Daniel Borodyansky: From Zero Sales Experience to Top Performer in 2 years using AI

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Now, today's guest is Daniel Brodynski. Now, Daniel is a strategic sales executive over at Microsoft. And as part of my membership, for those of you who are part of it, you know that I do these workshops on sales skills and tech skills. And on the tech skills side of the house, I always go looking for practitioners from who have been able to figure out how to use AI tools in their own day-to-day jobs to create more efficiencies. And this time, I decided to actually bring Daniel on the show, on the podcast, to give you a little taste of it, to see what these type of workshops are like with the membership. And what Daniel did, he walked us through a really interesting journey. First of all, he's relatively new into sales, and he got a killer senior job at Microsoft right out of the gate by doing some networking and taking a really creative approach, which I think a lot of you will appreciate.

And he also works at Microsoft. So they have OpenAI and all these incredible tools. So he's right there seeing how it's all unfolding. But he's also using these tools himself, regardless of Microsoft, to create efficiencies throughout his process and help him learn along the way. And we talked all about how he's using it to do meeting prep, to understand his ideal customer profile, to come up with better questions, to do summaries and conversations after the fact, and even shared some of the specific prompts that he's using. You all know me, you've heard it before, and I'll say it again. If you're not using AI to do your job right now, you're missing out and you're going to get left behind. So this is one of those episodes you're going to want to listen to and pick up on some of these tips that Daniel's doing here as a sales novice and how it's turning him into the Iron Man of sales, like I keep talking about.

So let's make it happen. Daniel, what's going on, brother? Thanks for coming on the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. Thank you. I appreciate you coming on here. This is an interesting one. We've been going back and forth. And I forget who introduced us in the first place. Who was it? It was Ian. It was Ian Cognac. Oh, yeah, yeah. Ian. Yeah. Ian Cognac. He was like, dude, you got to see what this kid's doing with some of this AI stuff. So Daniel, before we get going here, give everybody a little bit of background. We're going to, for everybody listening, we're going to talk about some tactical things, there's practitioner stuff about AI and how to leverage it in the sales process and really just kind of dive into some tactical things here.

But Daniel, why don't you give them a little bit of background on where you're coming from and what you're up to these days? Sure. Sure. No, I appreciate the opportunity. Yeah. Ian Cognac is, he's actually my sales coach. Nice. So I'm from Seattle, Washington, currently work at Microsoft as a sales executive. I'm super new to sales. So I've actually only been in sales for a year and a half. And I moved into a super strategic sales role as my first sales role ever. Wow. Um, so I've always been in marketing, I'm kind of selling internally. I worked for a medical device company, kind of helping them start digital marketing. Um, but when I got to Microsoft, I worked for their marketing team and started networking and kind of learned about sales, met a guy that was in enterprise sales.

And he opened my mind to just what you could do in sales, the earning potential. And I had at that time, uh, my wife was pregnant and I was just like, Oh my God, man, I'm wrong. I'm in the wrong space. So from that, from that time, it took me about two years. Uh, but I pretty much, you know, found one niche that I had experience in a Microsoft product. And then I found like every seller on LinkedIn that sells that thing, made a list of them and just like prospected my head off to all these sellers. Um, and then, um, through that experience, got a bunch of interviews, didn't get any, anything for two years, but ultimately built up enough experience to, to get it. And then one, one manager took a chance on me.

So about a year and a half then. Well, first of all, that's a fantastic story because it's rarer that people jump right into strategic sales, I guess, even after two years, right? I mean, you usually have to go through the gauntlet of SDR, BDR, AE, SMB, mid-market enterprise, right? And then finally, after maybe 10 years, you get to do some strategic selling with, with some big ones. So is that, I mean, and it's also funny that you got that bug, you know, early on when you hear like earnings potential and stuff like that. That's a, a lot of people get into that. Like they have their career and they're just kind of happy go lucky doing their thing. And then I can't tell you how many people I've talked to on, you know, on the podcast who were like on a plane or something like that, sitting next to somebody, conversation comes up, person starts talking about how much money they make.

And they're like, wait a minute, what? Like how, excuse me? Like, okay, I got to figure that out. Right. And then they jump into it and they figure it out from there. But what, um, I guess that, that track, when you say you, we're going to get into the AI stuff, but I'm curious on that. When you, when you say you like identified all the sellers at Microsoft, was that just to learn from them about like, like, like how they did what they did, what the role was all about? Yeah. Yeah. It was more of, you know, I, I have this goal now to get into sales. I see that you're in that position already. I'm thinking about doing that. Any chance I can spend 10 minutes, just understand your journey. You know, what's your, what's your day to day like?

And through that, through those conversations, um, first of all, I learned more about the role. Yeah. And then, and actually understood like, am I a good fit? Would I be good at this? And then ultimately you end up building your network and they're like, Hey man, this guy's sharp. Why don't you connect with my manager? I think there's a role opening up, you know, Hey, maybe start taking these trainings. And through that, it was just everything all locked. I love that, man. That's a, that's a big, like kind of make it happen mentality. Cause I, I, a lot of reps will ask me like, what do I do to get to the AE level? What do I get to do there? I'm like, why are you asking me? Yeah. Go find the AEs.

