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Introducing the 1st AI-Native Sales Execution Methodology w/Jim Dickie
34 Plays6 days ago
If you're considering sales training… listen here first.
For 20 years, the only choice was which methodology to use for training events.
Now, for the first time, there’s a real alternative: AI Native Sales Execution Methodology
In this episode, sales industry pioneer Jim Dickie joins Brian Dietmeyer to unpack:
- Why sales training events fail to drive execution
- Why most “AI add-ons” don’t cut it
- How Precision Guided Selling delivers 24/7, deal-by-deal, strategy-driven guidance
- Why this is the first true innovation in methodology in two decades
You no longer have to choose between Method A or Method B. You can choose a completely different model — built for how selling actually happens today.
Give it a listen. Your sales strategy and annual revenue numbers may depend on it.
#SalesExecution #AINative #SalesLeadership #Enablement #CloseStrong #PrecisionGuidedSelling #SalesMethodology #DisruptSalesTraining #CloseMode
Timestamps:
00:37 - Introduction to the topic of sales methodology evolution and AI integration.
01:08 - Discussion on the inefficacy of traditional sales training despite high investments.
03:04 - Insights into the poor outcomes of forecast deals and the comparison to gambling odds.
10:18 - Challenges with retrofitting AI into legacy sales methodologies.
17:33 - Exploring the concept of AI-native sales execution methodologies.
24:41 - How the new methodology can be delivered daily and tailored to individual deals.
30:26 - The role of AI in coaching and its integration with traditional sales management.
36:26 - Conclusion and reflections on the need for a new approach to sales training.
Recommended
Transcript
Intro
Introduction: Meet Brian and Jim
00:00:05
brian
Hello and welcome to another edition of Close Mode, the Enterprise Sales Show. i'm b Brian Dietmeyer CEO of CloseStrong. And today i am here with of the nicest, smartest guys that I know, Jim Dickie who is currently a research fellow at Sales Mastery.
00:00:20
brian
He's a sales transformation analyst. If you don't know Jim and and you want a stat ah about selling, Jim's the guy. And he'll have a story to go along with each one of those stats as well. He was also the former co-founder of CSO Insights. Jim, welcome back to the show.
00:00:37
Jim Dickie
Thanks, Brian. good were Glad to be here.
Unveiling AI Native Sales Methodology
00:00:39
brian
So today we're talking about the evolution of sales methodology and we're introducing the first AI native sales execution methodology, which is a Close Strong product. So you you and I, Jim, if if we've spent a great deal of time chatting about evolution of selling and the need to evolve how we enable salespeople.
00:00:59
brian
And today we're going to dive deep into sales methodology. and and what we're bringing to market to deliver a solution and that matches the reality of today's market. So here here's my first question for you.
00:01:10
brian
I'm looking at it, it's a rather
The Cost and Ineffectiveness of Sales Training
00:01:11
brian
long one. So American companies spend 26 billion years sales methodology training events. I've interviewed 65 sales revenue and enablement leads as I was building out this solution All of them had made that investment.
00:01:26
brian
They pulled that lever of sales methodology training. And all of them, to a person, were not pleased. And this this blew me away. i I put this up on LinkedIn a couple weeks ago. All of them said, look, we're not qualifying.
00:01:39
brian
We're not multi-threading. we're We're not doing a good job of competitive insight. We're doing crap discovery. and And we're not selling solutions. We're reacting to customers and and order fulfilling. So why...
00:01:51
brian
with all this money and all this time going into training for how to do those things, to a person, all 65 of these execs said, we're failing the basics still.
00:02:03
Jim Dickie
Well, I think, Brian let's let's even stop you start off by just focusing on the fact that we've been spending billions of dollars on not just training.
00:02:04
brian
Yes.
00:02:12
Jim Dickie
We've been spending it on CRM. We've been spending it on content. We're spending it on a whole lot of things for salespeople. And you mentioned that we've been doing a ah ah longitudinal study on sales for over 30 years.
00:02:24
Jim Dickie
And let me just share with you one
Sales Forecast Accuracy Issues
00:02:25
Jim Dickie
stat. So of the 70 metrics we gather, one of the things we always say is what's the outcome of forecast deals?
00:02:26
brian
Yeah.
00:02:33
Jim Dickie
So this is forecast.
00:02:33
brian
Yeah.
00:02:34
Jim Dickie
This is not all the deals that go in the pipeline. These are the ones that you're at the end of the the shoot. You sit there and say, hey, this is going to close in the next 30, 60, 90 days, whatever your forecast horizon is.
00:02:47
Jim Dickie
What's the outcome?
00:02:48
brian
Yeah.
