I've known Jason Benedict for over a decade.
He's a smart entrepreneur and marketing agency owner who understands the transformative impact of AI on sales and business operations.
We get into the evolution of AI tools, the benefits of automation, and how you can implement AI solutions to streamline processes and make mo' money.
We touch on the costs associated with setting up AI systems, the importance of multi-channel communication—multi-media, multi-step—and I get him to give a live demonstration of an AI agent in action.
Connect With Jason to See This In Action:
Text: Agency to 947.777.7332 or call or visit:
Automation.Agency
Takeaways
AI is revolutionizing the sales process.
Automation can save businesses significant time and money.
Voice AI can operate 24/7, enhancing customer service.
Understanding your data is crucial for effective AI implementation.
AI can outperform traditional sales methods by a large margin.
Small businesses can benefit greatly from AI solutions.
The setup of AI agents can be quick and efficient.
AI can capture customer information in real-time.
Multi-channel communication is essential for modern marketing.
Businesses should start with simple tasks to integrate AI.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to AI in Sales
02:41 The Evolution of AI and Its Impact
05:26 Utilizing AI for Outbound Strategies
08:07 Legal Considerations in AI Communication
10:50 Cost-Effectiveness of AI Solutions
13:38 Building and Training AI Agents
16:14 Subscription Models and Maintenance of AI
18:58 Scalability and Suitability of AI for Businesses
23:28 Managing AI Updates and Knowledge Bases
25:44 The Role of AI in Business Automation
29:01 Multi-Channel AI Communication Strategies
31:45 Live Demo with AI Agent Ava
35:58 Implementing AI for Business Growth
Need help with sales, marketing, systems, keeping humanity in all of the above?
Text or call me: (7 ONE 4) 369-8004 or schedule some time here.
Unlock the secrets of sales success by understanding what makes people do the things they do—access your free training: https://wesschaeffer.com/daily
Become unstoppable in 12 weeks for free, with the 12 Weeks To Peak™ habit tracker: https://wesschaeffer.com/12w
Connect with me:
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#12WeeksToPeak #SalesTraining #GoalSetting #PersonalDevelopment #GrowthMindset
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey, welcome to episode 723 or episode 1, I don't know, but if
it's the sales podcast at 7:23, if it's the new sales with AI
podcast, it's episode 1 1/2. Not real sure we're still in in
flux here, but welcome. I've got a good friend of mine,
Jason Benedict. I've known him for many years
(00:20):
through the future soft community.
Known a lot of these guys, right?
Just had Jason Jeremy Shapiro ona second time also know him
through infusion solve. You know, it was a powerful
platform back in the day. It's it affected everyone that
that committed to it made money OK.
(00:42):
And and those that used it just committed to using it.
Well, they made money. Their lives got easier.
They grew their sales without growing their staff.
And I've been talking about this, but you know, it's been a
couple of weeks and my fervor, my passion, my excitement, my
fear, my interest, it continues to grow around AI.
(01:02):
And so my goal is moving forward.
I'm probably changing everything, probably going to
change the inner circle to be more AI focused.
You know, I'm changing with the times.
They're still human to the otherend of the screen.
So we have to remember that. But how we reach them, man, it's
like it feels like 1995 all overagain.
And I just made a post and an e-mail about that.
(01:23):
You know, Bill Gates wrote his book The Road Ahead in 1995, and
he was right about a lot of things.
And so it feels like that again.But while it took many, many
years for the Internet to catch on and high speed Internet and
high speed mobile, then smartphones and social media, AI
is growing at an exponential rate compared to that.
(01:46):
So what business owners and professional salespeople and
entrepreneurs and executives, even military, I've got clients,
you know, in the military, you've got to be using AI.
And it's like, what does that mean?
And the reality is it's, it's not as crazy as it sounds.
You know, AI like a stand alone,everybody knows ChatGPT or maybe
(02:08):
Grok by X, Jim and I by Google. Yeah.
When you use AI, when you type aquestion, it gives you an
answer. That that's AI, that's a tool,
it's an app. It gives you some research and
gives you an answer. OK.
An AI agent is basically a pieceof code that you create that
(02:30):
runs whether you're using the computer, the device or not.
OK, like e-mail marketing. I've I've got web forms to
contact us or you know, get my free report that is
asynchronous. It does not rely on me.
That thing is always running. You can always opt in and then
you'll be tagged into my you place into my CRM, tagged with
prospect newsletter, blah, blah,blah.
(02:51):
Whatever it is you got you requested for free or maybe you
made a purchase and then automation kicks in.
Well, AI is doing kind of the same thing, but instead of with
ACRM being so restrictive, right?
e-mail, adjust a property in your CRM, maybe send a text to
the person. AI just does many more things.
(03:13):
AI agents are just like the nameimplies or says it's it's an
agent. What is an agent?
You know, it's a secret agent, James Bond that goes off and
give him give him instructions and he finds the bad guy and
kills him. OK.
An AI agent, artificial intelligence agent, you program
it to do what you need and it goes and does it.
(03:33):
And, but people think of these huge scripts and prompts and
programs. But it could be very simple
things. Editing a field in your CRM,
connecting to Google Sheets and,and updating a spreadsheet.
It can monitor the news and bring you articles and then it
can summarize those. And maybe every Monday morning
at 6:00 AM, you know, give you updates it can give you, you can
(03:55):
create draft emails, draft blogs, draft PDFSI mean there's
almost no limit to what these things can do.
So if you're paying well, I would say a low level person,
but honestly, these things are replacing radiologists or at
least augmenting them. I mean that counting, but but
for starters, right, if you havean overseas assistant that you
(04:16):
pay to create Instagram carousels to update databases,
you can build an AI agent to replace them.
Now, as this grows, you, you're going to need probably that same
VA or someone a little more adept to manage your AI agents.
So things are just changing. You know, I used to pay someone
(04:39):
to transcribe this podcast. Well, you know, Riverside has AI
and gives me a pretty good transcript.
Opus Clips chops it up, gives melittle snippets.
Riverside using it's AI gives metime stamps.
So, but now I still need help grabbing all that stuff and
publishing it. But I'm building AI tools to
(04:59):
take away bits and pieces of that and eventually it's going
to do the whole thing for me. So that's why I see.
That's why I'm talking about it more and more.
OK. Because in 2008 I found a
Fusionsoft that changed my life.I saw the power of just what
they were automating e-commerce lead generation, lead nurturing,
affiliate marketing and these AItools do 1000 literally 1000
(05:20):
times more than what Infusionsoft was doing back
then. And back then it was $5000 down
at 299 a month. It was complex.
It was hard to get up and running the the sequences you
made, the automation you made. You cannot be cloned and.
They could be. Cloned internally, but they
couldn't be shared but but then they came out with a campaign
builder 2011 and I've been selling campaigns that I've
(05:41):
created. I sell them and can push them to
other people's accounts. So AI lets me do the same thing.
Now it can be $100, it can be $10,000, but it's you own those
agents and the cost is because of my mind thinking about what
can be created in the speed right.
I'm literally spending all day everyday on these things.
(06:04):
And so yes, you, you can spend 30 or 60 or 90 days and go
figure this stuff out but how much money what's, what's the
opportunity cost of waiting 90 days to figure this out and
deploy it, You know so let's come to a happy medium a pay me.
I'll, I'll get it up and runninginstall it teach you how to do
it and then you don't owe anybody anything ever again.
Then you can go recreate those. So that's where this is headed.
(06:27):
OK, but, but I've known Jason for many years.
I saw him last November. He's he's ahead of the curve on
AI. So I have him give us some, some
stories, some examples, short little case studies.
So if you need some help with things, you know, I'll put an
affiliate link to, to what he's doing.
Please use that or just mention that you, you heard him on, on
this episode. He's got different packages.
(06:47):
He's more of an agency, right? I'm more of a consultant advisor
doing smaller things for small and big companies.
He's working with larger small companies, if that makes sense.
But thanks for listening. OK, thanks for hanging on.
I've been a little sporadic withthe episodes last month.
Got my black belt the day after my interview with Jason.
(07:11):
So that's fun. 8 1/2 years grinding.
I've been teaching the kids class.
I'm actually late now, so I'm gonna wrap this intro up.
I'll do the outro when I get back, so you'll see me in a
different shirt. But thanks for tuning in, you
know, please reach out on my website.
You know, I've got links to my calendar, book a time.
Let's talk. Let's figure out.
Tell me what your budget is. I'll help you figure this out,
(07:35):
get you started. And look, you're going to spend
a little money. You're going to spend 500 to
$5000 at least to get this sorted out with me, OK?
Or spend your time and figure itout for free.
But I'll go through your process.
I'll ask questions you probably haven't thought of, and I'll
bring 30 years of experience to expedite things.
But then the different subscriptions to the tools, they
(07:56):
may be 20-50 bucks a month. There may be ongoing fees based
on usage. You know, ten, 20-50 bucks a
month. But I mean, it's not thousands,
OK, Certainly not to get started.
So dig in. OK, Leverage me, reach out while
you can. I imagine this is I'm going to
get busy. I've been busy learning, right?
But now I've already got calls from one post and one e-mail
(08:19):
and, and I've only just begun. So again, thanks for sticking it
out. That's what I'm up to, right
Still around sales and marketing.
And I've always been about helping professional
salespeople, sales managers, sales leaders, corporate
leaders, entrepreneurs, you know, sell more, faster, higher
marginal, less stress and have more fun doing it.
And so AI is the most obvious way, the most profitable way to
(08:45):
make that happen. So.
Thanks for coming on this journey with me.
Now let's bring on Jason, Jason Benedict co-owner of automation
agency. Welcome to the sales podcast.
I don't even know the I don't know what I'm calling this
anymore. The sales with AI podcast AI
unravelled podcast AI demystified, AI for salespeople,
(09:06):
AI for grey haired people in sales.
What are we going to call this I?
Don't know you pointed at me andsaid grey hair though.
I think you dye your hair maybe?No.
Not yet. You're younger than me.
Don't remind me, man. What is happening?
You and I. What is this?
It's July. When were we hanging out?
Was it October? November.
I think so. November.
(09:27):
It was November. Scottsdale.
You. Had some AI stuff going on.
I put AI, put a shout out here. We are going to talk about
technology now. I got a new camera coming in.
I had my my Bluetooth Airpods cutting out yesterday so who
knows what's going to happen. I need I need technology help.
Can you help me? Can you help even someone like
(09:48):
me or am I like a lost cause? We can.
You're somewhat of a lost cause,but there's hope.
All right, this AI is so powerful even I can do it.
Yes 100% as long as you have a cell phone and fingers and a
voice. This was.
Golly, I can't believe it's like8 months ago you had your Santa.
That was an AI answering service, right?
(10:10):
Voice AI and yeah, voice AI. Yep.
And it was for kids to talk to Santa.
Look, there goes my video. Yep, I'm just going to leave it.
We'll keep going. What?
You and I have been in the infusions soft world.
Do you do you work with other platforms?
Yep, yeah, we service pretty much any CRM system.
OK, but I, I met you through thethrough the infusions soft
(10:33):
community. And so you and I have been
automating systems for entrepreneurs, the SMB space,
right, for a while. When did you, when did AI, when
did the light bulb go off for you?
Because it's only recently gone off for me.
So yeah, you're way ahead. Yeah.
What was that moment? Do you remember?
(10:54):
Yep. So I think the first step was
when Chachi BT released, right? So that was kind of like the
first touch of real AI. Hey, welcome back.
And this super software, right? Everybody, they they can live my
pain. I just open the Logitech brio
controller. I don't do anything.
I just open it and it goes back to focus.
(11:15):
But I got I got a new one on order, but you know, I didn't
want to hold back. You were ready.
You were going let's do it, let's do it.
Yeah. So ChatGPT was the first kind of
iteration into it and and understanding like, oh wow.
When did that come out? What was it, 2022 I think.
I don't know. It's been that long.
You've been using it for three years.