Yeah. You got AEs at your company. Like go find the baller AEs that you want to, you want to look, you know, mirror and what role you want and go talk to them. Exactly. Not all of them, but a lot of them will give you the time, give you the ideas, what you need to do. And then to your point, I don't think what they realize is that through those conversations that other conversations come up, right? So it's just, you know, you don't, I mean, I used to do that early in sales where I would just do informational interviews with people just to say, Hey, I'm just kind of curious. And it's almost like a podcast here. I mean, a lot of people are actually starting podcasts and they'll bring on the persona that they're trying to sell to.

Yeah. And then, but they won't sell to them and they'll just have a really cool conversation. And inevitably it leads to, Hey, what do you do by the way? Oh, cool. Well, you know what? You should talk to so-and-so about that, right? Yep. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's a, it's, it's a, it's a piece of advice I give to a lot of people now that ask me like, Hey, how'd you get into sales? I'm like, Hey, this is what you got to do. Go find all the sellers. Go find who's in the position you want to be in. Go find all those people, as many of them as you can come off humble, ask them for, you know, a couple, some time to, to learn from them, see how you can add value to them and watch the, watch everything unlock.

Love it, man. Love that. So cool. So let's, so how'd you get into like, I mean, obviously being at Microsoft, right? There's, there's open AI, there's, you know, all the stuff that's there and you got all the tools and everything else, but I guess for you getting into it and not having all the bad habits that most sales reps do coming into this world of AI, right? Cause I think a huge challenge for a lot of people right now in adopting AI is just like adopting any new technology. Like it's, it's about a change of your process, right? Like, and for me, you know, I'm a 47 year old man here. Right. And I got my shit like locked as far as how I do things. And so trying to get me out of like one system and into another or get out of one process and into another is really, really hard to do.

So I think there's a benefit to you that you just kind of got into it relatively recently with not a ton of bad habits, but where, how were you introduced to the AI stuff? And when did that light bulb go off? Yeah. For me, it was like, literally I was scrolling through LinkedIn and Gary Vaynerchuk popped up on my feed and he had a reel there that said, this isn't the most game changing to his, you know, his face on top of the chat. You'd be, this is the most game changing, least thing you could go play with it, go see what it is. Yeah. And I was like, all right. And I just started playing with it that night. And I remember that night, I probably, it was probably 9 PM. I saw that thing. I stayed up till 2 30 playing with it because my mind was blown, especially for me.

Cause I, I don't have the sales experience. I'm selling a super complex product at Microsoft. I'm selling dynamics 365. So that's the entire business application suite. ERP CRM solves every problem under the sun. I, um, have everything riding on this role. So I quit. I had my, my, my wife, she was a hairdresser in Seattle. So she stopped working because we had the kids and I was like, all right, I mean, earning potentials there, let's go get it. So I just kind of went all in and, um, hired Ian as my coach. So he kind of gave me the blueprint of like, Hey, here's how you really run the sales cycle. So it's almost like I had all the inputs that I could use for check for AI prompts in terms of like, Hey, I'm trying to write a prospecting email.

Here's how I want to structure it. Here's how I want to think about it. Um, but anyway, that night, I mean, I was going down the rabbit hole of trying to understand, like I can learn my entire product of what I sell using chat GPT. Hey, write me an email here. How does this company work? How do they make money? Just kind of using it as my thinking partner almost. That's the way I like to think about it. And that's, and I think that's an important distinction for people, because I think that too many people are looking at these AI tools to automate whatever they're doing, right? So that they can get more time back to focus on the real. And that to me is kind of, I don't want to say a fool's errand.

There's definitely things you can and you should automate, right? But to me, what you just said there, as far as the thinking partner, right? As far as like, Hey, I'm curious about this. Why is this happening? What's going on and taking you down the rabbit holes, but rabbit holes of curiosity. And, and I think that's where too many people are missing out. They're looking for the easy button for this thing to do their job for them. And quite frankly, for the reps that are looking for that, like they're ultimately just going to get replaced by that thing. Like, cause if you can get the thing to do all of the stuff that you were doing, quite frankly, I don't know what I'm, I'm paying you for. Right.

So what, do you remember the first, uh, the first prompt that you put in? Um, it might've been something like write me a rap song about something. It might've been something stupid, like something like that. Yeah. Like I'm like, or maybe like write me a love letter or something, you know, I don't know, something like generic, but then, but I remember the, I remember the prompt cause I was working. I mean, I don't remember how long I was into the sales role. I think I was finally into my like first full fiscal year and I was maybe in an account planning mode and I had identified kind of my tier one accounts, my A accounts where I thought I could make the big deals happen. And you know, everybody in a strategic tech tech sales role, I'm sure they know, like, you know, super important to bring a tailored point of view on how you think you could potentially help them solve their strategic initiatives.

Right. Yeah. And I'm in this new role. I don't have a lot of experience. I don't really understand the product I'm fully selling yet. I don't, you know, I never sold to manufacturing companies or retail companies. So I'm like asking super basic questions. Like, okay, you know, let's take Walmart, for example. My first problem was like, what does Walmart do? How do they make money? Explain it to me in a way that a middle schooler can understand. Okay. Perfect. Basic principles. How about dynamics? What does dynamics do? What the hell is CR? What is ERP? Just like super basic questions. Yeah. And then, and then like, you can use that thread to build on top of it. So it's like, okay, I'm a, hey, Chad GPT.

