Eugene “Blue” Bowen: Inside G2’s AI in Sales Report

The more friction you create at the top of the funnel, your pipeline is going to be depleted. Sales cycles are longer, so it's really important to make it as seamless as possible where you can. 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. Now, today's conversation is with Blue Bowen. He is a research principal over at G2, where he specializes in sales tech and AI. His background in market research and competitive intelligence gives him a sharp lens on how AI is reshaping the sales playbook.

Now, in our conversation, we dug into the reality behind AI and sales, where it's truly driving impact, where it's overhyped, and why data quality is still the number one barrier holding teams back. We unpacked the future of the SDR role, the growing importance of rev ops, and why AI's biggest near-term win might actually be in coaching and enablement, not just pipeline development. So if you're curious about how to use AI to augment your sales process instead of just automate it, this episode's for you. So I hope you enjoyed as much as I did. Let's make it happen. Blue Bowen, what's going on? Welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. Thanks, John.

Thanks for having me. How are you? Good, man. Good. It's, you know, we were just talking right before we got on here, man. It's things don't seem to be slowing down. They seem to be moving faster and faster. I think this report that you guys just put out there as far as the insights of what's going on with AI is going to be pretty interesting to dive into. But yeah, man, it's a little mind-numbing right now to try to stay, even stay paced with what's going on. Forget about stay ahead of what's going on right now. How are you feeling right now with you, like with just what you're doing, what you're seeing out there? You feel like you're on top of things? You feel like you're behind? You feel like you're ahead?

Where are you at right now? You know, I think it's hard to say. I think I'm on top of things. Ahead, I think, might be a little optimistic. I think I'm treading water trying to keep pace. You know, right when I think I'm on top of things, then a new thing breaks through. And then we're kind of recycling again. So we're floating over here. And I think this, I'm curious, because we always, you know, before we get into the details here, you know, I always love the origin story here, right? Like before, you know, we can all read what's on LinkedIn. So talk to us a little bit about your background, because I know you're a military and you've moved around quite a bit in a bunch of different areas, right?

That's where you're bringing up. Yeah. So my dad was in the army. So as a kid, moved around every two years. So kind of dynamic and agile in terms of being raised and then kind of spent my whole career in market research and competitive intelligence. Previously at a small startup in the business to government space. So kind of cold calling government employees, trying to glean competitive insights for my clients, for their procurement bids. And now with G2 research principles. So a voice of customer, whether that's a government employee or end users of software and kind of driving insights there, you know, customer always knows best. It's kind of cliche, but they can always provide insights, maybe not best.

Yeah. I call bullshit on that. I don't, I disagree because they don't always know what they need and they're not always right. I'm definitely more of the employees are the focus. So if you treat your employees right, then the customer is going to be fine. But I've seen too many companies follow that customer is always right. And then shred their internal culture around that and destroy their business because of it. So I vehemently disagree with the customer is always right. Yeah. Especially if, you know, I mean, we'll talk about this in a little bit, but if your ICP isn't baked, if you're targeting the wrong customers, you know, if you're, if you're selling swimwear to people in the mountains, your customer probably isn't always right.

Maybe, maybe your pinpointed strategies are wrong. Yeah. Well then you aren't either. So there's a, there's a balance there, but you went to, you went to school. Did you go to school with marketing with a sale? Did I see the sales focus on the, on that? Yeah. So, um, marketing major, and then they had kind of optionality minors, um, and professional selling was one of those concentrations. So. That's actually super cool. Cause I mean, that's, that's rare. I mean, you grad, you, you graduated in what? Uh, 18, 2018. Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, you know, I got a little bit older than you with a great beard here, but you know, when I was growing up and there was no, uh, degree in sales at all. So what did you go to, it was jam, was it jam you?

I forget. Yep, exactly. Um, did you go there because of the sales focus and, and did you know that that's what you wanted to do, uh, kind of when you grew up getting into school or was that just, that's pretty interesting to you and you followed that path? Yeah. Kind of followed the path. Um, knew I wanted to do college of business. Um, so I got into college of business then, um, focused on the marketing and then, um, you know, really was fascinated by consumer behavior and kind of the marketing lens. Um, and then felt like there was a national natural kind of add on to add the professional selling concentration, you know, marketing is so much about, um, resonating with people, speaking to people, piquing their interests and progressing that.

And I think sales is obviously kind of the next evolution of that. So really kind of intrigued with, you know, how to connect with people and how to, um, kind of continue that conversation, whether it's raising awareness from a marketing lens or whether it's kind of progressing deals and selling. So then what got you the itch on the analytics side of the house, right? Cause usually sales reps are not exactly the most analytical rep, you know, people out there. They're 10, they tend to be just like, yeah, let me go do my thing. And I hate, you know, analyzing, I hate inputting stuff into CRM. I hate doing all that analytical stuff. So for you, how did you catch that bug? Yeah, I think it was, um, kind of some marketing analytics and consumer behavior classes, um, that I took there really kind of piqued my interest and, you know, everything's data driven nowadays.

