Alyssa Merwin: Inside LinkedIn’s $1B Sales Engine

We're seeing a lot of experimentation across different organizations and the reps that are using AI daily are twice as likely to hit their quotas. Hey everyone, welcome back to Make It Happen Mondays, where we talk about sales, business, entrepreneurship, personal growth, mental health, and everything in between with guests who I truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us. And ooh, do we got a good one for you today? Today's guest was Alyssa Henderson and she is the Vice President of Global Sales Solutions at LinkedIn, managing over a billion dollars in revenue. And cool conversation here because LinkedIn just came out with the ROI of AI report. And this is something that I've been looking for for a while because ever since AI got into the market, I've been hearing everybody talk about efficiencies and productivity, but very few people talking about results.

Like what kind of results is AI driving for the organization? And LinkedIn, with the backing of Microsoft, took on this challenge and came up with a really cool report that you can see in the show notes here. And so we dove into that. But before we did that, as always, we got into the origin stories. Man, she's got a cool background. And I think that really leans towards where I think we all need to go right now. And we talked about the EQ versus the IQ and how her liberal arts degree really gave her some perspective and how she got into sales with corporate executive board and the education that she got there. For those of you who don't know, corporate executive board, you know, they wrote challenger sale, challenger customer.

And she learned a ton there, which we unpacked a little bit. Then we got into her role at LinkedIn and the report and all the things that she's learned and what she's seeing along the way. And the ultimate takeaway here is it is clear as day through this report and through our conversation that if you are not using AI on a daily basis at this point in sales, you're getting left behind. So I encourage you to listen to this. I encourage you to check out the report and download it and dive into this and realize if you are not on this train, it's going to run you over. So hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Alyssa Henderson, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast.

How are you doing today? Hey, I'm great, John. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming on. I've been looking forward to this conversation because we got all sorts of cool insights that we're going to dive into about the ROI of AI, which is the new report. And before we dive into that though, let's give everybody a little sense because you have a very interesting background that has led you to an extremely interesting role as the VP of your other VP of global sales solutions over at LinkedIn right now, right? That's right. Perfect. So talk to us a little bit about how you got there outside of your LinkedIn profile, which I'm sure everybody can check out, but talk to us about growing up and kind of, you know, parents with weird, where'd Alyssa come from?

You know what I mean? A lot of people have the nature nurture thing. So I'm curious from your perspective, a little bit of your background here. Sure. I mean, we can go all the way back. Um, and my, my story starts on a dirt road, the end of a dirt road, uh, in a small, small town in Florida, uh, raised by two parents who had their own business. Um, and I, you know, I, I remember from a young age, having a little bit of the entrepreneurial spirit myself, I started a greeting card business. I read about that. I was going to ask you about the greeting card business. Like we, I got to know about this. It's called pinky prints. Probably not a good idea in this day and age, but you would take your fingerprint and dip it in some ink.

And then I would make little greeting cards, you know, you, you, each little, uh, thumbprint or a print, but you'd put, make it into a little bird. And I'd sell them at the local craft fair. So it was my first, uh, first exposure to, you know, sales and the whole supply chain. And, you know, this kind of combining my love for creativity and art with, uh, you know, the hustle. Nice. Now, was that a, just out of curiosity, cause I've, I've been looking, um, I've been thinking through my, you know, my parents and growing up, my mom always said I was very money motivated. And I was like, really, was I? And she's like, well, you always just wanted to do what you wanted to do. Right. So for me, sales was like, I saw a pumpkin.

I think the first thing I sold was a pump, you know, those little tiny pumpkins you see that like, you know, Halloween. Um, I, I bought them for like a dollar at the store and then I put face, I painted faces on them kind of like you. And then I sold them to my friends for like three bucks or four bucks. Right. And it was so I could make money was yours. Um, when you did that, was that, do you remember if it was a drive to be creative or a drive to make money or were you just doing it? Cause it was cool. You know, that's a good question. I'm, I'm guessing at that stage, it was more of the creativity and the project, but I have to tell you that I think one of the reasons I got in, well, I know now looking back, one of the reasons I got into sales was definitely to have more control over my income.

And I'll, I'll tell you, there were two things that made me realize really in life that I wanted more control. One is my first real job was working at a retail store that sold, you know, women's clothing and handbags. And I remember I was like really good. I was, I was washing the windows. I was, you know, doing the cash register. I was doing everything. I was doing the job of five people. And I remember thinking like, no matter how good I am and no matter how much money I make for them, I can calculate my hourly earnings and it is not inspiring and it doesn't get better. Uh, and I remember thinking like, I don't think I was like conscious. No. Yeah. Looking back. I'm like, that was a, a, a very pivotal moment in my life, recognizing that I don't want to be in a job where my earning potential is capped by something beyond my own capabilities.

So that was like a big moment. I think. And, and did you know early on, uh, and did, did your parents instill this in you or, or what with, with the work ethic? Cause I, I had the same realization. I was just like, wait a minute. I'm, I know I'm going to work harder than everybody here. So if I'm going to work harder from better than most people, I should get paid more. And that's why I immediately flipped to being a waiter. Right. I was like, yep. I'm a waiter. Okay. There's a direct line for me. Right. So was it, was for you, was it work ethic that, that you just had a strong internal work ethic? Well, I mean, I think probably there's some of that, which is maybe a little bit more nature, but I mean, on the other side of this is I went to a very fancy prep school that I won a scholarship too.

