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S3 Ep11: AI Meets Sales - Insights from Zinnia Founder Lauren Goodell
53 Plays26 days ago
In this episode of Dial It In, Trygve Olsen and Dave Meyer have a conversation with Lauren Goodell, founder and CEO of Zinnia, an AI tool designed to help sales professionals build more personalized and effective relationships with their clients. The episode covers how Zinnia analyzes personality profiles and company data to craft bespoke outreach messages, how it can significantly improve sales efficiency, and the impact of AI on sales in the future. Along the way, Trygve and Dave discuss practical examples of how Zinnia has helped them in their own sales processes and share insights on the importance of human connection in sales. The episode also highlights Lauren's journey in the tech industry, the challenges she faced, and her recent successes, including winning a pitch competition with Hearst. Overall, it's an engaging discussion on leveraging AI to foster genuine, impactful business relationships.
Connect with Lauren Goodell on LinkedIn
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Dial It In Podcast is where we gathered our favorite people together to share their advice on how to drive revenue, through storytelling and without the boring sales jargon. Our primary focus is marketing and sales for manufacturing and B2B service businesses, but we’ll cover topics across the entire spectrum of business. This isn’t a deep, naval-gazing show… we like to have lively chats that are fun, and full of useful insights. Brought to you by BizzyWeb.
Links:
Website: dialitinpodcast.com
BizzyWeb site: bizzyweb.com
Connect with Dave Meyer
Connect with Trygve Olsen
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Transcript
Introduction to Dial It In Podcast
00:00:08
Speaker
Welcome to Dial It In, a podcast where we talk with fascinating people about marketing, sales, process improvements, and tricks that they use to grow their businesses. Join me, Dave Meyer, and Trigby Olsen of FizzyWeb, as we bring you interviews on
00:00:30
Speaker
that So we have a guest and we, uh, and shoot, normally we have all sorts of bio information about the guests.
AI Tools for Sales: Zinnia's Role
00:00:38
Speaker
You need a tool. Oh, I have something. So I've been using this really cool tool called Zinnia, Z-I-N-N-I-A. That is an AI tool that runs personality profiles and runs playbooks on how to best sell to somebody who you're trying to. Why don't I use that? And I'll learn a little bit about the
New Sponsor: WeFix HubSpot
00:00:58
Speaker
guests. Cause it only takes a minute and we do have a ah new sponsor for today, right, Dan? Yes. Yes. Yeah. I can do the sponsor read well. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Go. Okay.
00:01:08
Speaker
Is your HubSpot portal cluttered and inefficient? WeFix HubSpot powered by BusyWeb specializes in customizing and optimizing your HubSpot experience. Our team of certified experts offers tailored solutions, including training, re-onboarding, architecture reviews, and data restructuring, ensuring your portal aligns perfectly with all your business needs.
00:01:30
Speaker
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00:01:45
Speaker
Okay. I'm done with the report. okay It works that fast.
Meet Lauren Goodell: Unconventional Sales Techniques
00:01:49
Speaker
Okay. So our guest today is Lauren Goodell. Lauren enjoys building genuine relationships with clients and often uses unconventional methods like getting nails done or going for a walk to strengthen business connections. That's something I've never done is I've never gotten my nails done. I've done some, I've done some stuff, but never done that.
00:02:10
Speaker
ah She has a personal passion for helping others demonstrated by her ongoing support for Drink Local, Think Global. and She emphasizes the importance of human connection in sales and believes the authenticity and humor can significantly enhance client relationships.
00:02:27
Speaker
So really, she's my spirit animal. As seen in her story about quoting Missy Elliott in a prospecting email that is on LinkedIn, she takes the time to understand and appreciate the personal stories and challenges of others would help which helps her build rapport and trust in build business relationships.
Building Rapport and Making Guests Heroes in Sales
00:02:44
Speaker
Okay, now I have strategies on how we're supposed to talk to her. Ready? okay So first things first, is we have to build rapport because she cares deeply about human connection.
00:02:54
Speaker
So we have to build a relationship with her by talking about human interests, common interests, excuse me, shared experiences, storytelling. She's result oriented and customer centric. So let's start when she comes on Dave by yeah telling her about that time you got your nails done. And then show gratitude. Lauren is appreciative. So thank you, Lauren. Thank you for her partnership, for the sales process, and then make her the hero. She's been a role as founder and CEO of Zinnia for a little over a year.