The way I like to think about Chad GPT is almost like it's the most powerful blank brain in the world. It doesn't really know anything. If you say build me, write me an email to sell dynamics, it'll send you something super generic. Right. But you almost have to tell it. It's your thinking partner. It doesn't know anything. You got to tell it, give it the context. Yeah. So I told it, it's like, you know, you are a strategic tech sales professional with 30 years of experience working at Microsoft and all the top consulting firms in the world. I need your advice on how to sell strategically to this account in a way that solves their strategic business objectives and solves challenges that their C-suite would care about.

I need your advice. Enter. Oh, perfect. I'm this person now. All right. And then you work with it. And then you say, okay, I'm thinking about solving this. I've heard this about them where I'm, I want to reach out to the CIO. Here's him. Here's his personality profile. Here's how I want to tailor a message to him. So you almost use it as this sounding board, this, this thinking part. Hey, I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JV sales membership. It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, filling the funnel and driving to close. It also includes monthly workshops that I'll be running on specific skills and different tech like ChatGPT and how to leverage it in the sales process.

And it gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. You get all of this for $420 a year as an individual or $5,000 for teams. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to www.jbarrows.com and click on the individual or team membership and use code podcast, you'll get 20% off. Let's make this happen together. Love that, man. And so with that, like, do you, do you take, cause, um, do you, when you say they take your persona or whatever, do you put like their LinkedIn profile in there and have it scrub it? Or like, what are some of the things that you would do if you're going to, let's start at that beginning where you're, you're, you're account planning this.

You're looking at one of your tier one accounts. Do you put like their website in there, their 10 K in there and those types of things? And then do you go to the person and put their LinkedIn profile in and just keep asking them questions? Yeah. So what I, um, I kind of use the combination of Bing GPT and then Chad GPT. So Bing GPT, it's current with the internet. Yeah. Cause, so that's, that's key because you can use, and it's, I think it's just as powerful as Chad GPT now. So I use that to do my account plan. So I don't really put their website. I'll just say, you know, my account is Walmart. What do they do? How do they make money? What are some of their strategic business priorities in 2023?

Look at their 10 K, look at this, whatever. Sometimes you can even, um, you know, 10 Ks are often like PDFs or something you can download from their website. Claude AI, um, Claude.ai is a great tool where you can, um, upload an entire PDF. It can be hundreds of pages and then upload the entire piece. So take that 10 K uploaded to Claude AI and use that to ask questions off that. So you can kind of do that. But ultimately from the account research, I'm trying to build some kind of a holistic point of view on how I think my company could help them. Right. And so depending on that, then you kind of know who you need to reach out to within the account. So let's say, um, you know, I know customer experience is a, was one of the priorities that Walmart said, you know, and they want to prioritize in this fiscal year or whatever.

Okay, great. So who do I need to reach out to the CIO? So now I'll even maybe use the same thread in chat GPT. So it has all the context of the already the point of view that I've built. And I'll say, great. Now, based on this point of view, I want to reach out to the CIO. Here's some information about the CIO. And I'll go to LinkedIn and I'll copy paste his background. And then there's a tool called crystal nose C-R-Y. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you take that thing, you copy paste their personality profile and say, I want to make sure the message resonates. Yeah. And then give it as much context about the message that you want. Create a sequence for me. If the. It's just. Yeah. See, that's the thing that's crazy is like it does do a lot of the work for you.

But the one fear that I always have is that, again, reps are using it to have the answer and they'll just hit send. And this is when you talk about Gary Vaynerchuk, you know, I went to his back in 2017, 2018, I went to he has this 40 session where you can go to his office and you pay like 10 grand or whatever. And you sit down with other 10, 15 entrepreneurs and all his leads had every department comes in and talks about what they're doing with some of the biggest brands. And then Gary comes in at the end and does a Q&A. And around that time, I had seen an AI email written better. This was back in 2017. Wow. And there was a couple of reps from Salesforce. They actually left Salesforce and they came out and they said, hey, John, you know, we created this artificial intelligence bot.

It creates super hyper personalized emails and it's actually based off of your email structure. Right. And we want to show it to you. And I was at first, I was like, yeah, whatever. And they said it to me and I had a heart attack. I was like, holy shit. I mean, it was better than I could have written. And it was fast. I asked him, how long did this take? You know, and I'm like, there was no human involvement in writing this. And he goes, nope, no human involvement other than the picking the article to use from our app. And oh, by the way, it took 70 seconds. And I was like, what the shit? And this was way before a chat GPT. And so when I met with Gary around the same time, I was like, Gary, man, I just saw a robot write an email better than I could write.

Like, what does that do for like, what does that mean for us? Right. As sales professionals. And he said something that still sticks with me. He said, you know, don't worry about the tech. You're not going to beat it. Right. He goes, but be the last mile. You know what I mean? Like be that last mile. Like let the, let, let it do all the work. Let it write the email. Let it do the research, but be the last mile. Right before you send, hit send, make sure you humanize it. Make sure, you know, those types of things. So how are you looking at that as a last mile? Like, what is your perspective on when it kicks you out an email? What do you do with that email? When it kicks you out kind of a prospectus, how do you look at that?

And then how do you leverage that? Yeah. I think it's thinking back, it's super rare for me to send the very, like whatever the output is you always kind of add, it gives you a great template. So the way I think about it is, I mean, when you're like, say we don't have chat GPT and you're trying to create an email to somebody, you're going to ask yourself questions. All right. Who's this person? What does he care about? How can I make this resonate? How can I make it more concise? You're going to be doing all that. Like those questions you're going to be asking. So now you just use those questions as a prompt. Although you like think about your thinking with the AI bot. So, Hey, I need to reach out to this person.

