September 10, 2025 • 46 mins
We explore how the sales landscape is transforming with AI, requiring leaders to rewire their problem-solving approaches and update outdated methodologies with more effective frameworks like the Four C's.
• Commitment to technology and AI proficiency is crucial for sales leaders to understand what's possible
• Most revenue leaders have outsourced knowledge of tech capabilities to overwhelmed RevOps teams
• The 80-15-5 principle helps leaders balance immediate business needs with future-focused development
• Current go-to-market strategies must evolve beyond outdated frameworks like Predictable Revenue
• Today's outbound approach should focus on meaningful conversations, not just activity metrics
• Customized sales journeys need to recognize different buyer types using the VEX framework
• The "magic email" technique helps identify buyer knowledge level 48 hours before first calls
• Companies are artificially slowing down sales cycles by treating all buyers the same
• MedPick should be used as a deal evaluation framework, not a sales methodology
• INTENT framework (Next steps, Teams, Education level, Numerical priority, Time to impact) addresses modern buying realities
• When implementing new technology, focus on solving top revenue bottlenecks and creating power users
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Most of the people listening to this were not in
the workforce.
When we went from no internetto internet, I wasn't in the
workforce, but somebody had totrain John.
Hey, we're going to send anemail, we're going to go online
and search for things.
We're not going to go to thephone book or we're not going to
go to the library or anencyclopedia Like guys.
That was a huge, monumentalshift in how we solve problems.
(00:20):
We stopped going to the libraryand looking at books and they
were all curated for us insearch, etc.
And this is that next evolutionof how we solve problems.
So, as a leader if you've beenin the game for 10, 15, 20, 20
plus years, we are rewiring theway that we think to solve
problems.
So before it's like my SDRs ormy sales reps, they go, they go
to Google, they go to LinkedIn,blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, and it's like, oh no,we're not doing any of that.
(00:42):
Instead, I've got theseassistants.
They do that for me and it's abetter quality and it's deeper,
richer insights and it canidentify where I'm missing in
the deal.
So it's just getting us to V1faster, right?
I tell everyone, if you'recopying and pasting AI, that you
are guaranteed to put yourselfout of a job.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Welcome.
Welcome back to another episodeof the Sell Like a Leader
podcast, the podcast for revenueleaders who are on a mission to
cultivate a high-performingsales team within their
organization.
I'm your host, david Krieger,president of SalesRoads,
america's most trusted salesoutsourcing and appointment
setting company, and today wehave a special treat.
We've got a great revenueleader, jake Dunlap, who I've
(01:25):
had the privilege of getting towork on some programs and just
has an amazing team who helpstheir clients really reinvent
their sales processes, andespecially over the past several
years, with an eye to AI.
And so Jake is a founder andCEO of Scaled Consulting.
They are a globally recognizedsales consulting firm that has
(01:49):
outproduced outperformedindustry giants in sales
consulting and again, I canattest to that firsthand.
And recently he published abook that if you haven't checked
out, you've got to check outthe Innovative Seller, which is
a USA Today bestselling book.
Welcome, jake, great to haveyou on the show.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Love that intro man.
Thank you.
I'm really excited about theconversation and love talking
about the future of go-to-marketand where we're headed, so it
should be a fun one.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, I'm excited, and so, to that point, the sales
landscape has rapidly changedover the past few years with the
advent of AI and I think, jake,you've been on the forefront of
this for selling teams, and Ithink one of the interesting
things and where I'd like tostart that you've identified is,
(02:40):
even though sales has changedconsiderably, sales teams are
still relying on oldmethodologies, from the
Challenger sale to Medic to Bant.
But in your book you introducedsomething called the Four Cs
and I'd love for you to walk thelisteners through what.
(03:02):
That is why you think some ofthe old methodologies aren't
working, so we can get yourperspective.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, and I think, yeah, I've been a vocal.
I'm not even like an anti a lotof these methodologies, I just
think that the application hasto evolve.
That's really what it comesdown to, david, is that the way
that we applied things you know,back in 1996 were different
than you know 2025, right, asyou can imagine.
So.
So, really, as I was writingthe book, you know what I really
(03:33):
started to think about, andI'll tell you, it's interesting.
I actually, wiley, kind ofcontracted me to write a
different book is going to becalled the Everyday Guide to
Exceptional Sales, and so Ireally wanted to write this book
.
That would be kind of this likeyou know, go to resource, so
it's like anything that comes up.
This is what it would be and,candidly, is like I spent way
too much time writing that bookand then, as I got into it, I'm
(03:54):
like what am I doing?
Like I don't want to write that.
I don't want to write like asales guide, another sales guide
book.
I was like, like, and I wasable to use parts of it in the
book too, so it ended up being awin-win.
But what I really started tothink about is like look, where
is B2B sales headed, what isevolving, what's changing and
therefore, if you want to becompetitive as a seller or a
(04:17):
leader, what are the things thatyou need to be able to do?
And it's funny, I've never beena big acronym guy, but as I
worked kind of through theprocess, we came up with the
concept of four C's, where I waslike you know, what are the
attributes that I think it takesto be successful?
And just from what we're seeing, you know we work with hundreds
of clients every single yearfor a client to successful, and
so that's where I came up withthe four C's.
(04:38):
You know the first.
It starts with, you know,commitment to technology and AI
proficiency, and I truly believe, like this to me is one of the
biggest issues I see is thatrevenue leaders have outsourced
their knowledge of what ispossible to a RevOps team that's
already overwhelmed, and sothese leaders aren't able to
even you know, think about, youknow, outreach sales off.
(04:58):
These types of tools came outin 2015, 10 years old, that's it
.
So if you were a sales leaderbefore that, you learned a whole
new play, et cetera.
Now there's 2,000, 3,000, plussales technologies.
One tool that you knew could dothis does 75 things.
And so I just don't see how youcan be a successful sales
leader in 2025 and beyond if youdo not understand the art of
(05:21):
possible with both salestechnology and generative AI,
which is obviously why I tookthe firm you know heavy there.
You know we're doing four tofive new deployments a month of
helping companies to deploy in astructured manner gen AI
deployments, because I thinkthat's where everyone's really
struggling is like we've got ourreps, they're using it, what do
we do?
And we kind of have thisjumpstart where we're like we're
going to pick one department,we scope three assistants and
(05:42):
one automation, we scope the usecases for these other
departments and we really thinkabout AI proficiency as really
treating this like a productroadmap where every organization
, each department AI should be adepartment by department, a
role by role deployment andreally helping companies to get
there.
And so that first C inparticular.
To me it's funny because thebook came out in about a year
(06:05):
ago and I wrote that part Gen AIwas kind of coming to the
forefront.
It would have been probably.
We went to press that November,December, before, but it was
just so painfully obvious to methen just like how disruptive
Gen AI was going to be, and Ithink most sales and revenue
leaders in general are stillbehind, even comprehending,
(06:29):
david, the art of possible withthese tools, and so they need to
start small to go big is kindof the strategy we've stayed,
we've been talking about tobecome, you know, committed to
proficiency.
You know in, you know, revenuetech and and AI.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
And so that sales leaders can embody that.
First C, I mean, are therecertain things that you really
recommend?
I mean, for me at SalesRoads,the thing that I've been trying
to preach is listen.
A lot of times we don't evenknow exactly what the tools are
going to do, what's going towork, what's not going to work,
so we just need to lean in,we've got to use it.
We've had clients that arebasically like no, we aren't
(07:06):
using AI, it's not secure, and Ijust feel like I get that
there's privacy concerns, but ifyou don't lean in, you don't
just start understanding andflexing that muscle to
understand how it works, whereit works, where it doesn't work,
you're going to be left behind,and so is there anything in
particular that you try to?
Speaker 1 (07:31):
embody or imbue into the sales leaders so that they
can embody that first C.
Yeah, look, I talked aboutanother principle and this is a
life principle that I don'tthink it's a revolutionary
concept.
I call it 80-15-5.
And I feel like you know, I sawsome of the you know, some of
the questions you had sent overahead of time, and one of the
questions was you know, whatshould leaders be doing?
You know, 80-15-5 is thisconcept of you know 80% of your
(07:53):
time should be spent on thingsthat are going to impact your
business.
In the next, you know, call itthree months or so if you're a
sales leader, maybe it could be,depending on how big your
company is, it could be a littlebit more, a little bit less 15%
of your time should be thingsthat are going to impact your
business.
Call it six, 12 months from now, and about 5% of your time
should be dedicated to thingsthat are going to have a big
impact on your professionalcareer and your business maybe
(08:15):
nine, 12, 24 months from now.
And so the number one piece ofadvice that I give is you have
to block an hour or two a week.
And look, and it's interestingto block an hour or two a week.
And look, and it's interesting,I know what the job is, you
know everyone like I know, Iknow the demands, I know what
that means.
But I also can tell you we arelike you know, as I think about
(08:35):
when I first got into this toyou know, it's been two years
now where I had this you knowkind of conversation with a
buddy of mine, kevin Dorsey.
We're having beers and pizzaand it's like, dude, if it can
do that, it could do this and itcould do that.
And I was like, oh my God, he'sright.
And I literally emailed my teamand said, guys, I need to like
(08:55):
fire myself as CEO for a weekand I need to go just like mess
with this.
And then I was.
I was like this is this, is it?
And I think, one of the mostimportant kind of mindset shifts
to maybe help you to understand.
You know, yes, spending two tothree hours a week is worth.
It is.
This is a foundational shift inhow we solve problems as humans
.
This isn't a new technology,this is the same way.
(09:17):
Look, you know, most of thepeople listening to this were
not in the workforce when wewent from no internet to
internet.
I wasn't in the workforce, butsomebody had to train John.
Hey, we're gonna send an email,we're gonna go online and
search for things, we're notgonna go to the phone book or
we're not gonna go to thelibrary or an encyclopedia Like
guys.
That was a huge, monumentalshift in how we solve problems.
(09:38):
We stopped going to the libraryand looking at books and they
were all curated for us insearch, et cetera and at books,
and they were all curated for usin search, et cetera.
And this is that next evolutionof how we solve problems.
So, as a leader, if you've beenin the game for 10, 15, 20, 20
plus years, we are rewiring theway that we think to solve
problems.
So before it was like my SDRsor my sales reps they go, they
go to Google, they go toLinkedIn, blah, blah, blah, blah
, blah, blah.
(09:58):
And it's like, oh no, we're notdoing any of that.
Instead, I've got theseassistants.
They do that for me and it's abetter quality and it's deeper,
richer insights and it canidentify, like where I'm missing
in the deal.
So it's just getting us to V1faster, right?