And I was definitely the least, um, well off, uh, or in the lower, lower end of that. And I remember feeling very different than most of the kids I went to high school with. And I also remember thinking, I, I want to like be in the, you know, in the group, the categories that their parents are in and those kids are running in. And I want to be able, I don't want to have to like debate with my mom about the dress I want to buy for prom and whether we can afford it. And so I think there was a bit of, you know, I'm going to work hard to try to achieve the things that I want, but also some of it was circumstances. Love it. So now you go to college and you did, you went to Paris, you studied. So it's not like, cause I'm going to jump to your first job as a corporate executive board as a BDR.

And I always love the journey of like college. Cause sales is never a degree that you, well, now you can actually get your degree in sales back. I don't know how old you are, but I think I'm a little older than you. Uh, there was no degree there, right? There wasn't. And so everybody's journey into sales is kind of interesting. So you ended up at corporate executive board, but talk to me about like kind of your decisions in college and what got you to that point. Yeah. Well, first of all, I went to a liberal arts school, uh, on purpose cause they had no core curriculum and I didn't want to take math classes. So I was like, that sounds like a great, a great choice. So I went to this, this great school, Smith's college, outside of, um, Boston.

And it was a great place to learn and, you know, beautiful campus. And so that was, that was great. And I got to study in Paris, um, for a year as part of my, um, as part of my studies. And so I ended up actually by accident with a double major in, well, the primary major was political science and the accidental second major was French because all of my coursework in Paris ended up being political science in French. So I ended up with a degree or, you know, this, this double major that sort of didn't prepare me for anything that I was clear I wanted to do as a career. And I remember when I was graduating, you know, I think my, the whole time my parents were like, what are you, you know, what are you going to do when you come out of this liberal arts school like no real like technical skills.

And, um, and I was like, I don't know, like, I think I want to be a consultant. And so I thought I was going to, I looked at some consulting firms and it just so happened that the, there was one in DC, which is where I had some family and, um, I got connected and their entry level role was a BDR. And so I thought I was going into consulting. Turns out I was going into sales for consulting firms. And so I fell into it and didn't realize, I think until day one, when it was like pound the phone for call calls. Is this what consulting is? Nice. And I, but I mean, talk about a great sales education, right? With corporate executive board. I mean, they, I mean, you know, challenger sale and everything that they evolved to.

So I guess what was your biggest learning lesson from a sales standpoint, um, from corporate executive? Cause you had a couple of roles there, obviously, but I mean, with so much knowledge there, uh, and so much research and so much insights, I think I'm just curious, like, cause we're going to get to this report too, with insights, what were your insights out of corporate executive board? What, what were some of the takeaways that you learned about sales, um, from them or from doing that job? Well, I, I do think that corporate executive board in some ways, like wrote the book on, you know, one of the, one of the books on sales, you know, challenger is one of them, but it was, it was almost a little bit ahead of its time in terms of really understanding sales as a science and as a math equation.

Hey, quick promo here for the JB sales membership. If you want to know your math equation, join the membership today and check out the filling the funnel program. The first module in there is to know your sales equation. And what she's about to talk about here is doing the extra. The best reps take their number and double it and then back into it to know exactly what they need to do. Join the membership today. Know your equation, make it happen. And creating a process where there were super, super clear KPIs for each of the roles. And if you did the work and you were like baseline competent in how you got the work done, you were likely going to be successful. And then the X factor was how much extra effort you wanted to put in.

So you, you know, your question a minute ago about, you know, is it nature, nurture, work ethic, et cetera. I've, I learned pretty quickly at the corporate executive board that if I just did what they told me to do, I wouldn't do pretty well. But if I wanted to like crush it, if I wanted to get the club, if I wanted to make a bunch of money, and this was back in the day that we, you know, on Friday, Friday afternoons, they were handing out a hundred dollar bills. If you like, you know, achieve certain targets, it was for a kid right out of college who didn't grow up with money. It was like, this is amazing that I have so much control and influence over, over my earning potential. And so I remember that was a really cool thing to realize is there's what the company will ask you to do that kind of, if you follow their playbook will make you successful, but you can, you can do a lot more than what's being asked of you if you want to.

And I was definitely in that category. So that was the second thing. And then the third thing is, so I told you, you know, I went to a liberal arts school so that I could avoid math. Well, that's who my first like target buyers were. I got put in the finance practice. And so I was calling on CFOs in treasurers and audit executives of the world's largest companies. So what I learned, I mean, and I went from BDR, and we can talk about this, but I went from BDR and then eventually manager, and then actually decided to go back because I wanted to actually sell. And so I became an account executive. And so I was an account exec selling to literally, it was like the treasurer of Exxon Mobil and these big companies.

And I had to learn very quickly how to show up with a perspective and show up with insights that would get their attention and give me, you know, an opportunity for a conversation, right? To earn some credibility. Hey, here's another great example of something you could learn in the JB sales membership. I've updated the entire platform with all new content, including AI. And one of the big pieces here is how to prep for meetings and do discovery before you even talk with the client. So you can come up with a perspective and a hypothesis on how you can help them. The days of qualifying are over. You need to come with a perspective. If you want to learn how people, join the membership today, make it happen.

I love that. Cause this is where, this is where I like, so with corporate executive board, the challenger sale, right? Like I love the lead with insights idea. Like the challenger part, like, I think it's been a misappropriate a lot of ways, right? It's like, Oh, I'm smarter than you. And you make this decision once a year. I make it every day, blah, blah, blah. But that lead with insights piece, I think that's where, and I'm curious from your perspective, right? Cause we all, all sales reps, we all talk about, you know, thought leadership and, and you want to have a, you know, people trust you and trusted advisor. But you know, how do you suggest a 22 year old kid out of school who has to now call into CIOs, CTOs that they don't know how to speak that language?