00:02:48
Jim Dickie
And the outcome has never been over 50% in all the years we've done this. Now, this is a forecast, by the way, that we created.
00:02:56
brian
Yes.
00:02:57
Jim Dickie
And the odds of winning at crap tables of Vegas are 49.3%. And so we're doing like worse than playing craps.
00:03:03
brian
Yeah.
00:03:06
brian
So flip flip a coin.
00:03:06
Jim Dickie
And so I think that's the thing.
00:03:08
Jim Dickie
Yeah, I think that's the thing that people need to understand is this can't continue. You know, something's fundamentally wrong. and And I think one of the things that's wrong is The way that we've been approaching sales is, you know, we we'll have the sales kickoff meeting.
The Gap in Sales Training Methods
00:03:23
Jim Dickie
We'll plan some training events for that. We'll bring everybody together. We roll out and say, okay, here's what we want you to do. So we want you to call high.
00:03:31
brian
Yes.
00:03:33
Jim Dickie
We want you to differentiate. We want you to create a sense of urgency. We want you to sell value and avoid discounting. And you go, great. and But then you know The reps leave there and say, okay, i now know what to do. Well, I probably already knew what to do when I got to the sales kickoff meeting.
00:03:49
Jim Dickie
then we get back and they come back and they say, okay, how do I do that? And the how is left up to the sales manager because they're supposed to go in and coach.
00:03:57
brian
yes
00:03:59
Jim Dickie
Mm-hmm.
00:04:00
brian
Yeah.
00:04:01
Jim Dickie
And that's great, but what we've asked again, is sales managers, how do you spend your time? They come back and they say, well, I spent about 20% of my time coaching. Well, if I've got any direct reports, an hour per week per person.
00:04:10
brian
Yeah. b
00:04:14
Jim Dickie
And by the way, half of that's probably just saying, you know, what's the status on the GE deal? And so they're just reiterating stuff that's probably already in CRM.
00:04:19
brian
Yes.
00:04:22
Jim Dickie
That's not coaching.
00:04:23
brian
No, it's auditing.
00:04:24
Jim Dickie
<unk> That's auditing That's talking.
00:04:27
brian
Yeah.
00:04:27
Jim Dickie
you know, there's just really not this model that the the model's kind of broken is that we come up with what to do, but we're not really dealing with the how of selling and the how changes all the
00:04:32
brian
Yes.
Expanding Sales Methodology Definitions
00:04:39
Jim Dickie
time.
00:04:39
Jim Dickie
And I think that's one of the biggest issues that companies need to deal with.
00:04:43
brian
Yep. and and And, you know, another thing, Jim, that you and I have talked about is when we talk about sort of traditional or what I would call legacy methodology, you know, the two-day events that you that you roll out, you ah we You and I had a discussion the other day about we we need to we need to think about that definition of methodology in in a more broad way. right Most of us think it's it's the IP. right It's the content that you get in the workshop. That's the methodology.
00:05:08
brian
But it's really broader than that. what what yeah what' What's your take on when we think about methodology? What are all the stages of it?
00:05:16
Jim Dickie
I think that really there there are six things that kind of strike us that need to be part of of an overall sales methodology. One is the intellectual property itself. You know, are lot of good, you know, basic frameworks for how to go out and sell that are out there that have been proven.
00:05:31
brian
Yes.
00:05:33
Jim Dickie
And I think they they still hold the test of time. But the key thing on it is we don't live in a one size fits all world. And so we've got to take that methodology and we've got to, first off, customize it to our company.
00:05:47
brian
yes
00:05:48
Jim Dickie
Because when you sit there and say, well, I want you to go out and differentiate yourself in the marketplace. Well, what's my differentiation? For one company, it could be their product. For another company, it could be their service. For third company, could be their price.
00:06:00
brian
Yeah.
00:06:01
Jim Dickie
For fourth company, it could be their alliances with other partners.
00:06:04
Jim Dickie
I mean, so you've got to come in and customize this thing to each individual company. And so somebody's got to do that work. Then there's the delivery mechanism. You know, we've we for years relied on training salespeople. So again, you know, OK, let's bring in everybody to the sales kickoff meeting. And for three days, we're going to go through training courses on this new stuff.
00:06:26
Jim Dickie
well Well, there's been tons of studies published that just said, you know classroom training is great as long as you immediately go out and start to apply what you learned. Because if you don't apply it immediately, you fall off in terms of reten retention of what the skills and and tactics that you were given.
00:06:44
Jim Dickie
So I think we've got to deal with that. Then we've got to sit there and say, okay, how do we apply this methodology to this specific deal?
00:06:53
brian
Yes.
00:06:53
Jim Dickie
Because there's a sell cycle involved, but the sell cycle is there for one reason. It's their support-to-buy cycle. And each customer is going to be buying different ways. So I've got to then customize the yeah the application of this thing to this unique customer.