You know, I tell everyone, ifyou're copying and pasting AI,
that you are guaranteed to putyourself out of a job.
All AI is doing the same waythat Google got us to answers
(10:21):
faster, gen AI is just gettingus there even faster, and then
the human brain turns on for thelast 20%.
But now I can get to.
If I have 50 minutes to work onsomething, I get to V1 in 10,
and by the time the 50 minutesis up, I get to V3 that I maybe
never had bandwidth for.
So I think, kind of bringingthis full circle that is why
leaders have to embrace thisthat you have to rewire your
(10:43):
brain to solve problemsfoundationally different than
what made you successful even 10years ago, and I think that
that's a very tough, david.
That's a very tough pill toswallow once you get to a
certain point of your career,but I don't think you can unsee
that at this point.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah, and I think you do have to live it, because it
is so new, it is so different.
For you to create some of thesestrategies you have to see how
it's working again, see how it'snot working, see also, you know
, I agree with you.
I think that people can nowspend more time on the thinking
part of things.
However, what I struggle withmyself and for the team is
(11:21):
making sure that they don't gointo monkey mode.
They don't go because you cando things fast, it can be good
and copy and paste, and so,unless you're living it as a
leader, you sometimes don't seesome of those temptations and
think through how do I make surethat we aren't just going into
monkey mode and we're actuallyusing this to create better work
?
And I think that kind oftransitions us into the second C
(11:42):
which I'd love to get yourperspective on is the current
go-to-market strategy and whatthat means in this context and
how you advise your clientsaround that.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, so yeah, the second C is again having a
current go-to-market strategyand I think we as humans, we
tend to lock into patternrecognition.
If something works, we kind ofstruggle to then unanchor for
things that work.
We're like you know, thinkabout it when you play video
games, right, you tend to lockinto.
If you play 2K or Fortnite, youknow you've got your different
(12:16):
plays that you run and you kindof run, you know the best of the
best.
Players are very, you know,agile.
But I think that that's whatyou see happening with Outbound
is we're locked into plays thatworked seven years ago, six
years ago.
And just a little historylesson for everyone here's kind
of my history lesson.
There's a book that everyonefollows around go-to-market
(12:37):
called Predictable Revenue.
Okay, predictable Revenue.
I think this is important.
If you all haven't read it,your boss has read it, I promise
you.
Okay, um, or your vc or your pehas read it.
Predictable revenue was wasbuilt around how outbound worked
in the early 2000s.
Not kidding, and guess what,david?
It was pretty simple.
(12:58):
The internet was brand new.
Linkedin as a site fornetworking did not exist.
Okay, it did not literallyexist.
It was a job site until like2011,.
Right or so or sorry.
Yeah, it was only jobs right.
And so imagine what were thoseguys doing, david.
What did they do?
24, seven.
They picked up the phone and sowe built this kind of revenue
(13:19):
model that said, oh, activitiesequals, meetings equals pipeline
.
And that was true when everyactivity was equal, because they
were all high qualityactivities.
It was a high quality phonecall.
I wasn't using some mass emailor whatever.
I wrote a meeting.
I wrote a message to get ameeting with you, david.
I made a call to get a meeting,so all activities were
homogenous.
(13:39):
You fast forward to today.
That's not.
I'm doing a LinkedIn, a blah, ablah.
A bulk email versus acustomized email.
Those are not the same data set.
And so we're still continuingto run our teams based off of a
book that was written about astrategy that we're not actually
even running.
If every activity was acustomized, one-to-one activity,
(14:00):
well then, activities equal,meetings equal, you know, deals
right, or opportunities, and soI think for a lot of companies
that's why, you know, I talkabout this we have to start to
anchor our go-to market aroundthe first outcome, which we call
a meaningful conversation, andthat just simply means, like
jake connected with someone thatsaid I'm going to put you in
touch with someone.
Or maybe the assistant said,hey, I'll help to book a meeting
(14:21):
with janice or whatever it is.
And so we have to stop moving.
We have to realize the goalisn't account coverage, the goal
is generate a meeting with thatone person and somehow and I
think the other kind of historylesson part of this is in, you
know, look, even all the way upto 2015, there was really no way
for salespeople to do bulkemails right.
(14:42):
It didn't exist.
So again, every email and everycall from when that book was
written to call it 2015, 2016,every activity was high quality.
I had to send a one-to-one toyou.
I wasn't.
And then what happened is therewas a run between about 2016 and
2018-ish 19, where email-onlysequences kind of worked.
(15:03):
And then what happened is westarted to raise a whole group
of people who forgot how to call.
Then 2020 hit, then you've gotthese new hires all starting
remote and they never got to sitthere in the pit.
You know like, oh man, oh, thatwas good, jake, I like that
saying et cetera.
And so now you fast forward totoday, and today we are trying
to run a 2016-17 play, whenemail only kind of worked with
(15:27):
people that don't know how tomake phone calls, because we
didn't train them that way andthe leaders, candidly, they've
grown up in the 2020-2021.
They didn't learn how to call.
And you know there's a lot ofdata that shows kind of the the
omni-channel impact.
And so my point is I actuallythink it's easier than ever for
outbound yeah, I think it'seasier than ever.
One outbound yeah, I think it'seasier than ever.
One of our sister company wespun out last year, rev Optics.
(15:47):
We had a client betweenliterally came in in January
this year between Q4 and Q1,team of 20 SDRs had a hundred
more opportunities in onequarter and it was like, guess
what we're going to do, guys,we're not just going to
customize the first email, which, by the way, the first email is
literally I, which, by the way,the first email is literally I.
Have seen it in one sequenceout of probably tens, if not
hundreds of thousands ofsequences, where the first
(16:08):
touchpoint is the highestconverting touchpoint, but yeah,
that's the touchpoint everyonedoes.
Now we're kind of moving pastthat.
We do like a quasi likerelevancy base and it's like all
you have to do is patterndisrupt.
Send a video, send a LinkedInvoice note.
I don't really care what you do.
Send a video, send a LinkedInvoice note.
I don't really care what you do.
Send a handwritten note Coupledwith just keep adding value.
It's literally that easy.
(16:29):
Like, if your currentgo-to-market strategy is focused
on generating outcomes and notgenerating account coverage,
you're gonna be wildly moresuccessful than somebody who's
like account coverage only focus.
So that's a little bit of arant there on that one, but it's
just again.
Sometimes I swear to you, Ifeel like I'm living in bizarro
world.
(16:49):
Like we'll be talking to aclient.
I'm like okay, jake, but whathappens when activity goes down?
I go, we're talking aboutoutcomes, but I get it Like
there's pressure from your boardand your board is running the
playbook.
I told you so I look, I I getit.
I've been in that seat and I'veworked with you.
Know enough.
You know thousands of you knowcro's over my career.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Now like I get it's easier said than done a little
bit, but at the end of the day,if you're driving outcomes,
that's what people care about,you know yeah, I mean, activity
is such a short-term metric andand it's in a virtual world and
all those things, it's it aneasier metric, at least on a
day-to-day, to at least see thatpeople are working.
But at the end of the day, thething that is going to keep you
(17:30):
in the CRO seat is the outcomes,and so it is definitely
short-sighted, and when you'retoo short-sighted then you don't
have a long-term future.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
And this is where leadership comes in, david.
Look, people have been makingfake dials since forever, right,
like I remember this is 2007,.
Maybe I was running a team andthis dude he actually ended up
becoming a pretty successfulsales guy.
I stay in touch with him.
All of a sudden, I went up toone of my new hires and they had
this list of phone numbers.
(18:01):
I'm like, what is this?
They're like, they're like, uh,uh, they're like.
And one of our reps had come upbecause we had the most
ridiculous minimums.
It was a hundred dials and twoand a half hours of talk time a
day.
It was a lot like in, right, itwas too much.
And he had a list of fake phonenumbers.
Right, there's another kid.
I remember I caught him, um,like the, it flagged me hey,
this number has been called like30 times in the last like two
(18:22):
months, and it was a fax machine.
So it's like, I call the number.
It's like, and I'm like dude,come on, chris, man, like, so,
look, this idea of fakeactivities is has been happening
since before the auto stuff,right, but but again, I think
there's a happy medium, becauseI'm all for there's.
You know, if people can'tmanage to an outcome, then you
(18:42):
need to kind of look at some ofthe leading indicators and coach
there right.
But again, I want them doinghigh quality activities.
I don't want them to just dopunch the button activities.
And I've said this before too.
If you are an SDR or a sales repand I want you to listen to
this If you're a leader too, andI want you to tell me how this
is not logical.
(19:05):
If you're an sdr or sales repand your manager or your company
is telling you to kind of hit,send on these templates and just
do this, you're puttingyourself out of a job.
Right, you're putting yourselfout of a job because you're just
saying guess what ai can justdo that, like we're already
doing tests.
Like a hubspot just releasesbreeze ai agent and it's like
just hit, sit to hit a template,that's like pretty good.
It's pretty, pretty good.
Like you know, we haven't seenany of these outbound ones that
(19:26):
are like really doing it atscale.
But you know, I think it's likewe just have to really
encourage our people to turntheir brain on that.
10 to 20% know their personas,know the value we provide those
personas, so they can, you know,you know, be that trusted
advisor that somebody wants tomeet with, versus, you know,
just getting out as much ofactivity as possible.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah, and I think there's two aspects to that.
Which one?
Maybe AI will get to a pointwhere it can replace it, but
personally I don't think it's.
There is that creative sparkand doing the real good pattern
interrupt or whatnot and reallymaking something creative and
different than you AI humansstill, I think, can outperform
(20:10):
in that way.
Eventually, I think AI andmaybe with some of the right
prompts, it can be there now.
But then the second part is thetrusted advisor.
Right, if we don't positionourselves as salespeople as that
trusted advisor, you know,creating that type of
relationship, you know that'ssomething that is harder for AI
(20:32):
to replicate.
Now there are certainpersonalities that are creating
relationships with AIs right now, but it's different and it
always is going to at least Ipersonally think will be
fundamentally different.
And that's where salespeoplecan play and build their network
as an AI.
Who can't build a network,can't build trust over 10 years,
over 15 years, over a year ofworking with somebody.
(20:55):
And so with that, with yourthird C, the customized sales
journey you touched on it alittle bit, but maybe you could
break it down a little bit.
For sales leaders, if they'relooking at their current
go-to-market strategy, they sayoh, you know what?
Jake is right.
I'm still using the predictablerevenue playbook.
How do you think through withthem, or how do they think about
(21:18):
customizing that sales journeywith the tools that are
available now?
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Yeah, so customized sales journey.