Where did they get the insights? Because I like this fake it till you make it. I've, I used to believe in that. Now I'm, now I don't. Um, but it's like, it's also, we're in a world right now where it's hard for that 22, 23, 24 year old kid to, to have a meaningful conversation with an executive. So how do you coach them on, on how to do that? Well, there are two things that I did that worked and I think they'd still apply today. The first is I'm big, um, a big learner from observation. So I sought out who are the best people in the finance practice, the account execs that were crushing it. And then I asked to joint travel with them and observe them in meetings. I listened to all of their closing calls.

I mean, I just shadowed the heck out of them. And I picked up on the way that they were talking about the content, the kinds of conversations, the types of questions they were asking. So for, I was that 22 year old who had no business in time with these executives. And that was the first place that I built a little bit of confidence is let me like figure out who's doing this well. And like learn. So that's the first one. And, you know, I think in today's environment where, you know, there's a lot more virtual, like, I don't know how many folks are in the offices these days. So you might have to work a little harder to figure out like, who are the people within my team or my company? And I might just have to, you know, we will jump on a team's link together, whatever it is, so that I can listen in or listen to recorded calls.

So there are ways to do it, you just have to probably work a little harder. But that's the first one is like, let's just learn from the best. The second part, though, is it takes some homework. I remember, because I was so not well versed in the function in the domain, and just lacked confidence in the space. I crammed like heck before my meetings. And so I knew the research that I was going to walk in, I knew the hooks of the most important insights from it that were a little contrarian that might be interesting for one of these executives to just, it wasn't like I knew better, but I knew enough to ask a couple of questions that could give us, you know. That's, and I think that's the key, because I take the same approach.

Like I never even being in this industry for 30 years, and being, I've been a VP of sales, I am a CEO, right? I still don't challenge VPs of sales. I, like in the kind of general way, I ask questions, because like curiosity is, and I think this is going to move really well into our conversation about a lot of this AI stuff in the report here, is, you know, curiosity is a superpower. And AI is a superpower on top of that superpower, if you, if you, if you can leverage it right. But let me start with this. Can you, and I ask a lot of people this on the podcast, which is, do you believe that you are genuine curiosity? Are you born with it? Or can you, can you develop it? I think you can definitely develop it, but I'm going to add one.

I think it starts with preparation, right? And those who go hand in hand, like in order to do the right kinds of preparation, you have to probably be curious enough to care and to think about what. That's the part. It's the interest, like I said, people like you can, if you're interested in something, you're going to be curious about it. So you have to start by being interested. So to a customer, you have to be like, Hey, I'm, I, yeah, I'm interested in learning about this. And then you can become curious. But I think there is a natural curiosity that a lot of us are born with. I don't know about you. Yes, I think that's true. I mean, but I think that curiosity can also show up in a bunch of ways.

Like, am I curious to understand the intricacies of like a finance department and every, like not really, was I super curious about every single company deeply that I, you know, I mean, I was curious to figure out, like, could I help them? Right. So my curiosity came probably more from, from that. And so I think it just, like, you got to figure out your angle to find your curious. I like it. Yeah, absolutely. So, so now you've, you know, you're at LinkedIn now you're running a bill, how many billions? What's the number? More than one. Yeah. And over more, more than one. And, and, and now you have, you get to talk to all of these leadership, all this leadership, you see what's happening with LinkedIn.

You, you have a team that you manage and you have all this data and insights. What drove this, this report in the first place? So what we're going to be talking about here is the ROI of AI report. And we'll put the links in the, in the show notes for everybody here. And there were some really cool stats about it, but what, back up a little bit. Why, why do this report in the first place? Yeah, there, there are a couple of reasons. This is interesting. I think for all of us, I mean, first of all, first and foremost, I'm a practitioner, right? I run a multi-billion dollar business that, uh, our, our primary buyer is other chief revenue officers, VPs of sales and commercial organizations. And so I think we, there is the interest as a leader myself of a large global organization.

And there's also on behalf of all of our customers. And then you add on top of that, some really early access to open AI and to the early models. And it gave us a bit of a headstart on what was coming. And I think it's been interesting to both, um, you know, again, as you know, in terms of navigator, being able to build AI into our roadmap and, and really rethinking what we can bring to the market to add value, but also just seeing other, other sales leaders out there trying to figure it out. And I think we're all trying to figure it out together. And so we've been, I think all asking the question, how do you do this super well? How do you integrate AI into your sales process? And then I think a lot of people are trying to figure out, like, how do I measure and, you know, like decide if this is worthwhile and how much to invest and where.

And so that really led to this question. We thought we had a really unique lens that we could go out to the world and understand, like, where are people actually seeing impact and where, where's it making the biggest difference for, for revenue organizations? Yeah. And I think that's why I was so interested in looking at this report is because, you know, I've heard, I knew as soon as I saw chat TVT, I was like, Oh, the world has changed fundamentally. Like this was a light bulb moment for me. I knew personally, I was almost irrelevant from a cane when it came to delivering content wise. I'm like, okay, I got to get on this bandwagon. And, and I've heard, you know, plenty of people talk about efficiencies, right?