00:07:09
Jim Dickie
And so therefore, I'm going back to what we already talked about, yeah coaching and having my sales manager or something or somebody you know come in and kind of help me. modify this thing and go through and say, are we doing the right thing? Is it working?
00:07:24
Jim Dickie
And then the last thing is we live in a frail ecosystem. So the way that we were selling last week may not work this week. So how do we constantly adapt how we're selling?
00:07:34
Jim Dickie
So I think, you know, there are six six aspects and we're just focused on one. Hey, we delivered a methodology. We had a class and that's part of it, but it's yeah it's definitely not all.
00:07:42
brian
Yeah. That, yeah. yeah
00:07:47
Jim Dickie
I think that's why things are failing.
00:07:49
brian
Yeah, that i i I love that definition because I do think that most of us think it's the IP. And again, the IP is not bad and the IP is actually not the problem. It's it's all the customization and the pull through.
00:08:00
brian
you know when When you mentioned customization, i I realized in the last year as we're rolling out this new solution that we think of customization in terms of scopes. What is the rep selling? Who are they competing against?
00:08:12
brian
What vertical are they in? And is it a new or renewal?
Outdated Sales Methodologies vs. Modern Needs
00:08:17
brian
most of the customers we're working with now have 20 scopes. And if you go back to the legacy approach to methodology, it's, it's, and we're going to talk about how how we, how we use AI to do that today. But with legacy methodology, you, what I see and what I did in, in my past methodology company is we had to do kind of the one size fits all.
00:08:35
brian
It wasn't dialed into what am I selling? Who am I competing against? You know, is it new or renewal that like, how do you sell in that situation? And, and I think, ah Many of these methodologies, you and I discussed the other day that it's been 20 years, maybe since ah a new methodology, a brand new methodology has come out.
00:08:53
brian
and And they were all built in a time where the world was different and the technology that exists today wasn't there. Right. So all those six steps you talk about, to me, reflect what was happening 20 years ago.
00:09:05
Jim Dickie
Exactly. and And the world is changing dramatically and AI is driving that change.
00:09:10
brian
Yeah. the the The other thing you talked about was you know applying applying it to the deal. and And I not only ran a methodology company, I was also an independent consultant for another methodology company.
00:09:23
brian
And what that meant was you fill in the form at the end of the training class, right? There's a skill acquisition piece for a day and a half.
00:09:29
Jim Dickie
Yes.
00:09:30
brian
And then you fill in the blank form, which which to me, it's the answers that go into the form is where the the brilliance is and and the reps are zero basing every deal based on that. And again, That's something that's existed forever. There's not been an alternative to the typical sales training events. I think that's why people still pull the lever. They get a little lift out of it, but but the the design is as just old. And then you also mentioned the the static nature of them too. you know the The world's changing quickly. It sounds cliche, but how do you update that? So I have another question for you. I've noticed lately that a lot of the legacy methodology companies are
00:10:05
brian
kind of trying to retrofit, they're trying to bring in AI, right? So they're trying retrofit with some third party AI. what What do you see as, is that the right solution? Are there problems with that?
00:10:18
Jim Dickie
I think there are because, you know, ah everybody talks about AI, but I actually managed my first AI projects in the 80s.
00:10:25
brian
Yes.
00:10:26
Jim Dickie
and And I was using algorithms from the 50s, which, by the way, are still valid.
00:10:31
brian
Yeah.
00:10:32
Jim Dickie
But we were at that point in time just kind of scratching the surface on what could you do with this. i remember speaking to Comdex. I did a presentation on what is artificial intelligence and why should I care?
00:10:43
Jim Dickie
And I think we're still struggling today that, you know, when you take a look at ChatGPT, and you say, here's a powerful, powerful tool, game changer in all marketplaces.
00:10:51
brian
Yeah.
00:10:54
Jim Dickie
What's the most common thing people are using it for? Proofreading and editing documents.
00:10:59
brian
Right.
00:11:00
Jim Dickie
come on So I think the biggest problem right now is you've got methodology companies who are not technologists and you really got to blend the two together to really understand, because otherwise you're going to be driving a Ferrari down the Autobahn in Germany at 30 miles an hour.
00:11:01
brian
Yeah.
00:11:16
brian
Yeah.
00:11:17
Jim Dickie
And that's not what it was made for.
00:11:19
Jim Dickie
You're supposed to be driving at 150 hour.
00:11:19
brian
Yeah.
00:11:23
brian
Absolutely. And that's why when when I talk about that, that we we are the first AI native built methodology, and we call it a sales execution methodology, that it you know it's not a bolt on, it's not something you know for a methodology that was developed in the 80s.