This is a really important partof the book and probably one of
the I don't know, I think oneof the most important for people
to read and really internalizewhat this actually means for B2B
sales in particular.
I'll make the analogy first ofB2C sales.
(21:43):
If you think about how we buythings as consumers today, every
X number of months it gets moretailored to us, more tailored
to us perfect recommendations.
Click to buy for this person.
More information survey forthis person.
We are being trained as buyers,like if something's not hyper
relevant, I've got no time forit, right?
(22:04):
And the analogy I always use isI go.
How many times in the last twoweeks have you looked up an item
in Amazon?
It wasn't available to getshipped to you later, today or
tomorrow, so you picked adifferent product that gets
there today or tomorrow, orsomething that would literally
get there like three days later,like just think about that
behavior.
That is a very new, that is alike less than five year, six
(22:25):
year, maybe six year oldbehavior that just continues to
perpetuate in our brains a speedto information, the ability to
consume content.
You know we all consume tonsand tons of video content.
B2b companies are atrocious atproviding consumable content to
people, even though more andmore people, you know, want to
learn about thingsasynchronously.
And so you know customizedsales journey.
(22:47):
Really, there's a couple ofconcepts in there.
The first I'll talk about isthis concept called VEX, which
we talk about in the bookV-E-C-S.
Vex, which says that look,today customers are coming to
you.
There's a vetted group ofbuyers.
I think that that's probablyanywhere between 10 to 20% of
buyers now that say hey, david,look, I already use your
competitor, bro, I used you guysthree years ago.
(23:07):
I've already done chat, gptresearch.
Can we go?
Why are we having thisconversation, man?
Do I really have to sit here?
The inbound SDR is one of theworst roles that exists,
candidly, in currentgo-to-market.
That's like, hey, jake, I wantto understand some information.
It's like, dude, I already knowmore than you.
(23:28):
Why are we waiting another week?
Like, I think companies areartificially slowing down their
sales cycle left and rightbecause they're not appreciating
the vetted.
And then the next is educated,which is someone who might not
have all those attributes butmaybe they again, they either
use a competitor, they're a warmreferral from a current client
Each company we kind ofencourage if they check three or
five of these boxes and wetreat them as vetted and that
(23:50):
means the first call.
We're showing up with asolutions engineer, we do this,
we do this and I'll kind of getto more of those details.
Educated, we show up basicallywhere we would at step two.
Basically we're at step two.
Cold, you know, is the C, soV-E-C, cold and self-service,
right?
Mckinsey did a study.
I talked about it in the book.
Mckinsey said look by about nowand next year, about 20 to 30%
of people will be ready toself-service at anything under
50,000.
(24:11):
And I think for most peoplethey're like but I need to talk
to somebody.
I'm like no, I don't, I already.
It's like again, think, if it'sa known space, like I'm not
educating on why the space isimportant, I've worked with
somebody in your like, like your, like your competitive set.
Guys, I'm already, I'm alreadythere, I'm at step four.
I don't need you to convince meor sell me on the education
(24:34):
around why the space isimportant, I'm already there.
And so I think what we do areally bad job of is
understanding that you cannottreat every buyer like a
conveyor belt, and I think whathappens today is everybody
starts at the beginning, whetheryou're vetted, whether you're
educated, whether you're cold oreven if you're like God, I'd
love to self service.
You know that would be amazing,and so you know, one of the
(24:55):
easiest things you can do to getreal tactical here we call it
that magic email and I'm tellingyou within a week you will be
blown away Is at least 48 hoursbefore your call first call, you
have your reps send out and youcan automate this.
Obviously, reps send out anemail that says hey, david, I'm
really looking forward to ourconversation coming up on Friday
morning.
When I talk to VPs of blank,they're either one like already
(25:19):
familiar with the space, mighthave used us, or competitor in
the past, and I want to makesure I can show up prepared with
the right people from our teamor two.
They're kind of stillexploratory, still trying to
kind of understand details, andwe'll need to go a little bit
deeper into kind of the why.
Let me know where you fit onthis continuum and I'll make
sure that we're prepared forthat conversation on Friday.
That's all you got to do.
(25:47):
Yeah, you do that.
I'm telling you your repswithin a week.
I promise you a rep is going toflag to the manager and he's
going to go or she's going to go.
Oh my gosh, jake said that hewas this, this and this.
I think you need to get on thefirst call, and so we have to be
able to adjust to where youknow it used to be.
Because, again, let's rewindbehavior In 2010,.
Just 15 years ago, my ability tofind out anything about a B2B
company was like zero.
It's like there weren't allthese groups.
(26:09):
G2 didn't exist.
I don't know if people stilluse G2 that much, but like none
of this existed, right, so fastforward.
It's like HubSpot startedtalking about this like 2010, 11
, 12, that buyers are moreeducated, talking about this
like 2010, 11, 12, that buyersare more educated.
It was kind of BS then, but ifyou kind of continue as we get
access to more and more and more, and now we have chat, gpt
where I'm telling you, whatpeople are doing now is they're
(26:30):
saying, hey, I'm looking forsomebody in the sales engagement
space.
I've already used them.
I want these three options.
Give me a wild card option of acompany that's raised at least
50 million and boom, I'm comingin hot.
And so we're.
Just, we still have not adjustedour journey to appreciate that
people are coming in moreeducated.
And that is what I think, david, the scariest part is, I think
(26:52):
that what could end up beinglike the death nail for B2B
sales as a discipline, thatinstead of outside of the ultra,
ultra enterprise or ultrarelationship based sale, I think
if we can't adapt to this,buyers are not going to want to
talk to anybody in b2b sales.
They're going to say, look, letme self-guide, let me.
And if you think about modernsales today, I really don't want
(27:15):
to talk to the salesperson, Ijust want to talk to the
customer success person I'mgoing to work with, because, at
the end of the day, I'm going toget handed off and all I care
about is am I using the product?
And so what value is thesalesperson going to add if
they're spending time trying toqualify me and I already know
more than they do?
Yeah, and so that is thescariest trend for me over the
(27:36):
next two to five years that ifcompanies do not adapt to have a
more customized journey, moreand more buyers are going to go
work with your competition andopt out of your sales process
because they're like, dude, wait, you know the whole mindset and
this is what I learned too.
Got to hop on a call.
Oh hey, jacob.
Oh yeah, great question, canyou hop on a call?
(27:57):
I'm like just send me a videoof, like the two minute demo I
can send to my team, for thelove of God, right, like?
And to me it's both Like.
It's not that there isn't aright time to hop on a call, you
know.
It's like there's friction inthe process or something.
But very few companies do avery good job of asynchronous
education.
You know, I think at last thatwas 24% of your time is actually
spent with the customer andcustomer, and so this customized
(28:27):
journey is where are they at intheir process?
And am I giving themasynchronous ways to absorb
content, to learn content, tolearn about us?
Do I have a demo that'stailored to a CFO versus VP of
operations versus a VP ofmarketing that I can send really
quickly as a leave behind threeseparate emails?
And the answer for about 98% ofcompanies is no.
And I think that's what scaresme most about the customized
journey is we just refuse tobelieve that people are educated
and that people are actuallysmart enough to learn
asynchronously without yoursales rep hopping on a phone,
(28:49):
and those, I think, are thebiggest trends on why this
matters more than ever.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yeah, and I think the idea that you have is a good
workaround, because I think alot of times, especially on the
inbound side, it's that theyneed the discovery because they
don't have the information.
So either just ask the question, like you do, which is a great
simple workaround, or even likeinbound forms, or however you're
collecting your leads yeah,sure, and it can be more.
(29:13):
It's stuck before generative AI.
There's no reason why inboundforms can't be generative to
some extent.
They don't have to be.
Just click a button as part ofthe form.
I can ask a few questions andgenerate and get some of that
information, so you can startcustomizing the journey right
out of the gate.
From an inbound perspective,and I think you're absolutely
right.
I mean, we've all been on witha salesperson who's wasting our
(29:36):
time and there's no patience forthat right now.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
And that's the craziest part, david, just about
that last part Go ask youraverage sales leader the last
time they bought anything.
Go ask them and I guarantee youat least 75%.
I'll go ahead and say one outof four is fine.
We'll say, oh my God, it wasbrutal.
And then I go and I've postedabout this on LinkedIn.
(30:02):
I'm like when is the last timeyou audited your process?
It's the same.
You're doing the same thing.
Like what do you mean?
It's brutal.
You're literally doing theexact same process.
So I just feel like this is, Ifeel like this edit, anything in
the book is probably one of themore easy concepts to grasp,
because we know how we like tobuy as consumers, and if we can
(30:25):
take that mindset of meetingpeople where they are, letting
people learn asynchronously atthe right times and human
interventions at the right timeas well, too, we're going to win
and you're going to build amore, you know, future-proof
team.
And one thing I will say andthen you know we can move on is
look, and this is where I thinkMedPick and some of these
methodologies have anopportunity but are also
(30:48):
dangerous, because one of thebiggest behavior shifts that I
see right now is we're startingto treat MedPick like a sales
methodology versus a deal reviewframework.
Right, it was never meant to be.
Hey, jake, to run a gooddiscovery call, did you get
these three data points?
Because guess what A real badrep can go get those data points
right.
(31:09):
And again, a little historylesson, guys.
Medic, which was the precursorto MedPick, was invented in 1996
.
Do you know what buying waslike, guys in 1996?
There's a guy in a mahoganyoffice and he would just like
buy stuff.
Like the buying committee waslike two people, the owner or
the CEO, whoever, but they justbuy stuff.
Like the buying committees wereprobably I don't even know how
(31:31):
to guess one fifth the size thatthey are today.
The competition and amount ofcompanies doing something
similar to you was probablyeither non-existent or 1, 30th
of what it is today.
You know we had more free time.
There wasn't social media.
There was like, think aboutthat.
Like that medic was developedaround a buyer process from 1996
(31:58):
.
Now, do I think you can adapt itto today?
Absolutely, but you can't makeit your methodology.
And that's what a lot of ourclients I'm like look, we
actually don't have tonecessarily get rid of MedPick.
We have a framework calledintent.
That we think is more accuratethat we call it.
The N is for next steps.
We found that today and I putthis in the book.
It's like a last minute editionBecause I was like why are
(32:19):
deals actually struggling today,with all these people involved
and where did I feel like someof them fell down?
So next steps right now.
Momentum is the killer.
If you are not driving nextsteps, the deals won't get done.
This mythical champion is notgoing to do it.
They got too many things.
The T is for teams.
This concept of one decisionmaker or one economic buyer is
insane, right, and the decisionmaker today could be somebody
(32:42):
two levels below the SVP, who'sa squeaky wheel in the room.
So you got to understand theteams.