00:03:24
Speaker
so We're going to help her make a name for herself by showing how her solution can significantly impact your company's growth and success. Please welcome Lauren Goodell from Zinnia. Hey, Lauren. Hi, Lauren. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. I'm immediately showing gratification.
Zinnia's Impact on Sales Efficiency
00:03:43
Speaker
i In the world of AI right now, I think everybody's coming out with an AI tool. Everybody says that their tool is going to be so great.
00:03:53
Speaker
and so awesome and it involves having to learn how to talk to it and it's a whole thing and the tool at Zinnia is the one of the only thing I've seen in the AI space that actually is not only a difference maker but it's a game changer. It saves me literally hours of the day, every single day in the sales process. So I'm tickled pink for you to be here. This is our holiday special. So this is our very special holiday special. So Zinnia is our gift to our listeners this year.
00:04:26
Speaker
I am so happy
Using Personality Insights for Sales Tactics
00:04:27
Speaker
to hear that. And I love how much we're helping you and hopefully we can help some others too. And point of fact is I even used Zinnia for your intro. So everything that I said about Zinnia, I ran one minute process to get, that was her, the AI response. How much of that was true? Was any of it wrong? Was any of it wrong?
00:04:47
Speaker
No, all of it's true. What's funny is it's dynamic. It updates all the time with different online posts, news articles. I haven't looked myself up in a while and it's always fun to see what kind of shows that. That was it. Yeah. One of the things that I read out of your bio that I think I are very much cut from the same cloth is showing personality and humor in selling. There's one feature about the people who work for me refer to it as the Trig V button.
00:05:16
Speaker
Explain the Get Wild button. Yes. Okay. so One of my favorite stories from when I was at Microsoft selling is I couldn't get a hold of the prospect and ended up looking him up online and on Facebook and on YouTube, and I found out that he actually had a YouTube channel where he reviewed pizzas. This was like way before the Barstool Sports guy did the pizza reviews. I sent a pizza to his office with a note that said, I know this is cheesy, but can I get a slice of your time?
00:05:43
Speaker
And it works. We got in the office, we ended up building a relationship and ultimately closing a pretty large deal with them. And so our Get Wild button is really automating that process of doing the research, figuring out what's actually going to catch someone's attention according to their personality type or what they post about, and then giving you some really wild kind of guerrilla marketing strategies to break in.
Innovative Sales Strategies: The Get Wild Button
00:06:04
Speaker
There's an old episode of The Office called Dwight vs. the Computer, where he tries to outsell out sellll the computer. And so I say that because one of the people who works for me, he is currently prospecting and trying to get a deal with a for-profit college that teaches people how to be pilots.
00:06:27
Speaker
and so he called these I don't really know what to do what do you think I should do I said okay here's what you do is you get a is you get a book on paper airplanes and then you make 10 paper airplanes and then put your business card, attach your business card to every single one, and then walk them all over to the office and just be like, here, I have these things for you. And then on the paper, make sure you write, we're really good at making something and turning it into something better. We'd love to fly together. And he said, that's a really corny idea. I said, okay, why don't you check Zinnia and see what the Get Wild button is? Number two, on the Get Wild button,
00:07:09
Speaker
was make paper airplanes and bring them over. yeah yeah This is so funny. I just looked up yours. Your number one for me says, to send you a microphone shaped cookie with a note saying, let's cook up some innovative podcast ideas together. I love that. I love that. word Really, you had me at cookies, Lauren. I want to talk about the company. Tell us a little bit about yourself and and what inspired you to go out on your own and start this project.
Personalized Sales Experience at Microsoft & Salesforce
00:07:35
Speaker
Yeah, so I spent ah seven or eight years between Microsoft and Salesforce as an enterprise account executive. And so basically my entire career has been in enterprise sales and the thing that I loved about sale. Let's say let's start point yeah wait there. For those people who aren't in sales, she is not selling the Star Trek full. Enterprise is usually the big giant selling of major leading companies. So what she's bearing the lead a little, what she really means is she's really good at sales.