Oh, I can, you know, send faster emails and personalize my, you know, research more, but I've rarely heard of anybody talking about results. Like, okay, okay, great. We can send out hyper personalized messaging at scale now, like, you know, true personalization at scale, but are we getting higher conversion ratios? Uh, I can prep for a meeting instead of an hour. Like you said, I would go in hours and read through 10 Ks and annual reports and all that other stuff. And now it takes me 10 minutes, but is that making that discovery call convert better to a, to a qualified op? Right. And so that's where some of these insights were really interesting. So where did the, where did the data come from first?

Like who did you interview? And then, cause I know you have a lot of data for LinkedIn itself. And then let's talk about some of the key findings. Yeah. So we did a global survey, um, of companies around the world and we can, we can share, you know, probably the link to the actual findings. Um, and this looked across sales organizations of, of all sizes and, and shapes. And we found some pretty, I think exciting, that was exciting, uh, you know, insights coming out of this, which I think answers some of the questions that you're asking. And I think they're all the right questions. Like we, we need to make sure that whatever teams are spending time on are driving outcomes and results, not just, uh, you know, the new shiny object that we want to play around with.

And so, um, we can talk through a few of those. So I think the, the one that I was maybe most excited about was that we're seeing a lot of experimentation across different organizations and the reps that are using AI daily are twice as likely to hit their quotas. And so we can unpack like, okay, what are they doing differently? Yeah. That's like a, I think something for all, all of us to pay attention to. That's the one I've been screaming from the top since I saw this, which is effectively, if you're not using AI, you're getting left behind period. Like it's just, it's, it's not even a debate anymore. And, you know, I've been saying this for a long time. And so a lot of people have too, which is, you know, we're not going to get replaced by AI.

We're going to get replaced by sales reps who learn how to use it. And when you have a rep that is using it every day and getting two times 2.5, as a matter of fact, more, you know, than the average seller, you, if you're not paying attention to that, I don't understand, I don't understand why you're not, whether you're stuck in the old school, you just don't want to learn something new. But where do you see, where are they applying that to get those better results? I mean, obviously they're creating more efficiencies, but how are they using AI to be two and a half times better? Well, I think it's showing up in a few places. And by the way, I think this is where folks are struggling today is it's which parts of the sales process can I get the most benefit from AI.

And when, when we looked at what the specific outcomes were for these folks that are getting to better outcomes, there were a couple of places. So one is they, they are finding better outcomes and response rates from help with messaging. And, you know, I think like we can pause on that one for a minute. I mean, you think about, you know, I know when I was right out of university and early career, I didn't really know how to effectively craft a message that was going to land with the CFO. And today, AI is helping, you know, people like I would have been or folks that are using it, you have a starting point that is probably quite a bit better than starting with a blank sheet of paper. And so what we've heard anecdotally is it's helping them be a little bit more creative.

It's certainly helping the content to be more relevant. And then, you know, something that I think we can all appreciate is when it's done well, it can, it's personalized. And that stands out like crazy from most of, most of the stuff we, we all get. Let me, let me ask you, I mean, I've been preaching personalization for the past 20 years of my career. And I know you have two and how many personalized messages do you get is as the VP of, I mean, I'm so, I'm assuming, you know, plenty of people prospect into you. Do you get very many personal, like actual personalized emails? I've been in this global role for just over three years. And I, and so presumably I should be a buyer. I should be an ICP for a bunch of people.

You think? I, you think. I have gotten, I could count on one hand, the number of personalized notes I have gotten in my three years. And if you add all my, all my time at LinkedIn, I mean, it's, it's, it's not more than two hands. So like, this is what's driving me nuts. I feel like like my whole career is almost a failure at this point because I keep asking this question and, and same executives and roles that should be ICs, right. Or I, you know, ICPs and personas that people go after. And everybody says the same thing, like maybe a couple handful, something like that. LinkedIn video, for instance, like I get 200 in-mails on a, on a date, like a hundred in-mails on a daily basis. None of them are video, none of them are voicemails.

So where, why do you think that is the case with every, if you click on LinkedIn for three seconds and scroll through, it's personalization, ah, it matters and it matters and it matters. Why is nobody doing it? I mean, does this come back to the curiosity work ethic? I'm not sure. I mean, it's, listen, it's easier to drop somebody and do a cadence and just hit. Yep. Yeah. I, and then it is to take an extra couple of minutes to find something relevant. I would, I mean, maybe I'm not, I'm just not at the top of someone's list, so I'm not getting the personalized notes, but I, I would, I mean, I would like to think that if every one of our sales teams, like we just slowed down a minute to spend, spend two minutes finding something relevant, figuring out who we have in common, the, the number of doors that we can open with these exponentially higher than all the time that we're spending sending mass outreach.

So I, I don't know. And it drives me crazy. Um, I hate being on the receiving end of it, especially like given the product that we saw, it's like, come on, we can do better. And you had said something. So from a minute, cause I think now, you know, business acumen is, is sorely lacking, I think, or, and we've skipped that for this generation, but I think AI now is a, is a way if used correctly to significantly improve your business acumen in a lot of ways. The danger here though, is, is the using it as the silver bullet scenario, right? You said something very important in your last comment, which is that you use it as a starting point, right? To use AI as a starting point. And I'm going to use, you know, my quote that I stole from Gary Vaynerchuk when I, when I met him.

And cause I freaked out back in 2017, when I saw some AI stuff, some kid had taken my personalized email and created an AI, and this was back in 2017, and it was better and faster than I could have ever written. And I asked Gary, like, where does that leave us as sales professionals? He goes, don't worry about the tech. You're not going to beat it. He goes, just be the last mile. He goes, let it do all the heavy lifting, but be the last mile. So how are you coaching your team, uh, or, or, or working with individuals or, or, or the groups to, to strike that balance between the, the, okay, great. It's going to give us this great. And it's probably even going to write, I mean, realistically, it's going to write a way better email than a 22 year old kid could ever write in any scenario.