Education level I talked abouteducation as a part of it.
Numerical priority over pains Ifyou are not a top three
numerical priority for thatdepartment over the next two
quarters, your deal is notgetting done.
So, moving away from thisconcept of pain, I can tell you
(33:02):
I get eight leaders together.
They all listen to the call forsay yep, there's a pain to say,
and two are like nah, numericalpriority is like non refutable.
Is this a top three numericalpriority for your department as
a part of it.
And then T is the last.
T is time to impact, and thatmeans when does the customer
need to see results?
By right, and I think MedPickhas a version that called
(33:25):
compelling event, but it's likenext steps.
If I know the next steps andI'm driving that, I know the
teams that are involved.
There's usually a buyer teamand an end user team, sometimes
a vetting team, right, Iunderstand the education level
on meeting people where they'reat and educating them
asynchronously Right, Iunderstand I'm solving a top
three numerical priority, right,and I understand when the
customer needs to actually seethe benefit of what we do.
But I'm in the deal, like, Iknow, I'm like there, and so
(33:49):
that's kind of how we evolvedmedpick.
Again, I we have clients wherewe've evolved it for them.
But you still have to thinkabout this, these weaving in the
concepts of intent there too,of like not just saying what's
the economic buyer, sayingwhat's the economic buyer team
of people.
So we've we've had some reallygood success.
Uh, yeah, adapting it yeah,that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
I think that makes that makes a lot of sense.
Uh, this, this day and age, andamazing, this 1996, that's like
30 years ago.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Uh, right, crazy, I know, I know and like I said, I
I don't want to, I don't want to.
You know poo-poo much because,like I said, it can still be
applicable.
You cannot make it a dealframework Because, I'll tell you
, one of the most dangerousthings that we're seeing with
our clients is there's a clientof ours I won't talk about who
they are but they had a gonginitiative and they didn't
really have as tight methodologybut what they want to do, they
(34:38):
wanted to make MedPick into Gong, which, by the way, I'm totally
fine with that as a dealevaluation framework.
But guess what ends uphappening?
In lieu of a tight playbook,your sales leaders start to
coach to MedPick as yourmethodology.
Jake, did you run a good call?
Jake, your first call?
Oh, look what Gong said, thatyou did One, two, three, I did
(34:59):
great.
I listened to the call.
The call's terrible, you know.
And so we've got to move offthis idea Like, look, it's a
deal evaluation framework.
It doesn't equal a good callfor a discovery demo proposal
contract, like.
Those are two different things.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
So, as you know, we come to then here.
I do want to get into a fewtech stack types of things,
because I think a lot of whatsales leaders are are struggling
with and have frankly struggledwith for a long time but I
think it's on steroids now inthe age of AI is there are so
(35:38):
many different tools and we canget caught up in the promise of
them.
But I think we've seen and Ithink you even posted about it
recently sometimes we can makeour teams less effective because
we're just throwing so manydifferent things at them.
What are your thoughts aroundboth evaluating what you need or
(36:01):
don't need in this current age,and are there any things that
stand out as a tool that is moreubiquitous and I know a lot of
times it's got to just becustomized to the company and
the use case.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Sure, yeah, yeah.
There's a couple of things inthere.
Um one is you have to make surethat you're prioritizing the
biggest bottlenecks in yourrevenue org and you're focused
on deploying things there.
So you know if, if there's anew tool you hear about and it's
not solving one of your top twoor three numerical priorities
(36:35):
for your revenue team, amazing,let's put that on the docket for
November and we'll pick it backup.
So you have to stay focused.
You have to realize, look,technology and process
improvements are meant to drivemore revenue.
That's it.
And if it doesn't align to thatand I can't say specifically,
hey, look, our number onechallenge is X, our number two,
and this is exactly how we'regoing to quantify the impact of
(36:56):
this technology or processchange you may want to
reconsider.
Right, and it's not that youdon't want to prioritize it.
You might, you know, just wantto think about doing it there.
So you're always focused onfinding solutions that are to
the revenue challenge that we'rehaving right now.
That is the number one ornumber two bottleneck, right,
and so that's kind of like myfirst piece, and then I'll get
(37:17):
kind of I'm gonna come back tothat.
Actually, the number two pieceis one piece of technology
implemented at 100% is betterthan three pieces implemented at
30.
I equate this is kind of my bookanalogy, actually, I don't know
if I've ever made this, david.
This is kind of my book analogy.
Actually.
I don't know if I've ever madethis, david.
This is an exclusive Jakeanalogy, but I've made it to my
others before.
There are these people out therehow many books did you read
(37:40):
this year?
It's like, oh, I read.
I mean, look, I got a bookcase,you got a bookcase.
I read 35 books this year.
Amazing, tell me about thisbook and what did you actually
tactically implement?
It's like crickets, right?
So I think most of us are theseconsumers of books and we don't
do anything about it.
(38:00):
And I've put this challenge outthere Most people are better
reading one book a year, onebook and fully executing
everything that book says to do.
And I think sales technology orrevenue technology, is exactly
like that, that where I see thebiggest lift is to getting there
.
All the work that has to happenand I know it's a lot of work,
trust me.
We implement thousands probablyyeah, at least thousands of
(38:21):
sales technologies every year.
We're touching or implementing,and it's a lot of work to get
there.
The deployment of a newtechnology is step zero.
And when you start to have astep zero mindset that
deployment and initial trainingis step zero and you realize the
only goal of deploying atechnology is to create power
users within my organization itfoundationally shifts how you
(38:42):
think about deploying software.
So I don't care what softwareyou pick.
You're probably better offpicking less and deploying fully
, which means it's baked intothe company, it's baked into
what they're doing and it'ssolving the number one
bottleneck for your company overthe next.
You know two to four quarters.
That is my.
If you, if you pick that way, Ithink you're going to be in a
(39:04):
good.
You're going to be good, you'llbe.
You'll be better than like mostpeople.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yeah, I think that framework and that methodology
is fantastic and we look at it.
I've been very at Salesforce.
We've been very limited in whatwe deploy and we don't.
We tried not to tech stack up,because I think also what we
forget and I think you touchedon it is there's going to be a
(39:29):
period of time where actuallyproductivity will go down.
People are confused, they'renot understanding how to use the
technology, all those types ofthings, and we think and we're
sold on all these magic solvesfor your problems.
But you have to go into it withyour eyes open and with a plan,
like you said, and I like theidea that you look at it as
ground zero or the first step,that it is going to be a process
(39:53):
not just to implement it butalso to make sure that people
are using it in the right wayand the organization understands
how to use it in the right wayto be able to get the results
that you're looking for.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
That's right, and I think what we tell a lot of
leaders is that this is wheresales leaders shoot themselves
in the foot.
You say, well, when do you needto see this by?
And what does every leader sayDavid, hey, when does this need
to go live by?
Speaker 2 (40:19):
What's the answer?
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Yesterday, exactly Tomorrow, right?
That's answer number two.
If we're playing Family Feud,that mindset is why you're
struggling with technologyadoption.
You have to realize.
I need to again.
Going back to time, to impactwhen do you need to see impact
buying?
Don't give me this.
Yesterday, bs, actually, what'sthe date?
And now, how do we reverse,engineer the deployment plan to
(40:41):
get my team to power usage andadoption by that date?
And I feel like the one tool Iwill say and then I know we got
to wrap up is you need to startdeploying generative AI right
now.
Right now you need to pick andagain, you don't need to
overthink it, you don't need tosay what's my gen AI strategy
for my whole?
Stop Again.
(41:01):
What's my process?
You're going to pick one group.
We're going to find one way todeploy chat, gpt teams, gemini,
copilot.
The beautiful part and I thinkpeople need to hear this the
switching cost to go from a chatGPT teams instance to a Gemini
instance is like nothing, likethe ability we have to build the
(41:22):
exact same assistance at oneversus the other.
10, 20 hours of optimization,so you're not locking in and
guess what?
All their UIs look the exactsame.
There's like a list of gemsover here, or GPTs, and then
there's a chat.
So, like the UI different,isn't there?
So just picking one solutionagain.
What's the bottleneck I'm havingin my team?
What are the three ways we candeploy Gen AI?
You need to start to do thatnow, like you have.
Like you have to start to get amore standardized way that your
(41:44):
team is using this.
And a prompt library.
That was great 16 months ago.
We built out our first promptlibrary almost 24 months ago,
but we're not prompting anymore.
We have assistants that promptthe reps.
And then it's like well,actually, let's just build an
automation sales force.
You hit enrich, it runs throughthree assistants and pipes it
in.
So don't get overwhelmed withall the things.
I'm even saying we're going topick one department.
You're going to pick onedepartment, we're going to
(42:06):
decide two or three standardizeduse case and we're going to
deploy, and so that is one whereI think everyone does need to
do something, now more than ever.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
Oh, that is awesome.
Well, we are going to wrap onthat.
The one thing I'd like to do,jake, that we do with all of our
guests, is do a few rapid firequestions if you're up for it.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Of course let's do it .
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Run through them with the first thing that pops in
your head.
What is one thing that?
Speaker 1 (42:39):
people don't give enough value or attention to in
leadership.
Your job is not to fix people.
Your job is to help people getto the best version of
themselves that they can be, butyour job is not to fix people.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Love it.
What is one skill?
You advise everyone in sales tomasters, listening Favorite
business leadership or salesbook.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Man.
I mean obviously I'm gonna sayinnovative seller as a part of
this.
You know there was a book Iread really early in my career.
It was called DisciplineWithout Punishment.
It's probably 20 years old nowand that book helped me to kind
of understand the grappling thatI think a lot of us have with
(43:25):
accountability, coupled withkindness almost.
And yeah, it's kind of atextbook, kind of boring book,
honestly.
But Discipline WithoutPunishment, I think, is one
where if you haven't read thatbook and you're a leader, it's
worth.
I'm sure again, I haven't readit in a few years, but it could
be worth a read.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
I'll check it out.
That'll be my one book for 2026.
You can have multiple Favoritequote, mantra or saying that
inspires you as a sales leader.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
You are the person you are when nobody's looking
Nice.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
And finally, what is the most important goal or
project you're working on rightnow?
Speaker 1 (44:03):
For me right now it's launching Journey AI.
So I started a company.
That's what I needed to do.
After I've got 35 people and afull payroll, journey AI.
What we've done is kind of ourassistance that we've built out
into one platform.
So if you're a go-to-marketteam, you know you can set up,
you know we already have thesekind of seven out-of-the-box
assistance to help you doresearch, book meetings, build
(44:24):
account plans etc.
You can set up projects foreach account and then they all
know kind of the account thatthey're working on together.