You can find, you know, you can tell me the story you want to, you want to say, and I'll find the data to back it up. There's so much data out there right now. Um, so I think that's what really kind of fascinated me is like correlation and causation and, um, you know, how companies shift their strategy based off data, um, how they market and how they sell that. Love it. So talk, so let's talk about this report. What, um, first of all, what drove it? I mean, we'll get into the details here, but what, what was the driver for this and, and what, what were you trying to figure out? Yeah. So the driver is really to kind of raise awareness on how is AI being implemented, used and effective in sales, um, and kind of trying to be a myth buster in some areas and also just shed a little light in terms of what people are doing now, how they're seeing success.

And, you know, I think if you were to only, if your only source is LinkedIn, you would think that AI is only being used for AI SDRs and to spam your, uh, inboxes, um, and really try to try to take that peeled onion a little bit and talk about how AI is being used throughout the sales cycle, um, past close to help kind of customer retention and expansion. Um, and also kind of on the sales enablement side, which I think is kind of underserved right now. So, uh, just trying to be a little bit of a, a light in terms of how it's being used now, how it's, um, kind of being effective. Hey, I hope you're enjoying the conversation so far. I want to take a quick minute to share with you what I'm working on these days with my new JB sales membership.

It includes live monthly training delivered by me on my two signature courses, which are filling the funnel and driving a close that cover all aspects of the sales process. It also includes monthly workshops that'll be running on specific sales skills and different tech skills like chat GPT and how to leverage AI throughout the entire sales process. Finally, the membership gives you access to my entire online catalog with every course and every tip I've ever done. And as an exclusive offer to my podcast listeners, if you go to jbarrows.com, click on the individual membership link and use coupon code podcast at checkout, you'll get 25% off. Now let's get back to the conversation. Yeah, it's funny.

I, when I do my trainings, you know, I usually ask, I do a poll and I'll ask the group say, where are you on a scale of one to five, right? When it comes to AI, like one being I barely use it, maybe kind of use it like a search engine type of scenario. Five, I am all in agents created my own GPTs and everything else. And I'm inevitably I get threes and fours, maybe, you know, on those fives, I got some sevens, like I'm killer. Right. And then when I do my training and I, and I show the basics, like, you know, I've, I've created a couple of GPTs, but I use it to augment what we're doing from a training standpoint and just how I use it. And I don't think it's anything special, but you know, at the end, I'll ask again, okay, so you said you were three, four, five, whatever.

Now, based on what you just saw for the past two hours or whatever, now, where do you think you are? Or where do you think you actually are? And I get like zeros, ones, twos, like, holy smokes, man. Like I wasn't even scratching the surface here. And I, and which is kind of scary to me because I don't feel like I'm scratching the surface. I mean, I'm doing my best to stay ahead here, but every time I turn around, something new comes out and I'm like, Oh man, like, all right. So it's, I think there's a perception reality of once somebody starts to use it, even just a little bit, they're like, Oh, look at this cute little email I can write, or, Oh, it did some research for me. Fantastic. So where are you saying, or where does the data suggest that the real value of this is?

Cause I just, the, the SDR outbound stuff. I just think that's marketing at this point. I don't believe that sales reps even need to be doing a ton of, you know, spray and pray at all. Quite frankly, if they're going to do anything, it needs to be super focused, super personalized and very relevant. Um, but I think that's the one that everybody chases. So talk to us a little bit about what you're learning or what you learned of where AI is actually having a real impact on the sales, on the sales process. Yeah. Well said. Um, I kind of, I tend to agree with you on, uh, outbound and SDRs most likely should be marketing, especially like where the evolution is going now. So many touch points. Um, you know, that person really booked a meeting with you because you said you went to the same school.

Was it, was it the right person, the right message or the right time? Maybe it was just the time. And, you know, you happened to get them at the right time and they were in an active sales cycle. Um, I think right now, what I'm seeing is a lot of people are trying to use AI as an easy button. Remember that Staples commercial, that was easy. And, you know, they're using it for pipeline development. You know, we sent out a survey and every, the number one use case was AI SDRs. Then it was account research and account prioritization, um, which are all good. But really, I think that just speaks to people trying to put label as an easy button and just try to have a quick fix to a problem that is a little bit kind of wider picture if you look at the overall thing.

Um, so that's where we're seeing the most utilization right now. I think where in the future, what we'll see is using AI to up level reps, whether that's shortening training times with role simulation, um, whether that's live call coaching, whether that's smarter forecasting based off of, um, using all past interaction data and things like that. You know, you, you mentioned, um, some sentiment there, like a lot of, you know, with the AI scale, how good are you at AI? If you were asked rep, how confident are you that this is going to commit? A lot of that's kind of sentiment based now, right? So putting a little bit more data into the forecast, um, rather than just relying only on rep sentiment or their, or their, you know, level of confidence.

And is that based off of kind of historical analysis? Cause my fear with all this AI stuff, well, not that I got a lot of fears, but one of the things is, yeah, yeah, totally. And one of them is, you know, I thought originally this was going to solve the dirty data problem where, okay, I got a bunch of, you know, my CRM, some reps records this, this way, and some that way and whatever. Um, but Hey, AI is going to be able to go in there and be able to extract all this beautiful information and put it all into a logical. And that just is not true. Like this is this, we are still in a garbage in garbage out scenario here. So I'm, I'm wondering, you know, with four, let's, let's pick on forecast accuracy.