How are you preventing that? How are you coaching teams to learn from that and then make it their own versus just hit send? Cause it's way better than I would ever write. Well, I think we also have to recognize that AI is ubiquitously available to all sales teams today. So whether your, your company has invested and is paying for it, or you're doing it, you know, getting it for free, I mean, they're just, everyone's going to have access to the same stuff. So that is no longer the differentiator, right? So we can all get to a reasonable starting place. I think the differentiation comes from, again, me thinking about, I'm interested in connecting with John. What can I find out about him that will help me stand out from the 30 other people that are trying to get his time?

And I think that's where, you know, we want to balance, like we still need to be, you know, reaching out and, and engaging our entire, you know, territory and, and making sure that we're building relationships across an entire organization, not just the person with the big title. And, and so how do we balance that sort of like a little bit of the volume game, but I think it's like ratcheting way back on volume and focusing much more on quality. I mean, my team, you know, they're pretty good at this already, but they'll, they'll look at my network and they'll figure out who I know. And then they'll ask me to make a personal introduction and nine hands out of 10 that gets us meeting pretty quickly.

And I would much rather them spend five or 10 minutes working on that and me be able to make a personal connection that I guarantee will lead to a better outcome than if they were going to cold call. Yeah, absolutely. That's why it's, it's almost like the volume game these days. I think just marketing just needs to own it. Just whatever volume, whatever, just call it an impression, call it a complex marketing, whatever you want to call, but take the volume off of sales. And, and maybe on cold calls, because I still look at that as an impression point, you know what I mean? Where it's just maybe a double tap on whatever it is, but, but that email, that thoughtfulness, that, that perspective, that hypothesis of how I can help you is where the sales rep needs to learn and be able to deliver.

Absolutely. And, you know, you mentioned something a minute ago, which is, you know, there, there are all these different mediums for outreach. You know, there's in-mail, there's email, there's text, there's a phone call, there's voice messages on LinkedIn. I mean, there are so many ways that you can just stand out by thinking about how can I engage this person in a way they're probably not used to hearing from someone. I mean, I used to, I don't know, like the old, some of the old school, like send a book with a note to, you know, someone's office and, you know, there are some, again, it depends how important these prospects are for you. I will tell you my number, I have a hundred percent response rate on this one.

And it's, and it's, uh, so when, when COVID, so I wrote this book with my daughter called, I want to be in sales when I grow up. And I wrote it before COVID with her. And when COVID hit, you know, that everybody was doing the zoom things and, you know, CNN with the kid would come in and all that stuff. And so there was a lot of, you know, kids on LinkedIn. And if I saw a parent, but like a, you know, business professional with their kid in a, in a nice way, not like the guy on CNN who kicked his kid out, you know, I don't know if you remember that one, right? If I saw that, I'd be like, oh, that seems like a great mom or a great dad or whatever. And I would handwrite a note. I'd be like, Hey, you look like, you know, and I would send it a hundred percent of the time.

I would get a response back. Like it wasn't always, Hey, let's talk and do business. But if I put it as part of, I call it the give a shit factor, right? Like, do you care? Do you, do you genuinely care enough about the person that you're reaching out to, to spend the extra few minutes doing a little bit of homework on them, figuring out where they went to school? You know what? Like those types of things matter. And I think the human element is where I'm worried about being, getting lost in this AI world. Well, I think, yes, you can worry about getting lost. I actually think it becomes the primary differentiator. A different, absolutely. And so again, in a world where we all have access to the same tech, I think it's going to come down to how creative, how thoughtful, how curious, how much just like extra intention are you giving the work you're doing?

And that will, that comes down by the way, not to the organization that comes down to the individual, to the salesperson. Cause again, this is one of those things you have a lot of agency over. You know, how much, how much of a high touch do you want to put into, to land the conversation with the people that matter? Yeah. And that's why, you know, with a lot of reps that I talk who are looking for jobs these days, I'm like, look for the sales jobs that, that, that isn't volume oriented, like try to understand the philosophy of the, of the leadership on if it's a quality or quantity. Cause if it's quantity run away, because it's just going to get on. It's AI can do a better period. It's not even a debate at this point.

So let's talk about leadership as it relates to this, you know, say you're a CRO right now and you're looking at this and, and I, you know, deer in headlights, like, where do I start? I got my team. Some of them are using it. Some aren't. If there was one area that as a leader, you were going to say, Hey, we're going to start here at with using AI to, to start to see some tangible results so that we can then build on this, build a credibility of, of, of this journey, but also see some short-term tangible things. Cause we, we're not in a long-term world anymore, unfortunately. Like we, if something gets implemented, we got to start seeing results short-term so that I can then build on that and build credibility there.

So where would you start at this point with AI? If you were a CRO out there, are just kind of dizzying with all the different options. Yeah. I think if you're going to, if you're going to do sort of a central, you know, a centralized mandate, if you will, or an approach, I think first, you've got to look at your current sales processes and figure out how buttoned up are you? Cause I don't think throwing AI at an organization that doesn't have clear KPIs or a very clear sales process is going to be helpful. You're going to be, you know, people aren't going to be sure what to do with it. I would probably look at, you know, there, there are sort of like some obvious places in a sales process where AI can be really useful.