It runs off of ChatGPT 5.0 andPerplexity, and so it's just
kind of out of the boxgo-to-market assistance.
So, like I said, we just sawmost people sales leaders like
please give me a box to checkthis AI thing.
And so Journey AI we literallyjust launched with Alpha.
(44:46):
You can sign up.
We'll make sure you have thelink.
You can sign up for a freetrial, check it out, let me know
what you think and we'll begoing live into full production,
probably in early Q4.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
So that's what.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
I'm pumped out about.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Well, that's exciting .
Well, jake, this was afantastic conversation.
I really appreciate youbringing your perspective your
views on AI sales leadership.
If people want to connect withyou or learn more about what
you're working on, what's thebest way?
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Yeah, come check out what we're doing at Scaled it's
skledcom.
You can check out our differentkind of AI services.
Our core business is more kindof call it you might call it
revenue operations optimizationwhere we feel like AI was just a
natural part of how you buildthat.
Go check out Journey it'smeetjourneyai and check that out
if you're interested.
And then LinkedIn I post almostevery day probably at least
(45:36):
every day on LinkedIn, so ifyou're somebody who geeks out on
tactical advice and wants tostay up to speed.
And then YouTube we're puttingout a lot of videos around AI in
particular on YouTube, so we'llmake sure you have all those
links for the show.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
We'll put them in the show notes.
All right, jake.
As always so great to chat withyou.
We'll put them in the shownotes.
All right, jake.
As always so great to chat withyou For you guys listening out
there.
Thanks so much for listening tothe Sell Like a Leader podcast.
I'm David Krieger.
Hit me up on LinkedIn with anyquestions, guests, comments,
feedback.
Thanks so much, appreciate it.
Thanks everybody.
Most of the people listening to this were not in
the workforce.
When we went from no internetto internet, I wasn't in the
workforce, but somebody had totrain John.
Hey, we're going to send anemail, we're going to go online
and search for things.
We're not going to go to thephone book or we're not going to
go to the library or anencyclopedia Like guys.
That was a huge, monumentalshift in how we solve problems.
(00:20):
We stopped going to the libraryand looking at books and they
were all curated for us insearch, etc.
And this is that next evolutionof how we solve problems.
So, as a leader if you've beenin the game for 10, 15, 20, 20
plus years, we are rewiring theway that we think to solve
problems.
So before it's like my SDRs ormy sales reps, they go, they go
to Google, they go to LinkedIn,blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
blah, and it's like, oh no,we're not doing any of that.
(00:42):
Instead, I've got theseassistants.
They do that for me and it's abetter quality and it's deeper,
richer insights and it canidentify where I'm missing in
the deal.
So it's just getting us to V1faster, right?
I tell everyone, if you'recopying and pasting AI, that you
are guaranteed to put yourselfout of a job.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Welcome.
Welcome back to another episodeof the Sell Like a Leader
podcast, the podcast for revenueleaders who are on a mission to
cultivate a high-performingsales team within their
organization.
I'm your host, david Krieger,president of SalesRoads,
america's most trusted salesoutsourcing and appointment
setting company, and today wehave a special treat.
We've got a great revenueleader, jake Dunlap, who I've
(01:25):
had the privilege of getting towork on some programs and just
has an amazing team who helpstheir clients really reinvent
their sales processes, andespecially over the past several
years, with an eye to AI.
And so Jake is a founder andCEO of Scaled Consulting.
They are a globally recognizedsales consulting firm that has
(01:49):
outproduced outperformedindustry giants in sales
consulting and again, I canattest to that firsthand.
And recently he published abook that if you haven't checked
out, you've got to check outthe Innovative Seller, which is
a USA Today bestselling book.
Welcome, jake, great to haveyou on the show.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Love that intro man.
Thank you.
I'm really excited about theconversation and love talking
about the future of go-to-marketand where we're headed, so it
should be a fun one.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, I'm excited, and so, to that point, the sales
landscape has rapidly changedover the past few years with the
advent of AI and I think, jake,you've been on the forefront of
this for selling teams, and Ithink one of the interesting
things and where I'd like tostart that you've identified is,
(02:40):
even though sales has changedconsiderably, sales teams are
still relying on oldmethodologies, from the
Challenger sale to Medic to Bant.
But in your book you introducedsomething called the Four Cs
and I'd love for you to walk thelisteners through what.
(03:02):
That is why you think some ofthe old methodologies aren't
working, so we can get yourperspective.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Yeah, and I think, yeah, I've been a vocal.
I'm not even like an anti a lotof these methodologies, I just
think that the application hasto evolve.
That's really what it comesdown to, david, is that the way
that we applied things you know,back in 1996 were different
than you know 2025, right, asyou can imagine.
So.
So, really, as I was writingthe book, you know what I really
(03:33):
started to think about, andI'll tell you, it's interesting.
I actually, wiley, kind ofcontracted me to write a
different book is going to becalled the Everyday Guide to
Exceptional Sales, and so Ireally wanted to write this book
.
That would be kind of this likeyou know, go to resource, so
it's like anything that comes up.
This is what it would be and,candidly, is like I spent way
too much time writing that bookand then, as I got into it, I'm
(03:54):
like what am I doing?
Like I don't want to write that.
I don't want to write like asales guide, another sales guide
book.
I was like, like, and I wasable to use parts of it in the
book too, so it ended up being awin-win.
But what I really started tothink about is like look, where
is B2B sales headed, what isevolving, what's changing and
therefore, if you want to becompetitive as a seller or a
(04:17):
leader, what are the things thatyou need to be able to do?
And it's funny, I've never beena big acronym guy, but as I
worked kind of through theprocess, we came up with the
concept of four C's, where I waslike you know, what are the
attributes that I think it takesto be successful?
And just from what we're seeing, you know we work with hundreds
of clients every single yearfor a client to successful, and
so that's where I came up withthe four C's.
(04:38):
You know the first.
It starts with, you know,commitment to technology and AI
proficiency, and I truly believe, like this to me is one of the
biggest issues I see is thatrevenue leaders have outsourced
their knowledge of what ispossible to a RevOps team that's
already overwhelmed, and sothese leaders aren't able to
even you know, think about, youknow, outreach sales off.
(04:58):
These types of tools came outin 2015, 10 years old, that's it
.
So if you were a sales leaderbefore that, you learned a whole
new play, et cetera.
Now there's 2,000, 3,000, plussales technologies.
One tool that you knew could dothis does 75 things.
And so I just don't see how youcan be a successful sales
leader in 2025 and beyond if youdo not understand the art of
(05:21):
possible with both salestechnology and generative AI,
which is obviously why I tookthe firm you know heavy there.
You know we're doing four tofive new deployments a month of
helping companies to deploy in astructured manner gen AI
deployments, because I thinkthat's where everyone's really
struggling is like we've got ourreps, they're using it, what do
we do?
And we kind of have thisjumpstart where we're like we're
going to pick one department,we scope three assistants and
(05:42):
one automation, we scope the usecases for these other
departments and we really thinkabout AI proficiency as really
treating this like a productroadmap where every organization
, each department AI should be adepartment by department, a
role by role deployment andreally helping companies to get
there.
And so that first C inparticular.
To me it's funny because thebook came out in about a year
(06:05):
ago and I wrote that part Gen AIwas kind of coming to the
forefront.
It would have been probably.
We went to press that November,December, before, but it was
just so painfully obvious to methen just like how disruptive
Gen AI was going to be, and Ithink most sales and revenue
leaders in general are stillbehind, even comprehending,
(06:29):
david, the art of possible withthese tools, and so they need to
start small to go big is kindof the strategy we've stayed,
we've been talking about tobecome, you know, committed to
proficiency.
You know in, you know, revenuetech and and AI.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
And so that sales leaders can embody that.
First C, I mean, are therecertain things that you really
recommend?
I mean, for me at SalesRoads,the thing that I've been trying
to preach is listen.
A lot of times we don't evenknow exactly what the tools are
going to do, what's going towork, what's not going to work,
so we just need to lean in,we've got to use it.
We've had clients that arebasically like no, we aren't
(07:06):
using AI, it's not secure, and Ijust feel like I get that
there's privacy concerns, but ifyou don't lean in, you don't
just start understanding andflexing that muscle to
understand how it works, whereit works, where it doesn't work,
you're going to be left behind,and so is there anything in
particular that you try to?
Speaker 1 (07:31):
embody or imbue into the sales leaders so that they
can embody that first C.
Yeah, look, I talked aboutanother principle and this is a
life principle that I don'tthink it's a revolutionary
concept.
I call it 80-15-5.
And I feel like you know, I sawsome of the you know, some of
the questions you had sent overahead of time, and one of the
questions was you know, whatshould leaders be doing?
You know, 80-15-5 is thisconcept of you know 80% of your
(07:53):
time should be spent on thingsthat are going to impact your
business.
In the next, you know, call itthree months or so if you're a
sales leader, maybe it could be,depending on how big your
company is, it could be a littlebit more, a little bit less 15%
of your time should be thingsthat are going to impact your
business.
Call it six, 12 months from now, and about 5% of your time
should be dedicated to thingsthat are going to have a big
impact on your professionalcareer and your business maybe
(08:15):
nine, 12, 24 months from now.
And so the number one piece ofadvice that I give is you have
to block an hour or two a week.
And look, and it's interestingto block an hour or two a week.
And look, and it's interesting,I know what the job is, you
know everyone like I know, Iknow the demands, I know what
that means.
But I also can tell you we arelike you know, as I think about
(08:35):
when I first got into this toyou know, it's been two years
now where I had this you knowkind of conversation with a
buddy of mine, kevin Dorsey.
We're having beers and pizzaand it's like, dude, if it can
do that, it could do this and itcould do that.
And I was like, oh my God, he'sright.
And I literally emailed my teamand said, guys, I need to like
(08:55):
fire myself as CEO for a weekand I need to go just like mess
with this.
And then I was.
I was like this is this, is it?
And I think, one of the mostimportant kind of mindset shifts
to maybe help you to understand.
You know, yes, spending two tothree hours a week is worth.
It is.
This is a foundational shift inhow we solve problems as humans
.
This isn't a new technology,this is the same way.
(09:17):
Look, you know, most of thepeople listening to this were
not in the workforce when wewent from no internet to
internet.
I wasn't in the workforce, butsomebody had to train John.
Hey, we're gonna send an email,we're gonna go online and
search for things, we're notgonna go to the phone book or
we're not gonna go to thelibrary or an encyclopedia Like
guys.
That was a huge, monumentalshift in how we solve problems.
(09:38):
We stopped going to the libraryand looking at books and they
were all curated for us insearch, et cetera and at books,
and they were all curated for usin search, et cetera.