Brian's Motivation for New Methodology
00:11:40
brian
It's purpose built.
00:11:41
brian
we In fact, we can't execute ours without using AI, right? Because it's purpose built. But I know you you had some questions for me about that. So i'm goingnna I'm going to throw it back to you at this point.
00:11:52
Jim Dickie
Well, before we get into what you you you were just starting to talk about, you know i co-founded two software companies in my life. And Arthur Rock, who was one of the lead you know visionaries in the venture capital space, was an investor in one of those.
00:12:06
Jim Dickie
Arthur was the first investor in Intel, was an early investor in Apple. And he was really great at asking really potent questions.
00:12:11
brian
me
00:12:13
Jim Dickie
And one question he would always ask is he'd sit down and and i'd say, hey, i got an idea for a new software company. He'd go, great. What's your motivations?
00:12:22
brian
Right.
00:12:22
Jim Dickie
yeah What's your motivation for solving this specific problem? Why is this problem worth solving? And why is your approach the unique way that you want to do it? So I'm going ask you, what's your motivation for trying to take a look at you know building a you know a first native sales application methodology around precision guided selling?
00:12:34
brian
Yeah.
00:12:42
brian
So i some some of our listeners know that I ran and and still have Think Inc, which is a negotiation methodology company, right? And and customers still love it and buy it. and it's and it's But there's there's a better way. And one of the reasons I've realized there's a better way is that what one of our customers asked us to coach a billion dollars in renewals in the pipe.
00:13:06
brian
and And we've been rolling out workshops all over the world for this Fortune 10 company. and And we coach these billion dollars in deals. and And I just realized, wow, like this had major league impact. Jim and Brian working on a $5 million dollar renewal for two or three Zoom sessions or even some in-person sessions.
00:13:24
brian
That was brutal to scale, way more effective than running the workshops. Brutal to scale. I think we were billing that at 10K a day. So we were we are touching the top 1% of the sales force and the top 5% the deals.
00:13:36
brian
and And so part of my motivation was there has got to be a better way to to you know completely redefine methodology and and sales training.
00:13:48
brian
And so that that was that was one of my goals was how do we scale? How do we completely redefine this from events of 20 people sitting in a room two one to one-to-one, 365 at scale?
00:14:01
brian
for about the same price as training events. and And so that that was that was one one push. And you you had mentioned to me, i don't know, about a year ago, we were talking about something and you know i I will talk a lot about strategy to tactics connection. I believe that sales training should be about how do you execute your strategy one deal at a time, not how do you sell, which is kind of generic methodology.
00:14:26
brian
And you mentioned something to me, a company comes up with a new initiative, a new product, they announce it at SKO. And then on Monday, everybody goes back and sells the same thing. And the customers are still ordering the same thing.
00:14:37
brian
and And it struck me, that was at least a couple of years ago, you said that to me. And that was a motivation too. It's like, how do we how do we get that behavior change at the deal level at each stage of the sales cycle? If we're trying to make a switch to sell something new,
00:14:50
brian
how How do we do that? Right. So we now I'll give you a quick example. I know
Execution Disconnect in Sales Strategy
00:14:56
brian
folks in in me, I like examples. You know, we're working with a telecom company that was primarily a contract manufacturer and they wanted to move upstream into both integrated design and manufacturing solutions. So they did what you said. They announced it at SKO and people went back and and and customers were still ordering contract manufacturing from them because that's what they knew.
00:15:17
brian
sellers were still selling it because that was their comfort zone. And the question is, how do you how do you drill that that strategy, whether it's new or existing? How should we be qualifying to sell this new solution?
00:15:30
brian
Who should we be talking to? What new KPIs can we impact? What kind of discovery should we be doing? What does our competitive analysis look like with this new solution in here? How should we be configuring solutions and presenting them to customers.
00:15:42
brian
a That's what what you said to me two years ago, but we need to get into the how. that's That's what AI native sales execution methodology is all about, is to say, what is your strategy and how does it, we call it, actually, you helped with this name, Precision Got It Selling, precision at each sales stage.
00:15:59
brian
What do we have to be doing differently? What data do we need to execute this part of our strategy?
00:16:07
Jim Dickie
Let's get into just a little bit more, Brian, because yeah you've talked about that. But when you get into what do you mean by AI native sales execution methodology? What does that mean to you and what what should other sales executives be thinking about?
00:16:22
brian
Yeah, well, Native, I kind of touched on quickly earlier. Ours is purpose-built. We've got some methodology. we've We've got a book that supports it. But the book is only given to our clients because it's useless out there in the field because the book is supported by AI, right? So it was purpose-built.