00:08:03
Speaker
Thank you. But I would say I'm just really passionate about sales. I think sales get such a bad rap all the time of trying to push products that people don't actually need and being like forceful and getting people to buy just whatever by manipulating them or along those lines. But sales, what it really is really uncovering people's problems and fixing them and offering solutions for that.
00:08:24
Speaker
and um For me, my experience at Microsoft and Salesforce was a lot of doing things that don't scale. so Like I mentioned, looking up the prospect on Facebook, on YouTube, reading news articles, um all of that stuff takes a ton of time. But in my opinion, it's so important to be able to match the way that you sell to the way that somebody would want to receive a sales conversation.
00:08:47
Speaker
For example, you said Lauren like wants to build rapport. If you jump straight into business with me, I would be like, I don't want to have this conversation. But somebody that's like very data-driven and stoic wouldn't want kind of the relationship building Mormon fuzzies. So I think a lot of the things that I did at Microsoft and Salesforce was really understanding that, taking the time to do that, and then catering to your relationship building.
00:09:09
Speaker
Yeah, I think if I were to try to sell you, I think I would probably do the nails thing and or because hold them up for the camera. You have nice look at who see those are pretty, but they're understated. They're not big giant or you're super into food. I follow you on LinkedIn.
00:09:26
Speaker
I found, I originally got introduced to you because I love people with goofy names. We have a goofy name club. I'm friends with a guy, my name's Triggy. I'm friends with a guy named Wolfgang. And the best name I've heard all year is a guy who is a CFO, ah sorry, chief sales officer out of Charlotte. It was Denmark, Francisco.
00:09:45
Speaker
which is a place and a sandwich all at the same time. And he was like, oh my God, this is a game changer. So then I looked at and then I met Lauren and we were off to the races. made What got you into wanting to say, hey, i how can i how can we how can we make this process faster of really understanding who we need to talk to?
00:10:03
Speaker
Yeah, going through the whole process at those companies was
Automating Sales Processes for Efficiency
00:10:07
Speaker
time consuming. And I realized as I was leading teams of EDRs and coaching other greener reps that this was just something that good reps do, but it takes a lot of time and new reps don't know what they need to do. And even if they were to read that 180 page 10K, they don't know how to use it.
00:10:24
Speaker
And so it inspired me to go off on my own and and try to automate the things that I did manually that took forever and give people time back to be able to make A players more efficient and maybe make the sales reps turn into A players.
00:10:37
Speaker
I love it. What was the vision? what was How did you just just decided figure out, I need to make this technical solution? i think You and I are the same place where you know we kind of instinctively know, okay, here's how we approach something straight up. Okay, hey if we need to come out at an angle, here's how we're going to come at an angle, come in completely sideways, here's how we do that. and yeah I think you're about the only person I've ever met who can get away with the kind of stuff that you and I do.
AI vs. Human Connection in Sales
00:11:04
Speaker
yeah Yeah, no, the thing is with generative AI coming out and being more mainstream, I started seeing all these tools pop up that were like, automate all of your outreach, send out thousands of emails at once and have these AI BDRs or replace your account executives with these things. And my whole ethos is that human connection should be at the center of everything that we do.
00:11:27
Speaker
But AI can help us get there for us, right? If you're you ever gone to a dinner party and sat down next to somebody and for like the first half hour you're like, this person is so dry. I have nothing to talk to them about. This is so boring. oh Just get me out of here. And then all of a sudden you both find out that you hiked Machu Picchu or you both love yoga and then you can't shut up about it. And you're like making plans to hang out with him again.
00:11:48
Speaker
And I thought it just took bringing up the right conversation point to get there. And what AI can really do is remove that barrier and get you there from day one, from the first minute that you're talking to somebody.
00:11:59
Speaker
What's interesting, you talk yeah that because there are so many tools that automate your outreach, and they're all almost universally horrible, and they're never any good, and they never have the human element. And your tool, in addition to everything else, also has some outreach built in. But it's better, and it's demonstrably better. How is yours demonstrably better?
00:12:23
Speaker
So about 10 years ago, all of these companies started coming out with cadences and sequences to automate outreach. And a stat that I heard today is there's over 3 million messages sent per second in the world, email messages, over 3 million a second.
