraging
AI at your organization the way we thought we’ve been thinking about it at sales roads
and then we can start breaking into each of those areas.

Why AI in Sales Matters Today

We can talk about sales, then we can talk, you know, bigger picture as to how to actually
start and what tools maybe to start using. Does that sound good? Steven? Perfect. Yep.

Thanks for your insight on that. Okay, so let’s break it down. So what we did. So we when we started realizing that we had to figure out how to start using AI. There were two things that we were trying to keep in mind.

One is we wanted to figure out where could we have the most impact right now at sales
roads. And two, there are, if you start getting into the AI world, you’re going to realize there
is a new tool developed every single day, maybe every single hour, right? And so you can get overwhelmed very quickly and as owners of agencies and companies or
leaders of teams, you can overwhelm your team very quickly, which can have the opposite
effect of what you’re wanting to have, which is getting people just bogged down by tools. So what we did first before we didn’t start tool first, we started problem first, right? So what are some of the areas that we could potentially increase productivity?

Because this is as you start diving into AI is the most amazing productivity tool I’ve
ever seen. Bigger than the internet, I think. Bigger than the iPhone. Wow. So where are the ways that we could in bite-sized chunks tackle a problem?

So problem first, and then we can start thinking about how AI could help us solve that problem. So we start learning. We’re very targeted. And so we thought we would think of three, because that’s about as much as you can tackle
like in a quarter, right? That we could start using AI.

Implementing AI in Sales in Your Business

So what we landed on were, first, we do a lot of call listening and listening to calls
to make sure that the calls are, you know, the appointments, the leads that we generate
for our clients are of the caliber we want. And we have a big team that does that call listening. That is something that we spent a lot of money on. We spent a lot of time on. We could maybe even do it better.

We thought maybe AI, because it’s very good at, you know, looking at texts and looking
at transcripts could help us with. So that was, and I’ll talk about how we’ve been tackling that. So that was problem number one. The second part, the second thing that we identified was creating really good leads
and targeted leads, because you can’t create an outbound sales motion. You talk a lot, Stephen, about your ICP and figuring out the right customers and things
like that.

Well, you’ve got to take those insights and build a target list, right? And make sure you’re very targeted with that list. So that’s not easy to do, and we’re very good at it, but we felt AI could help make us better
at it. And then third, which is maybe the most exciting part right now, is building the strategies,
helping you to think about your ICP, helping you to think about your value proposition,
helping to build call approaches, emails. We spent a lot of time building that, and we felt that AI and the tools could help us
not just do it faster, because that’s the other quick caveat with AI, is it can make
you do things faster, but if you only are looking for speed, I think you’re going to
miss some of the golden gems of AI, which it can help you do things better, and it becomes
your assistant, and you can be more effective at everything you do.

So how can we build even better strategies for our clients? So we identified three areas that we thought AI was well-positioned to help us do faster,
better, and then we started tackling that. So I’ve just talked… I’ll pause there for a second. I’m happy to go into each one in detail, but that’s how we looked at AI first, to try to
not allow ourselves to get overwhelmed, and get our team overwhelmed with AI, and start
us on the learning curve.

Okay, so a quick recap here, because I think the approach that you used is really smart,
and here’s what I mean by that. You mentioned two things to keep in mind, right? Where can we have the most impact? Super smart, right? Because creating that impact, in my opinion, because creating that impact leads to fast
wins, and not banging your head up against the wall.

Common Mistakes with AI in Sales

And where can we have the most impact? It doesn’t mean changing the world overnight, but where can we have the most impact to give
us confidence that we’re heading in the right direction? I really like how you said that. And then you mentioned not getting overwhelmed. overwhelmed by, I’m paraphrasing here, but not getting overwhelmed by this influx of
the daily deluge of new tools, right?

Pick a few, test the impact, get some fast wins, and then you can sort of land and expand
after that. But then all of this, as I was taking the notes here, it seems like the overarching
piece that you and your team were asking yourselves was, start with the problem first. You identified three, and I would encourage our audience to do the same thing, and their
three might not be the same as your three, but start with the problems first that they’re
trying to solve, because then you know what impact you’re trying to have, right? I know that sounds probably simple, but like those guiding principles that you just gave
us, I think are fantastic, David. Thank you.