(11:36):
Yeah, about that. I think it was, it might have
been 2023 and I think it maybe came out 2022, but that was like
my first kind of diving into AI and I was like.
Was that kind of like the first consumer grade?
Because I mean, AI has been around for a while, but just
like the Internet, right? DARPA net or whatever.
I mean, the Internet was around for decades before, you know, we
(11:59):
start getting dial up and then high speed.
So is this kind of the same thing like the big brains and
the government are using it now?It's like, OK, let's, let's give
it to the peons. Yep, exactly.
They opened it up to us and we started playing with it and as
soon as we got into that, we're like, wow, this is powerful.
So we started using it for content for idea generation or.
(12:21):
Was it good? Was it good then?
It was, in my opinion, it was good and it's continued to only
get better. Obviously, the more that we
prompted that we train it, we teach it, the more that we
interact with it, it learns fromit and it gets our brand voice
down better. So, so it's, it's pretty Dang.
It was pretty good back then andit's only better now.
(12:42):
Right. But even back then, could you,
could you train it right? Because I'm, I'm seeing how you
build an agent now, how I can have it like read my book,
scrape my, my blog and get my voice.
Like how long has that been a thing?
That's a good question. I think it was probably a year
(13:04):
and a half ago when we started using it for that specifically,
right? And then about a year ago is
when actually March of last yearis when we started diving into
voice AI and we said, wow, OK, this is powerful from a sales
perspective, a customer service perspective, having the ability
to do inbound and outbound AI agents.
(13:26):
But we started selling them to our clients and building
solutions to help them with outbound calling, right?
Inbound calling, fielding questions, answering FAQs, but
then also developing sales scripts for it, right?
And doing it from a sales perspective.
And then as we started diving into voice AI, you mentioned
Santa's AI. That's one of our other products
(13:48):
that we created. Obviously my wife and I love
helping to support families and kids and it's something that we
wanted to build as a, a fun thing for kids to enjoy Santa
Claus. So we built Santa's AI, so
anybody can go to Santa's dot AIand they can put in their credit
card and they can get a phone call from Santa Claus himself.
(14:12):
Nice. But how?
How can the average business owner use this?
You know, you talk about outbound, Aren't there rules and
regulations about doing outboundcalls with AI?
There is, yeah. So when I talk about outbound, I
typically talk about hitting andtapping your existing database
first and foremost, right? That's the first place I
(14:33):
typically start is what we call DBR campaigns or database
reactivation campaigns. So most business owners don't
realize they have a goldmine sitting right inside of their
database and most of them haven't re engaged and touched
those contacts that have been sitting on their database for
years. And if they have re engaged
them, it's probably been throughe-mail, right?
(14:53):
Or they may have hired, you know, a salesperson to try and
attempt to do phone calls and they may be made, you know,
20-30 calls in a week. And our AI agents can make
thousands of phone calls within an hour if we wanted to, right?
So, so outbound typically startswith like database reactivation.
If they have a database, the other outbound strategy you can
do is so anybody spending lead like spending ad dollars on
(15:16):
Google Meta, right? You have inbound leads coming
into you. The moment that lead comes into
your database, you can out. You can trigger an outbound
phone call to it as long as you got the consent on your form
saying I agree to you know, emails, texts and AI calls.
OK, taking some notes here because I got somebody in mind
for this DBR. Yeah, so because it's true,
(15:40):
people, they work so hard. It's like it's always, how do I
get the next one? And it's like, why don't you
think about how do you keep the existing ones and maximize your
existing ones? And so if somebody is in my
database and even an existing customer, I mean, do I, do I
automatically have the right to call them?
(16:01):
Or does the system, since they're a customer, you know,
does it say, hey, Jason, this isWes's AI, you know, is it OK if
we chat for a second? Are you just, I did a little
disclaimer right up front and they're like, oh.
OK, cool. Yeah, Yeah, you can.
You can build a basically a disclaimer at the beginning and
it says, hey, this is Ava, an AIassistant with the automation
agency. I'm calling out on behalf of
(16:23):
Jason Benedict. Do you do you have a second to
chat? Right.
So right away, you're upfront, you're transparent, and they
know that they're speaking with an AI agent.
Is that is that required by law?Is that the recommended best
practice? Like what are you seeing?
So I'm not an attorney and I'm not going to dabble into that.
What I would recommend is that you talk with your attorney
(16:46):
about doing voice AI and what the legalities and regulations
are around. Them Well, I know you're not an
attorney, but you've built this for people, right?
Yep. And like in, at least in
Arizona, is it? Is it the law to disclaim it or
not? Yeah, you should disclaim it.
The the legality is that most outbound calls you should
(17:07):
disclaim it. Right, Yeah, OK, that's fine.
Yeah, yeah. And I and I got to imagine most
people don't mind. I mean, if it's a company that
you like, you know, like my jiu jitsu, right.
We get emails, we get text messages, you know, and I know
it's a bulk message. They're giving announcement
like. Oh, OK.
And I bet some people will complain.
Can you make me an AI that'll that'll open up my Logitech Rio?
(17:30):
Look at this. I click on it, click on the
camera, does it change? Look at that.
There we go, it's back. Why?
I guess things fail all right things.
Yeah. Things get old.
Fine, just like me. So to clarify on that, so like
for Santa's AI as an example, right, when we advertise for
Santa's AI, people know that they're opting in to request for
(17:51):
that call, right, So on. That they know right up front.
Yeah. So, but again, most people
struggle with lead generation. So you know that they would
still have to run ads, get people coming in, get that
awareness. So I'm talking about what can
they do right now, right, 'causethey're, there's all these
(18:11):
esoteric things, you know, like I was a meteorologist in the
air. Force.
Right. And people are like, why didn't
you? Why didn't you be on TV?
And I'm like, 'cause it's hard to get on TV.
Like those are coveted jobs you get in a big market.
They make a lot of money. And was it Al Roker or who's the
guy on on Good Morning America? Whatever.
You know, dude, being the National Weather guy is the
easiest thing in the world. Hey, look over here.
(18:33):
There's it's sunny out West. Oh, it's raining down in
Florida. We got a cold front coming in
the Northeast. Now here's what's happening in
your neck of the woods. OK, so most people out there
talking all their talk yappy yaponline.
It's like you can use AI. Here's 4000 prompts you can use.
You can use AI to generate leads.
(18:55):
You can use AI to scrape a website and people that they
don't know what it means right there.
It's just like, oh, it's sunny in Florida, OK.
Yeah. So it's like how I want to get
granular, right? It's what I want.
It's what I want to do with thiskind of shift, this pivot and
full transparency, you know, people need some, like, true
(19:19):
morsels they can bite onto, right?
So, so I love this DB Rs fine, everybody's got well, they
should well, if you have customers, you have a database
now it could be just in your outlook.
But hopefully. You know, you got them a little
bit. If you don't have it, then call
Jason, call me. We're going to get you hooked up
on a good CRM. You're going to clean up that
(19:41):
data, you're going to organize it.
We're going to verify everythingand then you can do some
outreach. And so like this DBR outbound
calling thing, I'm a boppy. Is this expensive?
Does this take like years and years to build?
And I'm going to owe you like a second mortgage and my third
child in my right arm. Like, come on, man, you got to
(20:02):
cut me a break. I'm a small business owner.
Yeah, No, I, so I'll, I'll use an example of a recent small
business owner who signed up andwe basically did an assessment
of his business and we identified that right now he's
the sole person doing all the calls.
He's being the receptionist. He's, you know, he's, he's
wearing 5 different hats trying to build his business.
(20:23):
And he was like, Jason, I'm considering hiring additional
people. I'm considering hiring a
receptionist, I'm considering hiring a customer support person
to manage, you know, my, my website inquiries.
And I'm looking maybe to hire, you know, maybe two or three
sales reps to do outbound sales calls for me.
And I was like, well, we've built what we call a virtual AI
(20:44):
workforce. So we can basically help you to
not only one no longer have to do recruiting, no longer have to
do hiring, no longer have to train, no longer have to pay
taxes on employees and payroll and pay for sick days and health
days and all those things. So I showed him a side by side
(21:04):
comparison of what he would, what he would pay if he were to
hire those people and what he would pay in comparison to what
hiring our AI workforce. And I showed him a $13,000 a
month savings by leveraging and using our solution.
So it's clear when you look at like when you're looking at, OK,
upfront cost and fees, yeah, there's going to be an upfront
(21:27):
fee to build voice AI, right? But as you continue to use it,
it's doing more than what the average human can do, right?
It's doing more phone calls, it's fielding more inbound
calls. It's converting at a higher
percentage. It's on brand every time.
It's on script every time, and it's following the exact
prompts. You don't ever have to call it
(21:48):
and go, hey, did you make those phone calls to those sales
opportunities? Yeah, right.
And that's where I mean that it's got to be built out, right?
It's got to be if, if I'm a chiropractor, I got to build
that out versus. If I'm a dentist.
And I mean, I'm sure there's some library, some, some
existing things you can maybe front end load it.
(22:09):
But is that where like do you sit down and in like, if I'm a
chiropractor, you're going to interview me, you know, like
how, what, what, what does this entail?
Teaching it how to be a good virtual employee.
First thing. So the first thing we can do,
I'll, I'll use this like let's say you're wanting to hire,
(22:30):
you're a chiropractor wanting tohire a receptionist, right?
So the first thing that I'll do is I'll have our AI scrape your
website and basically learn all of the information about your
website in a matter of minutes. So it's immediately
knowledgeable on day one. So you don't have to go through
the process of training and and helping them to understand all
the key things about your business.
(22:51):
Right, but most people have mediocre websites that aren't
going to tell them a whole lot. Yep.
And then the next thing I would say to you, Wes, is do you have
a sales script in a process thatyour current receptionist or
past receptionist already did? Most people do not.
Yeah. And then, right, right, right.
Yeah. I mean, they're winging it.
Yeah. So process of elimination, this
(23:11):
is where the assessment comes in.
What do you have? What do you not have?
Right? Yeah.
What's your process? How are you currently fielding
phone calls? How many calls are you taking
inbound right now? Do you have any call tracking
that you're, you know, you're monitoring, you know, so all
those key things are important data points for us to understand
of how we can help to support that customer, right.
And a lot of people are still using call centers.
(23:33):
And I'm like, Oh my goodness, that's that is becoming a thing
of the past very quickly. Because voice AI is less
expensive and it outperforms most humans by 22,000%.
Are you making up that number? I'm not making up that number.
Because, you know, 69.2% of statistics are made-up on the
spot. Yeah, that one's not made-up.
(23:54):
I actually presented on stage about that and showed an example
of how AI outperforms humans andthat and that statistic by
22,000%. And that's for call centers?
That is for outbound sales agents making phone calls per
week. So outbound call centers or just
outbound? Salespeople outbound call like
(24:16):
so outbound AI agents making phone calls, right?
So compared to the average salesperson who maybe makes 20
or 30 phone calls a day, voice AI can outperform that 22,000%.
Most people wouldn't know what they don't have.
They don't have that many names to even grow 22,000%.
Some do. So the smaller businesses, yes,
(24:38):
small businesses don't have thatbig database.
But big companies, Fortune 500 companies, they have big
databases. They can.
They need that volume and capacity.
And how is that? How are they doing outbound?
Are they doing the same disclaimer?
Are they just saying screw it and just smiling and dialing?
So everyone's a little bit different and we we let them
(24:59):
make the determination of how they're going to use the voice
AI agent. We build the tool, we implement
it and then they can, they have the choice of how they manage
and use it. But we always discourage against
cold calling. That's one key thing you don't
want to do with voice agents is you don't want to do cold
outbound calling. So, you know, people who are in
your database who know like and trust you and have opted in on
(25:21):
your website and are, you know, receiving information from text
messages and phone calls from you already.
Those are what I would call viable leads that you should be
dialing out to. Yeah, yeah.
Cool. And then like it's this
something is for an analogy, right?