00:12:38
Speaker
yeah and What is 10, 15x what it was 10 years ago? and Because of that, everyone's just ignoring these mass automated outreaches. and So our goal is not to add that one personalized line of, hey Trigby, how's it going in Minnesota? Canned message, same thing. right Our goal is to say, like actually get down to the root of what is the value proposition that's going to resonate to you as a human? But then also, like how do I cut through the noise and show you that I know you and show that I've actually done the time to figure out what you care about?
00:13:06
Speaker
and write the message in a tone that is actually fitting to your personality type. So we really try to cater the entire experience from prospecting through the sale to the person. And did you train the tool to do that somehow and pull it up? So I'm imagining that maybe there's disk profiling or something built into that. How does the tool know how to connect with people?
00:13:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's our own version of the disk profile. I'd say it's a light version, right? Because it's not self-submitted. But what we do is actually analyze what people talk about online, articles that they're posted in, maybe the way that they comment or interact with others online. And we take all of that and give what we call our hot points. So those are those personality descriptors as to who somebody shows up at work. But then we also use the sales technique of mirroring. So if we have data on how they write, we try to match that um in those prospecting messages.
00:13:57
Speaker
Explain what mirroring is for the people at home, because I know what you're talking about. That's that's not true. Actually, this isn' that's something I say all the time. Well, Lauren, I know what you're talking about, but for Nicole,
00:14:09
Speaker
tell her and I actually know what you you mean this time. So if you're you're a longtime listener, I know what mirror it is. So there's this sales psychology kind of technique, whether it's and the way that you write or the way that you interact. If Nicole is going to cross her arms, maybe I cross my arms. Maybe if you're leaning in, I lean in. If you talk in a very quick dialect, I will match that. And that's to make somebody feel comfortable.
00:14:33
Speaker
That's a mirroring technique used in sales psychology. Now, we translate that over to email. So if your email says, hey, Lauren, hope you're having a great day, exclamation point, smiley face, I will respond in kind. Versus if someone says, Lauren, dash, let's meet on Tuesday. I say, okay, period. So you mirror the way that they write to make them as comfortable as possible.
00:14:56
Speaker
I think in 2024 and 2025, as people are prepping for 2025, traditionally people think of there are 10, 12 touch points before you get to a sale. I think that's doubled at this point. And every little thing like that that you're talking about is a micro sale in and of itself. Somebody who's happy to see you, happy to talk to you.
00:15:19
Speaker
truly genuinely interested in who you are as a person that can be demonstrated, but it is time consuming. So finding the tool that actually works to help you make that faster is going to make a big difference because one of the things that I've seen is I've looked at a half a dozen other tools that do outreach and they all do the same thing, which is, hi, first name. Here is what my company is about. Would you care to spend 15 minutes together? Click here.
00:15:47
Speaker
And my answer is universally no, because the most valuable thing that I have is my own time and I rent it out to the company I work for. And if you're going to take it, you have to give me something in response. And if you don't show me what that is, or just even, I don't even want to be around you as a person, then you have nothing.
00:16:08
Speaker
It's so true. It's so true. Yeah. At the end of the day, a lot of the prospects that I had 10 years ago at Microsoft actually have become clients to Zinnia now, even if I never even closed the deal with them then was like all about relationship building and understanding what was important to them and actually caring, taking the time to care. Absolutely. Can Zinnia be rolled out for large teams or just, or what's the best way to roll this out?
Zinnia's Deployment for Teams
00:16:32
Speaker
Absolutely. We have we have a ah good mix. We have account executives that will just sign up on their own and put us on their personal card or their corporate card and just get going. But typically what ends up happening is that salespeople love to share good assets and tools. So more people on their team will start signing up and then eventually the VP of sales will reach out and say, like, all right, we negotiate a contract here.
00:16:53
Speaker
But we do also have full teams that come to us from the top down and say, we really are are trying to move away from spray and prey and focus more on an unreal relationship building and personalized sales. And they'll bring their whole team on and we'll do a training and a kickoff and make it a whole thing. And you have some statistics about the value of Zinnia Outreach compared with anything else, right?