How does it, how are you seeing them use it when it comes to that? Right. Cause there's sentiment as far as what, you know, intent data and stuff that G2, G2 can bring in, right. Where it's like, Hey, you know, this client just searched for, something else. And you know, there, there's an active, you know, they just search for your biggest competitor. So, you know, okay, you probably should reduce this or you should make a phone call. Right. But how is it extracting information that is helping from a historical standpoint on what good looks like when a lot of times what good looks like is, is a little bit of a moving target because of the crap that, and how inaccurate reps are at putting data into the system.

Yeah. I think AI is revealing that that is the problem. Again, people are trying to put a bandaid on a larger, on a, on a big hole in your chest and you have to realize maybe you need to look at the hole in your chest and forget about the bandaid. So, you know, everybody says the more data you have, the better the AI is when that's really not the case, you know, instead of like being targeted and, and focus on a small amount of data to extract the best possible insights. It's looking at this whole ocean. Um, one, when you're only in a part of the ocean, you don't care about what's going on really far North or really far South. You care about where you are. Um, and I think, you know, AI and forecasting, it is looking at historical, you know, how many stakeholders did you engage with when you won these deals?

Uh, what was the, uh, cadence of interactions? Um, who were the stakeholders? Was it C suite? Was it, you know, end users, things like that. Um, but it's only as good as what it has. So I think a lot of times that's the problem is they're looking at incomplete pictures, um, and then trying to put together, you know, a masterwork of art. Um, so really what needs to happen is people kind of going back to, uh, square one to the problem. Um, worried about data management, data principles. Um, what is your process? Um, what I found most interesting and kind of revealing in the report, um, was that a lot of people, I think 40% are using AI powered sales forecasting, deal intelligence tools, right?

Spotting, spotting, uh, risks, things like that. Only like 17% are using, um, activity capture and data entry automation. Um, so really relying on reps to put in all the data as if it was 15 years ago, but then we're going to have AI predict the success of that. So I think it's kind of, um, like ass backwards a little bit in the sense of you need to worry about what you're putting in the system and then maybe you can have some fruitful insights there. Yeah. And that, that's always cause I, you know, every CRM system I've ever played around with, it's, there's almost no best practices at all. Like, you know, I, there's sandbagging, there's, uh, you know, mislabeling titles, there's, you know, not track, not CCing your email to get into the system.

So it tracks, right. So there's all these different pieces in it. And it, there's, there's this concept of the dead internet too, which I'm, which I'm starting to pay attention to a little bit more, which is a really interesting phenomenon that I didn't really think about until relatively recently, which is, you know, most of the content for years obviously was, was human based, right. We created it and whatever. And it was all original thought, whatever. Um, but now AI is, is, is, I think I forget what the stat was about how much content on the internet now is AI generated. So there's a degradation of that, the, the, the value of that content. So it's now just pulling off of less and less and less quality content.

So therefore that information is going to get worse and worse and worse as far as the output is concerned. And you see the same thing in CRMs. So is there like, I mean, I know this isn't report oriented stuff, but from a, what you're seeing out there with clients, is there a, you know, Hey, we gotta, we gotta rip and, I don't want to say rip and replace, but almost start from scratch here with a brand new way to, to track things or how do, how do they get to that data integrity part? And, and like, at least what are the pillars here that they have to have in order for this data to be even meaningful? Yeah. Great question. And I think again, that's a whole podcast. We want to talk about how to keep your CRM clean.

If you're asking anybody, is your CRM up to date and clean? If you found the one person at a thousand that said yes, ask them again in three months and the answer is no, unless, you know, they have a strong data governance framework. They're leveraging like data enrichment, cleanliness. Um, and I think that's kind of, that's the problem. There's not a lot of processes in place to continuously update that information. Um, and now the next evolution, you asked if I was like on top of things, I'm just now starting to read about how so many companies are considering closing their walls. So not allowing all these systems to talk to each other. This is my data and not your data. So it's going to be harder to integrate within the CRM to make sure that that conversation intelligence call that was recorded, transcribed, had the action items and next steps is sunk to your CRM or then sunk to your sales engagement platform.

So there's kind of, um, this new, um, way of, of thinking that a lot of these software companies are kind of closing their ecosystems, which is only going to exacerbate the problem of is your CRM up to date? Yeah. It's, I read something where, you know, CNN and a lot of the news sources out there are blocking all AI from accessing their content because it's that that's their IP. That's what they put out there. And it's, I mean, we can all argue that CNN and MSNBC and Fox and that they all put out crap anyways, but, you know, but at least it was somewhat sourced by, you know, people that have some type of process to go through. And without that, it just goes to Reddit and it starts to pick up all the random ass opinions from idiots like me.

Right. Yeah. That is a fright. Yeah. I always think it's funny when you see like the major, major citations, it's like Reddit and Wikipedia. Yeah. It was like when I was in school, you get yelled at if you use Wikipedia as a primary source or anything, Reddit. I, for a while, I only thought trolls lived on Reddit. So now it's, you know, all our LLMs that people are trying to one shot. It's using two sources that historically aren't viewed as like verifiable and, you know, the most valid. Yeah. This is why I think this is why I've talked a lot about augmentations versus automation, right? The challenge I think we're at right now is we've gone from a search engine to an answer engine. And for those of us who are thoughtful enough, who have some context and who are curious, it's a superpower because we can use it to ask questions, gain insights, challenge it.