Yeah. I mean, so we, yeah, we want it to be methodical. Otherwise we could run in so many different directions and get nothing, spend a lot of
time and get nothing accomplished. Right. So that helped us to be really focused on getting our feet dirty, dipping our toe in
the water, and starting to implement AI as sales roads.

Well, and here’s another, in my opinion, key insight. When you said, not just faster, but better. Yes. Right? I think it’s so common to think, oh, ChatGPT is going to do this writing for me, and it’s
going to be instantaneous or whatever example, ChatGPT or other tools or whatever, it’s just
faster, faster, faster.

Yeah. But is it better? Right. And so when you’re highlighting that, and then the strategy piece, I think point number
three really underscores that building strategies, actually trusting AI tools to help you be
better in a strategy realm, that’s a really big win. So not just faster, but better.

The Future of AI in Sales

Right. So that’s really, really smart. Yeah. So ChatGPT is, I think, the most fundamental tool to leverage because of the power of it. And what I would say is, it is your assistant now.

You now have an assistant, either for free if you use the free version, or I would encourage
people to spend the $20 a month and get the 4.0 version. But let’s say for $20 a month, you could have an assistant in any domain you want, from
copywriting to law, be careful a little bit there, but to just brainstorming a general
business strategy, a business coach, but they are an assistant. And just like if you hired an assistant who had maybe some experience, but would you turn
over the keys to the castle and basically say, write this email, and then you just use
the email, right? Or write this email and just write the email. They are an assistant.

They are an amazing assistant at an amazing price, but they are an assistant to you. And that’s how you’ve got to use them. That’s really smart. Okay. So let’s go back to how you kind of broke this down for us a few minutes ago, roles
and tools.

So the three problems that you mentioned, I mean, those are problems. How does that connect into the roles piece? Yeah. So the roles and the way we solve them, what we did with each of those is, and let me start
with the last one, because I think that’s going to have, and I’m happy to go into the
other two, but I think that will have the most context, I think, for some of the listeners
and things that are maybe more ubiquitous to everyone’s issues and problems as an agency. So we defined the problem and the objective.

So the third one, just to remind everyone, was before we start any program with a client,
we build what we call our demand generation playbook. So that is our strategic roadmap to how we are going to help them create predictable
leads, predictable appointments, so that they have a steady funnel of sales opportunities
for their salespeople. But before we do anything, before we pick up the phone, before we send our first email,
we meet with them. We understand what they’re feeling, the value proposition is for their product or service. Who have been their best customers?

Expert Insights on AI in Sales

They might not have created a great who framework like you have, Steve, but we help them with
that a little bit. And sometimes they have it, but who is their IC? Who’s their ideal customer profile? What is their TAM? What’s their total addressable market?

What has worked so far in their outbound or their inbound motions? And then we build, it’s like a mini consulting program, we build our playbook. So this is how we are going to execute this strategy. Here’s the value prop that we’re going to refine it a little bit. Here are the personas, the people that we’re going to be targeting, the companies we’re
going to be targeting.

Here are the call approaches, the objections, the emails we’re developing. So this is a big endeavor. And before AI, we just did it, you know, and our client success manager, who’s our strategic
persona in each program, would develop that. So we felt that AI could help. help us do that better, speed up certain aspects, but also really go in more depth in certain
areas.

So my head of program management was tasked with this. Let’s figure out how we can do a playbook, leveraging AI, and make it better. So first of all, you have to have the who on your team. That could be you, right? Or it could be somebody on your team who’s closest to the problem.

They’ve got to be assigned, they’ve got to be accountable, and we think about what are
the key milestones and check-ins and things like that. So she has built thousands of playbooks, and she started just playing. So she started playing with ChatGPT. There are a few other little tools that we looked at for email building and whatnot. But how could we, step by step, take a kickoff meeting, get the information we need, and
then use ChatGPT to do it?

Mastering AI in Sales

And so with that, really what we’ve created is a series of prompts. So with every piece of information, we have now prompts that we’ve created for ChatGPT
that can help us with that. So for instance, I won’t go through everything, but for a value proposition, we have different
information that we got from them. Some of the value reasons that they’re different from their competitors, certain pain points
that their prospects have. And we will load that in to ChatGPT, give the ChatGPT three examples of good value propositions,
and ask it to kick out five different value propositions based upon that.