00:17:14
Speaker
We do. It is dependent on the industry for sure and the product that you're selling. But yeah, we get stories every day of, Hey, get wild is actually really working for us. Or but we have a definite lift in and open rates as well. um Yeah. it's And it's pretty huge. I think my open rates have doubled since I started. And I'd like to think that I'm pretty good at this, but even by just comparing notes before I hit the send is a huge difference here as well.
00:17:38
Speaker
Yeah. We typically see two to three acts. So love hearing that from you too. absolutely Absolutely. So what is, so you started building the technology. How did you bring it to market? Yeah, we, I brought in an awesome
Zinnia's Growth and Inbound Interest
00:17:50
Speaker
CTO. He is the best. He's been building sales tools for about 10 years. Came from Calendly, came from SalesLops. So he's a rockstar and also just a really good human. That's our whole ethos here. But we actually soft launched with a couple friendly customers and never really hard launched. It just, customers started rolling in. And so we've actually never done outbound here at Cinea. Everything has been inbound or word of mouth. Seriously? Mm-hmm.
00:18:16
Speaker
Wow. And how close are you to profitability? because you let Let's be clear, because that's a loaded question. you only You're like not years in, you're months in. Yeah. We officially went to market or were able to be commercialized like about four or five months ago and we're probably less than a quarter away from profitability. Amazing. That's intensely fast.
00:18:38
Speaker
yeah Thank you. Yeah. It's been a really fun journey. Wow. Okay. So look when people come to you, what are some of the things that, what are some of the problems that they come to you? Hey, I'm looking for this to be solved.
00:18:51
Speaker
What's really interesting is actually our biggest client came to us and said, hey, we're having this problem with prospecting, right? Everybody is having this problem with prospecting. Open rates are terrible. They're way worse than they were a year ago for every single industry. We need help making these more personalized. We don't have time to scale this. Can you help us make more personalized outreach and actually help us understand the problems of our customers?
00:19:12
Speaker
But they came back to us a couple months later and they said, we bought for prospecting. But now that we have all of these first discovery calls and we have all these sales cycles, we're staying because this actually helps us move deals forward. Yes. Yes. Absolutely. And I think that's certainly true. So what's, what's like the worst thing that you've heard that people come to you and said, needing help? Cause you're an old pro like I am. You've been in the game for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. I think that the biggest thing, the worst thing that I hear is.
00:19:42
Speaker
when people get on and say, okay, how do I just automate this? How do I just send this out to 10,000 people? That's actually ruining the point here. I even had somebody say, oh, I could build a bot that would just send this to thousands of people. And it's no, the whole thing is we don't ever automatically send anything because we want your human touch on it. We get you 95% of the way there. If somebody's name is my dog's name, I'll maybe make a joke about that. Like I'll make something to be super hyper personalized that AI just can't do.
00:20:09
Speaker
hyper without that extra personalization, it's really easy to get caught in saying something silly or going into a hallucination from AI or whatever. So one of the things that we get all the time at Busy Web is people will send us spam And they'll be like, okay, I'm super excited to talk to BusyWeb HubSpot marketing agency to grow your business, which is just our extra title that we use to describe ourselves on LinkedIn. So anytime anybody doesn't just say, Hey, love what you're doing at BusyWeb. We know that it's an AI generated and nobody took the time to actually look at it. So as you're doing those or as you pulled is, does the data mostly come from things like LinkedIn or how do they find, how do you find the info?
00:20:53
Speaker
Yeah, so the way that we actually build the prospecting email is that we ingest all of your sales data when you're setting up Zinnia. So if you have a first call deck or a brochure or even a demo, we'll put all of that into our system so it starts learning how to sell your product, but then we match it to the company you're selling to as well as the individual you're selling to.
00:21:14
Speaker
so We will automatically say, here's three value propositions that we think are really relevant to that company, and we'll have specifics. right of This company is based in Minnesota, and so they may love that they're local to you guys or whatever it may be. They have this many locations, so it's really hyper-specific. and Then we also will pull out some fun facts about the person.
00:21:33
Speaker
And so the way that our prospector builder works is you actually select one of the recommended value propositions and you select one of the fun facts. And those fun facts could be pulled from news articles, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Amazing. Okay. So there's a lot that goes into that. And then does it integrate with CRM or your email or how does the outreach go?