You know, I don't know about you, but I'm like, where'd you get that data? Could you give me the exact opposite viewpoint on this? Just so I understand where you're coming from, you know, please cite actual reference, you know, resources that are reputable, those types of things. But unfortunately, I think that's a very small portion of our population. I think the vast majority are going to take whatever answer it gives it and cut, paste and send. Yeah. So with that, as it relates to the SDR role and, you know, we talked about how, you know, it's really a marketing position. We haven't seen the mass layoffs yet, right? We haven't been to, oh my God, right? AI is replacing everybody. But what I think we're going to see very quickly here in the next jobs report, if it was focused on the, especially in the tech space, there's not going to be a lot of hiring moving forward.

Because it's that the AI can take that rep and multiply their productivity by five, six, 10, 20%, whatever it might be. So what do, where, let's, let's pick on that role specifically with the data that you've had and the insights is, what does this position look like in the future? Is SDR a pure marketing function that is just kind of looking at data and pointing things and then feeding, you know, real true intent back to full cycle sales reps? Or does the SDR have a place in the engagement side of it moving forward? That's a great question. I foresee that in the future, the SDR BDR role will report to marketing and be more of a brand awareness engine to kind of raise awareness and be the connective tissue that, you know, talks from marketing to sales.

So many times there's, there's still these, I mean, it's an eight, it's a decade old problem of siloed communications, people wanting attribution for their MQL. That was me. Well, really, like it's such a multi-touch, multi-pronged approach right now that there's not, people are fighting for attribution. They're like, they're not focused on the end picture or the big picture, right? They're focused on getting credit that this email is working really well. Let's, let's do this a thousand times rather than the fact that, well, that person in that account also attended an in-person event with you, um, also went to a webinar and then had a previous relationship with somebody in your organization that had that warm intro and referral.

Um, so being more of the connective tissue and understanding kind of all of the touches within, in terms of, you know, you talked about the dark web or the, the dark net, the, and like understanding where this person is in the buying cycle, where all of the impressions or touch points have been, um, to craft like a full picture and a full narrative to, to better proposition your value rather than just, um, uh, robotic dialer who's supposed to do 150 calls a day, uh, copy paste these emails without like developing a strong, bold point of view. Right. Yeah. That that's the part where, you know, I, I don't think it's these, these SDRs fault. So I think it's our fault as leadership to, because we've turned the position and we turned them into robots and now they're getting replaced by robots.

I mean, I mean, I, I cringe, I I've worked with SDR organizations for years now. And one of the times like where I'm always just like, I don't, I've turned down business where the marketing team creates the messaging, puts it into a sequence and doesn't let the rep have any autonomy at all to, to adjust that messaging. They literally just have to push buttons. And I'm like, can I ask like, what is the point of, of the human in this equation? And this was even before AI. I'm like, what are the cadence tools? I'm like, what, what is the point of turning a rep into this? And you know, it's about efficiencies and all this bullshit. But these days, if, if the one thing I can tell with AI, and I don't know if, I don't know if it's ever going to get there is there's just something about human communication, right?

A human written email, a human, you know, message, voice, whatever that is, that, that is different than AI. And maybe again, in a few months it, where it's going to be, we're not going to be able to tell the difference, but I don't know about you. I can still tell if any, no matter how personalized an email is, the only way I describe it is it just doesn't have a soul. Like there's something missing about it. And it's better than the templates that these kids put out, right? So what can, what can an SDR do right now from your perspective? Cause I, I agree with you. I think that the SDR role is going to roll up on a marketing. I think personally that we should shift to more of a GTM, a GTM generalist role where it's a salaried position and they get connected to rev ops, marketing sales, and they're basically an admin for the full cycle sales, but they get exposed to all the different, all the different parts of GTM.

And then they graduate to a GTM specialist where they can pick sales, marketing, or rev ops. And then their second year out, third year out, that's where they actually can become that rep. So what do you think a rep outside of like shifting this whole model, which I think we have to do anyways, what should reps do right now to, to, I don't want to say future-proof themselves. Cause I don't think any of us can, but what are the skills that you think that they need to develop in order to evolve with what's going on right now? I think it's imperative for them to be more strategic with their approach to focus on like the quality rather than the quantity. Instead of, you know, hi, first name, last name.

I saw you went to James Madison and you're a Ravens fan. Would you like to have a meeting? Taking that like one step further, focusing on quality rather than quantity and developing like bold points of views, understanding what their business priorities of the market they're going into is, understanding the whole, like how the solution you're offering fits into the problem statement of your prospects and the ecosystem. And honestly, like up-leveling it entirely. So rather than being a copy-paste engine or a cadence machine, trying to be more strategic and analytical, and then that's going to help you evolve to the full cycle sales rep to the, you know, experienced AE, um, rather than trying to mimic the machines that are quote unquote, replacing you.