Is this like you build a website, you know, WordPress
(25:44):
website on GoDaddy and then you build it the way I want.
Then when I'm ready, I just get I build a open under a GoDaddy
account and you push it to me and then I own it.
Or the is this running on your servers and I have like a
subscription to you forever? Yeah.
How does that work? Yep.
So typically there's a setup feeinvolved where we're building
(26:05):
out the AI agent. And that also depends on how
many agents are we building. Are we building 1 inbound
receptionist? Are we building an outbound
agent? Are we building a sales team of
five different agents and some are bilingual and some can speak
Spanish and German, etcetera, right.
So it really just depends on what they're looking to get done
and the complexity of the bill that they have.
(26:26):
Some, some businesses have really complex needs and logic
that needs to be built into their agent and somehow very
basic, simple stuff like, hey, Iwanted to take phone calls, I
wanted to answer simple questions and I wanted to book
an appointment for me when somebody's interested or
qualified. So the setup is going to be
different based on that. And then there is a monthly
subscription that, again, variesbased on your volume, how many
(26:47):
phone calls you're needing, how many minutes is it taking.
You know, we have some attorneysusing it for, you know, intake
calls, where they're doing, you know, 20-30 minute inbound
interviews with their customers.And they're saving 30 minutes a
time by just having an A voice agent taking and answering and
collecting all the data that a normal human would normally do.
(27:09):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because these things once
they're built, I mean, there's still there's processing fees
and all that, right. So it's not, it's not just this
magical thing. I mean, it is magical, but it's
like there's still assets and, and, and infrastructure that
goes into keeping these going and like, how stable are they?
(27:31):
You know, I can, once this agentis built, does it just run
forever? Is it like my software in this
camera and three years later it's going to die on me?
Well, it is like any software, it always needs to be updated
and monitored and upgraded, right?
So as open AI, which is what theplatform's built on, as it
enhances, we continue to enhanceour software.
(27:51):
So when a client signs up with us, we manage it for them, we
build it, we manage it, and thenthey pay a monthly subscription
for it. And it's based on usage and
number of minutes and number of calls that they need.
And everybody's different on howbig their database is and what
their, you know, their wish listis.
Yeah, interesting. Yeah.
Is there anybody that's too small to use AI?
(28:15):
Yeah, I think that there's, you know, probably startup
businesses should not be diving into this just yet.
Like unless you've got a solid revenue stream and a budget
coming in, you probably need to do things manually.
And initially you need to get your processes down.
You need to feel the pain of like, what it is to do things
manually first. And then once you get to a point
(28:35):
of scalability and you're like, OK, I can either keep doing this
and feeling the pain every day, or I can replace it with
automation and hire an expert like, you know, ourselves.
You know, let's pick one of these.
Let's say somebody just wants better inbound, they want
stability, they want, you know, 24/7, right, because this thing
will will work 24/7. Maybe they maybe they've
(28:57):
outsourced it, you know, for nights and weekends to somewhere
or or they're just not doing it,you know.
Hi, thanks for calling. Leave a message, let's say
somebody. Sets that up.
Can you give me a ballpark on the time it would take?
And let's say I'm a typical business, small business owner.
It's all in my head. You know, I train people when
(29:18):
they quit. I don't know how can I train the
next one? It's not stored anywhere.
It's got a simple 5610 page website, typos, you know, 2019
copyright, social media links are broken, you know.
Yeah, I'm a good guy. When you come see me, everybody
loves me. You know, I would have 4005 star
(29:40):
reviews on Google but I forget to ask for them.
So I have like 6, you know, the last ones from two years ago and
one of them is my mom, you know,so like what is this going to
what am I looking at? Like ballpark is like a few
grand to get started, you know, a couple hundred a month.
Yeah, like typically, Yep. So basically timeline, we
typically say we can build voiceAI agents within a matter of two
(30:02):
to three weeks. It's obviously going to depend
on all those factors that you just mentioned.
You have a functioning website, you have a call script, do you
have, you know, what's all the information that you have?
And if we're building something from scratch, it's probably
closer to three weeks. And this is where the prompting
comes in, building your prompt of what your AI agent is going
to do, right? So you want to, you want to
humanize it too. So you want to give it a name.
(30:23):
So one of our AI agents is namedAva, just like your daughter,
right? You want to.
Top speaker, You're not supposedto share that.
Man, now I got to delete this whole thing.
OK. Well, sorry about that.
Well, she, she's, oh, she's chopped off.
We can't see what you're pointing at.
All I see is a sword. OK, there they are.
(30:45):
There we go. Yeah.
All right, so you give it a name.
All right. Yeah.
So you give it a name, you give it tonality, you give it style,
you know, do you want it to be humorous?
Do you want it to be able to be light hearted?
Do you want it to be more serious?
Right. And so and then what's the
number one thing is what is the action that you want it to be
able to do, right? Like, why?
What are you building this AI agent for?
(31:07):
So you know, having the prompt, having the script, and then
basically if we're building in like an appointment scheduling
solution for them. So it can field questions and it
can qualify leads and then it can basically offer the
opportunity to go into the calendar and book an appointment
or it can send a text message with a link, you know, so
there's a lots of ways of how this can be built out.
(31:29):
So yes, you probably should. If you're a small business
owner, you're probably looking at like some people will do it
for 2500, set up 1000 bucks a month.
A lot of people do it for much higher than that.
So it's all based on the complexity of what you're
looking for. Right.
That's fine. Yeah.
And it's, I mean, it's less expensive than a person and a
lot more accurate and reliable. Exactly.
(31:50):
How hard is it to update, right?Let's say, hey, man, I'm
bleeding here. I got my money's falling off the
table. I got, you know, I need nights
and weekends coverage, you know,can we just, I need like, let's
get this up and running. But now let's say I, I calm
down, like, OK, man, I need, I need to update it.
I got my act together. I've got some documents, I've
(32:11):
recorded some things. We've had some off sites, you
know, the team's giving me input, you know, I've got, you
know, 12 pages to upload or I have, you know, a couple hours
of content from our, our meetings.
I can give you, you know, is that like quick to do?
Do I just send you an MP3 or? Yeah, you can.
(32:33):
Yeah, and it and it just like like this armware for my camera
is is it just get smarter like you know, or can I do that or do
I need you Yeah, team to to update Ava.
Yeah. So we typically manage all of
the updates. Now the reason we do that is
your, your AI agent is based on a knowledge base and everything
(32:53):
that you feed it, right? If you, let's say you give it 2
documents and one document saying that, hey, the right
answer is red, and the other document says the right answer
is blue, right now you have conflicts for the AI agent and
it doesn't know how to answer it.
So typically what we do is we will do conflict checks of the
documents and the information that's being needed for the
agent so that it can respond properly.
(33:16):
And we upload that into the knowledge base, and then we'll
adjust your AI prompt so that you're prompt basically knows
how to address and answer those new questions or those new
things. Or maybe you launched a new
product and you wanted to be able to speak to those things
and you wanted to be able to send text messages with links to
people when they ask about, you know, our AI reputation manager
(33:37):
or whatever it may be. Right?
Yeah. Yeah, and it's what you say.
Is this easier to update and build than an old school and
Fusionsoft campaign? Or is it like similar but
different? Like where would you rate it on
a complexity scale? I would say that it's all based
on the complexity of what you'relooking for it to do.
So I would say it's probably a bit easier because for us, it's
(34:01):
a matter of we already have the structure of your knowledge
base. We can easily upload documents,
but it's making sure that the documents don't conflict with
each other to ensure that the agent knows how to represent you
the correct way. Right, Yeah.
And then sometimes when people just try to throw too much at
it, it's it just, it has to havethe proper structure.
Just like in an automation sequence, you got to have the
(34:22):
right infrastructure, the right workflow, the right tags, the
right sequence and order of things that you wanted to do.
Same type of thing with an agentyou wanted to follow up a
particular process or sales script or structure.
Right. Yeah, Man, you got me thinking.
Because like, I hate. Answering my phone, I get so
many spam calls, but some peopledo leave voicemails.
(34:43):
And I'm like, I'm slow getting to them.
I know I should be better. Yeah.
Grandpa, man, I've been at this a long time.
Yeah. They're like maybe I need, maybe
I need one of these and let people call me and.
Chat. With digital W, yes, absolutely.
We need AI W at the forefront ofyour business, your website,
everything. Now you got me thinking, man,
(35:07):
don't make You're not supposed to make me think.
Aren't you supposed to have all the answers?
You're supposed to make my life easier.
Well, that's where the gear start turning and then you start
going, how can I deploy this in my business?
And that's what happens with every business owner I talk
with. As they start the gear, start
turning, they start seeing the connections, they start going,
OK, I was planning on hiring. I don't need to do that anymore.
(35:28):
I was planning on, you know, having that talk with our sales
Rep because they haven't been hitting their quota and they're
not making the amount of calls they should be, right?
We don't have to do any of that anymore.
When you build the right agent and you set it up and you
structure it to be on autopilot.And it could be on autopilot as
easy as like when someone fills out a form on your website, a
contact us form. And again, making sure that you
(35:51):
have the consent and the proper opt in, you can trigger out a
voice agent, right? And say, hey, thanks for
contacting the automation agency, right?
So there's many, many ways that you can leverage and use this.
And that's why we call it an AI workforce because it's not just
one thing. The business center I referenced
earlier we, we helped him to implement an inbound
(36:11):
receptionist and outbound agent and an AI chat bot that sits on
his site. So now he has three different
ways of AI engaging, capturing and booking appointments and
following up with his leads for him.
Yeah, and I've always said that like with Infusionsoft and
HubSpot, you know, it's like because it's so it can be
overwhelming, right? You think like all these
(36:33):
campaigns and if then variables and do I add them to a list?
Do I add them to a static list, a dynamic list so they get an
e-mail? Do I add them to slag?
Do I reassign the owner? Do I do a round Robin lead
assignment? Oh, I don't know.
It's like just start, you know, I tell people find the simplest,
most irritating thing, you know,'cause I, I'm terrible at goal
(36:55):
setting, but I'm fantastic at anti goal setting.
You know, it's like, I hate this.
Can you make that go away? So now if everything I hate goes
away, then I should be living myideal dream, goal filled life.
Right. That's right.
So it's like, let's pick just anirritating nuisance, but
something that has to get done and let's make that go away.
(37:17):
And then you'll start thinking in terms of systems and
processes and the. Second one will be easier and
easier and easier. Yep.
And the thing that I always recommend to us is you want to
have multiple channels of AI andcommunication, right?
So most people are just doing e-mail marketing, right?
And they're relying on that. So you're only as good as your
your open rate and your click through rate, right?
(37:40):
People who aren't opening the database, that's typically, in
most cases, 70% of your databaseisn't seeing your message.
So you should be thinking about another channel.
So we also built out a conversational text message AI
where people can text in and they can have a conversation
with our SMSAI bot that'll answer questions and it will
(38:00):
follow up with them and book appointments, send them links to
information. It's pretty powerful what you
can do, right? So have multi channel marketing
as a part of this process with AI, but you typically can start
with one and then build upon that.
Yeah, so we had talked about doing a demo, but I dude, let's
just give me your number. You want to be able to text in
(38:20):
right and experience. It.
Yeah, So what? What do you want them to text
to? So I want you to grab your phone
right now. Wes, that's you too.
All right. And I want you to text the word
agency to 947. Agency hold on.
SO 947. 77777332. Text the word.
(38:43):
Agency. Yeah, text the word agency.
All right, so and you can also call into that.
Catching Fire? Yep.
You can also call that number 947-777-7332 and you'll be able
to speak with our our AI agent, Ava.
Hey WAVY Hand, welcome to the automation agency.
(39:09):
Who am I speaking with? Big Daddy West.
It better call me Big Daddy West.
If you submit it like that, it will.
But it's green, man. I want the blue bubble.
Text. Well, you know, I I want a
million things to West, but you know, we got to start somewhere.
Thank you Big Daddy W what's thebest e-mail to reach you at?
