July 19, 2025 | Read online
If you’ve been following me for a while or taken any of my training, you’ve probably heard me hammer on these core concepts:
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Context over content
- “Marketing is content, Sales is context.”
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Science over Art
- “Science lays the foundation for the Art to evolve.”
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Relevance over Personalization
- “Personalization without relevance is worse than no personalization at all.”
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Augment not Automate
- “We should be using AI to augment our abilities, not automate them.”
These were all highlighted for me this week as I trained a few clients so I thought it would be good to share some perspective.
TACTICAL TIP:
How I Augment My Tier1 Prospecting without Automating it.
I walked a group of reps through some of the GPTs and workflows I use to research accounts and craft my messaging and then had them do the same and send me one of the ‘personalized’ emails they created for review.
These emails were technically solid, personalized and relevant but… there was something missing. It was obvious they had been copy/pasted from ChatGPT.
I get hundreds of emails in my inbox but no matter how personalized they seem, I can always tell when they were written by AI and the only way I can describe it is that they just don’t have a soul.
This is why I think it’s so important to use AI to augment our abilities as humans, not automate them. Especially now that everyone is using them so all the messaging is starting to sound the same.
Here’s how I’ve evolved my Tier1 Prospecting approach using AI as a copilot, not the pilot.
- Check my Tier1 Target account list on Sales Navigator to find someone who fits my ICP
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Use this SDR/BDR Research GPT to research the account
- After it’s done with its research I ask it to “find me 5 relevant and timely trigger events that I can use to personalize my outreach efforts with.”
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Then I copy/paste those trigger events into this JB Sales Messaging Bot to help me create a sequence
- I add my “Sales-Ready Messaging” to it along with any content that I have that is relevant to the persona I am targeting.
- I then copy/paste the output into a Google doc and adjust the messaging to make it my own.
By leveraging AI like this, I’ve taken my 30-minute process down to about 10 but I haven’t gotten it down to zero and I never want to.
SPOTLIGHT: FREE TRAINING THURSDAY
If you’re interested in learning more about the balance between personalization and relevance, quality over quantity and leveraging AI to augment your skills, you’re going to want to join me next week on Free Training Thursday, where I’ll be diving into the details and showing specific examples.
Rocco Savage from the Regie.ai team and I will break down:
- The reaI dangers of personalization done wrong
- How to prioritize relevance to drive better reply rates and conversations
- Real-world examples of what works (and what doesn’t)
- My Executive Priorities framework that reps can use to guide smarter messaging - especially when using AI tools like Regie.ai
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SALES TECH/RESOURCES:
OpenAI’s New Agent Bots.
Did you see what OpenAI launched this week? Agent Bots
Apparently they’re going to be able to run autonomously and click through your browser, move between apps, manage workflows, draft content, and run tasks across your screen.
It’s fascinating. It’s also more than a little dangerous.
Because just like autonomous vehicles, we’re not talking fully self-driving here, or at least we shouldn’t be.
Unfortunately, I can already see reps thinking this is the magic bullet that will do all their work for them.
That’s not how this works.
This is powerful tech. And it’s absolutely the direction things are heading. But we can’t confuse augmentation with abdication (big word, I know. ChatGPT added it so I kept it in even though I had to look it up :).
Pay attention to this space.
SALES FROM THE STREET:
The Prep Is Science. The Delivery Is Art.
I recently had a discovery call with a client that’s way outside my typical ICP (Tech/SaaS)
I wasn’t sure if I could really help them but they were referred to me so I took the call.
In general, during discovery calls, I try to get the basic qualification info out of the way as quickly as possible, ideally even before the call with my Meeting Efficiency Survey.
As soon as I can tell they are qualified, I then make the switch to trying to disqualify them and ask them questions to uncover the reasons they shouldn't work with me.
My theory is they’re going to figure them out eventually so I might as well get them out of the way upfront and save us both a lot of time.
My initial call with my potential Champion went well enough to get a follow up meeting with their CEO.
When I got on the call with the CEO, it was evident he was skeptical that I could help.
As we dug into the issues they were having and their impact on the business it was evident they needed help elevating the conversation with their buyers to be much more strategic, but didn’t know how.
Instead of me trying to pitch them on how I could help, I decided to show them.
I asked them to share a Tier1 target account they wanted to be more strategic with and told them I would send them a copy of an account plan/approach of how I would prepare for a meeting with this client pretending like I was one of their reps.
I used my GPTs and "Meeting the Challenge” training to produce a 2-page briefing that outlined industry trends, strategic initiatives, persona insights along with a few hypotheses on how they could help the client and some questions they can use to uncover the problems and impact they’re having on the business.
When I sent it to them, I asked if this was how their reps were preparing for the meeting and if not, if this is how they wanted them to.
If it was the latter, I ‘closed’ them by asking when they wanted to get started.
We’re now at the contract phase and there's a strong likelihood they will close.
It’s never been easier to add value to clients throughout the sales process and beyond.
This is the Science/Content/Relevance. The Art/Context/Personalization is all in how you deliver it.
#MakeitHappen
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