Wow. And the reason why I say five is, again, they can do five, they can do 10, they can do one,
almost in the same amount of time. But then you get to look at it, and you can say, okay, this one is the best one, that
I like the best, but it’s missing this, it’s missing that. And you chat back, just like you would with an assistant or a colleague about a value
prop, you do it with ChatGPT. And you go in and out, you try this, and then you can also make it more edgy, right?

Test the boundaries, because it will create it like that. Make it more professional, less marketing, blah, blah, you know, things like that. And you just iterate, and the thing I love about AI and chat is you get to brainstorm
with it. So take time with it, brainstorm it, and that’s how you get some real gold in a value prop
or emails and things like that, is you just go back and forth, it’s your assistant. And so she’s been playing with it, and she basically created a process for our team to
use ChatGPT.

So there are certain prompts that they’ll use, certain information they should put in,
and then guidelines, this is, you iterate based upon this. So that’s how we created a structure, and now we have a way that we can just use ChatGPT,
not to just click one button and say, build our playbook, because that would be a much
worse playbook than we would build ourselves. But here’s how you brainstorm and leverage ChatGPT to build a better playbook. Yeah, and so that sounds like a very powerful insertion of AI’s capability into a process
that you’ve built, like you mentioned, the DemandGen playbook, and you’ve taken pieces
out of that in order to, yes, make it faster, but then also to make it better, right? Like the brainstorming piece, and here’s what I thought was also a big golden nugget out
of what you described there.

And not just the end result, that’s a big golden nugget too, but how you described the
prompt process, that it’s not just a one prompt, well, it didn’t give me what I was looking
for, but it’s iterative, it’s this, it’s this, it’s this, it’s this, and you mentioned the
word brainstorming, and thinking of ChatGPT as, yes, it’s a tool, and yes, you’re looking
for a particular golden nugget, but then it’s an iterative process in refining through the
tool, that’s what then leads to the gem at the end, right? Absolutely, and you hit on a really important point. So there’s two aspects to it. First, like you said, it is an iterative process, right? It’s not one and done.

How to Approach AI in Sales

You want to iterate, you want to see what’s working well, whatnot. And I think what you just said really reminded me of something that’s important, is some
people have used ChatGPT, and they’ve put in a prompt, and they get back something that
just isn’t very good, and they’re like, yeah, this doesn’t work. Yeah. ChatGPT is only as good as the prompts that you write. And so one of the things that we’ve worked on a lot for this, as well as anything, is
you’ve got to really work on the prompting.

If people are looking to do some ChatGPT and whatnot, I would look for some… There’s great little prompting courses or little cheat sheets. But just a few things to keep in mind is try a few different prompts if you’re not getting
what you want. Make sure that whatever you’re setting up is a good prompt. A few things are just high level, just for people who want a few little nuggets.

With ChatGPT, tell it what it is. It doesn’t know who it is until you… So what I mean by that is when we’re doing copywriting, we say to ChatGPT, before we
start prompting it… you are a marketing copywriter for a SaaS company. Now it’s got its marketing hat on.

It doesn’t think it’s a lawyer or whatever else it is. And that gives it context, right? Then you say, you know, I’m looking to write an email
with Xtone to, you know, this persona
who has these pain points. And the more specific you can be with your prompt,
the better. And lastly, and that’s why I said with the value prop,
if you have a few example of what good is, right?

So maybe you’ve written a high performing email in the past
or a really good marketing one sheet or a good value prop. If you can give it a few examples,
it then has a better sense of what you’re looking for
in this. So it needs context. So the more context you can give it and the more time,
I mean, we’ve spent three months building the prompts
for our demand generation playbook, right? And we’re still not done.

We’re gonna still iterate it. But prompting, that’s why if you look on LinkedIn now,
prompt engineers are like, you know,
I think getting hundreds of thousands of dollars, right? It’s the new thing. But you don’t have to like, you know,
all you need to do is take out, you know,
there’s little courses on there, little YouTube videos,
few little principles just to make sure
you’re prompting the tool in the way that is effective
for what you’re trying to do. Okay, this is amazing.

