January 25, 2025 | Read online
Helping elevate the people and profession of Sales by sharing authentic conversations, practical tips, expert advice, relevant tech and real-world lessons from my experience selling every day. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday.
We’re living in the future.
The other day I was prepping for an in-person client meeting and didn’t have time to remember everything about the client and our conversations so I used some of the AI tools I’ve been playing around with and….holy shit….
I’m going to use this story to combine the Tactical Tips, Sales Resources and Sales From The Streets section of this newsletter into one because it covers all three and it shows what is possible right now.
Keep in mind, I do not consider myself an AI guru or even a Tech guru. I’m just a Sales guy who is curious and willing to try new things.
If you’re not curious and/or willing to try new things right now you’re going to get replaced by those who are.
Hopefully this story will help you realize what’s possible and how easy it is to catch up.
TACTICAL TIP, SALES RESOURCES, SALES FROM THE STREETS:
When I was 23 years old and the VP of Sales and Marketing for my first self-funded start-up, a typical week for me included making around 400 cold calls, attending about 2-3 networking groups in the mornings and 2-3 networking events in the evenings and going on at least 5-8 in-person sales calls as I drove all over the State of Massachusetts in my 4 cylinder Mitsubishi Gallant.
This was before GPS and any of this tech that we all now rely on for every aspect of what we do.
This was also before it was THAT important to prepare for meetings because there just wasn’t a ton of information about companies other than what was on their website.
I sold to small businesses and back in the early 2000’s, CEOs of SMBs weren’t out there posting on social media or jumping on podcasts, they weren’t sharing any news and events with the world like they do today, and Linkedin and Google were barely a thing.
It’s almost incomprehensible for me to think about a world without GPS, Linkedin and Google today, and that’s not even including AI into the equation yet.
Back then, it was totally acceptable to go into a meeting and start by saying something like “tell me about your business” or asking questions like “what are your priorities?” or “what keeps you up at night?”
Now, those are some of the most insulting statements you can make or questions you can ask in my opinion since most of the information is out there and easy to find before we even walk in the door.
However, back then, clients tolerated spending the majority of the conversation getting interrogated by sales reps and then listening to their canned pitch because there weren’t as many options.
Now, the tolerance for the interrogation and “no value conversation” are over.
So, as Sales and client expectations have evolved, so have I.
I’m not a “bleeding edge” type of guy but I’ve always tried to stay a little ahead of the curve so I can stay relevant and share what I’m learning along the way (hence, the “JB Sales Learning Lab”).
But last week, I leaped into the future without even really trying and it blew my mind.
I got an inbound lead for a company who was local to Boston. I had two Qualification/Discovery calls with the main person leading the evaluation of training vendors to help address some of the challenges their Sales team were dealing with.
I use Otter.ai (sponsor) to record all my calls and get them transcribed so I can use their AI chat to ask questions about the meetings and remind myself of certain topics that were discussed.
I’ve also been working on a Meeting Prep GPT with a partner of mine Chris Briest to help me prepare for meetings.
(BTW This type of GPT and others are what I give to my JB Sales Members along with the training so if you want access feel free to join the membership today. I’m launching a whole new platform in about a month with all new content and if you join now you’ll get access to all the new stuff when it comes out. Also, if you’re looking for an AI consultant to come in and work with you, your team or your company, feel free to reach out to Chris B directly and tell him you heard about him through me and he’ll take care of you)
The Meeting Prep GPT provides research and insights in the following flow:
- Industry trends impacting the company you’re meeting with and specific trends that are relevant to what you sell
- Company insights into what they do, how they make money, who they sell to (their ICP), and any financial and strategy information they put out there
- Persona insights including their main priorities, challenges and KPIs for their role in their specific industry
- Insights on the person you’re meeting with including their work history, major accomplishments, personality profile and more
After it does all that research and prep for you, it then helps you come up with a hypothesis on how you can help the client and questions you can ask to uncover impact and drive urgency.
The GPT does this all in less than 10 minutes which in and of itself is crazy to me since this type of prep used to take me at least 30-45 minutes.
So, I have two full transcripts of conversations with the client and all these insights from the GPT.
The next step with the client was to meet with leadership and the decision team in person at their office which was about a 45 minute drive for me.
I had been training, traveling and working late nights that week to prepare for the lunch of my new platform so I didn't have a lot of time to prepare for this in-person meeting and anyone who knows me knows I have a TERRIBLE memory.
As I was rushing around getting ready to leave and worried about my lack of prep, I decided to try something that I had shared with you all a few newsletters ago in the “Sales Resources” section - Google’s NotebookLM.
I took the two transcripts and all the notes from the GPT and uploaded them into Notebook LM. I then asked it to “generate” a “deep dive conversation” for me while I got dressed and ready to go.
Five minutes later it had created an audio file of a conversational podcast with two “people” talking about all my notes and insights on the company.
I forwarded the link to my iphone, jumped in my car and played the podcast on the drive down to meet with the client.
I had to listen to it twice because the first time I listened to it I was more amazed at how they were synthesizing and discussing the content than I was trying to understand the content itself.
By the time I arrived at the client’s office I was fully up to speed on everything I needed to know and felt fully prepared for the meeting (which went well by the way).
I’m still trying to wrap my head around how easy it was for me to do that and how insanely valuable it was for me and ultimately the client.
Like I said before, we’re living in the future.
If you’re not curious enough and willing to try some of this stuff out I wish you luck but unfortunately that doesn’t mean much since I believe you make your own luck.
#MakeYourLuckHappen
CLAY IS DOING BIG THINGS
I can't begin to tell you how amazing the partnership with Clay has been. They raised another round and are working with major companies like Microsfot, OpenAI and more.
Check out their Series B press release here.
If you want to learn how I use Clay in my prospecting workflow - reply to this email with Clay and I'll show you how I took 1 hour of my prospect reacher down to 7 minutes.
|
ADDITIONAL WAYS YOU CAN LEVEL UP YOUR SALES GAME
- The JB Sales Membership is where you’ll get access to my live training, workshops, AMAs and OnDemand catalog so you can level up your sales skills every day! 3000+ Sales pros have already joined. Are you next?
- The industry-leading Make it Happen Monday Podcast where you’ll get insights and inspiration from some of the most interesting and influential people in the world of Sales and business. (this is where you’ll hear the Guy Kawasaki episode on May XYZ)
- The JB Sales YouTube channel with practical tips that you can apply immediately to drive results along with interviews and content that is guaranteed to get you to think differently.
| How did I do with this edition? |
|
|
|
|