(39:29):
Dang, our SMS AI is already capturing your information what
you want to be called by? I gave them your e-mail though.
I wanted to fix my camera. Oh well.
Well, that it can't do. This will be here tomorrow,
yeah. Now, do you put these delays in
on purpose or is that just how it is?
We we do that humanizes it a bit.
If it's too fast, then it's going to feel a little bit more
(39:50):
robotic. But don't people know I mean.
Well, I mean the people listening to your podcast and
texting in, yes, but most peopledon't.
Some people still don't. It needs to give me those
little. Dots like it's thinking.
Yeah, yeah. I hear you.
OK. Yeah.
So I mean it just builds it out,right?
And just and and you can build as many steps as you want.
(40:11):
Yep, for sure. And you can have it go through
this, the process, the script, but what's happening is it's
captured that information the moment you text in.
It captured your phone number, created a contact record for you
in our CRM. It then captured Big Daddy W as
your name and then as you entered in your e-mail address
it stored that in the e-mail field.
(40:32):
And then from there we can trigger all sorts of different
automation based on where we want to go with it.
Sure, right. So, all right, well, should we
do a live demo real quick with Ava?
Should I? Should I call her?
All right, let me call her. You just call on the same
number. Yep.
And is this. Just yours for demos or you're
not using this? Hey Ava, I'm here sitting with
(40:54):
Big Daddy West on his podcast and we're talking about voice
agents. How can you help Wes, who's been
known as the Sales Whisperer, domore sales with voice AI?
Put it closer, I lost you go theother way.
Ava, repeat that. Ava yeah, share more details
because I think Big Daddy W is still on the fence about AI.
He he's always knocking the people who are doing AI because
(41:16):
he's an old school sales guy. So how do you how do you bring,
you know, how do you teach an old dog new tricks Jujitsu?
Oh, I'm sorry. He said jiu jitsu.
He was interrupting you but you keep going.
Should we show? Him how it rolls in action.
Ava, I think you just proved thepoint of how Wes was
interrupting with his jiu jitsu,which he does often because he's
(41:38):
on the mat every day. And I think you just proved a
point how your dynamic you can respond to things based on what
people are saying to you. So maybe tell Wes a funny jiu
jitsu joke if you can. He's shaking his head no.
So I think you didn't impress him on that one, but you
impressed him otherwise. Thanks, Ava.
(41:58):
Should have quit while you were ahead.
Yeah, she had you big daddy Wes.There you go, I was sold.
Take my money. Yeah, pretty crazy though,
right? Like dynamically, I gave her
your name. She had humor involved.
She dynamically responded when we interjected with jiu jitsu.
She changed her her approach andpitch to tie into something that
(42:22):
is, you know, something that you're an advocate of and and
passionate about, right. Yeah, very cool.
Pretty crazy stuff. This is what we're doing all
day, every day is we're helping business owners to implement
voice AI, SMSAI, e-mail, AIAI, social media, AI, reputation,
like you name it. We're we're building AI until
(42:43):
almost every aspect of all the small business owner challenges
that we have and the things you don't want to do anymore.
Yeah, so, yeah, so I got the reply.
Thanks for confirming Big Daddy W were you interested in
anything specific like help withAI powered social media
management, AI reviews website? So a bunch of options.
So like how long, How many iterations do you have on this
(43:04):
one in particular? Not many.
So right now we're kind of isolating to about 5 different
product offerings that are all focused around AI.
So I just mentioned a few of those.
Yeah, but. Like after a few more replies is
like, hey, let's book a call or something, yeah.
It's designed to kind of get to that point where the goal is to
obviously convert the lead and the opportunity.
(43:25):
And then again, because your nowyour information's now been
captured in our CRM, we can build a slew of automation that
happens. So a couple of days later, send
you an e-mail. Send e-mail.
Phone call, right? Assign A tag.
Hey, call this person. Because they didn't.
They're not opting in or whatever.
Yeah. And until until, you know,
basically you say uncle or you achieve the goal that we've set
(43:47):
out to accomplish, it can continue to follow up.
And we build that cadence based on every business.
And every business is a little bit different.
Custom home builders have a longsales cycle.
So you expand out your time of communication and you know,
things that are shorter sales cycles, you might have a higher,
you know, outbound ratio of calls and texts and follow up
and, you know, showcasing the things.
(44:09):
And it also depends on, you know, the business owner's sense
of urgency and need, you know, do they have a bleeding neck
issue and they need help right away.
So that's that's the beauty of automation and workflow
automation build out that we cando and customize for every
business. Right, I like it.
All right. Should we mention your website
or do you use somewhere by to call or text?
(44:32):
Yeah, they can. They can go to our website.
It's automation dot agency. But yeah, I encourage you guys
to call in to Ava 947332. You can text the word agency
just like Wes did, and you can learn more about.
Us there should be a big daddy Wes opt in, but you we didn't
discuss that. We you know, we kind of hit this
kind of quick. So, you know, I appreciate you
(44:53):
being flexible. We can.
We can build one for you. How about we build one for you,
For Big Daddy? West Oh, look at that.
That's an option, man. I don't want to drag you down.
Man. This was all good.
This was good stuff. Yeah, for sure.
I knew I was right, man. I knew you were smart, dude.
So this is cool. Yeah, good stuff.
And I can see you, I can hear you got a little Halo going.
(45:15):
It's it's just perfect. That's right, I got a little
glow behind me, you know, littleambiance.
Ambiance. Little thin sway.
That's right. Oh, man.
All right. Well, Jason Benedict, are you in
Scottsdale or Phoenix? Where are you?
Yeah, I'm pretty much South of Scottsdale.
I'm in Chandler, AZ. Yeah, my wife and I started a
(45:37):
business back in teen, been helping small businesses.
We've helped support more than 5000 small businesses in the
last 11 years now. Very nice.
Yeah. That's why I keep you in my
Rolodex man. That's right, I see you opening
the emails and getting the text messages.
You can't escape. That's right.
(45:59):
Cool, man. Well, Jason Benedict all the way
from Chandler Automation dot agency.
Thanks for coming on this new show, which I'll figure out a
name eventually. All right.
All right, Big Daddy W, How about that Big Daddy West AI
discovery or something, you know?
Big daddy W AI musings by big daddy W I'm I'm a plug it into
(46:21):
Cheji. How about Big Daddy W discovers
AI? But do they want to see me
discovered, or do they want to discover it?
Well, I think when they see you discover it, they want to
discover it. Who was that dude like Bear
Gryllis? I got to look up him, be like.
You know, but. Discover AI with Big Daddy West.
There you go, discover. Binocular or micro?
(46:42):
Is it a binocular? Maybe 1 Binocular, 1 Microscope
or magnifying glass Like, you know, big.
Picture I think one eye has to be a Terminator eye and the
other has to be human or half jiu jitsu half business just
like your profile photo. You got me thinking now.
All right, that's what I do. That's what you do, all right,
man. Hey, why don't you go sell
(47:02):
something? I think I just did.
I'm just waiting for you to publish this video.
I got to hit stop. Here we go, ready to stop.
So we hit stop. Now, a head start.
This is a day. Well, made me two days after my
intro. But look, there it is, the
certificate. The belt is on the patio airing
out in its usual place, but the black belt.
(47:23):
I hope you like this episode. Got one already in the can.
Chris Daigle might publish that pretty quickly as well.
Back-to-back here, I'm talking with more people about AI.
Talking with my old buddy Roger Bauer.
He was the guy that I first started podcasting with back in
2009. We created Southern Social
Media, but we only did a few episodes.
(47:44):
But man, it was really hard to podcast in O 9.
Then I started for real in 2013 with the Sales podcast.
I'm stuck with it, but he and I are going to do some episodes on
AI and I'm still I'm spending damn near every, every free
moment getting deeper and deeperinto it and but again, learning
(48:06):
how to do simple things. Everybody tries to make things
too complex. I forget what, you know, so
advanced it's simple like a rebel Canon camera, one of
those, I don't know, so advancedit's simple.
The little things make a big difference.
Always say, you know, small hinges, swing big doors.
Figure out the little things that irritate you and eliminate
(48:29):
them, get them out of your life.Then you have more time, more
energy, more focus for the big things, doing the deep work.
So you know, what can you what kind of tools can you build and
look, because this it's so big, right?
The world is so big and powerful, so many options with
this, with this AI stuff. You really have to look at
detach for a moment when when you're going through something
(48:50):
and it could be something that you like, but for sure something
that irritates you. Take a step back and I have this
out of body experience. Look down and say, can AI take
this off my plate? When you're focused, you know
when when something has meaning,when it's relevant.
Then the learning begins. The the drive to find the answer
begins just like in in jujitsu, you know, we always laugh.
(49:14):
I got to tell my instructor like, hey, why did you ever show
us this? Like I've always shown you this,
but depending on your game and where you are in your
development, you know, like I say, baseball, everybody knows
baseball. You know, if I'm in a hitting
slump and you're teaching me howto field grounders and I'm
decent at grounders, you know, Imay not pay attention to the
little nuances because I'm up inmy head like, how do I, how do I
(49:37):
hit a breaking ball? How do I hit a curveball away,
you know? And so I'm just, I'm focused on
my problem now. I go and I fix that batting
problem. Now I'm like.
Oh, look at this. You know, go back to your coach,
Hey, look at this thing I learned about fielding, Dude, we
did that three weeks ago. You know, so you've got to be
(49:58):
perceptive, open, receptive to the message, to the lesson.
So if something's bothering you right there, figure out how can
that be resolved? And, you know, like my own
podcast here, there's a lot of steps.
And so don't. I've got a spreadsheet with
about 15 columns of things that have to get done that I track.
(50:19):
And so to automate all of it is a tall task.
It requires about 3 different pieces.
Well, four pieces of different software, some bouncing around.
And, and now I still don't thinkit could be totally automated.
So instead break it into pieces and parts.
Can this Riverside video or transcription or show notes or
(50:40):
time stamps be pulled out and formatted?
You know, with that markdown language?
It doesn't have the extra carriage returns.
That's nice. That saves me time, you know.
So let's say there's 1518 steps to doing this.
Can I automate three of them? Can I automate 6 of them?
If I can, then then those thingswill be automated forever and I
(51:02):
will gain experience on how to do it.
So then as I look at other things throughout my business,
I'm quicker at automating those.So it's the exact same thing
I've done with with marketing automation, sales automation
platforms and Fusionsoft, You know, keep HubSpot, Entreport,
active Campaign, Nimble now has automations.
Almost everything has automations down.
(51:23):
Zoho, even MailChimp, so you know, and hey, way back in 2012,
Salesforce bought exact Target, which is an e-mail tool, and
they previously in 2012 had bought Pardot, which does
automation. So the, you know, the £800
gorilla has known for well over a decade that you've got to
automate, you got to have, you know, having a CRM is fine.
(51:45):
It's, it's that source of truth.But how do, what do you do with
it? How do you take action on that?
You had this information, this field changed.
Now what? How do you know it's acted upon
properly in the correct time by the right person?
How do you know you need some type of automation, a building
AI agents. And there's a difference between
(52:06):
AI and AI agents, right? AI is ChatGPT.
It's it's a, it's an app. It's a static tool that's
sitting there waiting for you tolog in and use it.
OK, It's it's a hammer. You know, it's just sitting
there ready for you to pick it up and go drive a nail.
An AI agent is a a manufacturingline, right?
(52:27):
An assembly line with robots doing all the picking and
sorting the creation. So you build an AI agent to
execute the tasks that you were even doing manually on AI.
OK, so that's why you know, I'm linking to the tools that I'm
using. I've always been an affiliate of
(52:47):
different things. So when you see something, if
you like it, please click my links.
I'll get paid on that. That's how I've made most of my
money over since 2006. Thousand 8 is being a certified
partner, being an affiliate, a reseller of different tools.
So I find them you pay the same price you would if you bought
it, you know, from the the organization.
(53:08):
But if I brought it to you, you know, then I get paid.