And thank you for that additional context. We’re gonna take a quick break. And then everyone, when we come back,
we’re gonna talk more about AI roles and tools
and how that fits into the overall sales process. But we’ll be right back with David in just a minute. Okay, everyone.

So before the break,
I mentioned that we were gonna come back
and ask for David’s expertise
or that I would ask for David’s expertise
around sales process, around list,
and also how AI fits into the sales process. And so at the break, I was asking David,
if we could start with just getting his point of view
and his expertise,
high level sort of orchestrating the sales process
as a whole, just kind of give us that view out of his head. And then we’ll break that down
and think about how AI can be inserted
into various kind of roles in that process. So David, take us high level,
give us your view of the sales process,
the outbound sales process,
and then we’ll start to break it down. Yeah, so this is hard.

And you’re not alone in,
if you struggle with this, you’re not alone. I think a lot of agency owners,
a lot of companies struggle with feast or famine, right? You know, they get some clients,
then they’re servicing them
and then they have to scramble to get new clients. And so it’s hard to build a predictable revenue process. But let me break down some of the fundamentals
that I think are important when you’re trying to do it.

So you’ve got to start from a strategic base. So, and I know there’s other,
we won’t go to detail,
there’s other podcasts and things on your websites
even to help people with this,
but you’ve got to think about who you want to target first. Because with outbound, that’s also the magic,
is you get to decide who you want as a client
and go out and try to reach out to them. So you’ve got to define who that is. And you start with some of your best clients,
see where there are some fundamental similarities,
and then you got to define it,
use the worksheets that you have seen,
but define who your ideal customer profile is.

Because without that, you’re flying blind, right? So once you figure out who that ideal customer profile is,
then you got to think about how you want to talk to them,
how you want to message them, right? And so there are really three fundamental ways right now
in an outbound motion to do it. Phone calls, emails, and social LinkedIn,
usually for B2B, right? And so, think about those channels.

If you have some familiarity with some versus other,
you can kind of gravitate towards one at the beginning. I would encourage you to create a holistic one,
but also you got to, that’s a lot more work too. But think about the channels you want to go after
and then think about the messaging. So what are, as part of your ICP worksheet,
you’re thinking about their pain points. What are the challenges that they’re having
and how have you solved those challenges for other clients?

If you have social proof, case studies and things like that,
that’s really great and important as part of this. So think about those pain points
and how you solve those pain points uniquely
for your company,
which will transition into your value proposition. With that, then leverage
and come up with your call approach. Once you get someone on the phone,
how are you going to engage them? How are you going to get them interested in talking to you?

And that’s got to be in about 26 seconds or less. It’s got to be a tight call approach, right? With emails, how are you going to message them? How are you going to email? And I know that you are excited about your product
and service and things like that,
but it’s got to be three sentences or less
because we’ve all gotten the long emails,
no one’s going to read them.

And so, like Mark Twain, I’ll butcher it,
I think he said,
or Winston Churchill, one of those smart people,
he said, you know, I apologize that I didn’t have
more time to write a short letter. Yeah, isn’t that a great quote? I know, right? But you gotta do it, and we’ll get back to it,
but AI is a great way to do that
and help you shorten up what you have. So into two, three lines or 26 seconds
and things like that.

Oh, okay. Okay, so you build that,
the call approach and the strategy. You have to do that. You can’t hire, unless they’re very high level,
but even, you know, if you’re a small agent,
a small company, I think it’s founder led,
at least at the beginning,
because if you don’t create the process,
if you don’t create the messaging,
you bring somebody in from the outside
who doesn’t understand your business
or your prospects the way you do,
you’re setting them up for failure. You might get lucky, you might get that,
you know, VP of sales who just knows it
and not saying that it’s not out there,
but turnover rate for VP of sales,
for VP of marketing is what,
on average, like 14 months, maybe less,
because people don’t take the time
to at least build the fundamentals of the process.

They can iterate off of it, but build that fundamental,
build your own demand generation playbook. Okay, so once you’ve got that,
you’ve got to translate that into a list, right? Because if you don’t know how to reach out to them
and you don’t know where they are,
you’ve got to, you know,
and so there are,
we have a whole department that does this. I will talk at a high level
and you can reach out to me on LinkedIn
if you have some questions. I’m happy to break it down further.