Um, we talked a minute ago about outreach, right? That's like one very clear opportunity. And so, you know, if you're running an SDR organization or actually it doesn't really matter, like any sales role is going to have to do outreach to identify new contacts and build new relationships. So is there an opportunity in that part of the sales process for us to just like level up our game, get our response rates, like fill the top of the funnel? Um, another area would be, you know, we, we, we all know how there are just more people involved in buying decisions and that's probably only going to get more complex given everything going on in the world. And so, um, people are going to be more reticent to make decisions.

They're going to want more input from colleagues. They're going to want a little bit more CYA, right? And decision-making. And so, um, what does that mean for our sales teams? It means they need to be identifying more stakeholders and building more relationships and more advocacy. And that's another place that you could easily, you know, tap into AI to help me find those new people that are not again, just like on some list somewhere. I need to understand, you know, org chart dynamics. I need to understand reporting. I need to understand the influencers that sit around my decision maker. Um, so that's another place. I think the third is, you know, every, every rep, and hopefully, you know, every great manager, they're doing a solid account planning at least once a year, if not on an ongoing basis.

And that's an obvious place where, you know, back in, in our era, we had to go read the K's and the Q's and all, all the press releases. And today with the click of a button, you can, you know, you can have the account plan built for you essentially. And so that's another obvious place. Now with those are just three places, any one of those though, without you taking some time to step back and think about how does this make my moment of engagement more effective? It's only going to be. Yeah, exactly. So, so that's the other part. And I think this comes down to, okay, so what, what role do managers play? Yeah. Yeah. Right. That's what I was going to go to next, which is like, as a manager, first of all, let's look at it in two different ways.

One is what should you be doing as a manager yourself, regardless of what you're going to implement with your team or how you're going to implement it. But how should a manager be, be acting right now in a world of uncertainty in the sense that like anybody comes here and tells me, oh, this is exactly how you should be using AI. I'm like, shut up, get out of here because tomorrow you're going to be wrong. So anybody who pretends like they know what they're talking about in this world that changes every six minutes is out of their mind. So how should, how should they be educating themselves on AI and what, what approach should they be taking? And then we can talk about how they should take it with their team.

Yeah. I mean, first of all, I think as leaders, we all have responsibility right now just to try to keep up with what's going on and no one can predict the future here to your point. So like, I think there's what we know today and that will change tomorrow. Um, but I think as a manager, you know, I find, you know, I find it easiest to be grounded when I can think about what's, what do I know today and what's within my control at least today. Right. And so, um, using the tools that either our companies are providing or that we can go experiment with, I think is really important. It's important to show our teams that we're willing in and wanting to do this and learn along with them. And that we're like, we're all on this journey together.

Um, I think that's really important. I mean, some of the coolest ideas are coming from our sales teams, right? They're the ones, you know, they're going to figure out the best approaches and the hacks and the, um, and the best tech and tools out there. And so I think creating an environment where you're, you're like open and wanting to learn about it and hear about it. Now I will say there's this like natural tension and friction with companies. Like we have privacy security concerns. And so how do you create an environment of experimentation and making it okay to play around with things, but at the same time needing to figure out, you know, okay, well, how do you make sure everything is done in the right way?

Now I don't have a great answer for that. I think like every company has to sort of navigate that tension, but I think also just acknowledging that's like part of, part of this learning together. Yeah. I think I have this concept that I've been trying to push around, which is, you know, turning your sales organ into a sales lab where it's kind of like engineer, you know, um, engineers have, um, you know, hackathons, right? Where they pick something, they kind of nerd out on it for a while. Well, I think that, I think we should do the same thing in sales. I think we should all get together as a sales and marketing, by the way, actually sales marketing and engineers, quite frankly, and bring customer success into why not?

And, and pick a, pick a component of the sales process. I don't care what it is, prepping for meetings, writing better emails, do whatever it is and say, all right, everybody break up into teams, you know, put some senior reps with some junior reps, some engineers with some marketers or whatever, and just say, all right, uh, here's the, here's the thing we got to figure out. Whoever can figure out how to do this more efficiently than what we're doing in now or get better results wins. Totally. You got an hour, go. I was at, uh, we were hosting our club. Like our, it was like, actually the club club one. It was like the top 1% of all global sellers. And, um, I was talking to one of our reps who is fabulous and he was telling me about, you know, some tech that he was using that was, uh, it was able to take, you know, transcripts and then, uh, turn it into decks for the customer.

And so it was taking, you know, like the conversation that we had that, you know, the customer was okay with. Right. And then, uh, and then turning it into, you know, here's the exact sum of what we talked about, your key challenges in their words when, you know, and here's how we can help. And I just thought, you know, such a cool idea of, again, just empowering our teams to get creative, to make their lives easier. And by the way, that makes it a much better customer experience too. Customer experience and employee experience, because I think the thing that the employees are, are just craving right now is, is some sort of like belonging to something and learning about something. And if it's just continued, Hey, just do your job and go hit your numbers, they're going to bounce and goes, but if the collaboration and you can get them working, and I think AI is such a catalyst for that, because all you got to do is be curious.

All you got to do is pick whatever the problem is, and then just go down the rabbit hole with it and see if you can find something out. And if you can, great. If you can't, whatever, you know, just time it. So you're not doing six days of, you know, deep dive in AI, but you know, hour here, hour there, you can figure out some pretty cool stuff. Job satisfaction goes to the roof. It does. And you know, it gives people an opportunity to be seen and to make an impact. And this idea of, of the labs, I love it. One of our customers was talking about, it was this amazing, the really impressive CRO. And she was saying that she's created this little AI council that she, I think, I don't know if it was weekly or every couple of weeks, she was getting a group of ICs together, you know, in members of her sales team and bring them in to say, what have you learned?