I need to make it concise. I want to make it whatever. But then ultimately it's going to use, it's going to create a great prompt, but then, you know, you, you tailor it yourself, you know, you make it, you know, maybe, you know, CTAs that'll work for you or works better with your voice. So, um, yeah, I think that makes sense. Yeah. And I think that's the key is that's why I think there's, it's interesting that you're coming with, with no background, not limited background in sales and starting to use this because the cool thing is, is it knows all the sales methodologies. It knows all the sales frameworks. Um, and I think a lot of reps are, are using too much baggage to, to bring to the table.

Like there's one thing about prompting it with the right prompts as far as what to look for. And then there's the other thing about not, you know, maybe not allowing it to be creative, right? Not allowing it to stretch your brain. And so I see that, you know, quite a bit with myself too. Like I, I kinda, I, I, it's almost like I'm looking for, I'm leading the witness here as far as what I want the answer to be when, when I need to kind of open it up a little bit and say, okay, let me, let my curiosity kind of expand here and see what this thing tells me. That's actually a really good point that I haven't, cause I've been more prescriptive in terms of what I want the output to be as well, based on Ian's training.

So I kind of know the frameworks, the way I want the emails to go, line one is warm and personal. Like I have everything kind of, so maybe giving it some, some room to, have you, have you found that that's like the output has been better if you kind of give it some, some autonomy, kind of create this output for me without giving it too much structure? A little bit. Right. So I, I've gone, I've crossed the chasm here. Like I was super prescriptive with it and I would give it exactly the methodology and it followed it. And there's benefit to that, right? Cause those methodologies are tried and true and everything else. But because everything is evolving so fast right now, um, and these frameworks, a lot of the historical ones are being picked up by these AI bots and actually doing real personalization at scale.

Cause I used to kind of roll my eyes at personalization at scale. Like, you know, when sales loft and outreach, we're doing that stuff. And I'm like, guys, just because there's a, you change the name, the title in the industry does not mean this email is personalized. Right. And, um, but now I, I'm seeing real personalization at scale. And so I'm seeing these bots do it, but I still think there's, there's like a, it's missing a soul and I can tell, you know what I mean? Like, it's like, I'll, I'll read an email and I'll be like, yeah, good job finding the trigger, making the connection. But I can tell this is an AI bot because it's going auto, right? Which is why I still think that last mile is important.

And I think it's important for us now to be creative, to start pushing it and start opening it up and releasing it from some of the frameworks to see if there's something new that is going to stand out, that is going to leverage. But I mean, I think the other thing is a lot of people are, are really obviously rushing towards the email sequences and writing better emails with this. And I actually think that's the, I won't say the worst part of it, but the least interesting part of it to me, right? Cause I like what you're doing. You're coming up with a perspective, you know, you're coming up with an understanding and then you use that email. How else? Like, let's extend the sales process here.

Cause I, I look at it from a discovery standpoint, you're preparing for a meeting. Yeah. I've actually used these tools for like role play to tell me what, like, what are good questions to ask this person. So it comes up with really, and I'm like, I'm trying to find impact. So what's a good impact question I can ask this person to understand, to show them, I understand the situation, but isn't too generic. So what are some of the ones that you're, what are some of the prompts that you're using kind of further on after you kind of get that perspective as a comp plan and maybe send a few emails and get somebody to say, yeah, let's have this conversation. Yeah. I mean, for me, I'm just pulling up like a prompt that I've used.

So I, you know, you use it for account planning, use it for emails, but for meeting prep has been the most impactful for me. I mean, um, like I, even for, for the Walmart example, like I'll, I'll, let's say it's a chat GPT prompt. Let's say I've built a point of view already within the same thread and I'll say, okay, great. You got a response from this person. He's ready to take a meeting. My goal with the meeting is to share my high level point of view, understand his top priorities, determine whether they have a problem of which you can solve or a priority goal, which you can help them achieve and gain spot his sponsorship to proceed with deep discovery. Using all the information in this thread, please create a prep document for the meeting in the following format intent for call colon agenda, three bullets.

I can attach to the meeting invite, a high level point of view, something I can share at a high level to this person to have them open up. For example, as I mentioned in my email, I was doing some research and noticed X, I think Microsoft can help in the following way. And then discovery questions based on research to uncover problems that Microsoft can solve. And you should see this thing. I mean, it's just like perfect document intent thing. Yeah. And after that, you read that thing and it gives you context. Then you can play with, use your experience to kind of adjust things, whatever you need to do. There's also another one that I had where like, let's say it's a Monday morning, you've got a meeting coming up in an hour that you're just not ready for, right?

Maybe it's a existing client that you kind of connect with regularly. Maybe you know there was an opportunity in the past. So same kind of thing. Go to Bing GPT. What are the, what are some of the problems I could be experiencing if I'm a CIO at this company? Think about industry trends, current economic headwinds, et cetera. Okay. So it kind of puts me in, in the person I'm connecting with this world and gives you perfect, you know, some great information. How could the Microsoft partnership and, you know, the product I sell help me with where I'm at today? I am in the process of evaluating X, maybe opportunity you heard about in the, in the past. I'm focused on delivering business value through operational efficiency and finding ways to add value to my organization.