00:21:55
Speaker
Yes, so we are integrated into both Gmail and Outlook, as well as your calendars, and of course HubSpot and the Salesforce as well. Ah, the old homestead. listen One of the things that I think is a huge game changer, because I think i if somebody's been listening for 25 minutes now, they're thinking, oh, great, another thing that I have to go to and I have to... like But there are some...
00:22:23
Speaker
smoothing of daily life that comes into it. So for instance, since I signed up just even three months ago to now I get, because I've integrated my calendar, I get daily updates. Can you talk about that?
00:22:39
Speaker
Yeah, so we do start by integrating into your calendar and every good sales rep notes, you're probably in back-to-back calls all day. And sometimes you're like, which one of the prospects is this? Who is this? You get a daily email if you like, or you can log into the platform and we give you your list of the events for the day. And it will tell you a quick buy of the companies you're meeting with as well as each of the individuals that you're meeting with.
00:23:00
Speaker
So that way it's just a quick refresher. It's not meant to be anything groundbreaking, but it's more of, oh yeah, this is that person. And then you can create an account playbook directly from there and have everything you need for that first call in one single place. Which is just mind blowing when it started getting those emails. Because now all of a sudden I have to even make the playbook. They're just automatically for me based on how I sell and how we sell.
00:23:26
Speaker
and really And we have a couple of guys who work for me, they sell very differently. And so sometimes, you know, compare notes, how is for going after the same prospect, how I and the system does uniquely say how I should talk to them versus how another person would talk to them.
00:23:42
Speaker
yeah which is just super fun. So where one of the things that i I think is always super interesting when I talk to people like you who've come out with this really great tech and everybody started valuing it, it starts growing is
00:23:59
Speaker
I think one of the things I see is people get a crushing case of the yabbits. So they say, Cynthia, oh my God, that's so awesome. Yeah, but I really would like it to do this. Or yeah, but I'd really like it to do this. So as the founder and as the really the visionary of the company, I'm sure you get that feedback. What do you do with it and how do you decide how to iterate the product forward? Because you can't be everything to everybody.
00:24:27
Speaker
We can't be everything to everybody. that's It's so true. and it's I would say that's the hardest thing of being a founder is focus. as We have customers that we absolutely love, but they're really unique use cases where we're like, we love you guys, but we can't go and build this thing that's only going to be helpful for you.
00:24:44
Speaker
So what we actually do is like customer feedback is the number one most important thing for any startup at our stage. If you're working with any startups, make sure to give them product feedback every step of the way. But we actually collect the feedback. We like getting on calls with our customers. And then we have a almost essentially a spreadsheet that says we've been asked for this feature 19 times. We're going to start prioritizing that one.
00:25:04
Speaker
and we just make sure to continue the feedback loop from customers every step of the way. so That way, there's a threshold. you're not just because the I think the problem that founders have too is they want to be and they want to get bigger and bigger and bigger. You don't necessarily have to just because somebody says it should doesn't mean you you necessarily have to. If you still have a good product, and I think you could argue this is a niche product, but it also universally applies to all salespeople. It's not just sales and tech or sales and software or anything like that.
00:25:34
Speaker
There's still a tremendous amount of value in it. Yeah. Yeah. No, we, we know that where we are is just the tip of the iceberg and we have some really exciting things coming that are all actually coming from feedback from our customers. Obviously started with this big vision and I've been thinking it along the way, but we're really excited. Jay, can you give us a sneak preview of something that's coming?
Next Best Action Feature: Smart Sales Suggestions
00:25:54
Speaker
Yes, it's what's funny about that the next thing that will be launched hopefully in the next couple weeks, we're in beta with a couple people right now testing it, making sure we can break it every different way before really releasing it to the public, but it's called Zinnia's Next Best Action.
00:26:08
Speaker
And so what this actually does is integrates into your CRM, integrates into your email, and then tells you what the next best thing to do. And all of this came from- Shut the front door. Really? Like for me, I would have alarms and alerts set everywhere to be like, oh yeah, follow up with this person. They told me to follow up in January and I would make a calendar reminder for myself.