00:16:40
brian
Like this whole thing was purpose-built together to to encompass all what you talked about before. What's the underlying methodology? How are we going to customize it? How are we going to deliver it? How are we going to coach it and reinforce it? And how are we going to update it? It was built ground up, leveraging current technology.
00:16:57
brian
So, you know, when to. And so that's AI native.
The Precision Guided Selling Approach
00:17:01
brian
When we talk about sales execution, again, it's back to that. that That how are we executing our sales?
00:17:06
brian
That's what we should be teaching reps how to do. And it's cool because I think one of the things I wrote in the Precision Guided Selling book is, hey, you as a rep, your job now is executing company strategy one deal at a time.
00:17:18
brian
I think that's a pretty cool job, right? And that that's what AI native sales execution methodology is all about, is as your strategy is shifting, as the marketplace is changing, are we feeding this at-
00:17:21
Jim Dickie
Thank you.
00:17:29
brian
each stage of a deal to a rep are we're giving them the data and the insight and the guidance that they need they need to compete. So that the AI guides reps, yeah there's there's there's and essentially sort of no training with this approach. It goes immediately to deal application, right? Say, okay, welcome, log in,
00:17:52
brian
log in Let's go to this opportunity. Let's qualify. Right. And let's continue to go go through this. And and it's available, you know, 24, 7, 365. And the question I've been talking to some potential customers about is, look, you you can spend 1500 bucks a head, you know, 150 grand on rolling out two day events or.
00:18:13
brian
You can have 365 support at at for every rep on every sales stage for the next year for about the same investment. And so that that, to me, that's the starkest way, Jim, to think about the difference between rolling out legacy events and and having this sustained, scalable solution that's one-to-one and completely in context.
00:18:36
Jim Dickie
Brian, you had asked me to you talk about what I thought you know the components ought to be for successful implementations of projects. I came up with six things for you. and Let's go back and revisit how you stack up against those things, because you've talked about the fact you've got a ah methodology, but where did it come from?
00:18:48
brian
Yeah. Right.
00:18:54
Jim Dickie
me you know
00:18:54
brian
right
00:18:55
Jim Dickie
What kind of testing has it been under over the the last couple decades that you've been rolling it out?
00:19:00
brian
We've had for for others who others who work in startups and and Jim, this should sound familiar to you. We have have had an argument here for a year about whether or not we are a methodology.
00:19:10
brian
And quite frankly, my team my team, and I think even you to a degree were saying, yes, you are. And I was the one pushing back. And I finally realized we are. So we've prior to founding this company for 20 years, we coached deals in 47 countries.
00:19:24
brian
And we know what a fact-based approach for at each stage of the deal cycle from qualify to close, what data do we need to continue to nudge this deal forward and include and increase our close rate?
00:19:36
brian
So it's really our methodology, if you want to call it that, is process steps. At what stages, what data and insight do we need to compete? And how are we going to use that with this customer? And is it connected to our overall strategy?
00:19:48
brian
And so this precision guided selling, it is a methodology that encompasses all those moving parts you talked about. And it can be used as a standalone or if somebody else is using a classic methodology and and their team is licensed to use it, our our guidance can even reinforce that and pull it through.
00:20:07
Jim Dickie
Got it. So I understand that, but yeah what what is your approach in terms, how are you different in terms of customizing that methodology to each individual customer that you're going to be working with going forward?
Customization and Real-time Guidance
00:20:18
brian
Yep. to To me, this is one of the most exciting parts and it's one of the breakthroughs that we had. I had mentioned earlier that part of the trick with customizations is scope.
00:20:28
brian
A rep's working on this solution against this competitor and this vertical and it's either new or renewal. There's almost no way to customize methodology and then deliver that to people in a classroom to give them the guidance they need on the how.
00:20:42
Jim Dickie
Yeah.
00:20:43
brian
And we had a dream. there There's two parts to our solution. One is the strategy center, which is the brain of the guide. And then the second is the closed plan, which is you know where where the brain speaks to the rep and guides them.
00:20:54
brian
We had a dream 18 months ago that the strategy center would create itself. I could say, i'm my my client at ClosedStrong is GE Healthcare. And I could put that into the brain and the brain would build out data that tracks with every stage of the sales cycle.
00:21:11
brian
We were doing that manually. It took us about six weeks. We build about... about 20,000 for the average customer to build out one or two scopes. The AI can now build out 20, 30 scopes in 15, 20 minutes.
00:21:25
brian
and And we just, so that's one way in which it's different. It's the level of customization, multiple scopes. We just did this one of our first clients and we ran, excuse me, we ran the data by four cross-functional execs, deal desk people, product people, you know, sales leads.