So just ideas, thinking there, you know, prepping for meetings. And then you take that, copy paste it into chat GPT and say, Hey, based on this information, give me a prep document, intent for call, create an agenda for me, a couple of follow-up emails. So just, it's like, it doesn't do everything. I mean, I guess it kind of does a lot for you, but it's how you think about it. It's not going to do it automatically. You need to think with it. You're, you know, you've got to be there. It's not going to automate you. That last mile. Right. Yeah. And so, so how is, you're using a lot of these tools, like being like that anybody can use. Right. But you work at Microsoft. I saw some shit that, so I did a post recently, um, about, you know, when I saw it, Dreamforce, for instance, right?

And, and what I, I think it was LinkedIn. I was part of their product roadmap and Microsoft, uh, somebody jumped on the thread and was like, Hey, have you seen what Microsoft's doing? And I've been waiting for Microsoft forever, um, to, to get their shit together with like a full blown, because they got everything. Right. I mean, it's, it's literally between LinkedIn, between Microsoft Dynamics, between Office 365, between all those different things. I mean, it is the killer app if you, if you really engage in all that stuff. And what I saw as far as the demo of, uh, Dynamics 365 sales, like I was like, there's pretty, it's, it's there. So it's, it's getting there. So, so talk to me about, from an insider's perspective, you know, what are you seeing?

My, my view is, I think we're all going to be standing from like sitting in front of a dashboard. I think we're all going back to full cycle sales. I think we're going to be sitting in front of a dashboard with information being fed to us. And it's not necessarily like, Hey John, you know, or like when I walk into the office, it's not going to be like, Oh, who should I reach out to today? Or who should I set a cadence to? It's like, no, no, no, no. John, you got to reach out to Daniel because Daniel just did these five things and his company just did that. And these are things. And by the way, you should call him instead of email him because he likes phone over, crystal nose type of stuff. He likes phone over email.

And, um, here's like three snippet bullet points that you should say when you make that phone call to him. Right. Type of thing. So that's where it's almost like, I don't know if you remember my normal, remember the movie minority report. No, I haven't seen it. Yeah. So minority report it's, it's, um, Tom Cruise and he's basically sitting there and he's got, it's futuristic, right? It's about the, how AI uses to predict murders before it's murder. So they predict crimes before they actually happen. So you actually get arrested before you even kill somebody because these precogs. But the point is, is he's standing there with these gloves on and he's just kind of swiping back and forth. Right.

It's kind of like Tony Stark with Iron Man. Right. He's like that. So with what you're seeing, with what you're doing right now, without the baggage of sales and with what you're seeing at Microsoft and what they're doing with their platform and integrating is where do you see kind of the, this evolving to, as far as where the sales rep sits and how this technology is going to support that. Cause a lot of people are wondering right now, like what the fuck is the future of sales? And I, I have a vision, but I'm curious, you're on the inside of a company that's obviously neck deep in AI right now. Yeah, no, it's a good, it's a good question. I think I, I very much agree with what you're, what you said in terms of, it's going to be a single pane of glass that you can kind of work kind of the way you articulated that.

I think that's where it's going. I mean, the, the product that Microsoft is, so pretty much Microsoft owns 49% of open AI. They're weaving in this AI capability into every aspect of their portfolio. I sell specifically business applications. So I see, I see it weeped into dynamics. A lot of it is still in preview. It's not generally available. Even us as sales reps aren't fully utilizing co-pilot yet, but it's called co-pilot. Yeah. So you're the pilot co-pilots in the seats. You're working with a co-pilot. It's not automating. It's not, but you're going to use it to help you, you know, write emails, understand your customers better, do research, you know, get insights, um, all those things.

So, you know, if like, for example, that single pane of glass, that would be like dynamics, three 65 sales, a CR, you know, Salesforce, whatever CRM platform you're using, you know, you have, you have it there to, you know, gather all the insights that you have about a customer, use it in your emails, different things like that. Um, so I think that's where it's going. Yeah. And I think that's what kind of scares me about a lot of what happened, what is happening right now. Cause you know, so many sales reps, I, I, I, and I was preaching this last week at dream force. It was, I, I just think we've gotten so lazy in the past 10 years and we've tried to over engineer the sales process with all this technology and kind of grow at all costs, top line revenue, go, go, go, go, go.

And we've skipped a lot of the fundamentals. And so now that sales is hard again, you know what I mean? And, and these reps don't have those fundamentals to fall back on. And these tools are actually doing a lot of the work that they used to do. I mean, there's a report that Salesforce came out with that talked about how like on average, uh, the, you know, the average rep only spends like, I don't know, 27, 28% of the time actually selling. Right. And then they cut out all these different pieces of like the different admin components. And that's all AI can do a lot of that. But unfortunately a lot of the reps have turned into robots and, and a lot of that's how they justify their job. Like, well, I'm updating CRM.

I'm doing this. And quite frankly, man, I, I don't, I, I don't see a lot of them surviving. Like I see a large portion of the sales population going away because the tech's going to do the majority of the work for them. Could be, could be. Yeah. I mean, I have the, I have the benefit of not having all that experience or all that thing. And I like, right when I jumped in, I was like, all right, I got to do this right. So I hired Ian and he's kind of teaching the fundamental. So I'm, um, yeah, I often, I even have it written here on my board. My lack of sales experience is my biggest advantage because I have to remind myself of that. Cause often I'll get into that imposter syndrome of like, oh shit, I'm going in.