And Stephen, maybe there’s some specifics
you want to dive into,
but without going too far into it,
there are a few ways that we look at doing it. One is use Sales Navigator and LinkedIn to build that list
and choose those selects
and see who the people are that you’re doing. And then you can use tools like Zoom Info,
Sales Intel, Apollo,
to then take that and put it into a list
that has direct dial numbers, emails,
you know, hopefully not, but, you know,
just company numbers. It’s really important to get the direct down the cell phone
if you’re looking to call
and put into an Excel list. And then you’ve got to have a CRM, right?

So I know a lot of us,
and a CRM that you’re using,
not just a database, right? That you’re keeping, you know, context in. There are a number of different tools again,
you know, that you can use,
but you’ve got to import that into some form of CRM
to do the proactive calling. And then what I would suggest
is start doing it yourself a little bit,
you know, test the messaging,
see how it’s working. But then once you’ve got this process down
and you’ve iterated,
they got the message
and you’ve got the right target list,
you know, prospecting takes a long time.

So you want to hire somebody
who can do the prospecting for you. It could be an agency like us. And also we obviously can help
with some of that upfront stuff
that we’re talking about,
but you can hire somebody
who just do the prospecting for you, right? And generate those leads,
generate those appointments
so that you’re working on closing,
not spending a whole day
to just get one appointment
or two appointments. So I’ll pause there.

I just talked a lot,
but that’s, you know,
in a bridge version of an outbound sales motion
to start generating leads and appointments. Brilliant. Okay. So let’s talk a little bit more about
LinkedIn, Sales Nav,
love the Zoom info piece,
Apollo piece,
and then moving that into an Excel
and all of that. You mentioned CRM.

So that’s telling me,
okay, part of this process
is what I’ll call,
there’s probably a better term,
but I’ll call cold emails. So I’m trying to anticipate
maybe some questions from our audience. And it might be like,
yeah, hey, hang on a second here, David. If I’m going to build the list,
I’m going to put it in my CRM
and I’m going to be sending cold emails. I’m going to get all sorts of spam complaints
and my sender reputation is going to go into the gutter.

So help us better understand
how you guys are navigating that potential pitfall,
because I’m sure you have some steps for that. Yeah. So first of all,
I also wouldn’t just send out,
you know, cold email, right? I would make sure that you’re doing some calling. Cold email has a very low percentage success rate.

So you’re going to have to send a lot
to get some bites, right? And I think that calling,
I know it’s tough and people don’t want to do it,
but at the end of the day,
it’s the best way to break through
and have a great conversation with prospects,
understand their problems,
talk about what you can do,
and then book a more in-depth meeting. So first of all,
I would not avoid the calling piece. As far as the emailing piece,
there are a few things that I think
can overcome what you’re talking about. One is if you really narrowly defined your ICP
and have some very high level prospects,
I would customize the emails.

I wouldn’t just spam them, right? If you know there are certain customers
that you really think are great,
you know, take a look at their LinkedIn,
do a little customization. There are great tools, AI tools that can help you. There’s a company called Reggie.ai
that does customized emails based upon
persona, LinkedIn profiles and websites. And your value prop, again, I think you need to tweak it a bit, but it can get you started
with some of that.

So I would say for your high value prospects, take a little time, customize the emails,
and then you’re not going to get spam complaints. If you want to go after a wider swath of folks, and you can’t customize every single email
and the thousands, or you can with AI, but I’ll tell you wonky things happen, right? You definitely want to, there are tools out there that can warm up domains that are close
to yours, but not exactly yours, right? So that you don’t, you know, I don’t even know if SEI really counts this stuff anymore,
but just to be careful, you know, that you’re not getting the spam complaints, it will rotate
the domains, rotate the emails, so that you make sure that you’re going into inboxes,
and not just going to spam. So you want to use, and in the show notes, Stephen, I’m happy to give a few examples
and links and things like that for that.