You pay the same. And if you let me know you
bought it, then I throw in little bonuses.
You know, I give extra consulting.
I'll give give you access to some tools, some digital
programs. So let me know and I'll help you
out right. You scratch my back, I scratch
your back. But I hope you like this
episode. Like I said, stay tuned.
I'm getting my arms around this.I'm excited about it.
(53:29):
I think I'm going to be changingthe the inner circle and the
focus will be more on this. But still at the end of the day,
this is to all this to make a sale.
There's a human being on the other end of the screen.
People have forgotten about thatprobably the last 30 years with
the Internet, with social media.OK, so how is AI going to help
you connect? And I'm going to show some
(53:51):
examples already got some on my website.
AI create some good content, so informative, not overly
emotional, not super deep and connecting, but it's a good way
to get started. And so can you use these tools
to accentuate and accelerate andenhance what you already know?
If you do that and you, you remain human.
(54:13):
You keep your humanity. The Sky's the limit.
OK, If I can help you, reach out.
Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.
I'll go sell something.
Hey, welcome to episode 723 or episode 1, I don't know, but if
it's the sales podcast at 7:23, if it's the new sales with AI
podcast, it's episode 1 1/2. Not real sure we're still in in
flux here, but welcome. I've got a good friend of mine,
Jason Benedict. I've known him for many years
(00:20):
through the future soft community.
Known a lot of these guys, right?
Just had Jason Jeremy Shapiro ona second time also know him
through infusion solve. You know, it was a powerful
platform back in the day. It's it affected everyone that
that committed to it made money OK.
(00:42):
And and those that used it just committed to using it.
Well, they made money. Their lives got easier.
They grew their sales without growing their staff.
And I've been talking about this, but you know, it's been a
couple of weeks and my fervor, my passion, my excitement, my
fear, my interest, it continues to grow around AI.
(01:02):
And so my goal is moving forward.
I'm probably changing everything, probably going to
change the inner circle to be more AI focused.
You know, I'm changing with the times.
They're still human to the otherend of the screen.
So we have to remember that. But how we reach them, man, it's
like it feels like 1995 all overagain.
And I just made a post and an e-mail about that.
(01:23):
You know, Bill Gates wrote his book The Road Ahead in 1995, and
he was right about a lot of things.
And so it feels like that again.But while it took many, many
years for the Internet to catch on and high speed Internet and
high speed mobile, then smartphones and social media, AI
is growing at an exponential rate compared to that.
(01:46):
So what business owners and professional salespeople and
entrepreneurs and executives, even military, I've got clients,
you know, in the military, you've got to be using AI.
And it's like, what does that mean?
And the reality is it's, it's not as crazy as it sounds.
You know, AI like a stand alone,everybody knows ChatGPT or maybe
(02:08):
Grok by X, Jim and I by Google. Yeah.
When you use AI, when you type aquestion, it gives you an
answer. That that's AI, that's a tool,
it's an app. It gives you some research and
gives you an answer. OK.
An AI agent is basically a pieceof code that you create that
(02:30):
runs whether you're using the computer, the device or not.
OK, like e-mail marketing. I've I've got web forms to
contact us or you know, get my free report that is
asynchronous. It does not rely on me.
That thing is always running. You can always opt in and then
you'll be tagged into my you place into my CRM, tagged with
prospect newsletter, blah, blah,blah.
(02:51):
Whatever it is you got you requested for free or maybe you
made a purchase and then automation kicks in.
Well, AI is doing kind of the same thing, but instead of with
ACRM being so restrictive, right?
e-mail, adjust a property in your CRM, maybe send a text to
the person. AI just does many more things.
(03:13):
AI agents are just like the nameimplies or says it's it's an
agent. What is an agent?
You know, it's a secret agent, James Bond that goes off and
give him give him instructions and he finds the bad guy and
kills him. OK.
An AI agent, artificial intelligence agent, you program
it to do what you need and it goes and does it.
(03:33):
And, but people think of these huge scripts and prompts and
programs. But it could be very simple
things. Editing a field in your CRM,
connecting to Google Sheets and,and updating a spreadsheet.
It can monitor the news and bring you articles and then it
can summarize those. And maybe every Monday morning
at 6:00 AM, you know, give you updates it can give you, you can
(03:55):
create draft emails, draft blogs, draft PDFSI mean there's
almost no limit to what these things can do.
So if you're paying well, I would say a low level person,
but honestly, these things are replacing radiologists or at
least augmenting them. I mean that counting, but but
for starters, right, if you havean overseas assistant that you
(04:16):
pay to create Instagram carousels to update databases,
you can build an AI agent to replace them.
Now, as this grows, you, you're going to need probably that same
VA or someone a little more adept to manage your AI agents.
So things are just changing. You know, I used to pay someone
(04:39):
to transcribe this podcast. Well, you know, Riverside has AI
and gives me a pretty good transcript.
Opus Clips chops it up, gives melittle snippets.
Riverside using it's AI gives metime stamps.
So, but now I still need help grabbing all that stuff and
publishing it. But I'm building AI tools to
(04:59):
take away bits and pieces of that and eventually it's going
to do the whole thing for me. So that's why I see.
That's why I'm talking about it more and more.
OK. Because in 2008 I found a
Fusionsoft that changed my life.I saw the power of just what
they were automating e-commerce lead generation, lead nurturing,
affiliate marketing and these AItools do 1000 literally 1000
(05:20):
times more than what Infusionsoft was doing back
then. And back then it was $5000 down
at 299 a month. It was complex.
It was hard to get up and running the the sequences you
made, the automation you made. You cannot be cloned and.
They could be. Cloned internally, but they
couldn't be shared but but then they came out with a campaign
builder 2011 and I've been selling campaigns that I've
(05:41):
created. I sell them and can push them to
other people's accounts. So AI lets me do the same thing.
Now it can be $100, it can be $10,000, but it's you own those
agents and the cost is because of my mind thinking about what
can be created in the speed right.
I'm literally spending all day everyday on these things.
(06:04):
And so yes, you, you can spend 30 or 60 or 90 days and go
figure this stuff out but how much money what's, what's the
opportunity cost of waiting 90 days to figure this out and
deploy it, You know so let's come to a happy medium a pay me.
I'll, I'll get it up and runninginstall it teach you how to do
it and then you don't owe anybody anything ever again.
Then you can go recreate those. So that's where this is headed.
(06:27):
OK, but, but I've known Jason for many years.
I saw him last November. He's he's ahead of the curve on
AI. So I have him give us some, some
stories, some examples, short little case studies.
So if you need some help with things, you know, I'll put an
affiliate link to, to what he's doing.
Please use that or just mention that you, you heard him on, on
this episode. He's got different packages.
(06:47):
He's more of an agency, right? I'm more of a consultant advisor
doing smaller things for small and big companies.
He's working with larger small companies, if that makes sense.
But thanks for listening. OK, thanks for hanging on.
I've been a little sporadic withthe episodes last month.
Got my black belt the day after my interview with Jason.
(07:11):
So that's fun. 8 1/2 years grinding.
I've been teaching the kids class.
I'm actually late now, so I'm gonna wrap this intro up.
I'll do the outro when I get back, so you'll see me in a
different shirt. But thanks for tuning in, you
know, please reach out on my website.
You know, I've got links to my calendar, book a time.
Let's talk. Let's figure out.
Tell me what your budget is. I'll help you figure this out,
(07:35):
get you started. And look, you're going to spend
a little money. You're going to spend 500 to
$5000 at least to get this sorted out with me, OK?
Or spend your time and figure itout for free.
But I'll go through your process.
I'll ask questions you probably haven't thought of, and I'll
bring 30 years of experience to expedite things.
But then the different subscriptions to the tools, they
(07:56):
may be 20-50 bucks a month. There may be ongoing fees based
on usage. You know, ten, 20-50 bucks a
month. But I mean, it's not thousands,
OK, Certainly not to get started.
So dig in. OK, Leverage me, reach out while
you can. I imagine this is I'm going to
get busy. I've been busy learning, right?
But now I've already got calls from one post and one e-mail
(08:19):
and, and I've only just begun. So again, thanks for sticking it
out. That's what I'm up to, right
Still around sales and marketing.
And I've always been about helping professional
salespeople, sales managers, sales leaders, corporate
leaders, entrepreneurs, you know, sell more, faster, higher
marginal, less stress and have more fun doing it.
And so AI is the most obvious way, the most profitable way to
(08:45):
make that happen. So.
Thanks for coming on this journey with me.
Now let's bring on Jason, Jason Benedict co-owner of automation
agency. Welcome to the sales podcast.
I don't even know the I don't know what I'm calling this
anymore. The sales with AI podcast AI
unravelled podcast AI demystified, AI for salespeople,
(09:06):
AI for grey haired people in sales.
What are we going to call this I?
Don't know you pointed at me andsaid grey hair though.
I think you dye your hair maybe?No.
Not yet. You're younger than me.
Don't remind me, man. What is happening?
You and I. What is this?
It's July. When were we hanging out?
Was it October? November.
I think so. November.
(09:27):
It was November. Scottsdale.
You. Had some AI stuff going on.
I put AI, put a shout out here. We are going to talk about
technology now. I got a new camera coming in.
I had my my Bluetooth Airpods cutting out yesterday so who
knows what's going to happen. I need I need technology help.
Can you help me? Can you help even someone like
(09:48):
me or am I like a lost cause? We can.
You're somewhat of a lost cause,but there's hope.
All right, this AI is so powerful even I can do it.
Yes 100% as long as you have a cell phone and fingers and a
voice. This was.
Golly, I can't believe it's like8 months ago you had your Santa.
That was an AI answering service, right?
(10:10):
Voice AI and yeah, voice AI. Yep.
And it was for kids to talk to Santa.
Look, there goes my video. Yep, I'm just going to leave it.
We'll keep going. What?
You and I have been in the infusions soft world.
Do you do you work with other platforms?
Yep, yeah, we service pretty much any CRM system.
OK, but I, I met you through thethrough the infusions soft
(10:33):
community. And so you and I have been
automating systems for entrepreneurs, the SMB space,
right, for a while. When did you, when did AI, when
did the light bulb go off for you?
Because it's only recently gone off for me.
So yeah, you're way ahead. Yeah.
What was that moment? Do you remember?
(10:54):
Yep. So I think the first step was
when Chachi BT released, right? So that was kind of like the
first touch of real AI. Hey, welcome back.
And this super software, right? Everybody, they they can live my
pain. I just open the Logitech brio
controller. I don't do anything.
I just open it and it goes back to focus.
(11:15):
But I got I got a new one on order, but you know, I didn't
want to hold back. You were ready.
You were going let's do it, let's do it.
Yeah. So ChatGPT was the first kind of
iteration into it and and understanding like, oh wow.
When did that come out? What was it, 2022 I think.
I don't know. It's been that long.
You've been using it for three years.
(11:36):
Yeah, about that. I think it was, it might have
been 2023 and I think it maybe came out 2022, but that was like
my first kind of diving into AI and I was like.
Was that kind of like the first consumer grade?
Because I mean, AI has been around for a while, but just
like the Internet, right? DARPA net or whatever.
I mean, the Internet was around for decades before, you know, we
(11:59):
start getting dial up and then high speed.
So is this kind of the same thing like the big brains and
the government are using it now?It's like, OK, let's, let's give
it to the peons. Yep, exactly.
They opened it up to us and we started playing with it and as
soon as we got into that, we're like, wow, this is powerful.
So we started using it for content for idea generation or.
(12:21):
Was it good? Was it good then?
It was, in my opinion, it was good and it's continued to only
get better. Obviously, the more that we
prompted that we train it, we teach it, the more that we
interact with it, it learns fromit and it gets our brand voice
down better. So, so it's, it's pretty Dang.
It was pretty good back then andit's only better now.
(12:42):
Right. But even back then, could you,
could you train it right? Because I'm, I'm seeing how you
build an agent now, how I can have it like read my book,
scrape my, my blog and get my voice.