I don't know what I'm doing. No, but maybe it's a, maybe it's an advantage. No, it is because there's a big argument to be had right now of rip and replace, right? Cause what got us here will not get us there scenario. And I, and there's a lot of companies that I've talked to CROs and everybody who are really just trying to figure out what the fuck to do because they have these reps and these teams and this tech stack that is so over bloated and it just doesn't fit the new world. And so there's a genuine and a real argument to be made here of, you know what, let's just burn this shit to the ground and start with AI native reps who don't have the baggage. I don't have the baggage of all the process who don't have.

And so like, let's rip out our tech stack. Basically let's restart from a native AI and then let's go hire reps who are like you don't have the baggage, have the curiosity, are willing to put in the work, but also know how to leverage these tools and restructure your entire sales org. And I'm seeing it. Like I think Q1, I think I had over 100 conversations with CROs and almost every single one of them was telling me that if they didn't are, if they hadn't already like completely restructured or abandoned their BDR SDR group, they're, they're thinking about completely restructuring or abandoning it and going back to it and just leveraging all this AI stuff. And I don't think that's the answer because I think there's a transition here, but it's a real, it's a real conversation being had out there.

That's crazy. No, I think, I mean, what I'm, what I'm seeing is cause I've been sharing some of these tips and tricks and things across Microsoft and people are picking and Microsoft, you know, the whole ideas around having a growth mindset. So they're big into, you know, how are you using this? And managers are bringing me in and they're like, yeah, share this thing. So they're, they're really encouraging. And I also think that what I see or the biggest thing is like people are hesitant to start trying it, so if I could just say anything on this, it's like, just go play with it, go create the stupid thing, just go play with it. And I think that if you have a ton of sales experience, that's an advantage with this tool because you have so much, you know, how to sell, you have, you know, all the, um, you know, the objections that could come up, you know, your product better than I do.

You know, there's so many things that you can use and teach the AI bot to kind of, you know, all these different, just, you could trade it better. You could, you could be even more powerful with AI. It's like, think of it as like putting on a, just taking a bunch of steroids where you're for your sales process, you know? So just do it, just try it, play with it. Have you trained it on your voice yet? Like, I know you train it on all these prompts and like what to do, but there's also that part of training it to sound like you literally. So it's like, write an email in my tone. Have you gone that far with it where you're actually teaching it to sound just like you versus just give you some answers?

I haven't, I don't know if there's a formal way to do that because if there is, I would love to learn it, but I, I've, I've done things like, um, you know, here's some, here's a few of my LinkedIn posts. Here's how, please extract like what my style is and make this one sound similar. I've done things like that. I've also, you know, I've had like my elevator pitches and different things for my product, um, written out and the way I tell the platform story of Microsoft and I'll take that and I'll feed it into there and then I'll say, tailor it, you know, for this organization's objectives, make it sound like Steve Jobs wrote it and it'll just like, you know, make it crazy, engaging and things like that.

But I haven't like formally done the, um, your style. Is there a way to do that? Do you know how, how do you do that? I mean, the way I did it was, I just asked it, how do I train you to have my style? Like I did exactly what you said, which is jump into it and I just fucking asked it. I was like, Hey, how do I, how do I teach you how to be, you know, have my voice and write things in my vocation? And it was like, well, just feed me, you know, your writings and any blog posts you have and all these different things. And then I just went and I grabbed a bunch of my blog posts, a bunch of my emails, a bunch of my stories, you know, and just pushed it in there. And I said, and I just kept doing it.

I was like, here's another, here's a blog post I wrote. Here's a blog post I wrote. Here's a blog post I wrote. And then at the end I would say, okay, cause that's one prompt, right? That just goes all the way through. And then I, then I'll say, what's a prompt that I can write in the future to remind you of my writing style in this thread and how, and, and so that I don't have to go through this each time I want you to write me something new. And then it will create the actual prompt that I can just cut and paste. And then I start a new thread with like a new client or something like that. And I'll be like, Hey, here's the prompts. Remember you're now acting like John Barrows, CEO of sell better by, you know, JB sales.

And, you know, now write an email, write a blog post, write a, you know, proposal in that, in that tone. And sure as shit, there it is. Yeah. That's good. That's good. Right. And I think your point of like, that's my thing as far as getting people involved here, like the people who are scared, I'm like, why be scared? Like, this is one of those things. Like my, my favorite answer to John, how do I get started with chat GBT is that is a fantastic question to ask chat GBT. Literally you go in and you're like, you know what? I'm a 47 year old man. I'm a, I live in Boston, Massachusetts. I'm a CEO of a sales training organization. I'm just getting started with chat GBT. I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing.

How, like, what's a way that I could start leveraging this tool to start having, you know, creating efficiencies. My goal is to blah, blah, blah. Yep. And then all of a sudden there's 15 ideas of, oh shit, well that sounds cool. Let me try that one. And then go, go, go, go. Yeah. Deeper, deeper, deeper, deeper. And a great question to ask at the end of a prompt is ask me questions to make sure that the prompt you're going to give me is to my satisfaction. So have it ask you the questions that it needs to give you the best prompt. Love that. Yeah. That's the one thing I don't do enough of. I don't think it's like, it's now it's like, well, basically qualify me. I have a general idea here of what I'm looking for, but ask me what questions do you need to ask me so I can give you the information so you can give me a better answer for that and create the prompt that I'm looking for.

