The AI for Sales Podcast Chad Burmeister

Welcome to the second season of The AI for Sales Podcast! In today's episode, Chad is joined by Mike Montague, Director of Community Engage at Sandler Training and Host of the How to Succeed Podcast.
Mike first shares his journey in the sales world and other activities for his career over time. He then discusses how Sandler interacts with AI and the different possibilities we could explore when it comes to integrating AI in sales training, prospecting, and more.

QUOTES

The possible impact of AI for sales training - Mike
"The same crash is happening here and people get confused, what's the AI's job? What's the salesperson's job? And how do we combine these two in the best of both worlds so we don't lose our humanity but we also don't lose all the insights, data, credibility, efficiency, and 24/7 availability of AI? And I think we can do both."

Mike on AI for prospecting calls
"That's a really great way to think about AI, it's not how do we replace you? How do we outsource all the work we don't want to do to the AI, right? It's how do you make the best possible outgoing prospecting calls. That's really what we're all about here."

Learn more about Mike and connect with him in the links below:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikedmontague/
Website: https://www.sandler.com/

Learn more about AI for Sales with Chad:
LinkedIn Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/12811259/
LinkedIn Personal Page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chadburmeister/
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TheAIforSalesPodcast
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ai4sales
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/theaiforsalespodcast/
Twitter Page: https://twitter.com/saleshack

On this episode of the AI for Sales Podcast, Chad is joined by Ryan House, Director of Business Development at Programmers.io. Ryan says that the market for programmers is currently at an insane level. He talks about how they help companies find top-quality candidates in the market to bolster their programming and AI.

He shares about the many levels at which AI is being used no matter if it's for the sales motion or for business development. He also discusses his perspective on how AI's "perfection" could still be a dealbreaker for many consumers today.

HIGHLIGHTS

Where AI plays a role in the projects of big companies
AI being used in business development
Bot automation and AI in the sales focus
The disadvantage of AI being "too perfect"

QUOTES

Ryan: "It's not Star Trek exciting or anything like that but to just have that where you're starting to see manufacturing companies and industries you would never really expect to use AI are starting to now use AI and programming in general."

Ryan: "I would say it's so efficient in terms of taking something that is a traditional skillset, i.e. cold calling, and modernizing it to the speed that is needed for today."

Ryan: "The biggest thing is the rationality of human decision-making. AI is so rational and that's the problem right there of why it can't be replacing a human, so to speak."

Learn more about Ryan and connect with him in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryan-house-469662a4/
Email: ryan.house@programmers.io
Website: https://programmers.io/

On this episode of the AI for Sales Podcast, Chad is joined by Zach Selch, Founder and CEO of Global Sales Mentor. Focusing on international growth is an inevitable challenge that many companies will face along the way. In what ways can you incorporate AI for your business if you want to expand globally?

Zach talks about the relevant details that come with international growth especially when you can use the right technologies available today. He discusses some of the reasons why people shy away from international business and how to resolve them. He also shares his view on the possibilities of AI taking over.

HIGHLIGHTS

The idea of getting to see a little bit of the world
How AI and the internet help reduce the cost of face-to-face meetings
Addressing the fear of complexities in international business
Will AI take over

QUOTES

Zach: "If you can be proactive about planning out how you want to live your life, you can get there. If you just sort of try and let the universe guide you, you're probably not going to get any place interesting."

Zach: "In 2020 and 2021, I closed as much business as I closed in 2019 without getting on a plane which I would have thought was impossible. And it was basically through using good technology."

Zach: "I think there's always going to be room for the top salespeople and the top sales jobs to be doing their thing. AI isn't going to replace them. So it's not that everything is being taken off the table, it's just a lot of the work is being made easier with AI."

Learn more about Zach and connect with him in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zselch-internationalsales/
Website: https://www.globalsalesmentor.com/

On this episode of the AI for Sales Podcast, Chad is joined by John Nord, Head of Sales of Craftable. Everybody in the hospitality and restaurant industry has to count, cost, and sell ingredients and products in the most efficient ways possible to maximize profit.