00:21:43
brian
And they rated the data 87% accurate before we ever spoke to a human, right, to to get it done.
00:21:49
Jim Dickie
one
00:21:50
brian
And then then what we did is we interviewed some of those key execs like the deal desk and and and product and pricing. and sales lead and talk to them about their frustrations. you know where what What's wrong? What's coming in you know what Why are these deals in bad shape?
00:22:06
brian
What would make them be in better shape? We record those interviews, have AI summarize it, and then drop that into the prompt for their guide. and we we just This is, again, to me, the most exciting part of of what we do. and We started out building this closed plan thing and then The tail wagged the dog and the strategy center took on a life of its own.
00:22:24
brian
So and it's it's already, you know, laden with with prompts, really good prompts. But now I interviewed Jim Dickey, who's the deal desk guy at this company. You tell me what your frustrations are, what you want to see more of, less of, same of. I summarize that. I drop it into the prompt for your unique instance.
00:22:40
brian
So when a rep's getting around to the business of configuring solution in commercial terms, it's being guided how Jim Dickey would guide them. And we, we, We demoed this. We interviewed this customer and we started with our AI data. Then we interviewed the customer. He dropped in the prompt and we had the guide produce a solution and commercial terms configuration. And it was it was so cool. This exec said, you just scaled the hell out of me.
00:23:07
brian
Right? Yes. ever Everything I want reps doing and a lot of the things that are not happening are now happening. And you know what? You want to change that tomorrow? It's no problem. I'm going interview you. I'm going to summarize it. I'm going drop it into the prompt.
00:23:18
brian
So I hope but we we we did the same with with the the the one lead who was was really high on discovery. It's like, who should we be talking to? What should we be talking to them about?
00:23:29
brian
This is a a company that that is in manufacturing business and and there's a lot of engineering data. And he gave us, we we should be talking to these production managers about these specific engineering specs and all that went into the prompt. So when when the when the guide is bringing discovery questions back to the rep, it's reflecting, right? When you're talking to this person, you've got to get to this KPI. So I hope that helps. I mean, it's completely different than the sort of soft approach to light light overarching customization. And it's drilled down precisely to what am I selling? Who am I competing against? What vertical, et cetera.
00:24:05
Jim Dickie
You know, yeah you take a look at AI and you see clearly this could be a profound aid to help salespeople in terms of, you know, giving that 7x24 coaching type of capability.
00:24:06
brian
Hi.
00:24:17
Jim Dickie
But I'm just kind of curious, how is your delivery of this solution going to be different than sitting there and saying, hey, it's a kickoff game, we're going to cover everything. It sounds like this could be delivered every single day on every single deal.
00:24:32
Jim Dickie
So what's that look like to you?
00:24:34
brian
Yeah, I'd mentioned earlier that it's like, as we've completely tried to redefine this whole notion of sales training and and think of sales methodology at the base of this, that there's really, we bypassed the skill acquisition phase.
00:24:47
brian
We go directly, you know, oh okay, the the the rep is going to do about two and a half hours of online modules to get a sense of, of what what this methodology is. What is PGS precision-guided selling based on?
00:25:00
brian
How does the technology work? you know Get them ready. But that that's more of a kind of a soft intro. The moment they log in they are asked, what are you selling? Who are you competing against? What vertical are you selling in? Is it new or renewal?
00:25:14
brian
And then all the data in the strategy center pulls into the guide's brain for that deal. and And we start with qualify, right? To go, okay, here's here's what, i qui this this is the part.
00:25:25
brian
I'd mentioned a lot of methodology. You're filling out blank forms. It's the answers that go into the forms that are helpful. The rep is not taught how to qualify. It's saying, okay, for this kind of a deal, here are the six qualifiers.
00:25:37
brian
and And those are weighted, kind of most to least important. Then you shouldn't even go after this thing. You know, it'll give them a score. But based on actual qualification criteria, then... it will kind of de-risk the deal. It'll look at, is it qualified? Am I talking to the right people about the right things? Can I compete?
00:25:55
brian
And based on what the rep's clicking and the answers they're giving to the data we're providing them, it's giving them kind of a risk score for this deal. and And then giving them the specific actions against specific stakeholders down to the specific discovery that they need to be doing to to de-risk this deal and raise the probability of winning.
00:26:17
Jim Dickie
Gotcha. And then I guess to the thing is, let's take it a little step further and talk about yeah how do the reps then apply it to each individual deal? Is it going through and saying, okay, as we're progressing on this thing, I'm giving it some feedback, but it's giving me more advice all the way through the process?
00:26:26
brian
yep Yeah.
00:26:34
Jim Dickie
How's that work?
00:26:35
brian
And I kind of started bleeding into some of that and in my previous answer, but it's, again, it's, it's 24 seven on demand, just in time versus just in case.