Yeah. What are, what are, so let's look at it from a company perspective. What are the biggest mistakes that stood out with this data of how companies are implementing AI or thinking about it? Um, one we talked about, which is, uh, not using activity capture and data entry automation. Um, really like you're relying on your rep who already has a huge book of business, um, to manually update all the notes in your CRM. And then two, I think there's such a focus on pipeline development right now for AI use cases, whether that's account research, personalization, automated spray and pray, um, and not enough on sales enablement and really like up-leveling. There was a research done by Clary in, um, um, a few months ago that like 10% of reps account for 65% of overall revenue.

And like, when you think about that, like, it doesn't make sense to me that the idea would be to let's replace reps with bots instead of like worrying about the 90% that are only contributing 35% of revenue. Um, so really like, I think the, we'll see a shift that people are going to focus AI to be an enabler, not a replacer. Um, and that right now people are trying to use AI SDRs because I mean, the value proposition is great, right? Like, Hey, you go to bed, you wake up, you have a bunch of qualified meetings that are going to convert. Like I understand it. It sounds like a great appetizer, but, um, I don't think it's a future proof. No, I think the reality of it is, you know, I've seen a lot of them and, uh, you know, they make all sorts of promises and B2C, I think is fine.

You know what I mean? That workflow where you can go on Instagram, get clicked on this, do that, whatever, get to watch a little video and then, you know, click on a link to buy something. And, and I do think that consumerization, you know, the B2C world is obviously creeping into, not even creeping, screaming into B2B, right? Because we all expect that, that, that, and we'll get into this too, is the, the frictionless sales process, right? The more friction we add to the sales process, the less, the less likely I am to engage because there's just so many other options, right? I mean, the moment I get to a point where I have to be forced through a sales reps process, right? Like where they have to qualify me, then they have to go through a demo and I have to wait to talk to an AE and then I have to wait to talk to an SE and then, you know, and you're going to ask me a bunch of irrelevant questions when I'm already 60 to 70% through the sales process.

And I just want to know this, right. That those days are gone. And, and it's because it's just so much easier to find out that information. So where are you seeing, uh, AI being applied to, you know, to, to ease that friction, um, and where are kind of the best use cases for it? Yeah. And, you know, I will say like AISD or similar to the B2C realm, if it's a really transactional business, if you're not selling this large enterprise complex, like, you know, million dollar software, you know, it's almost more like mimicking the PLG playbooks. Like, yeah, AISDRs can work there. Go play with my products. You know, I saw you clicked on five things. I saw you sign up for the free trial and you've used a lot of it.

You know, it makes sense to implement AISDRs there to kind of help with the activation, the monetization of it. Um, but getting back to your question in terms of like frictionless, our data shows that buyers are preferred engaging with sales reps later on in the process, that the research portion of their buying cycle is the longest. So it's really imperative that once they reach out, we're talking about inbound here, obviously, once they reach out that you are able to guide them and be a servant to them rather than a blocker. Um, if, if I reach out to five companies for a new CRM system and one gets back to me in the next, in 24 hours, the other four take a week, like I'm going to talk to the one that got back to me right away and progress it further along.

Maybe they're not the best solution, but they're going to provide the best experience and then progress me the most. And if I already had a strong understanding of the market, which our research shows that buyers do, you're only reaching out to people that you have at least trust in that they're going to meet your needs. Um, so I think it's really imperative. We talked about all these touch points in, in the buying cycles right now that if you, the more friction you create at like the top of the funnel, that your pipeline is going to be depleted. Sales cycles are longer. So it's really important to make it as seamless as possible where you can. Um, I do think, you know, obviously salespeople add value there, some, there's some intended or intentional friction to help quantify the value and, you know, help people make a business case to, to have that, um, you know, be fruitful.

But I think in the top of the funnel, there's so much unnecessary friction, um, that that's where you can kind of see a lot of things get alleviated, whether that's a simple product or whether that's lead to account matching, um, just trying to automate any of those kinds of early touch points, um, I think is, is crucial. Yeah. And also the, you know, to a certain degree, the qualification of it, right? Because I think we've filled our pipelines with a bunch of meetings just to have meetings, right? These, these arbitrary metrics that we go for where I, I mean, I put my pricing that people before, you know, up until recently, most trainers, you couldn't find their pricing anywhere, maybe for their individual modules or anything like that.

But for like a full onsite set, I charge 30, $40,000 a day. Right. And people are like, Oh, you can't put that on your website. I'm like, why not? I'm putting it right on my website. Cause I sure shit don't want to talk to somebody who isn't willing to spend 30, 40 grand. Right. Like, I don't want to get on a call, go through the qualification process, think that it's a good fit and then say, Oh yeah, it's going to be 40 grand and have them be like, Holy shit. You know, this is, I thought there's only gonna be like $5,000. Like that's a waste of everybody's time. And so I guess what, where's your, what's your perspective on, on going back to the client doesn't always know what they need. Yeah.

And, and it's, you know, in a good sales reps job is to uncover like, you know, Hey, you think this is the problem, but really after I ask you a few questions, the root issue is here. And I know you only have a budget for $10,000, but this is really a $40,000 problem. It's actually a $40,000 solution to a million dollar problem. And you didn't even see it yet. So that that's like what a great sales rep can do. It can take somebody who kind of thinks they know what their problem is, dig deep to find that root cause, understand the impact of that problem, and then walk them through what, how to, you know, what the real solution should look like. But there's a fine line of doing that, right? Cause, and then there's very few sales reps that can actually do that well.