But there are tools that can set up your emailing so that you make sure that your emails are
actually getting delivered and your domains aren’t getting penalized in any way if you’re
wanting to send emails at a higher velocity. Okay. And so you mentioned CRM, so like just in full transparency, so here at Predictive,
we use Keep, used to be Infusionsoft. Any particular recommendation of CRM that you and your team really like? I know there’s scads of them, so that’s why I’m curious if you have sort of some best
practices or maybe some favorites.

Yeah, so we use a company called Vanilla Soft, which is really good for calling and really
good for agency work, because it divides everything up. And so Vanilla Soft has been great. We’ve been using them for 12 years. It’s really good to make sure that you are just calling one record after another. They have some email capabilities.

And so that has been good. A lot of our clients use HubSpot. I think that that is great and you don’t have to do a Salesforce implementation and things
like that. You can go with Salesforce. It’s just a little bit more.

You need to make sure that you can implement it. But then you’re also going to have to put a sales acceleration platform on top of it. So a sales loft or an outreach.io to be able to automate some of the emails, the cadences,
and the LinkedIn. Those are a few things for folks to check out. And there’s also, if you’re on, Pipe Drive is another good one that’s simple to use.

And so those are a few examples. That is great. Yeah. When you mentioned Salesforce, I was thinking, oh boy, it’s like oftentimes it’s like taking
the space shuttle to the grocery store. Exactly.

It’s a little bit much. Okay. So I know that we’re quickly running out of time and I want to sort of honor, or not sort
of, I want to honor the promise that I mentioned to our audience during the introduction. So as we think about these tools, and thank you very much for architecting the sales process
and then breaking some of that down. When we think of the tools and then the emails and the customization, how do you recommend
that we keep this human centered, that it doesn’t feel automated, that it doesn’t feel
schmutzy, that it doesn’t feel like that came out of left field.

So how do we keep this human centered throughout this entire process by still harnessing AI,
but keeping it human centered? Yeah. So first is the mindset. And there’s two things to keep in mind. One, we would all love to have a button we can press and just leads start falling out
of the sky and appointments fall out of the sky and sales fall out of the sky and everything
is automated.

Right. But as we all know, there’s no easy button in sales. And for all the things you probably are seeing out there about AI, oh, yeah, it’s just going
to automate and you’re just going to start getting appointments or start, there is just
never an easy button. So be careful of that and know that this is going to can be your Iron Man suit, right? You know, and AI can augment and make you so much better at what you’re doing, but you
still need to be in the suit, right?

You still need to be Tony Stark, right? So I think that’s the, you know, the first mentality is just to remember that. And the second, which is part of that and related, is that you’re selling to people,
right? Sales is a human endeavor, and it always will be. And so remember who you’re selling to and better.

And I think you talk about this a lot, Steven, you know, how you can help people, how you
can help your prospects, how you can help your prospective clients. And when you look at it through those two prisms, I think it’s going to give guidelines
for not trying to find that easy button and not just trying to create a mechanical process. is helping you to remember that the human
is on both sides of this equation. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t use technology to make us better. We weren’t using the internet right now, again,
where would we be?

But you’re gonna have to use AI,
but you gotta remember those two aspects. And so with that, with this process,
is think about the types of companies
that you can help most. Think about the companies you have now,
the clients you have now,
how have you been helping them? How can you help? And then leverage that outbound motion.

I listed a whole bunch of things out. I know it’s a bit complicated,
but you also can start very, very simple
and look on LinkedIn and look at a few of those companies
that you can help and just start reaching out to them. Start calling them, start connecting with them on LinkedIn,
start commenting on some of their posts on LinkedIn,
engage with them in a human way,
and just start rolling up your sleeves and doing it. At the end of the day, to create a predictable process,
you have to follow some of those processes that I said,
and I know that’s, I listed a lot,
but start just by engaging. Just like with AI, you gotta start by doing it.

If you haven’t started prospecting,
start by engaging with your target market,
start by having conversations with them,
start networking with them and understanding their issues
and how you can help and lead with that mindset of helping,
and then build that process
that I laid out around that mentality. So brilliant. This is so good. And thank you for being so generous
in sharing specific tool names and recommendations. I really, really appreciate that
because that gives our audience some good homework,
some great takeaways,
just like I mentioned in the introduction,
I knew you would do that,
and I’m so, so very grateful that you did do that.