Yep. All right. It's fucking crazy, man. It's so, I mean, it's, it's so, I mean, look, I think the, the, the boom has kind of, I think the first half of this year was like, just holy shit chaos with everybody being like, oh my God, this is going to take over the world. And just like everything, it's kind of like now it's kind of come off of that like insanity. But what I, what I fear is that a lot of people think it's like Bitcoin or think it's like NFTs. Right. And by the way, I, I, I firmly believe that NFTs and Bitcoin are coming back. Like they're going to come back strong. Um, but I, I look at AI as different because this thing is learning on top of itself, right? The compounded effect of it learning on itself.

And so it's going to get just exponentially better. Whereas I look at Bitcoin and I understood why Bitcoin failed because there was no regulatory agency around Bitcoin and that's people's fucking money. And if you lose people's fucking money, they go crazy. Right. And same thing with NFTs. I was like, well, that's cool, but I, what is it? There's no real, I mean, there's some practical application to it, but I got a gift here. Great. I own it. I don't care. You know, I, I see the future application of it where it's like, oh, cool. You know, like for instance, you and I, we don't, we don't go to concerts anymore and get ticket stubs and I don't, how old are you again? I forget. I'm 27. So you're way younger than me, but like back, like, you know, I used to have like, like, like ticket stubs that I would hold onto, like that I went to this fucking concert and it was bananas.

Now it's all on your phone, but I could see, okay, well I, now that's an NFT. Now that ticket is an NFT to that concert that was bananas. Great. But who cares? AI though is, I think fundamentally different. Like, are you seeing it that way too? Yeah, I think, I think so. I mean, the, yeah, the practical application of NFTs and things like that. I mean, I've seen other applications with NFTs. Like for example, if you like take the concert example too, like if you, um, you know, went to this concert, maybe now it gives you some kind of other added value as, as future, it gives you access to future concerts or, Hey, you know, if, if the artist throws an event sometime, since you have that, it gives you things like that.

But yeah, I mean, AI, you're not using NFTs, Bitcoin, every single, like AI is like your partner in crime for anything that you need to do. It makes you more powerful as a person. I don't see Bitcoin and, and, uh, NFTs doing that. No, I think it's in the real world. Yeah. And I also don't think it, and again, Bitcoin and NFTs don't compound interest on themselves, right? In the sense of like, they're learning. And that's, I think that's my, you know, my pessimistic, I got, I, I, there's so much optimism for what this thing can do, but then there's the pessimism of like, holy shit, we are feeding this machine and it's going to, it's waking up and it's going to take all this stuff and eventually wake up and say, all right, humans, we don't fucking need you anymore.

Yeah. Like I, I, I, I told this, I told this before on the podcast, probably, uh, but I, and I'm it blew my mind, but have you ever heard the, the, about the, the story about the Terminator in the, in the matrix? Did I tell you that one or did you? No, no, I haven't heard of that one. So if you Google it, you got this woman, right? And I, and I've, there's the interviews there and it's an actual person. It's not, you know, an AI version of this thing. So I got it, but who knows if it's truly true or not, but she said she wrote the book before the studio stole the movies from her. She wrote the book and in the book, the Terminator was the prequel to the matrix. John Connor is Neo. And if you think about it, they actually even take it to the, uh, to the religious site where JC, John Connor, Jesus Christ, and Mary is the, um, immaculate reception, uh, conception, right?

Because remember, um, remember Sarah Connor, right? The mom in the first one, remember the guy came from the future to protect her against, against Arnold. Well, and then he impregnated her and then he went back to the future. And so it's the immaculate conception because there was no guy. And she, that's why she was in the insane asylum because she had a baby and nobody knew and blah, blah, blah. And so then you go onto the second Terminator and they, they project into the future about what happened when the machines woke up and started coming after the humans and the humans had to, you know, fight them and, and kill their power source. So they did a nuclear winter to kill the sun because that's where they were getting their power.

Well, now the machines didn't have any power from the sun. So they turned to humans. They put us in the pods. They plugged us into the matrix and they let us think that we're now actually in the world. And here we are. So it's like, when you start to, I have, I haven't done it yet. Cause like, I can't waste that much time with my wife and daughter around, but there's going to be a weekend where my wife and daughter are not around. And I'm literally going to watch every fucking episode of the Terminator and every fucking episode of the matrix, like back to back to back and look for the threads because to a certain degree, it's like sky, I look at Skynet and I look at like, that's kind of like Chad GPT, right?

It's like, motherfucker woke up and it was like, oh, and everybody's like, look at how cool this is. This is bananas. And then, uh-oh. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I'm not thinking about any of that. I'm thinking about how I can use it to crush my number of this fiscal year. But yeah, absolutely, man. Yeah. There's a bigger thing to it. Yeah. It's crazy. Well, that's what, I mean, and that's why I'm curious, like, you know, from like what our kids are going to grow up into, right? Like my daughter's 12 and she is, she's not going to know a world without AI. Right. Your kids are definitely not going to know a world where they die without AI. And, you know, there's all the positives that this thing can do because of the large language models and being able to analyze trillions of lines of data and code and everything like that.

I mean, there's, there's potential here that this cures cancer, that it solves climate change, right? Because it's just mass amounts of data. But then there's the flip side of, okay, you know, there's things, you know, self-aware, you know, goes into these things. So it's a, it's fascinating, man. I think this is such a cool time to be involved as long as you're paying attention. And I think that's one of your points of just get involved because if you're not, you will wake up one day and get replaced, right? Yeah. I mean, there's no question. And I mean, if you have kids, if you have kids, like kind of to your point, if you have kids, they're going to be using the tool. You better know what the hell it does.