And this is that next evolutionof how we solve problems.
So, as a leader, if you've beenin the game for 10, 15, 20, 20
plus years, we are rewiring theway that we think to solve
problems.
So before it was like my SDRsor my sales reps they go, they
go to Google, they go toLinkedIn, blah, blah, blah, blah
, blah, blah.
(09:58):
And it's like, oh no, we're notdoing any of that.
Instead, I've got theseassistants.
They do that for me and it's abetter quality and it's deeper,
richer insights and it canidentify, like where I'm missing
in the deal.
So it's just getting us to V1faster, right?
You know, I tell everyone, ifyou're copying and pasting AI,
that you are guaranteed to putyourself out of a job.
All AI is doing the same waythat Google got us to answers
(10:21):
faster, gen AI is just gettingus there even faster, and then
the human brain turns on for thelast 20%.
But now I can get to.
If I have 50 minutes to work onsomething, I get to V1 in 10,
and by the time the 50 minutesis up, I get to V3 that I maybe
never had bandwidth for.
So I think, kind of bringingthis full circle that is why
leaders have to embrace thisthat you have to rewire your
(10:43):
brain to solve problemsfoundationally different than
what made you successful even 10years ago, and I think that
that's a very tough, david.
That's a very tough pill toswallow once you get to a
certain point of your career,but I don't think you can unsee
that at this point.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah, and I think you do have to live it, because it
is so new, it is so different.
For you to create some of thesestrategies you have to see how
it's working again, see how it'snot working, see also, you know
, I agree with you.
I think that people can nowspend more time on the thinking
part of things.
However, what I struggle withmyself and for the team is
(11:21):
making sure that they don't gointo monkey mode.
They don't go because you cando things fast, it can be good
and copy and paste, and so,unless you're living it as a
leader, you sometimes don't seesome of those temptations and
think through how do I make surethat we aren't just going into
monkey mode and we're actuallyusing this to create better work
?
And I think that kind oftransitions us into the second C
(11:42):
which I'd love to get yourperspective on is the current
go-to-market strategy and whatthat means in this context and
how you advise your clientsaround that.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Yeah, so yeah, the second C is again having a
current go-to-market strategyand I think we as humans, we
tend to lock into patternrecognition.
If something works, we kind ofstruggle to then unanchor for
things that work.
We're like you know, thinkabout it when you play video
games, right, you tend to lockinto.
If you play 2K or Fortnite, youknow you've got your different
(12:16):
plays that you run and you kindof run, you know the best of the
best.
Players are very, you know,agile.
But I think that that's whatyou see happening with Outbound
is we're locked into plays thatworked seven years ago, six
years ago.
And just a little historylesson for everyone here's kind
of my history lesson.
There's a book that everyonefollows around go-to-market
(12:37):
called Predictable Revenue.
Okay, predictable Revenue.
I think this is important.
If you all haven't read it,your boss has read it, I promise
you.
Okay, um, or your vc or your pehas read it.
Predictable revenue was wasbuilt around how outbound worked
in the early 2000s.
Not kidding, and guess what,david?
It was pretty simple.
(12:58):
The internet was brand new.
Linkedin as a site fornetworking did not exist.
Okay, it did not literallyexist.
It was a job site until like2011,.
Right or so or sorry.
Yeah, it was only jobs right.
And so imagine what were thoseguys doing, david.
What did they do?
24, seven.
They picked up the phone and sowe built this kind of revenue
(13:19):
model that said, oh, activitiesequals, meetings equals pipeline
.
And that was true when everyactivity was equal, because they
were all high qualityactivities.
It was a high quality phonecall.
I wasn't using some mass emailor whatever.
I wrote a meeting.
I wrote a message to get ameeting with you, david.
I made a call to get a meeting,so all activities were
homogenous.
(13:39):
You fast forward to today.
That's not.
I'm doing a LinkedIn, a blah, ablah.
A bulk email versus acustomized email.
Those are not the same data set.
And so we're still continuingto run our teams based off of a
book that was written about astrategy that we're not actually
even running.
If every activity was acustomized, one-to-one activity,
(14:00):
well then, activities equal,meetings equal, you know, deals
right, or opportunities, and soI think for a lot of companies
that's why, you know, I talkabout this we have to start to
anchor our go-to market aroundthe first outcome, which we call
a meaningful conversation, andthat just simply means, like
jake connected with someone thatsaid I'm going to put you in
touch with someone.
Or maybe the assistant said,hey, I'll help to book a meeting
(14:21):
with janice or whatever it is.
And so we have to stop moving.
We have to realize the goalisn't account coverage, the goal
is generate a meeting with thatone person and somehow and I
think the other kind of historylesson part of this is in, you
know, look, even all the way upto 2015, there was really no way
for salespeople to do bulkemails right.
(14:42):
It didn't exist.
So again, every email and everycall from when that book was
written to call it 2015, 2016,every activity was high quality.
I had to send a one-to-one toyou.
I wasn't.
And then what happened is therewas a run between about 2016 and
2018-ish 19, where email-onlysequences kind of worked.
(15:03):
And then what happened is westarted to raise a whole group
of people who forgot how to call.
Then 2020 hit, then you've gotthese new hires all starting
remote and they never got to sitthere in the pit.
You know like, oh man, oh, thatwas good, jake, I like that
saying et cetera.
And so now you fast forward totoday, and today we are trying
to run a 2016-17 play, whenemail only kind of worked with
(15:27):
people that don't know how tomake phone calls, because we
didn't train them that way andthe leaders, candidly, they've
grown up in the 2020-2021.
They didn't learn how to call.
And you know there's a lot ofdata that shows kind of the the
omni-channel impact.
And so my point is I actuallythink it's easier than ever for
outbound yeah, I think it'seasier than ever.
One outbound yeah, I think it'seasier than ever.
One of our sister company wespun out last year, rev Optics.
(15:47):
We had a client betweenliterally came in in January
this year between Q4 and Q1,team of 20 SDRs had a hundred
more opportunities in onequarter and it was like, guess
what we're going to do, guys,we're not just going to
customize the first email, which, by the way, the first email is
literally I, which, by the way,the first email is literally I.
Have seen it in one sequenceout of probably tens, if not
hundreds of thousands ofsequences, where the first
(16:08):
touchpoint is the highestconverting touchpoint, but yeah,
that's the touchpoint everyonedoes.
Now we're kind of moving pastthat.
We do like a quasi likerelevancy base and it's like all
you have to do is patterndisrupt.
Send a video, send a LinkedInvoice note.
I don't really care what you do.
Send a video, send a LinkedInvoice note.
I don't really care what you do.
Send a handwritten note Coupledwith just keep adding value.
It's literally that easy.
(16:29):
Like, if your currentgo-to-market strategy is focused
on generating outcomes and notgenerating account coverage,
you're gonna be wildly moresuccessful than somebody who's
like account coverage only focus.
So that's a little bit of arant there on that one, but it's
just again.
Sometimes I swear to you, Ifeel like I'm living in bizarro
world.
(16:49):
Like we'll be talking to aclient.
I'm like okay, jake, but whathappens when activity goes down?
I go, we're talking aboutoutcomes, but I get it Like
there's pressure from your boardand your board is running the
playbook.
I told you so I look, I I getit.
I've been in that seat and I'veworked with you.
Know enough.
You know thousands of you knowcro's over my career.
Speaker 2 (17:09):
Now like I get it's easier said than done a little
bit, but at the end of the day,if you're driving outcomes,
that's what people care about,you know yeah, I mean, activity
is such a short-term metric andand it's in a virtual world and
all those things, it's it aneasier metric, at least on a
day-to-day, to at least see thatpeople are working.
But at the end of the day, thething that is going to keep you
(17:30):
in the CRO seat is the outcomes,and so it is definitely
short-sighted, and when you'retoo short-sighted then you don't
have a long-term future.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
And this is where leadership comes in, david.
Look, people have been makingfake dials since forever, right,
like I remember this is 2007,.
Maybe I was running a team andthis dude he actually ended up
becoming a pretty successfulsales guy.
I stay in touch with him.
All of a sudden, I went up toone of my new hires and they had
this list of phone numbers.
(18:01):
I'm like, what is this?
They're like, they're like, uh,uh, they're like.
And one of our reps had come upbecause we had the most
ridiculous minimums.
It was a hundred dials and twoand a half hours of talk time a
day.
It was a lot like in, right, itwas too much.
And he had a list of fake phonenumbers.
Right, there's another kid.
I remember I caught him, um,like the, it flagged me hey,
this number has been called like30 times in the last like two
(18:22):
months, and it was a fax machine.
So it's like, I call the number.
It's like, and I'm like dude,come on, chris, man, like, so,
look, this idea of fakeactivities is has been happening
since before the auto stuff,right, but but again, I think
there's a happy medium, becauseI'm all for there's.
You know, if people can'tmanage to an outcome, then you
(18:42):
need to kind of look at some ofthe leading indicators and coach
there right.
But again, I want them doinghigh quality activities.
I don't want them to just dopunch the button activities.
And I've said this before too.
If you are an SDR or a sales repand I want you to listen to
this If you're a leader too, andI want you to tell me how this
is not logical.
(19:05):
If you're an sdr or sales repand your manager or your company
is telling you to kind of hit,send on these templates and just
do this, you're puttingyourself out of a job.
Right, you're putting yourselfout of a job because you're just
saying guess what ai can justdo that, like we're already
doing tests.
Like a hubspot just releasesbreeze ai agent and it's like
just hit, sit to hit a template,that's like pretty good.
It's pretty, pretty good.
Like you know, we haven't seenany of these outbound ones that
(19:26):
are like really doing it atscale.
But you know, I think it's likewe just have to really
encourage our people to turntheir brain on that.
10 to 20% know their personas,know the value we provide those
personas, so they can, you know,you know, be that trusted
advisor that somebody wants tomeet with, versus, you know,
just getting out as much ofactivity as possible.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Yeah, and I think there's two aspects to that.
Which one?
Maybe AI will get to a pointwhere it can replace it, but
personally I don't think it's.
There is that creative sparkand doing the real good pattern
interrupt or whatnot and reallymaking something creative and
different than you AI humansstill, I think, can outperform
(20:10):
in that way.
Eventually, I think AI andmaybe with some of the right
prompts, it can be there now.
But then the second part is thetrusted advisor.
Right, if we don't positionourselves as salespeople as that
trusted advisor, you know,creating that type of
relationship, you know that'ssomething that is harder for AI
(20:32):
to replicate.
Now there are certainpersonalities that are creating
relationships with AIs right now, but it's different and it
always is going to at least Ipersonally think will be
fundamentally different.