So where do you think the AI needs to end and the human needs to come in, assuming that it's a good, you know, reasonable sales rep who knows how to ask some questions and dig? Yeah, that's a great question. I think after, you know, you would hope that a lot of the qualification can be automated when in terms of, um, not only price sensitivity, but, you know, are they like an ICP fit or, you know, if you're selling is enterprise software and it's a small business, like hell set up a referral program with somebody that caters to that small business and then have an additional source of revenue come in that every small business prospect you get, you just refer to, to a partner organization. I mean, talk about a flywheel and like efficiency.

Um, so really like having a honed in ICP on, on more than just, um, you know, they're in the technology industry in America, um, which ICP is like a whole nother problem that we could talk about where there's not just like three factors that go into an ICP. Um, but I think once they've understood the initial or gauge interest and awareness and that they've realized they have a problem, right? Like the first step is admittance, right? So they realize they have a problem. Um, and then bringing in a sales rep to help them quantify and like scope what that problem is. And are they focused on the right solution? Or are they trying to, again, put a bandaid on a much bigger problem? Um, so I think that's where the more tactical and strategic kind of elements of the human, um, human sales rep versus like what an AI can do, um, is kind of really meaningful.

But see, this is where I'm, I'm struggling because I, the more I use AI, the more, the more I realize that if you figure out how to use it the right way, cause here's, here's my thing. I don't think I used to be like, oh man, sales reps, you're going to get replaced by AI. Then I shifted to, you're not going to get replaced by a, you're going to get replaced by sales reps who learn how to use AI, right? And then it, then it's, but now actually I don't necessarily care as much about the AI function on the sales side of the house, as far as efficiencies and that type of thing. My fear is when the client wakes up and realizes that they can get more value on a five to 10 minute conversation with chat GPT than they can almost any sales rep out there for crying out loud.

If they know how to ask the right questions, you know what I mean? So to your point, like even digging for pain, like if I was looking for, I, and I've done it, uh, I don't know, tell me what, what am I missing here? What other things should I be looking at? Why is this really my problem? Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. And then I get down to you. Yep. This is it. And then I can marry that up to, okay, now go find me the vendors that can solve that exact problem. Bring me through, educate me on all this pros and cons, look at G2, see who are the top vendors are in this quadrant. Right. And then give me the, and then the, the question of the value of the sales rep really becomes hard to answer because I'd much rather talk to a customer success person.

I'd much rather talk to an engineer who is, who isn't trying to convince me of anything. Who's, who's just trying to educate me and help me on that last mile there. So, I mean, are we headed towards this 80, 20 Pareto's rule here where 20% of, of, uh, reps are going to be assassins, but 80% are going to be irrelevant. That's one way to look at it. Or you could also think about how maybe we'll have full cycle sales reps, right? So like, they're not just worried about acquiring the customer and then, Oh, they probably weren't a great fit, have a lot of problems. Good luck CSM team. You know, um, in terms of really owning the relationship, like being a true relationship manager, isn't just when the contract signed.

Um, but it's like throughout success throughout implementation. Um, and I think that's what we'll see. We're already starting to see a little bit of that. Um, but you know, kind of, I forget which company it was, but they up-leveled a lot of their sales reps to become full cycle, um, AEs, as well as took all of their SEs, the ones who know the product the best, and then put them in the sales reps role. Because again, they're trying to solve the problem, not necessarily so worried about quota attainment and things. Um, so I think that's what what we'll see is more of a true guide or a Sherpa, if you will, as a sales rep, rather than trying to tactical, uh, tactfully like find a problem, quantify it, and then kind of pass the buck on.

Yeah. I mean, I, I do, you know, my vision is almost, um, it is full cycle sales where we're not like, I don't walk in today and say, Hmm, who should I reach out to today? It's like, no, no, no, John, you, you need to reach out to blue because his, he just said this on internet, you know, his company just did that the market and the trends are going in this direction, you know, they're primed for these types of things. Oh, and by the way, he likes phone over email, um, because of his personality profile and he's usually on the road a lot. So here's a couple of snippets of things that you can say when you make this phone call, you click that thing, it makes the phone call. You and I have a conversation.

It records the entire thing, dumps it into CRM and I'm on my next one. So I think that's ultimately where we're headed. And to your point, like full cycle, right? It's not just that cold call. It's now, okay, now I got you as a customer. Now I'm going to bring you through the onboarding process. I don't know if customer success is, is cause I do think there's a different skillset of maintaining that client and giving them the attention that they need. But I think the vast majority of all other aspects of sales are going to be done by one person. Yeah. And, you know, we say like people buy from people and, um, you know, having like now in a typical thing, you meet with SDR, create a relationship, then get passed off, then get passed off, then get passed off, you know, is you, who are you trusting?