Yep. Absolutely. Because we're also just like, you know, there's so many, even now, like parents who aren't aware of social media and they're, you know, 11 year olds, 12 year olds are on social media and they're just completely unaware with what they're doing, what they could potentially be seeing all these different things. So yeah, use it, play with it. Actually, one of my, so I hope this happens because I think I scared my wife and daughter away from AI for a while because I was so like, holy shit, look at this stuff. And both of them were like, get the fuck away from me. Like you're way too crazy about this shit. And so I scared them away, but I think I've got my daughter hooked back in because she's in seventh grade right now going to eighth and she's got to go to high school next year.

And she has to do a year long project, right? And she has to pick something that she wants to learn about. And I was like, well, why don't you learn about the effect AI is going to have on education for a kid like you? And because, I mean, talk about a kick-ass year end project and then a project that you could tell high schools like, holy shit, look what I just learned. Right. And, and she's like, and when I made the connection to like, this'll actually help her get into a high school, help her get in that knowledge, regardless of AI or not, but the cool project, she'd like, the light bulb went off. And the beauty is, and I really, I'm not pushing too hard because she's down to like her top three choices here and she's leaning more towards that.

So I don't want to be like, do it, do it, do it. But I'm so excited because it's exactly that. I'm going to show her what's the end goal in mind. I want to create a, like I, I'm a 12, 13 year old girl. This is where I live. I want to, I have to learn something over the course of a year. The goal is to present to my class, a 10 minute presentation about what I've learned. The topic is how AI is going to impact my generation from an educational standpoint, map out a three month thing for me to do with 10 minutes a day or whatever it is that will guide me towards the output that I'm looking for. And I don't want to cheat. I'm not trying to cheat here. You know, that type of thing. And I guarantee you that motherfucker is going to map out her entire semester.

Yeah. Beautiful. Absolutely. That's good. That's a really good prompt. That's very smart. Right. This is like, this is like, I mean, that's why it's so fucking cool. If you just start playing, like you start just thinking about random ass shit, right. About like, wait, I'm curious. And I think that's the one superpower. Let me ask you this about you. Have you always been curious? I've been very obsessive in my, like whenever I get into something, whether it's, you know, lifting or boxing or when I have a goal, like, okay, I'm going to get into sales. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to, I'm going all in. I think I'm very curious about the things that I want to be curious about. Like personal development stuff.

Like, oh my God, I can go all day. Watch that stuff all day. Journal. What's the best way to journal? Oh, another tactic. Like my wife's like, you're watching the same shit over and over and over again. And the guy's just saying it differently. I'm just like, oh, no, I pick something up every time. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. But yeah, you got to be curious with this tool. Like, like I said, use it as a thinking partner. Don't ask it to do things for you. Ask it. Think with it. Ask it questions. That's actually one of the superpowers that I think I have, which is, I think I was born naturally curious. And so this stuff to me is fascinating because I'm genuinely curious about what's going on here. And I think my hope is, is that people can use this to become curious because I think that is like, if I were to lean on anything for sales reps moving forward, it's business acumen, curiosity, genuine curiosity about the client, about the role, about the industry, about everything else.

And then, you know, empathy, right? Like really trying to have true empathy for the person that they are talking to. So if you put those three things together, those are things that's, that tech has a hard time replicating, right? I mean, it can help you be curious, but tech isn't curious. It can help you have empathy, but it doesn't have empathy. You know, it can help you with business acumen, but it's just giving you data. It's not, it doesn't actually have business acumen to be able to connect the dots the right way and ask the right. So I think if you look at it that way, this thing is just a, like I, like you said, it's like steroids. Yeah. Yeah. It gives you, it'll give you everything you need to be successful in a meeting, but it won't do the meeting for you.

Yeah. So you have to like, the way I always think about it is what's your intent for the meeting. So if you can say, you know, I want to come off as a trusted advisor, I want to be curious, I want to understand blah, blah, blah. Yeah. Then you have all the data to go make that meeting happen. But that intent is key. Love it. Awesome, man. Well, look, let's wrap this up. We're up to 45, which is usually around the timeline. And I love it because this has got me curious again. I got to go back and start trying to fucking around with some more stuff here. But Daniel, I, you know, I know you work for Microsoft and you're doing some really cool shit, but where can, where can people find out more information?

And are you sharing this stuff? Like stuff, I know you're sharing it internally, but are you like doing posts and stuff like that around this, this type of thing too? Not officially. Yeah. I've been thinking about, I probably should start like sharing some snippets and stuff. But no, I'm on LinkedIn. That's probably the best way to, for this audience and follow me also Instagram and things, but I'm more like boxing and doing things like that personal life stuff. But, but yeah, LinkedIn, Daniel Bordowski. Bordowski. So, and just for people listening, I'll put it in the show notes, but it's B-O-R-O-D-Y-A-N-S-K-Y, Daniel. Yeah. And go find him on LinkedIn because he's doing some really cool shit here.

Daniel, thank you so much for coming on, man. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. All right, everybody. Well, hopefully you've got, hopefully this conversation got you curious enough to go start playing around with it if you haven't already. And for those of you who have, hopefully he gave you some good ideas on some new prompts that you can try out as you go. 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 went or you think it's going, you make somebody smile today and you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now. So thank you all very much. And I will see you on the other side.

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