Like how long has that been a thing?
That's a good question. I think it was probably a year
(13:04):
and a half ago when we started using it for that specifically,
right? And then about a year ago is
when actually March of last yearis when we started diving into
voice AI and we said, wow, OK, this is powerful from a sales
perspective, a customer service perspective, having the ability
to do inbound and outbound AI agents.
(13:26):
But we started selling them to our clients and building
solutions to help them with outbound calling, right?
Inbound calling, fielding questions, answering FAQs, but
then also developing sales scripts for it, right?
And doing it from a sales perspective.
And then as we started diving into voice AI, you mentioned
Santa's AI. That's one of our other products
(13:48):
that we created. Obviously my wife and I love
helping to support families and kids and it's something that we
wanted to build as a, a fun thing for kids to enjoy Santa
Claus. So we built Santa's AI, so
anybody can go to Santa's dot AIand they can put in their credit
card and they can get a phone call from Santa Claus himself.
(14:12):
Nice. But how?
How can the average business owner use this?
You know, you talk about outbound, Aren't there rules and
regulations about doing outboundcalls with AI?
There is, yeah. So when I talk about outbound, I
typically talk about hitting andtapping your existing database
first and foremost, right? That's the first place I
(14:33):
typically start is what we call DBR campaigns or database
reactivation campaigns. So most business owners don't
realize they have a goldmine sitting right inside of their
database and most of them haven't re engaged and touched
those contacts that have been sitting on their database for
years. And if they have re engaged
them, it's probably been throughe-mail, right?
(14:53):
Or they may have hired, you know, a salesperson to try and
attempt to do phone calls and they may be made, you know,
20-30 calls in a week. And our AI agents can make
thousands of phone calls within an hour if we wanted to, right?
So, so outbound typically startswith like database reactivation.
If they have a database, the other outbound strategy you can
do is so anybody spending lead like spending ad dollars on
(15:16):
Google Meta, right? You have inbound leads coming
into you. The moment that lead comes into
your database, you can out. You can trigger an outbound
phone call to it as long as you got the consent on your form
saying I agree to you know, emails, texts and AI calls.
OK, taking some notes here because I got somebody in mind
for this DBR. Yeah, so because it's true,
(15:40):
people, they work so hard. It's like it's always, how do I
get the next one? And it's like, why don't you
think about how do you keep the existing ones and maximize your
existing ones? And so if somebody is in my
database and even an existing customer, I mean, do I, do I
automatically have the right to call them?
(16:01):
Or does the system, since they're a customer, you know,
does it say, hey, Jason, this isWes's AI, you know, is it OK if
we chat for a second? Are you just, I did a little
disclaimer right up front and they're like, oh.
OK, cool. Yeah, Yeah, you can.
You can build a basically a disclaimer at the beginning and
it says, hey, this is Ava, an AIassistant with the automation
agency. I'm calling out on behalf of
(16:23):
Jason Benedict. Do you do you have a second to
chat? Right.
So right away, you're upfront, you're transparent, and they
know that they're speaking with an AI agent.
Is that is that required by law?Is that the recommended best
practice? Like what are you seeing?
So I'm not an attorney and I'm not going to dabble into that.
What I would recommend is that you talk with your attorney
(16:46):
about doing voice AI and what the legalities and regulations
are around. Them Well, I know you're not an
attorney, but you've built this for people, right?
Yep. And like in, at least in
Arizona, is it? Is it the law to disclaim it or
not? Yeah, you should disclaim it.
The the legality is that most outbound calls you should
(17:07):
disclaim it. Right, Yeah, OK, that's fine.
Yeah, yeah. And I and I got to imagine most
people don't mind. I mean, if it's a company that
you like, you know, like my jiu jitsu, right.
We get emails, we get text messages, you know, and I know
it's a bulk message. They're giving announcement
like. Oh, OK.
And I bet some people will complain.
Can you make me an AI that'll that'll open up my Logitech Rio?
(17:30):
Look at this. I click on it, click on the
camera, does it change? Look at that.
There we go, it's back. Why?
I guess things fail all right things.
Yeah. Things get old.
Fine, just like me. So to clarify on that, so like
for Santa's AI as an example, right, when we advertise for
Santa's AI, people know that they're opting in to request for
(17:51):
that call, right, So on. That they know right up front.
Yeah. So, but again, most people
struggle with lead generation. So you know that they would
still have to run ads, get people coming in, get that
awareness. So I'm talking about what can
they do right now, right, 'causethey're, there's all these
(18:11):
esoteric things, you know, like I was a meteorologist in the
air. Force.
Right. And people are like, why didn't
you? Why didn't you be on TV?
And I'm like, 'cause it's hard to get on TV.
Like those are coveted jobs you get in a big market.
They make a lot of money. And was it Al Roker or who's the
guy on on Good Morning America? Whatever.
You know, dude, being the National Weather guy is the
easiest thing in the world. Hey, look over here.
(18:33):
There's it's sunny out West. Oh, it's raining down in
Florida. We got a cold front coming in
the Northeast. Now here's what's happening in
your neck of the woods. OK, so most people out there
talking all their talk yappy yaponline.
It's like you can use AI. Here's 4000 prompts you can use.
You can use AI to generate leads.
(18:55):
You can use AI to scrape a website and people that they
don't know what it means right there.
It's just like, oh, it's sunny in Florida, OK.
Yeah. So it's like how I want to get
granular, right? It's what I want.
It's what I want to do with thiskind of shift, this pivot and
full transparency, you know, people need some, like, true
(19:19):
morsels they can bite onto, right?
So, so I love this DB Rs fine, everybody's got well, they
should well, if you have customers, you have a database
now it could be just in your outlook.
But hopefully. You know, you got them a little
bit. If you don't have it, then call
Jason, call me. We're going to get you hooked up
on a good CRM. You're going to clean up that
(19:41):
data, you're going to organize it.
We're going to verify everythingand then you can do some
outreach. And so like this DBR outbound
calling thing, I'm a boppy. Is this expensive?
Does this take like years and years to build?
And I'm going to owe you like a second mortgage and my third
child in my right arm. Like, come on, man, you got to
(20:02):
cut me a break. I'm a small business owner.
Yeah, No, I, so I'll, I'll use an example of a recent small
business owner who signed up andwe basically did an assessment
of his business and we identified that right now he's
the sole person doing all the calls.
He's being the receptionist. He's, you know, he's, he's
wearing 5 different hats trying to build his business.
(20:23):
And he was like, Jason, I'm considering hiring additional
people. I'm considering hiring a
receptionist, I'm considering hiring a customer support person
to manage, you know, my, my website inquiries.
And I'm looking maybe to hire, you know, maybe two or three
sales reps to do outbound sales calls for me.
And I was like, well, we've built what we call a virtual AI
(20:44):
workforce. So we can basically help you to
not only one no longer have to do recruiting, no longer have to
do hiring, no longer have to train, no longer have to pay
taxes on employees and payroll and pay for sick days and health
days and all those things. So I showed him a side by side
(21:04):
comparison of what he would, what he would pay if he were to
hire those people and what he would pay in comparison to what
hiring our AI workforce. And I showed him a $13,000 a
month savings by leveraging and using our solution.
So it's clear when you look at like when you're looking at, OK,
upfront cost and fees, yeah, there's going to be an upfront
(21:27):
fee to build voice AI, right? But as you continue to use it,
it's doing more than what the average human can do, right?
It's doing more phone calls, it's fielding more inbound
calls. It's converting at a higher
percentage. It's on brand every time.
It's on script every time, and it's following the exact
prompts. You don't ever have to call it
(21:48):
and go, hey, did you make those phone calls to those sales
opportunities? Yeah, right.
And that's where I mean that it's got to be built out, right?
It's got to be if, if I'm a chiropractor, I got to build
that out versus. If I'm a dentist.
And I mean, I'm sure there's some library, some, some
existing things you can maybe front end load it.
(22:09):
But is that where like do you sit down and in like, if I'm a
chiropractor, you're going to interview me, you know, like
how, what, what, what does this entail?
Teaching it how to be a good virtual employee.
First thing. So the first thing we can do,
I'll, I'll use this like let's say you're wanting to hire,
(22:30):
you're a chiropractor wanting tohire a receptionist, right?
So the first thing that I'll do is I'll have our AI scrape your
website and basically learn all of the information about your
website in a matter of minutes. So it's immediately
knowledgeable on day one. So you don't have to go through
the process of training and and helping them to understand all
the key things about your business.
(22:51):
Right, but most people have mediocre websites that aren't
going to tell them a whole lot. Yep.
And then the next thing I would say to you, Wes, is do you have
a sales script in a process thatyour current receptionist or
past receptionist already did? Most people do not.
Yeah. And then, right, right, right.
Yeah. I mean, they're winging it.
Yeah. So process of elimination, this
(23:11):
is where the assessment comes in.
What do you have? What do you not have?
Right? Yeah.
What's your process? How are you currently fielding
phone calls? How many calls are you taking
inbound right now? Do you have any call tracking
that you're, you know, you're monitoring, you know, so all
those key things are important data points for us to understand
of how we can help to support that customer, right.
And a lot of people are still using call centers.
(23:33):
And I'm like, Oh my goodness, that's that is becoming a thing
of the past very quickly. Because voice AI is less
expensive and it outperforms most humans by 22,000%.
Are you making up that number? I'm not making up that number.
Because, you know, 69.2% of statistics are made-up on the
spot. Yeah, that one's not made-up.
(23:54):
I actually presented on stage about that and showed an example
of how AI outperforms humans andthat and that statistic by
22,000%. And that's for call centers?
That is for outbound sales agents making phone calls per
week. So outbound call centers or just
outbound? Salespeople outbound call like
(24:16):
so outbound AI agents making phone calls, right?
So compared to the average salesperson who maybe makes 20
or 30 phone calls a day, voice AI can outperform that 22,000%.
Most people wouldn't know what they don't have.
They don't have that many names to even grow 22,000%.
Some do. So the smaller businesses, yes,
(24:38):
small businesses don't have thatbig database.
But big companies, Fortune 500 companies, they have big
databases. They can.
They need that volume and capacity.
And how is that? How are they doing outbound?
Are they doing the same disclaimer?
Are they just saying screw it and just smiling and dialing?
So everyone's a little bit different and we we let them
(24:59):
make the determination of how they're going to use the voice
AI agent. We build the tool, we implement
it and then they can, they have the choice of how they manage
and use it. But we always discourage against
cold calling. That's one key thing you don't
want to do with voice agents is you don't want to do cold
outbound calling. So, you know, people who are in
your database who know like and trust you and have opted in on
(25:21):
your website and are, you know, receiving information from text
messages and phone calls from you already.
Those are what I would call viable leads that you should be
dialing out to. Yeah, yeah.
Cool. And then like it's this
something is for an analogy, right?
Is this like you build a website, you know, WordPress
(25:44):
website on GoDaddy and then you build it the way I want.
Then when I'm ready, I just get I build a open under a GoDaddy
account and you push it to me and then I own it.
Or the is this running on your servers and I have like a
subscription to you forever? Yeah.
How does that work? Yep.
So typically there's a setup feeinvolved where we're building
(26:05):
out the AI agent. And that also depends on how
many agents are we building. Are we building 1 inbound
receptionist? Are we building an outbound
agent? Are we building a sales team of
five different agents and some are bilingual and some can speak
Spanish and German, etcetera, right.
So it really just depends on what they're looking to get done
and the complexity of the bill that they have.
(26:26):
Some, some businesses have really complex needs and logic
that needs to be built into their agent and somehow very
basic, simple stuff like, hey, Iwanted to take phone calls, I
wanted to answer simple questions and I wanted to book
an appointment for me when somebody's interested or
qualified. So the setup is going to be
different based on that. And then there is a monthly
subscription that, again, variesbased on your volume, how many
(26:47):
phone calls you're needing, how many minutes is it taking.