So like, you, you know, you take up so much time and effort to build that relationship and trust just to kind of pass it off. Um, I think we'll see like a little bit more accountability in the future, if you will. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about intent, right? Because I think there's, you know, we, we've gone trigger based content, right? So we've gone from the spray and pray to now, you know, then it was triggers like, Oh, you went through a merger and acquisition. Let's talk about that. We can help you with merger and acquisitions. Um, you know, those are, it's better than, than generic messaging, right? You're, you're at least somewhat connecting to something that's happening personalized, but the real, uh, the real value obviously is intent.

And I mean, you probably heard the stat that there's only about 5% of anybody's addressable market. That's actually in market, right? The other 95% are at some level. So we got to nurture those, but we've got to find those 5%. But could you just help us understand like what is intent? True intent. And, and how should you use it? Because I'm calling bullshit on a lot of people who, who use intent data because what they do is, Oh, I see you downloaded this white paper. So we should talk. Right. And to me, I download plenty of white papers. I have zero interest in talking to that company at all. It's the topic that I was interested in. Right. So, you know, now don't get me wrong. If I'm searching for sales training, being like, Hey, I'm looking for sales training.

I'm on G2 and I'm like, Hey, you know, tell me the top sales training I should look at for prospecting. That's definitely intent. So even with that though, if somebody reached out to me and said, John, I see you were searching on G2 for sales training. We should talk because my train, I'd be like, what the, like, get away from me. You know what I mean? Like, I know everybody's watching, but like, that would be a little bit too much. So what's the, what's the right way to use intent data that, that drives the highest results? Yeah. Um, you make a great point that, you know, someone like, if you see a successful playbook in SAS, it's going to be successful for a little bit and then it's going to get copied and replicated and then it's not going to be successful.

Right. So it used to be spray and pray. Then it was, I saw you switch jobs, you know, it's known that like executives switch technologies or change things within the first six months. So let's get them right there when, when they're hot and new to the organization. Um, or it's kind of like researching and almost like stalker, like behavior, right? Like, yeah, I was on your pricing page. Um, and I was just checking it out. As I said earlier, research is the longest part of the sales cycle. So conducting the research, um, you don't need to tell me that you saw me on the pricing page, but maybe come up with a value added proposition. Um, so I think kind of the next level to that, the next layer, um, and it's not really personalization.

It's more like relevance is what's important. Um, you don't need to tell me that you saw that I went to school that has nothing to do with the business problem that I'm trying to solve right now. So I think the next level is really kind of combining signals to create a point of view and a messaging that is going to, um, some assumption base that is going to solve the problem that you think that they are going after. So not that you downloaded a white paper, I get more sales messages and outreach than anybody. I think as a research analyst, I download everything. I read everything. I'm everywhere. Um, yeah, again, sorry, SDRs. I'm, I'm not interested in your solutions, but you know, it's interesting to see the messages that come through.

Um, but really kind of creating a storyboard, if you will, of taking all the various intent signals and developing a strong point of view in terms of what they care about and what, you know, where their priorities are. So it's not a one-to-one relationship in terms of one intent signal equals one outreach message. It really should be, you know, few to many. So you're creating almost a picture of what the problems they have are, what their strategic initiatives are, um, and how your, your value proposition can help alleviate that. Um, I think that's the future. It's not one-to-one it's few to one. Yeah. And that's why I, I actually use intent to go look for triggers to then create a message. So like when I get intent data, it's okay, cool.

They were searching for this. They were doing that. They downloaded whatever. Well, that means something might be happy, might be happening in that business. I don't know yet, but it, it, it, it kind of, if we go back to prioritization of like who I should be focusing on my time, right. As opposed to the spray and pray, it's like, I'm not using just demographics and firmographics, those types of things to say, okay, here's my ICP. I'm now using to say, okay, here's a tight version of my ICP and layering on intent to that to saying, and they're pretty active. So now those are going to bubble up to the top. And then I'm going to say, Ooh, they just did that. Now let me go look at their website.

Let me, let me go look at the executives, what they're talking about, their 10 K, their annual reports, those types of things, and see if I can marry those two things together. Because if they downloaded this white paper on this topic and I can read through or use AI to read through their AI, their, their 10 K that says that these are some of their initiatives. Ah, therefore my, my hunch is my hypothesis is here that these are the issues that you're facing. And so now I can craft a message that's personalized and relevant for that. Yeah. A hundred percent. You know, what if their 10 K says sales are downs and, you know, student economic headwinds and elongated sales cycles and, you know, then tie all of those things together.

So like use each intent data as like an ingredient in a meal to create a meal rather than saying, Oh, I love salt. Do you like salt? It's like, no, let's create a meal. That's going to be appetizing to the prospect. Um, and that, you know, would serve their benefit rather than just cause one-to-one, you know, signal to outreach. That's not much different than spray and pray, right? It's just like you you're using as a, as a trigger point, but it's not developing a point of view. It's not like being strategic. Um, it's again, kind of like a, a template copy paste approach. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like I said, it, it's, it's sadly it's better than it's still better than most. Um, you know, no matter how much I've preached personalization over the years and relevance over the years, it's just still amazing to me.