00:26:28
Speaker
or go in and put an alert in or a task and have spotter sales force. What we do is we say, hey, sent Nicole a message five days ago and she hasn't responded. You should nudge her. But instead of saying, hey, Nicole, what do you think? It says, we actually write the message for you. Hey, Nicole, I saw this news article that's relevant to our conversation that we had last week. What do you think about this?
00:26:50
Speaker
So it's actually value-based sales. and Then maybe I had a meeting with you guys and hadn't sent a follow-up message yet. We will actually take that call recording, turn it into a follow-up message and say, hey, Lauren, you didn't send a message yet. Here's what we think you should send, tweak it, and push send.
00:27:05
Speaker
Wow. shut out that yeah was ah That's one of the things that I think every sales person struggles with is, Oh my gosh, what can I do? And the worst thing you can do is just say, Hey, yeah, I'm just checking in. We do calling every Tuesday with the sales team and Trigby leads that for us. And he constantly reminds me to never say, Hey, I'm just anything. and I put you backwards. So jets is not sales.
00:27:33
Speaker
That's terrible, right? Or anything I can do to help, right? So adding more value coming up with the list. For those check-ins, is that based off of your input or your company's input? Like it follows your sales team, maybe looks at your blogs or something, or how does that how does it find it?
00:27:50
Speaker
Yeah, so right now, the nudge is coming more from public data, so it's going to be less. It's going to be more based on industry, actually. So selling into a manufacturing company, maybe sending, hey, did you see this industry 4.0 article that came out today? Thought this was relevant because of XYZ. Future state, we will actually start pulling in another big thing on the red map, pulling in case studies and internal comms. So if I'm selling something to a company of a certain size,
00:28:18
Speaker
Zinnia will actually say, here's the right case study to talk about because of the industry, because of the problem and because of the results. That's helpful. And it's more geared towards helping the audience. the audience. Yeah. I want to subscribe to your TED talk. That's tremendous. Okay. So that makes a lot of sense. And if you're doing the outreach and doing the regular follow-ups based on that tool,
00:28:44
Speaker
then again, of course, you can add your own flair to it, right? Exactly. Does that, and I don't want to get too knit or too detailed on this because I'm just totally geeking out about the tech, but for that, is it like literally going into your CRM and setting you a task or do you go in to get Zinnia and pull that?
00:29:05
Speaker
Yes. So my, my answer is yes, always. Yeah. yes and but yes yeah and so you're Starting with when you do, it will be a tab open in Zinnia today, but when you log in, it will actually say you have 23 next best actions that we recommend today. We estimate this will take you 55 minutes using, because we're writing everything for you. You don't actually have to do a lot of it. So it's going to be in Zinnia, but eventually we will actually be able to meet people where they are, whether that's their inbox, whether that's HubSpot or Salesforce.
00:29:36
Speaker
Wow. What's the work equivalent of following Lauren around like the Grateful Dead?
Integrating Emotion in AI Tools
00:29:40
Speaker
Yeah. and Where can I subscribe to that? he did Oh, come on. where're I'm always happy to hang with you guys. I said this earlier, and I'll say it again, because I think most companies who are trying to use AI in order to improve sales technology, they've got it wrong and she's got it right. Because the human element and the slowing down of AI gives you the opportunity to bulk do so much more. What that gets is you get bulk doing so much more that doesn't create and tool more sales.
00:30:15
Speaker
both This is the only tool that I've seen that actually has what tinker's nickel. I got to stop talking like that every time I use phrases like that. incur ni You guys one that's on front of my front i need to run outside and shake my fist and tell some kids to get off my lot.
00:30:32
Speaker
There's a cloud to yell at. oh go kids plus the Kids today with their robots and I even forgot what my point was. This is better and you should buy it. Yeah. um I've got to save for us. Yeah. and Can you tell us about the pitch competition that you just won with Hearst Lab? Yeah.
00:30:49
Speaker
Yeah, we are so we're excited to be partnering with Hearst. If you're familiar, they're one of the biggest media companies in the US, but they are also just incredibly supportive of ah female and underrepresented founders. So they have this thing called Hearst Lab, and it's a pitch competition where they bring female founders in from across the country to pitch on stage and kind of do a shark tank style presentation.