What new, like hacks have you identified? And then picking the ones that were working and scaling that out. And that is giving those reps a platform. They're getting exposure. They're driving impact. Like that's a pretty cool way to drive engagement and drive up job satisfaction and all that. I'll tell you that one of the, and you probably see this, I'd be interested in the data on this on LinkedIn is how many AI consultants full-time. So I'll give you an example. Do you know Sydney Sloan over at YouTube? Yes. She's a good friend of mine. I had her on the podcast just to catch up the other day. And, you know, she said she's, she's hiring a full-time AI rep for her sales team. And that the goal of that rep is that individual is to individually work with every sales rep on her team to help them adopt and learn and use AI.

And I think that's actually an incredibly new role that, that has tons of potential. And so to your point where, you know, you have some reps, not everybody's going to go into the, be the enterprise AE and all of a sudden be the VP of sales. You know, they go into marketing, they go into this, but now you have an opportunity to become the AI guru for the team that quite frankly could become invaluable moving forward. Are you seeing a lot of those roles pop up? I haven't seen that one. I love that idea. No surprise comes from Sydney. So it's very cool. I think the, I haven't, we of course are seeing on LinkedIn, the job titles with AI or, I mean, it's just off the charts. But I think the, the other way to tackle an opportunity like that, I love the idea of, you know, the specialized person and whose job it is to sort of work with each rep.

I think the flip side or, or like as a, an additional way to think about that is leveraging our frontline managers. And again, going back to what are the parts in the sales process? I'm going to give you a really simple example for my team, but you know, going back to this idea that, you know, on average reps are connected to like one or two people at their accounts, but they really need to be connected to more like 10 to 15 plus, depending on, you know, the type of product we're selling. One of, you know, our managers in the weekly one-on-ones it's okay, let's sit down and we're going to do, you know, look at deal strategy or forecast, and we're going to pull up your relationship maps. And we're going to take a look at what other relationships you have today.

And next week, I want you to have built, you know, three additional relationships with that, that account. And that is like on the surface, not rocket science, doesn't feel super like sexy AI, but we can use AI to help get that work done. And that is a way for our managers to reinforce the, the, what we need to achieve, which is building more relationships. And the how is just using AI in the sales process. And so I think that in some ways we, we sort of over complicate some of this, but we need to use our managers to make sure it's part of the work that's already happening or needs to happen. Yeah. Well, and I think that also gives managers, you know, hopefully some, going back to the people component of this, right?

Like everybody knows frontline managers are why a rep stays or leaves a job. And, and the sad thing is, is managers get no coaching, no training on how to be an actual manager. And the funny thing I find is, is that AI, if used the right way, could be your best manager coach you've ever come across in your life. You know what I mean? Like I tell sales reps all the time. I'm like, I mean, you can pay me if you want to, like I'll happily come in, but you can also go into chat GPT and say, could you act like John Barrows and be my sales coach and help me understand how to do this. And there's enough information out there that I put out there that it's going to tell you a pretty close answer to me.

And so I think managers can adopt that to become that manager that, that makes a real difference in their reps' lives because they, then they can also do individual coaching plans for each rep based on their personalities and what they like and everything. So. And role plays, right? And by the way, managers can role play, you know, conversations with their reps. Reps can role play conversations with their manager or their, their customers and prospects. There's so much opportunity for, again, for, it just takes that little bit of curiosity and time to invest. Yeah. So a couple more things, um, where, I guess, I want to stay on the leadership piece, right? So where do you see leadership? Like if, if adopted, is leadership's role going to change because of the human, because of how much AI can do, is leadership going to be shift back towards more of the interpersonal stuff and less of the KPIs and those types of things?

How do you see that leadership role evolving? Yeah. Again, I don't know that any of us has a crystal ball, but I do think that all of the things that, um, we can uniquely do as humans are going to be the things that are going to probably end up being the most important parts of our jobs. So the soft skills, the EQ, the relationship building. And by the way, this is not just for managers. This is for salespeople too, because the tech will be able to do so much of the other. And by the way, like, I think it's interesting to think about a world where, you know, can, is there like a centralized function that's doing all of the outreach, right? And so the role that the salesperson plays or that the sales manager plays, like it's, it just becomes like a more specific part of the process.

Like who knows? But I think these are questions that as, again, as a tech gets better and, um, you know, can do more, we're, there's still going to be a need for all of these roles, but I do think it becomes a bit more specific, like where we play. Yeah. My vision is you ever seen, um, the movie minority report. Remember, remember how he has the gloves and he's sitting in front of those screens and he's just kind of swiping stuff back and forth. I think my vision is that I think outbound is going to be completely taken over by AI completely, um, and intent, all that stuff. And so I'm going to show up to a dashboard and it's just, it's not going to say, Oh, who should I talk to today? It's going to be like, Oh no, no, John, you need to reach out to Alyssa because she just did this.

And her, you know, she posted about that and her company's doing this when you reach out. Oh, by the way, make a phone call. Cause she likes phone over email. Cause this is her personality. And, uh, here's a couple of talking points and then I'll make that phone call. It'll record the whole thing, dump it into CRM, update it, and I'll be on to my next show. So like, that's, I genuinely believe that's the direction that we're headed. Yeah. I think that's one. I think the other that, you know, maybe these are not at odds. Um, the other is where the buyer is primarily in the driver's seat. Right. And, you know, it's not just that I'm searching around, like showing some signs of intent, but, but I'm actually like on a journey to make a decision and I'm going to get to 99% of the answer myself.