00:26:45
brian
And again, three 65 it's, it's there, this isn't a two day event and we hope that coaches pull it through. The coaching is built into it. Frontline coaches are are are given deal summaries for every deal that's being guided, right? So we we can help them. And I think we'll talk about that later. But yeah, what what happens with the rep is, again, they come in, they log in, but they click a few boxes saying, this is what I'm selling, who I'm competing against, et cetera.
00:27:10
brian
And it starts from qualify to stakeholder engagement to our ability to compete. to then discovery questions and an action plan and then coming back for solution configuration and then finally developing customer facing solutions.
00:27:22
brian
And at each phase, I mean, some of these some of these steps are taking three to four minutes because the data is being provided to the rep. They're not filling out forms. They're just clicking what's relevant. So, it's again, it's it's a real time. It's immediate. It's just in time.
00:27:39
brian
and And it's it's it's giving them data that's in alignment with the company strategy, right? Aligned with every sales stage. So I hope that that helps. It's a little bit different than spending two days in a class and spending most of your time doing skill acquisition and then filling out the form at the end of the class. We start immediately. The training is immediately, let's qualify this opportunity based on these qualifiers that are custom for what you're selling. like
00:28:05
Jim Dickie
So when you're getting into the coaching type of model, the technology, it can be a coach by itself, but you're also going to have your own sales manager as a
AI's Role in Coaching and Process Improvement
00:28:14
Jim Dickie
coach. What's that what's that blended coaching model look like?
00:28:17
brian
Yeah, I was talking to a friend of mine, Gary, who's a sales VP at a tech company, and and I showed him the deal summary. So after the the rep is guided, a deal summary is provided to the frontline manager, a one pager.
00:28:33
brian
and Gary said, holy blank, I could three to five X the quality and quantity of my one-on-ones. I think I knew the answer, but I was like, tell me some more on that. and He said, i spend excuse me I spend half of my one-on-one downloading the basic data on the deal.
00:28:49
brian
And you're you're handing me, is it qualified?
00:28:50
Jim Dickie
Thank you.
00:28:52
brian
Who am I talking to? you know Where are my holes? Have I done discovery? you know Am I ready to compete? All that, you're dropping all that in front of me. And his point was, I can do a lot more and I can do a lot better because I can start deep. I'm starting at, you know who who knows, 20 or 30 feet underground versus 10 feet above ground saying, okay, you know let's let's begin with the basics. so I think that that's the big piece is that we're doing a lot of that guiding upfront, we know managers are not going to have time to do it. Now, there are some deals that need to be double clicked on and that's why we have a deal summary. You know, if we, we know, and Jim, I think you've told me this, that five, 5% of a pipeline is being touched by a frontline sales manager today.
00:29:35
Jim Dickie
Yeah.
00:29:35
brian
You don't want every deal guided. you know if If this is your new sales training solution, you you want people to be doing maybe if the, what would happen if you had 50 to 60% of the pipe guided by the AI and then the top 10% of that push the deal summary to the frontline manager who who then double coaches it.
00:29:55
brian
and And so that's that's kind of the model. And we've even got to onboard the managers to say, how do you coach a deal that's been pre-coached or pre-guided in this way? Because it's, you know, all all the basics are covered for you. So you can now begin to get like crazy deep.
00:30:13
Jim Dickie
I think to about one of the things you know we've seen in the past is that when you're trying to improve something over time, <unk>ve you We've been relying on people to do that. So we are relying on managers to improve the sales process. We've been relying on programmers to improve the CRM technology.
00:30:31
Jim Dickie
AI can help improve itself.
00:30:33
brian
Yes.
00:30:33
Jim Dickie
So how is precision-guided selling reacting to what it learns in terms of, hey, we provided this guidance, except this new new little twist came up in the marketplace. And here's the next, here's the more effective way to handle it next time. How does that evolve itself?
00:30:49
Jim Dickie
And what does that mean to the rep and to the manager?
00:30:53
brian
So you make me think of something. We're we're presenting to a potential investor who who asked, well, you're you're you're training an LLM. you know So how how long before this thing has advocacy?
00:31:04
brian
How long before it learns enough to be really smart? and And we said it's going to have advocacy on day one because it's got the company strategy in its brain for any any any ah any ah configuration of solution and competitor types you want to put in there.
00:31:20
brian
But it will It will then learn over time. And we're at the point right now where a company, if a company has a strategy shift, we're going to interview that exec and we're going to drop it into the prompt.
00:31:30
brian
We're working on the tech right now for it to scan, for the strategy center to scan and say, your competitor to just introduced a new piece of software. And that should change the way we do competitive analysis. Right. So that's phase two.