You know, we have some attorneysusing it for, you know, intake
calls, where they're doing, you know, 20-30 minute inbound
interviews with their customers.And they're saving 30 minutes a
time by just having an A voice agent taking and answering and
collecting all the data that a normal human would normally do.
(27:09):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, because these things once
they're built, I mean, there's still there's processing fees
and all that, right. So it's not, it's not just this
magical thing. I mean, it is magical, but it's
like there's still assets and, and, and infrastructure that
goes into keeping these going and like, how stable are they?
(27:31):
You know, I can, once this agentis built, does it just run
forever? Is it like my software in this
camera and three years later it's going to die on me?
Well, it is like any software, it always needs to be updated
and monitored and upgraded, right?
So as open AI, which is what theplatform's built on, as it
enhances, we continue to enhanceour software.
(27:51):
So when a client signs up with us, we manage it for them, we
build it, we manage it, and thenthey pay a monthly subscription
for it. And it's based on usage and
number of minutes and number of calls that they need.
And everybody's different on howbig their database is and what
their, you know, their wish listis.
Yeah, interesting. Yeah.
Is there anybody that's too small to use AI?
(28:15):
Yeah, I think that there's, you know, probably startup
businesses should not be diving into this just yet.
Like unless you've got a solid revenue stream and a budget
coming in, you probably need to do things manually.
And initially you need to get your processes down.
You need to feel the pain of like, what it is to do things
manually first. And then once you get to a point
(28:35):
of scalability and you're like, OK, I can either keep doing this
and feeling the pain every day, or I can replace it with
automation and hire an expert like, you know, ourselves.
You know, let's pick one of these.
Let's say somebody just wants better inbound, they want
stability, they want, you know, 24/7, right, because this thing
will will work 24/7. Maybe they maybe they've
(28:57):
outsourced it, you know, for nights and weekends to somewhere
or or they're just not doing it,you know.
Hi, thanks for calling. Leave a message, let's say
somebody. Sets that up.
Can you give me a ballpark on the time it would take?
And let's say I'm a typical business, small business owner.
It's all in my head. You know, I train people when
(29:18):
they quit. I don't know how can I train the
next one? It's not stored anywhere.
It's got a simple 5610 page website, typos, you know, 2019
copyright, social media links are broken, you know.
Yeah, I'm a good guy. When you come see me, everybody
loves me. You know, I would have 4005 star
(29:40):
reviews on Google but I forget to ask for them.
So I have like 6, you know, the last ones from two years ago and
one of them is my mom, you know,so like what is this going to
what am I looking at? Like ballpark is like a few
grand to get started, you know, a couple hundred a month.
Yeah, like typically, Yep. So basically timeline, we
typically say we can build voiceAI agents within a matter of two
(30:02):
to three weeks. It's obviously going to depend
on all those factors that you just mentioned.
You have a functioning website, you have a call script, do you
have, you know, what's all the information that you have?
And if we're building something from scratch, it's probably
closer to three weeks. And this is where the prompting
comes in, building your prompt of what your AI agent is going
to do, right? So you want to, you want to
humanize it too. So you want to give it a name.
(30:23):
So one of our AI agents is namedAva, just like your daughter,
right? You want to.
Top speaker, You're not supposedto share that.
Man, now I got to delete this whole thing.
OK. Well, sorry about that.
Well, she, she's, oh, she's chopped off.
We can't see what you're pointing at.
All I see is a sword. OK, there they are.
(30:45):
There we go. Yeah.
All right, so you give it a name.
All right. Yeah.
So you give it a name, you give it tonality, you give it style,
you know, do you want it to be humorous?
Do you want it to be able to be light hearted?
Do you want it to be more serious?
Right. And so and then what's the
number one thing is what is the action that you want it to be
able to do, right? Like, why?
What are you building this AI agent for?
(31:07):
So you know, having the prompt, having the script, and then
basically if we're building in like an appointment scheduling
solution for them. So it can field questions and it
can qualify leads and then it can basically offer the
opportunity to go into the calendar and book an appointment
or it can send a text message with a link, you know, so
there's a lots of ways of how this can be built out.
(31:29):
So yes, you probably should. If you're a small business
owner, you're probably looking at like some people will do it
for 2500, set up 1000 bucks a month.
A lot of people do it for much higher than that.
So it's all based on the complexity of what you're
looking for. Right.
That's fine. Yeah.
And it's, I mean, it's less expensive than a person and a
lot more accurate and reliable. Exactly.
(31:50):
How hard is it to update, right?Let's say, hey, man, I'm
bleeding here. I got my money's falling off the
table. I got, you know, I need nights
and weekends coverage, you know,can we just, I need like, let's
get this up and running. But now let's say I, I calm
down, like, OK, man, I need, I need to update it.
I got my act together. I've got some documents, I've
(32:11):
recorded some things. We've had some off sites, you
know, the team's giving me input, you know, I've got, you
know, 12 pages to upload or I have, you know, a couple hours
of content from our, our meetings.
I can give you, you know, is that like quick to do?
Do I just send you an MP3 or? Yeah, you can.
(32:33):
Yeah, and it and it just like like this armware for my camera
is is it just get smarter like you know, or can I do that or do
I need you Yeah, team to to update Ava.
Yeah. So we typically manage all of
the updates. Now the reason we do that is
your, your AI agent is based on a knowledge base and everything
(32:53):
that you feed it, right? If you, let's say you give it 2
documents and one document saying that, hey, the right
answer is red, and the other document says the right answer
is blue, right now you have conflicts for the AI agent and
it doesn't know how to answer it.
So typically what we do is we will do conflict checks of the
documents and the information that's being needed for the
agent so that it can respond properly.
(33:16):
And we upload that into the knowledge base, and then we'll
adjust your AI prompt so that you're prompt basically knows
how to address and answer those new questions or those new
things. Or maybe you launched a new
product and you wanted to be able to speak to those things
and you wanted to be able to send text messages with links to
people when they ask about, you know, our AI reputation manager
(33:37):
or whatever it may be. Right?
Yeah. Yeah, and it's what you say.
Is this easier to update and build than an old school and
Fusionsoft campaign? Or is it like similar but
different? Like where would you rate it on
a complexity scale? I would say that it's all based
on the complexity of what you'relooking for it to do.
So I would say it's probably a bit easier because for us, it's
(34:01):
a matter of we already have the structure of your knowledge
base. We can easily upload documents,
but it's making sure that the documents don't conflict with
each other to ensure that the agent knows how to represent you
the correct way. Right, Yeah.
And then sometimes when people just try to throw too much at
it, it's it just, it has to havethe proper structure.
Just like in an automation sequence, you got to have the
(34:22):
right infrastructure, the right workflow, the right tags, the
right sequence and order of things that you wanted to do.
Same type of thing with an agentyou wanted to follow up a
particular process or sales script or structure.
Right. Yeah, Man, you got me thinking.
Because like, I hate. Answering my phone, I get so
many spam calls, but some peopledo leave voicemails.
(34:43):
And I'm like, I'm slow getting to them.
I know I should be better. Yeah.
Grandpa, man, I've been at this a long time.
Yeah. They're like maybe I need, maybe
I need one of these and let people call me and.
Chat. With digital W, yes, absolutely.
We need AI W at the forefront ofyour business, your website,
everything. Now you got me thinking, man,
(35:07):
don't make You're not supposed to make me think.
Aren't you supposed to have all the answers?
You're supposed to make my life easier.
Well, that's where the gear start turning and then you start
going, how can I deploy this in my business?
And that's what happens with every business owner I talk
with. As they start the gear, start
turning, they start seeing the connections, they start going,
OK, I was planning on hiring. I don't need to do that anymore.
(35:28):
I was planning on, you know, having that talk with our sales
Rep because they haven't been hitting their quota and they're
not making the amount of calls they should be, right?
We don't have to do any of that anymore.
When you build the right agent and you set it up and you
structure it to be on autopilot.And it could be on autopilot as
easy as like when someone fills out a form on your website, a
contact us form. And again, making sure that you
(35:51):
have the consent and the proper opt in, you can trigger out a
voice agent, right? And say, hey, thanks for
contacting the automation agency, right?
So there's many, many ways that you can leverage and use this.
And that's why we call it an AI workforce because it's not just
one thing. The business center I referenced
earlier we, we helped him to implement an inbound
(36:11):
receptionist and outbound agent and an AI chat bot that sits on
his site. So now he has three different
ways of AI engaging, capturing and booking appointments and
following up with his leads for him.
Yeah, and I've always said that like with Infusionsoft and
HubSpot, you know, it's like because it's so it can be
overwhelming, right? You think like all these
(36:33):
campaigns and if then variables and do I add them to a list?
Do I add them to a static list, a dynamic list so they get an
e-mail? Do I add them to slag?
Do I reassign the owner? Do I do a round Robin lead
assignment? Oh, I don't know.
It's like just start, you know, I tell people find the simplest,
most irritating thing, you know,'cause I, I'm terrible at goal
(36:55):
setting, but I'm fantastic at anti goal setting.
You know, it's like, I hate this.
Can you make that go away? So now if everything I hate goes
away, then I should be living myideal dream, goal filled life.
Right. That's right.
So it's like, let's pick just anirritating nuisance, but
something that has to get done and let's make that go away.
(37:17):
And then you'll start thinking in terms of systems and
processes and the. Second one will be easier and
easier and easier. Yep.
And the thing that I always recommend to us is you want to
have multiple channels of AI andcommunication, right?
So most people are just doing e-mail marketing, right?
And they're relying on that. So you're only as good as your
your open rate and your click through rate, right?
(37:40):
People who aren't opening the database, that's typically, in
most cases, 70% of your databaseisn't seeing your message.
So you should be thinking about another channel.
So we also built out a conversational text message AI
where people can text in and they can have a conversation
with our SMSAI bot that'll answer questions and it will
(38:00):
follow up with them and book appointments, send them links to
information. It's pretty powerful what you
can do, right? So have multi channel marketing
as a part of this process with AI, but you typically can start
with one and then build upon that.
Yeah, so we had talked about doing a demo, but I dude, let's
just give me your number. You want to be able to text in
(38:20):
right and experience. It.
Yeah, So what? What do you want them to text
to? So I want you to grab your phone
right now. Wes, that's you too.
All right. And I want you to text the word
agency to 947. Agency hold on.
SO 947. 77777332. Text the word.
(38:43):
Agency. Yeah, text the word agency.
All right, so and you can also call into that.
Catching Fire? Yep.
You can also call that number 947-777-7332 and you'll be able
to speak with our our AI agent, Ava.
Hey WAVY Hand, welcome to the automation agency.
(39:09):
Who am I speaking with? Big Daddy West.
It better call me Big Daddy West.
If you submit it like that, it will.
But it's green, man. I want the blue bubble.
Text. Well, you know, I I want a
million things to West, but you know, we got to start somewhere.
Thank you Big Daddy W what's thebest e-mail to reach you at?
(39:29):
Dang, our SMS AI is already capturing your information what
you want to be called by? I gave them your e-mail though.
I wanted to fix my camera. Oh well.
Well, that it can't do. This will be here tomorrow,
yeah. Now, do you put these delays in
on purpose or is that just how it is?
We we do that humanizes it a bit.
If it's too fast, then it's going to feel a little bit more
(39:50):
robotic. But don't people know I mean.
Well, I mean the people listening to your podcast and
texting in, yes, but most peopledon't.
Some people still don't. It needs to give me those
little. Dots like it's thinking.
Yeah, yeah. I hear you.
OK. Yeah.
So I mean it just builds it out,right?
And just and and you can build as many steps as you want.
(40:11):
Yep, for sure. And you can have it go through
this, the process, the script, but what's happening is it's
captured that information the moment you text in.
It captured your phone number, created a contact record for you
in our CRM. It then captured Big Daddy W as
your name and then as you entered in your e-mail address
it stored that in the e-mail field.
(40:32):
And then from there we can trigger all sorts of different
automation based on where we want to go with it.