So thank you for that. Before we go, I know we need to come in for a landing here,
but before we go, before we close out and say goodbye,
David, anything you think we might’ve missed,
I’m sure there’s a ton,
but anything you think we might’ve missed,
any final advice, any final recommendations
that you’d like to share,
and also please do tell our audience
the best way to connect with you. For me, both with AI and, you know,
building a predictable revenue model
where you’re doing outbound
and making sure that you have a steady flow of leads. You know, I’m an agency, you know,
or no, we, just to give you a sense,
you know, we have get about 150 leads,
you know, per month, right? You know, we’ve created a machine for this.

Now, most of them, you know, we talk to them,
you know, aren’t always, you know, the best fit,
but, you know, it’s important,
you can create this process for yourself. And the best way to do it is just to start, right? Start engaging, you know, outbound can be scary. You know, a lot of rejection is part of it,
but you just got to start and you’ll get better. Start looking at processes, you know,
it can be messy at first, but just start with it.

And it’s the same thing with AI, right? Just dive in, start playing, start doing it. You know, it will be part of everything you do soon. And I just have chat GPT up on my,
one of the things that starts up every day, it’s there. And I think proactively, how can I use it today?

And you start understanding,
you start flexing those muscles
and it starts blowing, my team is just blown away
by what they can do now and how they can move
more effectively in their day-to-day. Yeah, and I love how you frame that up. Just dive in, just start doing it. And then going back to one of the things
that you mentioned at the very beginning,
where can we have the most impact? It doesn’t mean you’re trying to change the world tomorrow.

Dive in, start doing it piece by piece,
not going 180 degrees in the opposite direction
to breakneck speed, but just a nugget or two,
create some fast wins
and then start to land and expand, right? Absolutely, absolutely. Amazing. Best way to connect with you, David. So on LinkedIn, I’m David Krieger
on LinkedIn or SalesRoads.

You can find us both places. So I’m very active on LinkedIn,
posting content about these types of things,
other aspects of Outbound. Reach out to me, direct message me,
happy to connect and talk more about what we discussed today. Thank you, my friend. And okay, everyone, no matter how many notes you took
or how often you go back and re-listen
to David’s words of wisdom
and the expertise that he shared with you,
and I sure hope that you do that.

But the key is you have to take all of these fundamentals,
these best practices, these tools,
take them, dive in, start using them. Because when you do, you will accelerate your results. You will not only be faster,
but more importantly, you’ll be better. And David, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. And I am grateful that you said yes to come onto the show,
to teach us, to be our mentor,
to help us raise the bar and move onward
to the next level with our businesses.

Thank you so much, David. Thank you so much for having me. This was a great conversation. Really appreciate it, Stephen. Complete transcription result saved to: /home/ubuntu/audio/using_ai_in_sales_transcription_20260321_111235.json
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Snippet of transcribed content:
by what they can do now and how they can move
more effectively in their day-to-day. Yeah, and I love how you frame that up. Just dive in, just start doing it. And then going back to one of the things
that you mentioned at the very beginning,
where can we have the most impact?

It doesn’t mean you’re trying to change the world tomorrow. Dive in, start doing it piece by piece,
not going 180 degrees in the opposite direction
to breakneck speed, but just a nugget or two,
create some fast wins
and then start to land and expand, right? Absolutely, absolutely. Amazing. Best way to connect with you, David.

So on LinkedIn, I’m David Krieger
on LinkedIn or SalesRoads. You can find us both places. So I’m very active on LinkedIn,
posting content about these types of things,
other aspects of Outbound. Reach out to me, direct message me,
happy to connect and talk more about what we discussed today. Thank you, my friend.

And okay, everyone, no matter how many notes you took
or how often you go back and re-listen
to David’s words of wisdom
and the expertise that he shared with you,
and I sure hope that you do that. But the key is you have to take all of these fundamentals,
these best practices, these tools,
take them, dive in, start using them. Because when you do, you will accelerate your results. You will not only be faster,
but more importantly, you’ll be better. And David, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day.

And I am grateful that you said yes to come onto the show,
to teach us, to be our mentor,
to help us raise the bar and move onward
to the next level with our businesses. Thank you so much, David. Thank you so much for having me. This was a great conversation. Really appreciate it, Stephen.

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