And maybe for a bit of comfort before I, I, you know, sign, I, uh, I want to have a conversation or I really want to like talk through it. Right. Yeah. This was interesting because I, I, for years I've railed on kind of old school sales reps. Like I'm like, you're dinosaurs. Like, you know, the whole relationship and golf and steak dinners and blah, blah, blah. Right. You know, values, the real relationship driver. And I still do believe value values, the relationship driver, but I've now reversed my, uh, uh, thought process on steak dinners and golf. I actually think those are going to be actually more important because that's all there's going to be left is the ability to engage. And that's the challenge that I see with a lot of this generation who's grown up like this in this, you know, in this screen here.

And we've become such a transactional nature. Relationships aren't deep anymore. And so it's almost like, I don't know how to teach reps, how to, how to, how to care, how to have those deep relationships, how to develop those deep relationships, because that's, what's going to matter. I don't need to talk to you for information anymore. I can, I mean, the, the last thing I'll, I don't know if you saw it, but, um, you know, Guy Kawasaki, right. I had him on the podcast and he had created a GPT. And, and so, and he had said in an interview when I was prepping, if you ask my GPT a question, you'll get a better answer than if you ask me. And so I did. So the night before I interviewed him, I asked his GPT, all the same questions I was going to ask him.

I asked him the same exact questions the next day. I didn't tell him. And at the end I go, Hey guy, I know you're a huge AI fan here. I go, um, I gotta let you know, like, I've already had this conversation with you last night. And he goes, what? I go, yeah. I go, and I can be honest with you, man. You were right. I'm like your, your answers last night were better. And he was joking and he was like, well, then why, you know, why am I not out still surfing? Right. And I was like, actually, that's my question to you. Is it if I'm going to, if I can get better answers from your GPT, what is the point of this conversation? Do I want to go surfing with Guy Kawasaki? Absolutely. Do I want to go to Olive Garden, his favorite restaurant, which is weird to me, but yes, absolutely.

But do I want to learn from Guy Kawasaki when I can get better answers from his GPT? I don't think so. Right. So with that information, are you, are you worried? I mean, I guess it's not even worried. Is it, is it, is it really truly that shift from EQ to IQ that we're, that we're on right now? Yeah. From IQ to EQ. Yeah. Sorry. I think, I think there's going to be like everything. I think there's going to be balance. And I think it depends again, if, if this is a highly complex technical, you know, sale, it's, it's a different, you know, I, you're not going to make those kinds of decisions where there are just tons and tons of stakeholders or all of those things through, I think, I think just pure technology.

And so there will always be a role, I believe, um, for, for our play in those high consideration sales. Um, I, I think there's like, jury is out though on, on, I mean, I, I think we, we know that consumer buying behavior is heavily influencing B2B buying behavior again, and not so highly complex considerations. And so like, I don't see that changing. I think the more we can get our jobs done and decision-making done with the least amount of friction, like that's, that's good for everybody. Um, that's good for companies. It's good for buyers. It's good for sales teams. And again, let's spend our time on the highest value parts and the parts that I think we as sales people want to be doing, which is like engaging with other humans.

Having conversations like this, right? Awesome. Is there anything else that we missed? Any other big things that we should have hit on or takeaways from your perspective before we wrap things up? Well, it sounds like one takeaway is I need my own, uh, own GPT that, uh, will probably give you better answers too. Hey, look, I, um, I've been toying around with creating my own, but I'm like, I don't know if I want to, I don't know if I'm ready to yet to be irrelevant. No, not yet. I mean, surfing, that's good. Uh, no, I mean, listen, I think that, that I would just leave all of our listeners with, we are in this learning together. And I think the more we can learn, experiment, recognize that like what we know today is probably going to be different than what we know tomorrow.

And it's all about, I think, adapting and being open to change right now. I mean, that's, I think that's the currency, whether you're in a leadership role or individual contributor role. Yeah. Adaptability. I've been screaming about it. Like adaptability, agility, like you got to be able to pivot right now, pretty damn quick, fail fast, figure it out, learn, move. All those things. Otherwise you're just going to get left behind. And it's not even like I, like we talked about it's, this isn't an if, this is a when. Well, and then maybe in that spirit, like the last, the last point is if you're not adapting right now and using the technology, you are going to get left behind because you're going to get outpaced.

And so I think we, we have to, we all have to be, you know, getting uncomfortable, trying new things, changing our habits and behaviors in order to, to figure out how do we, how do we use the tech to help us, you know, be more effective. Well, well, thank you so much for coming on. This was super interesting and I'm glad we got the chance to connect here because this was a, it's a lot to unpack, but I think, I think you and I have a similar mindset here of there's a ton of opportunity if you take it, if you take a hold, you, you, you can be scared about this and if you're scared and try to avoid it, but if you look at it as an opportunity, I think you can, you can really rise above and make a true difference for yourself, for your clients, for everybody else.

So thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, my pleasure. Absolutely. And everybody hope you enjoyed the conversation as much as I did. And like I always say at the end of all these podcasts, go out there and make somebody smile today because no matter how bad your day is going or how bad you think it went, if you make somebody smile today, you know, you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. Thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side. Hey everyone. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did with your support and our incredible guests. We're one of the top sales podcasts out there right now. And I can't thank you enough now to keep the momentum going.

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