And that's where salespeoplecan play and build their network
as an AI.
Who can't build a network,can't build trust over 10 years,
over 15 years, over a year ofworking with somebody.
(20:55):
And so with that, with yourthird C, the customized sales
journey you touched on it alittle bit, but maybe you could
break it down a little bit.
For sales leaders, if they'relooking at their current
go-to-market strategy, they sayoh, you know what?
Jake is right.
I'm still using the predictablerevenue playbook.
How do you think through withthem, or how do they think about
(21:18):
customizing that sales journeywith the tools that are
available now?
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Yeah, so customized sales journey.
This is a really important partof the book and probably one of
the I don't know, I think oneof the most important for people
to read and really internalizewhat this actually means for B2B
sales in particular.
I'll make the analogy first ofB2C sales.
(21:43):
If you think about how we buythings as consumers today, every
X number of months it gets moretailored to us, more tailored
to us perfect recommendations.
Click to buy for this person.
More information survey forthis person.
We are being trained as buyers,like if something's not hyper
relevant, I've got no time forit, right?
(22:04):
And the analogy I always use isI go.
How many times in the last twoweeks have you looked up an item
in Amazon?
It wasn't available to getshipped to you later, today or
tomorrow, so you picked adifferent product that gets
there today or tomorrow, orsomething that would literally
get there like three days later,like just think about that
behavior.
That is a very new, that is alike less than five year, six
(22:25):
year, maybe six year oldbehavior that just continues to
perpetuate in our brains a speedto information, the ability to
consume content.
You know we all consume tonsand tons of video content.
B2b companies are atrocious atproviding consumable content to
people, even though more andmore people, you know, want to
learn about thingsasynchronously.
And so you know customizedsales journey.
(22:47):
Really, there's a couple ofconcepts in there.
The first I'll talk about isthis concept called VEX, which
we talk about in the bookV-E-C-S.
Vex, which says that look,today customers are coming to
you.
There's a vetted group ofbuyers.
I think that that's probablyanywhere between 10 to 20% of
buyers now that say hey, david,look, I already use your
competitor, bro, I used you guysthree years ago.
(23:07):
I've already done chat, gptresearch.
Can we go?
Why are we having thisconversation, man?
Do I really have to sit here?
The inbound SDR is one of theworst roles that exists,
candidly, in currentgo-to-market.
That's like, hey, jake, I wantto understand some information.
It's like, dude, I already knowmore than you.
(23:28):
Why are we waiting another week?
Like, I think companies areartificially slowing down their
sales cycle left and rightbecause they're not appreciating
the vetted.
And then the next is educated,which is someone who might not
have all those attributes butmaybe they again, they either
use a competitor, they're a warmreferral from a current client
Each company we kind ofencourage if they check three or
five of these boxes and wetreat them as vetted and that
(23:50):
means the first call.
We're showing up with asolutions engineer, we do this,
we do this and I'll kind of getto more of those details.
Educated, we show up basicallywhere we would at step two.
Basically we're at step two.
Cold, you know, is the C, soV-E-C, cold and self-service,
right?
Mckinsey did a study.
I talked about it in the book.
Mckinsey said look by about nowand next year, about 20 to 30%
of people will be ready toself-service at anything under
50,000.
(24:11):
And I think for most peoplethey're like but I need to talk
to somebody.
I'm like no, I don't, I already.
It's like again, think, if it'sa known space, like I'm not
educating on why the space isimportant, I've worked with
somebody in your like, like your, like your competitive set.
Guys, I'm already, I'm alreadythere, I'm at step four.
I don't need you to convince meor sell me on the education
(24:34):
around why the space isimportant, I'm already there.
And so I think what we do areally bad job of is
understanding that you cannottreat every buyer like a
conveyor belt, and I think whathappens today is everybody
starts at the beginning, whetheryou're vetted, whether you're
educated, whether you're cold oreven if you're like God, I'd
love to self service.
You know that would be amazing,and so you know, one of the
(24:55):
easiest things you can do to getreal tactical here we call it
that magic email and I'm tellingyou within a week you will be
blown away Is at least 48 hoursbefore your call first call, you
have your reps send out and youcan automate this.
Obviously, reps send out anemail that says hey, david, I'm
really looking forward to ourconversation coming up on Friday
morning.
When I talk to VPs of blank,they're either one like already
(25:19):
familiar with the space, mighthave used us, or competitor in
the past, and I want to makesure I can show up prepared with
the right people from our teamor two.
They're kind of stillexploratory, still trying to
kind of understand details, andwe'll need to go a little bit
deeper into kind of the why.
Let me know where you fit onthis continuum and I'll make
sure that we're prepared forthat conversation on Friday.
That's all you got to do.
(25:47):
Yeah, you do that.
I'm telling you your repswithin a week.
I promise you a rep is going toflag to the manager and he's
going to go or she's going to go.
Oh my gosh, jake said that hewas this, this and this.
I think you need to get on thefirst call, and so we have to be
able to adjust to where youknow it used to be.
Because, again, let's rewindbehavior In 2010,.
Just 15 years ago, my ability tofind out anything about a B2B
company was like zero.
It's like there weren't allthese groups.
(26:09):
G2 didn't exist.
I don't know if people stilluse G2 that much, but like none
of this existed, right, so fastforward.
It's like HubSpot startedtalking about this like 2010, 11
, 12, that buyers are moreeducated, talking about this
like 2010, 11, 12, that buyersare more educated.
It was kind of BS then, but ifyou kind of continue as we get
access to more and more and more, and now we have chat, gpt
where I'm telling you, whatpeople are doing now is they're
(26:30):
saying, hey, I'm looking forsomebody in the sales engagement
space.
I've already used them.
I want these three options.
Give me a wild card option of acompany that's raised at least
50 million and boom, I'm comingin hot.
And so we're.
Just, we still have not adjustedour journey to appreciate that
people are coming in moreeducated.
And that is what I think, david, the scariest part is, I think
(26:52):
that what could end up beinglike the death nail for B2B
sales as a discipline, thatinstead of outside of the ultra,
ultra enterprise or ultrarelationship based sale, I think
if we can't adapt to this,buyers are not going to want to
talk to anybody in b2b sales.
They're going to say, look, letme self-guide, let me.
And if you think about modernsales today, I really don't want
(27:15):
to talk to the salesperson, Ijust want to talk to the
customer success person I'mgoing to work with, because, at
the end of the day, I'm going toget handed off and all I care
about is am I using the product?
And so what value is thesalesperson going to add if
they're spending time trying toqualify me and I already know
more than they do?
Yeah, and so that is thescariest trend for me over the
(27:36):
next two to five years that ifcompanies do not adapt to have a
more customized journey, moreand more buyers are going to go
work with your competition andopt out of your sales process
because they're like, dude, wait, you know the whole mindset and
this is what I learned too.
Got to hop on a call.
Oh hey, jacob.
Oh yeah, great question, canyou hop on a call?
(27:57):
I'm like just send me a videoof, like the two minute demo I
can send to my team, for thelove of God, right, like?
And to me it's both Like.
It's not that there isn't aright time to hop on a call, you
know.
It's like there's friction inthe process or something.
But very few companies do avery good job of asynchronous
education.
You know, I think at last thatwas 24% of your time is actually
spent with the customer andcustomer, and so this customized
(28:27):
journey is where are they at intheir process?
And am I giving themasynchronous ways to absorb
content, to learn content, tolearn about us?
Do I have a demo that'stailored to a CFO versus VP of
operations versus a VP ofmarketing that I can send really
quickly as a leave behind threeseparate emails?
And the answer for about 98% ofcompanies is no.
And I think that's what scaresme most about the customized
journey is we just refuse tobelieve that people are educated
and that people are actuallysmart enough to learn
asynchronously without yoursales rep hopping on a phone,
(28:49):
and those, I think, are thebiggest trends on why this
matters more than ever.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yeah, and I think the idea that you have is a good
workaround, because I think alot of times, especially on the
inbound side, it's that theyneed the discovery because they
don't have the information.
So either just ask the question, like you do, which is a great
simple workaround, or even likeinbound forms, or however you're
collecting your leads yeah,sure, and it can be more.
(29:13):
It's stuck before generative AI.
There's no reason why inboundforms can't be generative to
some extent.
They don't have to be.
Just click a button as part ofthe form.
I can ask a few questions andgenerate and get some of that
information, so you can startcustomizing the journey right
out of the gate.
From an inbound perspective,and I think you're absolutely
right.
I mean, we've all been on witha salesperson who's wasting our
(29:36):
time and there's no patience forthat right now.
Speaker 1 (29:41):
And that's the craziest part, david, just about
that last part Go ask youraverage sales leader the last
time they bought anything.
Go ask them and I guarantee youat least 75%.
I'll go ahead and say one outof four is fine.
We'll say, oh my God, it wasbrutal.
And then I go and I've postedabout this on LinkedIn.
(30:02):
I'm like when is the last timeyou audited your process?
It's the same.
You're doing the same thing.
Like what do you mean?
It's brutal.
You're literally doing theexact same process.
So I just feel like this is, Ifeel like this edit, anything in
the book is probably one of themore easy concepts to grasp,
because we know how we like tobuy as consumers, and if we can
(30:25):
take that mindset of meetingpeople where they are, letting
people learn asynchronously atthe right times and human
interventions at the right timeas well, too, we're going to win
and you're going to build amore, you know, future-proof
team.
And one thing I will say andthen you know we can move on is
look, and this is where I thinkMedPick and some of these
methodologies have anopportunity but are also
(30:48):
dangerous, because one of thebiggest behavior shifts that I
see right now is we're startingto treat MedPick like a sales
methodology versus a deal reviewframework.
Right, it was never meant to be.
Hey, jake, to run a gooddiscovery call, did you get
these three data points?
Because guess what A real badrep can go get those data points
right.
(31:09):
And again, a little historylesson, guys.
Medic, which was the precursorto MedPick, was invented in 1996
.
Do you know what buying waslike, guys in 1996?
There's a guy in a mahoganyoffice and he would just like
buy stuff.
Like the buying committee waslike two people, the owner or
the CEO, whoever, but they justbuy stuff.
Like the buying committees wereprobably I don't even know how
(31:31):
to guess one fifth the size thatthey are today.
The competition and amount ofcompanies doing something
similar to you was probablyeither non-existent or 1, 30th
of what it is today.
You know we had more free time.
There wasn't social media.
There was like, think aboutthat.
Like that medic was developedaround a buyer process from 1996
(31:58):
.
Now, do I think you can adapt itto today?
Absolutely, but you can't makeit your methodology.