00:31:14
Speaker
Where we get hammered with questions and have to defend our company in front of a room of a couple hundred people. Last week we ah presented as a finalist as a out of 480 some companies. And we were one of two winners that they selected. So we were super, super excited about that. Yeah.
00:31:30
Speaker
yeah Yes. So it was awesome. And when we're really excited, obviously we are excited about having the financial investment from them, but the partnership with them is going to be even more important to us. They have an incredible marketing team that's going to be hands on and helping us. And then we're going to start helping some of their companies that have their portfolio as well. Wow.
00:31:51
Speaker
So maybe this is a little bit inside baseball, but as a startup that is looking to promote your business every way you can, how did you find that opportunity and where do you look for opportunities to grow and spread the word about Zinnia?
Acknowledging Support and Growth Opportunities
00:32:09
Speaker
Yeah. So that one, I'm very lucky that I have incredible investors, incredible advisors, but actually one of our angel investors nominated ah us for it. He saw it and yeah he was like, I think Zinnia would be a great fit. And so they reached out and we had to go through the whole application interview process for it. but Yeah, I think for us, having awesome investors and advisors who do bring us opportunities like that has been great. But even joining shows like this and getting to see what else is out there and talk about our product and share our story and the passion behind it is is our biggest thing for marketing today. Do you feel like you got lucky with your investors or did you strategically pick them?
00:32:47
Speaker
yeah Everything in life is in a little bit of luck, right? Actually, one of my lead investors, he has this saying that he talks about all the time. He was first investor in Calendly and sales loft, and he's had some huge unicorns. But he always says, work hard enough for long enough to get lucky.
00:33:03
Speaker
Because it's the right person, it takes the right partnership to really transform your company. And I'm a big proponent of, again, human connection, but be surround yourself with good people and care about them and how you can support them and good things will come. Love it. I'm just still wanting the tech now, even more than ever. We're coming a little dangerously short on time and what where do you see AI helping sales in 2025 and beyond?
00:33:33
Speaker
AI is not going to go anywhere, but although we're seeing all these companies, like I mentioned earlier, using AI to replace jobs, to automate these things, say AI, BDRs, AI account executives, I don't think that's the direction we'll actually go. I believe that AI is going to automate the menial tasks to give us time back to actually focus on relationship-based sales and actually focus on understanding the real problems and removing all the busy work that none of us like to do anyway.
00:34:02
Speaker
yeah and ah I'm sure there will be some companies that try to go all in on AI and just release their teams, and that's just the wrong way to do it, especially in relationship selling. and Maybe you could get away with something on like super low-level B2C, where you're just doing an e-commerce play and trying to connect and engage, but it's all about relationships when you're marketing to other businesses and trying to sell something that might impact someone's entire life at their company. That's, I agree completely that having a tool like this, and now I really need, I'm going to ask my boss, Trigby, to give me the tool so that I can start using it in my prospecting because I'm hearing good things, but now getting to see where it goes and what you can do with it. I need those follow-ups and I need the ideas to pitch to people. So that's just fantastic. Thank you.
00:34:55
Speaker
yeah Thank you. Which begs the question, Lauren, where can people find you
Visit Zinnia Online: Special Promo Code
00:34:59
Speaker
online? Where can people find Zinnia online? Yeah. So our website is getzinnia.ai. So G-E-T-Z-I-N-N-I-A.ai. Or find me on LinkedIn under Lauren Goodell. She's usually in some fantastic place eating something.
00:35:15
Speaker
but but but I do love food, yes. That's a huge passion of mine. lauren Lauren is one of those horrible people that can ruin a bad mood at the drop of a hat. I instantly feel better when you spend time with her. And is she she buried the lead a little. We do have a special referral code for our visitors. So if you go to getsenia.ai and you use the promo code trigv,
00:35:38
Speaker
t r y gve you get a little something special so dave when you go to get zinnia.ai use the promo code trigby uh i am a huge proponent of this i would do anything for her because i think this is where the future of sailing is going i'm i am lined up firmly behind her so Lauren, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. Happy holidays. Good luck in the new year. yeah This has been another episode of Dial It In, produced by Nicole Fairclaw and Andy Wachowski. I am always as Trigby, and my co-host is Dave. Happy holidays to all, and to all a good night. And with apologies to Tony Kornheiser, we will always try to do better the next day.