00:31:44
brian
But right now we can we can adjust pretty pretty easily with shifts in customer strategy or market changes and and just shift shift the brain of of the guide a little bit so it we get it to react real time. I i was speaking with an SVP at a supply chain management company who bought one of their biggest competitors in Europe.
00:32:08
brian
And there's there's only two or three players in this space. And And he was saying, this is great because we had a much smaller footprint than our closest competitor in Europe. much So that therefore gave us a much smaller global footprint.
00:32:21
brian
And we lost a lot of deals. And I said, okay, so you just acquired this company. How long before words are coming out of reps' mouths? Right. To execute. again Again, how do you qualify now that that you've got an expanded footprint? Does that change the stakeholders you're talking to? with KPIs you can impact? How you configure solutions? How you compete against these other two?
00:32:41
brian
He said nine to 12 months.
00:32:44
brian
By the time marketing, and you know this, you're nodding.
00:32:44
Jim Dickie
Okay.
00:32:45
Jim Dickie
yeah
00:32:46
brian
It's like by the time marketing comes up with the decks and the talk tracks, and then how how much are people actually going to use it? In a scenario like that, I would say 48 hours, could we we could blend in how we should be selling across the entire sales process from qualified to close, given this change in our value proposition.
Integrating AI with Existing Systems
00:33:07
Jim Dickie
you're You're suggesting a lot of change here. And so i I guess my last question for you, Brian, is this, you know, there's evolutionary change and there's revolutionary change. And so, you know, companies have already invested in your ways to sell.
00:33:20
Jim Dickie
And so if they've already got a methodology, are you going to be a revolutionary thing that requires a lot of shakeup or is it it evolutionary or is it kind of a combination of the two?
00:33:20
brian
and
00:33:30
brian
Yeah, it's it's a really good question. And again, one of one of those arguments we've had internally, right? A lot of discussion about it. And the reality is that some of our customers are using my methodology from Think, Inc., right? they So that our guide, when it comes to negotiation phase, our guide already has that information in its brain in the strategy center. So it will guide the rep according to those principles because the customer bought that training and they like it. And so in essence, we're pulling it through and that can be done for for any upfront methodology. You know, again, the methodologies themselves aren't bad. The problem is they're not being pulled through.
00:34:09
brian
So anybody who's licensed, any rep who's licensed to use XYZ methodology, the guide can reinforce and use that language and help pull it through for our customers. I think PGS can stand alone by itself, but for folks who have made investments in some selling methodology and are struggling with pulling it through,
00:34:29
brian
You know, we can add in all this custom contextualized data and pull that through at the same time.
00:34:34
Jim Dickie
Well, yeah it's interesting because I think we we've seen that what we've been doing the last 20, 30 years isn't generating the results we want. We're clearly they're going to have to be doing something different. So it'll be interesting to see how the market reacts to this, because I think what you're talking about is what we need is we need to have a fundamental different way of moving away from sales reps focusing on transactions, you know, things that are rapid, repetitive routine to interactions, which are complex, protracted value add.
00:35:05
Jim Dickie
And we're going to have to support that a totally different way.
00:35:08
brian
Yeah.
Revolutionizing Sales Training with AI
00:35:08
brian
it's it I was just thinking as you were saying that that, I think the decision for a lot of sales enablement leads and a lot of CROs and sales leads is which methodology should I choose, right?
00:35:18
brian
And that's been the choice that's out there.
00:35:19
Jim Dickie
Yeah.
00:35:20
brian
I'm going to pull the training, the sales training lever. My choice is which methodology. What we're bringing to market is you you have an entirely different way now, an entirely different level, but within that sales training that, that again, it It customizes differently. It delivers differently. it coaches differently. You know, it it it'll pull through your earlier investments.
00:35:43
brian
And this is where this we're we're hoping this is, you know, a revolutionary approach to say it's a new way to think about training your salespeople. And you again, you have that choice of two day events or you have that notion of 365, 24, 7 or every every rep, every deal for almost precisely the same investment. And, you know, the question is which which one's going to yield more? And for me, that answer is easy.
00:36:06
Jim Dickie
Agree with you.
00:36:07
brian
All right. So, Jim, I really appreciate you doing this. And I appreciate for those who are listening, Jim and I have been talking about this subject for years. And, you know, we've we've just launched our MVP for both the Strategy Center and the Rep Facing Close Plan.
00:36:23
brian
And it's it's come to fruition after a lot of years of dialogue. So, Jim, I appreciate not only your time today, but your support over the years to kind of rethink what's broken and and how do we how do we bring something that's much more effective to market. So thank you.
00:36:38
Jim Dickie
My pleasure. It's it's clearly a problem worth solving.