John talks about how automation and AI play a role in connecting what businesses buy with what they sell to break down profitability more accurately. He shares his thoughts on AI augmenting many of the processes, especially in the hospitality and restaurant industries. He also discusses some of the newer technologies that focus on AI in the sales motion.

HIGHLIGHTS

Where does AI play a role in solving customer's problems
The value that their software provides
Does AI replace or augment
Advancements for AI in the sales motion

QUOTES

John: "Our analytics product is essentially advanced recording for operators, recreating spreadsheets and just data ultimately being fed into it whether it's from the food or beverage side, a combination of both, or just purely from the point of sale."

John: "There are certain aspects of a client moving from one tier to another where AI is probably a better fit. Some of the most successful companies that we've seen over the last 10 to 20 years have been exiting out of the SaaS boom right now and going into in-app transactions or in-app upgrades."

John: "It's cool to actually see the team learn through a piece of technology that can analyze a whole day of conversations and kind of compile it where we can have a quick 20 to 30-minute conversation and better understand that there's a lot of information but let's just try a piece of it."

Learn more about John and connect with him in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnnord/
Website: https://craftable.com/

On this episode of the AI for Sales Podcast, Chad is joined by Seth Earley, CEO of Earley Information Science and author of The AI-Powered Enterprise. Most businesses will discover that data involved in pilot testing may not necessarily translate into production. Seth discusses the importance of investing in data and architecture for its increased impact in work.

He also talks about the challenges of integrating and organizing data in the organization's business and IT sides. He shares that having a more holistic view of the organization is essential. He suggests starting with the business objectives and then identifying where you can speed up the flow of information using AI.

HIGHLIGHTS

●Early applications of AI and machine learning
●The AI-Powered Enterprise
●Fixing data: Business problem or IT problem?
●The customer journey is a knowledge journey

QUOTES

Seth: "I like to say the first thing about AI is forget about AI. Focus on the business, the business process, and the business outcome. Look for those places where you have friction points in your information movement. Where, if you have that right information, can you speed up all those downstream processes?"

Seth: "What it does is that it gives you a greater ability to locate exactly what you need. And that, of course, is based on information architecture. There's no artificial intelligence without information architecture."

Seth: "They come armed, they're knowledgeable, and they understand what they need. It's not like the old days when the salesperson was the gatekeeper of knowledge and information. Customers want to have that control, they need to be able to get that information from their website and from other sources."

Learn more about Seth and connect with him in the links below:

●LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethearley/
●Website: https://www.earley.com/
Book: The AI-Powered Enterprise

On this episode of the AI for Sales Podcast, Chad is joined by Oscar Beijbom, CTO and Co-Founder of Nyckel. He talks about the essential factors of building up your own AI system, training, deploying, and adding the API to your application.

He shares insight into the general use of AI and how its value in increasing the efficiency of work still outweighs fears that it will replace people. He also discusses how Nyckel is able to provide the necessary functions for users at such an affordable pricing model.

HIGHLIGHTS

What enables Nyckel to operate in a short period of time
Importance of bias in general AI
AI in the sales space
Deploying the technology at an affordable price

QUOTES

Oscar: "We actually use AI to figure out which subset of models to try and we use AI to approximate how long it will take to train. We use all these levels because it's so easy to add we kind of use it to boost up our own product."

Oscar: "With Nyckel it's less of a problem because we train, what we call, narrow AI specifically on your data. So we use pre-trained models but we tailor them to your data. You can always make sure that the data you're providing is consistent with your product and ethics."

Oscar: "It's more about making sales representatives more efficient. It could also be like identifying patterns in what companies to reach out to. So you have a database of ten thousand companies you could potentially try. Now you could use an AI to identify which of the remaining are promising that are similar to the ones that already replied."

Learn more about Oscar and connect with him in the links below:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oscar-beijbom-696aa6/
Website: https://www.nyckel.com/