I mean, you said you get a ton of emails. I get, I get 250 to 300, uh, a week and you know, and I'm out there, I put all my stuff out there. I talk, you know, the amount of content that's out there. I, I use my pot like this podcast I use as basically as an open therapy session. I talk about all my strategies, all the different things that I have issues with that I'm trying to solve. And I'm such an open book. And yet the fact that I almost never, ever get a value oriented email in my inbox that is genuinely personalized and relevant to me is just mind blowing. I mean, I did, I got one the other day and I was, I was so blown away that I, that I, you know, usually everybody rips people apart on LinkedIn.

It's like, Oh, there's a piece of shit email from this SDR or whatever. I was like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, look at this one. Like this was actually crushed it and here's how and everything else. And, uh, it's just, it's so sad that it's so rare. Yeah. Always, uh, like finding a needle in a haystack. Yeah, it really is. So, all right, let's end on this. Any, uh, bold predictions based on the data or, or what either, either one of these, choose one of these, either a bold prediction for you about what we're going to see here in the next six to 12 months with, with what's happening and the trends that you're seeing, or, um, you know, your favorite insight from this report that we didn't hit on. Ooh.

Um, my favorite insight from the report would probably be, Hmm. Sorry. There's so many, John. Um, would probably be how the number one factors that people renew software are because vendor responsiveness and support, um, or that's how that helps them with their final selection of software. Customer support and proven ROI help with renewals. Um, so it's really the, the human element will always be there to help quantify and realize that value. Um, and then prediction, bold prediction would be, um, in the next 12 months, we'll see a lot more SDRs reporting to marketing, um, and, uh, greater utilization of AI in the middle of the funnel rather than solely focused on this easy button of pipeline development.

Yeah. Yeah. I actually think that, uh, the, the best application of AI period and you had brought it up earlier is on the enable inside of the house, uh, when it comes to coaching specifically, uh, frontline coaching is where I see the biggest benefit short term and longterm, uh, for organizations and individuals, because it's, it's theoretically it's, it's objective, right? Whereas managers don't know how to coach. They never have, they never will. We never give them the tools to or the time. I don't care how many gong recordings you can have. Like you, unless you allow, you know, three days a week, four days a week for your managers to listen to gong recordings, it ain't going to happen. So that, you know, but AI can listen to every single call, extract what the rep did, compare it to what good looks like, give immediate feedback in an objective way, and then roll it up to the manager to give them that insights that they have to maybe invest in a, you know, a holistic training to address that systemic issue and then have individual coaching plans.

Like that's to me where I wish more companies would invest as opposed to this bullshit outbound SDR stuff. Yeah. All about like up-leveling. Like you mentioned, you talk about all of your problems that you're facing and the strategies and things like that. Like why isn't an AI assistant telling me right now, if, if, if, if I was a sales rep, like drill into John, he just said he has a bunch of problems. Like you don't know what those problems are. Um, it's really should, the focus should be on up-leveling, but I think it's such a easy promise for this easy button to kind of create these things. But, um, B2B sales is, is complex. It's hard. Um, it's not as transactional as like buying something off Instagram.

Uh, so humans are always going to be needed there in my opinion. Yeah. Well, I hope you're right, my friend. I hope you're right. But I, I, I do know that, that, that it's, you know, and this isn't just sales. I'm, I'm not picking on sales. I'm picking on everybody. I think the, I think the, the, the people who don't level up, the people who aren't the ones who are leveraging this the right way are just absolutely going to get replaced because it's just so obvious to me. I'd tell any rep who doesn't think that they're in trouble right now is to legit go into ChadGBT and just pretend like you're a potential customer for your solution. I mean, for me, I'd be like, yep, I'm, I'm a VP of sales of a 50 person sales team.

I got 20 SDRs, 20, you know, 30 AEs. Tell me, you know, I'm looking at the JB sales training. Tell me how he compares against the other three vendors on the top of the G2 crowd list, you know, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, in a five minute conversation versus some 22 year old kid who's going to ask me bant questions and drama, you know, and then wait another week and a half to talk to an AE who's going to probably ask me the same dumb questions and then wait another week to talk to an SE who's going to finally be somebody who can actually potentially help me. But by then I'm so annoyed or probably gone. It doesn't matter. So that's, that's, I think where we're headed. Yeah. And the last thing I'll say and kind of speak into all that kind of disjointedness is, you know, I think in the next like 12 months, we'll see a higher focus on RevOps as kind of backbone, you know, marketing's doing their job.

Sales is trying to do their job and like, and customer success obviously too. And like RevOps is great on paper. It's people aren't taking it seriously enough. And I think AI is going to like further heighten the imperativeness and the role that they play in being the connective tissue. So I think that's something that we'll see also. Love it. Awesome, Blue. Well, where can people find out more information about the report that you're putting out and what G2 is doing? So talk to us a little bit about where you want people to go. Yeah. Follow me on LinkedIn, Blue Bowen. My reports there as well. Learn.G2 is where my report is. Learn.G2.com. Feel free to reach out to me. I would love to learn more about what you're doing well, areas you're struggling with, and how you guys are, you know, leveraging AI as well.

Open door policy over here. So thanks so much for having me, John. Yeah. Thanks for coming on, man. And hopefully, hopefully everybody enjoyed the conversation much as I didn't like. I always say it on 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, you make somebody smile 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. Go to jbarrows.com slash newsletter to sign up today. Let's all level up and make this happen together.