Sure, right. So, all right, well, should we
do a live demo real quick with Ava?
Should I? Should I call her?
All right, let me call her. You just call on the same
number. Yep.
And is this. Just yours for demos or you're
not using this? Hey Ava, I'm here sitting with
(40:54):
Big Daddy West on his podcast and we're talking about voice
agents. How can you help Wes, who's been
known as the Sales Whisperer, domore sales with voice AI?
Put it closer, I lost you go theother way.
Ava, repeat that. Ava yeah, share more details
because I think Big Daddy W is still on the fence about AI.
He he's always knocking the people who are doing AI because
(41:16):
he's an old school sales guy. So how do you how do you bring,
you know, how do you teach an old dog new tricks Jujitsu?
Oh, I'm sorry. He said jiu jitsu.
He was interrupting you but you keep going.
Should we show? Him how it rolls in action.
Ava, I think you just proved thepoint of how Wes was
interrupting with his jiu jitsu,which he does often because he's
(41:38):
on the mat every day. And I think you just proved a
point how your dynamic you can respond to things based on what
people are saying to you. So maybe tell Wes a funny jiu
jitsu joke if you can. He's shaking his head no.
So I think you didn't impress him on that one, but you
impressed him otherwise. Thanks, Ava.
(41:58):
Should have quit while you were ahead.
Yeah, she had you big daddy Wes.There you go, I was sold.
Take my money. Yeah, pretty crazy though,
right? Like dynamically, I gave her
your name. She had humor involved.
She dynamically responded when we interjected with jiu jitsu.
She changed her her approach andpitch to tie into something that
(42:22):
is, you know, something that you're an advocate of and and
passionate about, right. Yeah, very cool.
Pretty crazy stuff. This is what we're doing all
day, every day is we're helping business owners to implement
voice AI, SMSAI, e-mail, AIAI, social media, AI, reputation,
like you name it. We're we're building AI until
(42:43):
almost every aspect of all the small business owner challenges
that we have and the things you don't want to do anymore.
Yeah, so, yeah, so I got the reply.
Thanks for confirming Big Daddy W were you interested in
anything specific like help withAI powered social media
management, AI reviews website? So a bunch of options.
So like how long, How many iterations do you have on this
(43:04):
one in particular? Not many.
So right now we're kind of isolating to about 5 different
product offerings that are all focused around AI.
So I just mentioned a few of those.
Yeah, but. Like after a few more replies is
like, hey, let's book a call or something, yeah.
It's designed to kind of get to that point where the goal is to
obviously convert the lead and the opportunity.
(43:25):
And then again, because your nowyour information's now been
captured in our CRM, we can build a slew of automation that
happens. So a couple of days later, send
you an e-mail. Send e-mail.
Phone call, right? Assign A tag.
Hey, call this person. Because they didn't.
They're not opting in or whatever.
Yeah. And until until, you know,
basically you say uncle or you achieve the goal that we've set
(43:47):
out to accomplish, it can continue to follow up.
And we build that cadence based on every business.
And every business is a little bit different.
Custom home builders have a longsales cycle.
So you expand out your time of communication and you know,
things that are shorter sales cycles, you might have a higher,
you know, outbound ratio of calls and texts and follow up
and, you know, showcasing the things.
(44:09):
And it also depends on, you know, the business owner's sense
of urgency and need, you know, do they have a bleeding neck
issue and they need help right away.
So that's that's the beauty of automation and workflow
automation build out that we cando and customize for every
business. Right, I like it.
All right. Should we mention your website
or do you use somewhere by to call or text?
(44:32):
Yeah, they can. They can go to our website.
It's automation dot agency. But yeah, I encourage you guys
to call in to Ava 947332. You can text the word agency
just like Wes did, and you can learn more about.
Us there should be a big daddy Wes opt in, but you we didn't
discuss that. We you know, we kind of hit this
kind of quick. So, you know, I appreciate you
(44:53):
being flexible. We can.
We can build one for you. How about we build one for you,
For Big Daddy? West Oh, look at that.
That's an option, man. I don't want to drag you down.
Man. This was all good.
This was good stuff. Yeah, for sure.
I knew I was right, man. I knew you were smart, dude.
So this is cool. Yeah, good stuff.
And I can see you, I can hear you got a little Halo going.
(45:15):
It's it's just perfect. That's right, I got a little
glow behind me, you know, littleambiance.
Ambiance. Little thin sway.
That's right. Oh, man.
All right. Well, Jason Benedict, are you in
Scottsdale or Phoenix? Where are you?
Yeah, I'm pretty much South of Scottsdale.
I'm in Chandler, AZ. Yeah, my wife and I started a
(45:37):
business back in teen, been helping small businesses.
We've helped support more than 5000 small businesses in the
last 11 years now. Very nice.
Yeah. That's why I keep you in my
Rolodex man. That's right, I see you opening
the emails and getting the text messages.
You can't escape. That's right.
(45:59):
Cool, man. Well, Jason Benedict all the way
from Chandler Automation dot agency.
Thanks for coming on this new show, which I'll figure out a
name eventually. All right.
All right, Big Daddy W, How about that Big Daddy West AI
discovery or something, you know?
Big daddy W AI musings by big daddy W I'm I'm a plug it into
(46:21):
Cheji. How about Big Daddy W discovers
AI? But do they want to see me
discovered, or do they want to discover it?
Well, I think when they see you discover it, they want to
discover it. Who was that dude like Bear
Gryllis? I got to look up him, be like.
You know, but. Discover AI with Big Daddy West.
There you go, discover. Binocular or micro?
(46:42):
Is it a binocular? Maybe 1 Binocular, 1 Microscope
or magnifying glass Like, you know, big.
Picture I think one eye has to be a Terminator eye and the
other has to be human or half jiu jitsu half business just
like your profile photo. You got me thinking now.
All right, that's what I do. That's what you do, all right,
man. Hey, why don't you go sell
(47:02):
something? I think I just did.
I'm just waiting for you to publish this video.
I got to hit stop. Here we go, ready to stop.
So we hit stop. Now, a head start.
This is a day. Well, made me two days after my
intro. But look, there it is, the
certificate. The belt is on the patio airing
out in its usual place, but the black belt.
(47:23):
I hope you like this episode. Got one already in the can.
Chris Daigle might publish that pretty quickly as well.
Back-to-back here, I'm talking with more people about AI.
Talking with my old buddy Roger Bauer.
He was the guy that I first started podcasting with back in
2009. We created Southern Social
Media, but we only did a few episodes.
(47:44):
But man, it was really hard to podcast in O 9.
Then I started for real in 2013 with the Sales podcast.
I'm stuck with it, but he and I are going to do some episodes on
AI and I'm still I'm spending damn near every, every free
moment getting deeper and deeperinto it and but again, learning
(48:06):
how to do simple things. Everybody tries to make things
too complex. I forget what, you know, so
advanced it's simple like a rebel Canon camera, one of
those, I don't know, so advancedit's simple.
The little things make a big difference.
Always say, you know, small hinges, swing big doors.
Figure out the little things that irritate you and eliminate
(48:29):
them, get them out of your life.Then you have more time, more
energy, more focus for the big things, doing the deep work.
So you know, what can you what kind of tools can you build and
look, because this it's so big, right?
The world is so big and powerful, so many options with
this, with this AI stuff. You really have to look at
detach for a moment when when you're going through something
(48:50):
and it could be something that you like, but for sure something
that irritates you. Take a step back and I have this
out of body experience. Look down and say, can AI take
this off my plate? When you're focused, you know
when when something has meaning,when it's relevant.
Then the learning begins. The the drive to find the answer
begins just like in in jujitsu, you know, we always laugh.
(49:14):
I got to tell my instructor like, hey, why did you ever show
us this? Like I've always shown you this,
but depending on your game and where you are in your
development, you know, like I say, baseball, everybody knows
baseball. You know, if I'm in a hitting
slump and you're teaching me howto field grounders and I'm
decent at grounders, you know, Imay not pay attention to the
little nuances because I'm up inmy head like, how do I, how do I
(49:37):
hit a breaking ball? How do I hit a curveball away,
you know? And so I'm just, I'm focused on
my problem now. I go and I fix that batting
problem. Now I'm like.
Oh, look at this. You know, go back to your coach,
Hey, look at this thing I learned about fielding, Dude, we
did that three weeks ago. You know, so you've got to be
(49:58):
perceptive, open, receptive to the message, to the lesson.
So if something's bothering you right there, figure out how can
that be resolved? And, you know, like my own
podcast here, there's a lot of steps.
And so don't. I've got a spreadsheet with
about 15 columns of things that have to get done that I track.
(50:19):
And so to automate all of it is a tall task.
It requires about 3 different pieces.
Well, four pieces of different software, some bouncing around.
And, and now I still don't thinkit could be totally automated.
So instead break it into pieces and parts.
Can this Riverside video or transcription or show notes or
(50:40):
time stamps be pulled out and formatted?
You know, with that markdown language?
It doesn't have the extra carriage returns.
That's nice. That saves me time, you know.
So let's say there's 1518 steps to doing this.
Can I automate three of them? Can I automate 6 of them?
If I can, then then those thingswill be automated forever and I
(51:02):
will gain experience on how to do it.
So then as I look at other things throughout my business,
I'm quicker at automating those.So it's the exact same thing
I've done with with marketing automation, sales automation
platforms and Fusionsoft, You know, keep HubSpot, Entreport,
active Campaign, Nimble now has automations.
Almost everything has automations down.
(51:23):
Zoho, even MailChimp, so you know, and hey, way back in 2012,
Salesforce bought exact Target, which is an e-mail tool, and
they previously in 2012 had bought Pardot, which does
automation. So the, you know, the £800
gorilla has known for well over a decade that you've got to
automate, you got to have, you know, having a CRM is fine.
(51:45):
It's, it's that source of truth.But how do, what do you do with
it? How do you take action on that?
You had this information, this field changed.
Now what? How do you know it's acted upon
properly in the correct time by the right person?
How do you know you need some type of automation, a building
AI agents. And there's a difference between
(52:06):
AI and AI agents, right? AI is ChatGPT.
It's it's a, it's an app. It's a static tool that's
sitting there waiting for you tolog in and use it.
OK, It's it's a hammer. You know, it's just sitting
there ready for you to pick it up and go drive a nail.
An AI agent is a a manufacturingline, right?
(52:27):
An assembly line with robots doing all the picking and
sorting the creation. So you build an AI agent to
execute the tasks that you were even doing manually on AI.
OK, so that's why you know, I'm linking to the tools that I'm
using. I've always been an affiliate of
(52:47):
different things. So when you see something, if
you like it, please click my links.
I'll get paid on that. That's how I've made most of my
money over since 2006. Thousand 8 is being a certified
partner, being an affiliate, a reseller of different tools.
So I find them you pay the same price you would if you bought
it, you know, from the the organization.
(53:08):
But if I brought it to you, you know, then I get paid.
You pay the same. And if you let me know you
bought it, then I throw in little bonuses.
You know, I give extra consulting.
I'll give give you access to some tools, some digital
programs. So let me know and I'll help you
out right. You scratch my back, I scratch
your back. But I hope you like this
episode. Like I said, stay tuned.
I'm getting my arms around this.I'm excited about it.
(53:29):
I think I'm going to be changingthe the inner circle and the
focus will be more on this. But still at the end of the day,
this is to all this to make a sale.
There's a human being on the other end of the screen.
People have forgotten about thatprobably the last 30 years with
the Internet, with social media.OK, so how is AI going to help
you connect? And I'm going to show some
(53:51):
examples already got some on my website.
AI create some good content, so informative, not overly
emotional, not super deep and connecting, but it's a good way
to get started. And so can you use these tools
to accentuate and accelerate andenhance what you already know?
If you do that and you, you remain human.
(54:13):
You keep your humanity. The Sky's the limit.
OK, If I can help you, reach out.
Thanks for watching. Thanks for listening.
I'll go sell something.
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