And that's what a lot of ourclients I'm like look, we
actually don't have tonecessarily get rid of MedPick.
We have a framework calledintent.
That we think is more accuratethat we call it.
The N is for next steps.
We found that today and I putthis in the book.
It's like a last minute editionBecause I was like why are
(32:19):
deals actually struggling today,with all these people involved
and where did I feel like someof them fell down?
So next steps right now.
Momentum is the killer.
If you are not driving nextsteps, the deals won't get done.
This mythical champion is notgoing to do it.
They got too many things.
The T is for teams.
This concept of one decisionmaker or one economic buyer is
insane, right, and the decisionmaker today could be somebody
(32:42):
two levels below the SVP, who'sa squeaky wheel in the room.
So you got to understand theteams.
Education level I talked abouteducation as a part of it.
Numerical priority over pains Ifyou are not a top three
numerical priority for thatdepartment over the next two
quarters, your deal is notgetting done.
So, moving away from thisconcept of pain, I can tell you
(33:02):
I get eight leaders together.
They all listen to the call forsay yep, there's a pain to say,
and two are like nah, numericalpriority is like non refutable.
Is this a top three numericalpriority for your department as
a part of it.
And then T is the last.
T is time to impact, and thatmeans when does the customer
need to see results?
By right, and I think MedPickhas a version that called
(33:25):
compelling event, but it's likenext steps.
If I know the next steps andI'm driving that, I know the
teams that are involved.
There's usually a buyer teamand an end user team, sometimes
a vetting team, right, Iunderstand the education level
on meeting people where they'reat and educating them
asynchronously Right, Iunderstand I'm solving a top
three numerical priority, right,and I understand when the
customer needs to actually seethe benefit of what we do.
But I'm in the deal, like, Iknow, I'm like there, and so
(33:49):
that's kind of how we evolvedmedpick.
Again, I we have clients wherewe've evolved it for them.
But you still have to thinkabout this, these weaving in the
concepts of intent there too,of like not just saying what's
the economic buyer, sayingwhat's the economic buyer team
of people.
So we've we've had some reallygood success.
Uh, yeah, adapting it yeah,that's awesome.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
I think that makes that makes a lot of sense.
Uh, this, this day and age, andamazing, this 1996, that's like
30 years ago.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Uh, right, crazy, I know, I know and like I said, I
I don't want to, I don't want to.
You know poo-poo much because,like I said, it can still be
applicable.
You cannot make it a dealframework Because, I'll tell you
, one of the most dangerousthings that we're seeing with
our clients is there's a clientof ours I won't talk about who
they are but they had a gonginitiative and they didn't
really have as tight methodologybut what they want to do, they
(34:38):
wanted to make MedPick into Gong, which, by the way, I'm totally
fine with that as a dealevaluation framework.
But guess what ends uphappening?
In lieu of a tight playbook,your sales leaders start to
coach to MedPick as yourmethodology.
Jake, did you run a good call?
Jake, your first call?
Oh, look what Gong said, thatyou did One, two, three, I did
(34:59):
great.
I listened to the call.
The call's terrible, you know.
And so we've got to move offthis idea Like, look, it's a
deal evaluation framework.
It doesn't equal a good callfor a discovery demo proposal
contract, like.
Those are two different things.
Speaker 2 (35:16):
So, as you know, we come to then here.
I do want to get into a fewtech stack types of things,
because I think a lot of whatsales leaders are are struggling
with and have frankly struggledwith for a long time but I
think it's on steroids now inthe age of AI is there are so
(35:38):
many different tools and we canget caught up in the promise of
them.
But I think we've seen and Ithink you even posted about it
recently sometimes we can makeour teams less effective because
we're just throwing so manydifferent things at them.
What are your thoughts aroundboth evaluating what you need or
(36:01):
don't need in this current age,and are there any things that
stand out as a tool that is moreubiquitous and I know a lot of
times it's got to just becustomized to the company and
the use case.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
Sure, yeah, yeah.
There's a couple of things inthere.
Um one is you have to make surethat you're prioritizing the
biggest bottlenecks in yourrevenue org and you're focused
on deploying things there.
So you know if, if there's anew tool you hear about and it's
not solving one of your top twoor three numerical priorities
(36:35):
for your revenue team, amazing,let's put that on the docket for
November and we'll pick it backup.
So you have to stay focused.
You have to realize, look,technology and process
improvements are meant to drivemore revenue.
That's it.
And if it doesn't align to thatand I can't say specifically,
hey, look, our number onechallenge is X, our number two,
and this is exactly how we'regoing to quantify the impact of
(36:56):
this technology or processchange you may want to
reconsider.
Right, and it's not that youdon't want to prioritize it.
You might, you know, just wantto think about doing it there.
So you're always focused onfinding solutions that are to
the revenue challenge that we'rehaving right now.
That is the number one ornumber two bottleneck, right,
and so that's kind of like myfirst piece, and then I'll get
(37:17):
kind of I'm gonna come back tothat.
Actually, the number two pieceis one piece of technology
implemented at 100% is betterthan three pieces implemented at
30.
I equate this is kind of my bookanalogy, actually, I don't know
if I've ever made this, david.
This is kind of my book analogy.
Actually.
I don't know if I've ever madethis, david.
This is an exclusive Jakeanalogy, but I've made it to my
others before.
There are these people out therehow many books did you read
(37:40):
this year?
It's like, oh, I read.
I mean, look, I got a bookcase,you got a bookcase.
I read 35 books this year.
Amazing, tell me about thisbook and what did you actually
tactically implement?
It's like crickets, right?
So I think most of us are theseconsumers of books and we don't
do anything about it.
(38:00):
And I've put this challenge outthere Most people are better
reading one book a year, onebook and fully executing
everything that book says to do.
And I think sales technology orrevenue technology, is exactly
like that, that where I see thebiggest lift is to getting there
.
All the work that has to happenand I know it's a lot of work,
trust me.
We implement thousands probablyyeah, at least thousands of
(38:21):
sales technologies every year.
We're touching or implementing,and it's a lot of work to get
there.
The deployment of a newtechnology is step zero.
And when you start to have astep zero mindset that
deployment and initial trainingis step zero and you realize the
only goal of deploying atechnology is to create power
users within my organization itfoundationally shifts how you
(38:42):
think about deploying software.
So I don't care what softwareyou pick.
You're probably better offpicking less and deploying fully
, which means it's baked intothe company, it's baked into
what they're doing and it'ssolving the number one
bottleneck for your company overthe next.
You know two to four quarters.
That is my.
If you, if you pick that way, Ithink you're going to be in a
(39:04):
good.
You're going to be good, you'llbe.
You'll be better than like mostpeople.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
Yeah, I think that framework and that methodology
is fantastic and we look at it.
I've been very at Salesforce.
We've been very limited in whatwe deploy and we don't.
We tried not to tech stack up,because I think also what we
forget and I think you touchedon it is there's going to be a
(39:29):
period of time where actuallyproductivity will go down.
People are confused, they'renot understanding how to use the
technology, all those types ofthings, and we think and we're
sold on all these magic solvesfor your problems.
But you have to go into it withyour eyes open and with a plan,
like you said, and I like theidea that you look at it as
ground zero or the first step,that it is going to be a process
(39:53):
not just to implement it butalso to make sure that people
are using it in the right wayand the organization understands
how to use it in the right wayto be able to get the results
that you're looking for.
Speaker 1 (40:05):
That's right, and I think what we tell a lot of
leaders is that this is wheresales leaders shoot themselves
in the foot.
You say, well, when do you needto see this by?
And what does every leader sayDavid, hey, when does this need
to go live by?
Speaker 2 (40:19):
What's the answer?
Speaker 1 (40:20):
Yesterday, exactly Tomorrow, right?
That's answer number two.
If we're playing Family Feud,that mindset is why you're
struggling with technologyadoption.
You have to realize.
I need to again.
Going back to time, to impactwhen do you need to see impact
buying?
Don't give me this.
Yesterday, bs, actually, what'sthe date?
And now, how do we reverse,engineer the deployment plan to
(40:41):
get my team to power usage andadoption by that date?
And I feel like the one tool Iwill say and then I know we got
to wrap up is you need to startdeploying generative AI right
now.
Right now you need to pick andagain, you don't need to
overthink it, you don't need tosay what's my gen AI strategy
for my whole?
Stop Again.
(41:01):
What's my process?
You're going to pick one group.
We're going to find one way todeploy chat, gpt teams, gemini,
copilot.
The beautiful part and I thinkpeople need to hear this the
switching cost to go from a chatGPT teams instance to a Gemini
instance is like nothing, likethe ability we have to build the
(41:22):
exact same assistance at oneversus the other.
10, 20 hours of optimization,so you're not locking in and
guess what?
All their UIs look the exactsame.
There's like a list of gemsover here, or GPTs, and then
there's a chat.
So, like the UI different,isn't there?
So just picking one solutionagain.
What's the bottleneck I'm havingin my team?
What are the three ways we candeploy Gen AI?
You need to start to do thatnow, like you have.
Like you have to start to get amore standardized way that your
(41:44):
team is using this.
And a prompt library.
That was great 16 months ago.
We built out our first promptlibrary almost 24 months ago,
but we're not prompting anymore.
We have assistants that promptthe reps.
And then it's like well,actually, let's just build an
automation sales force.
You hit enrich, it runs throughthree assistants and pipes it
in.
So don't get overwhelmed withall the things.
I'm even saying we're going topick one department.
You're going to pick onedepartment, we're going to
(42:06):
decide two or three standardizeduse case and we're going to
deploy, and so that is one whereI think everyone does need to
do something, now more than ever.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
Oh, that is awesome.
Well, we are going to wrap onthat.
The one thing I'd like to do,jake, that we do with all of our
guests, is do a few rapid firequestions if you're up for it.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Of course let's do it .
Speaker 2 (42:28):
Run through them with the first thing that pops in
your head.
What is one thing that?
Speaker 1 (42:39):
people don't give enough value or attention to in
leadership.
Your job is not to fix people.
Your job is to help people getto the best version of
themselves that they can be, butyour job is not to fix people.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
Love it.
What is one skill?
You advise everyone in sales tomasters, listening Favorite
business leadership or salesbook.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
Man.
I mean obviously I'm gonna sayinnovative seller as a part of
this.
You know there was a book Iread really early in my career.
It was called DisciplineWithout Punishment.
It's probably 20 years old nowand that book helped me to kind
of understand the grappling thatI think a lot of us have with
(43:25):
accountability, coupled withkindness almost.
And yeah, it's kind of atextbook, kind of boring book,
honestly.
But Discipline WithoutPunishment, I think, is one
where if you haven't read thatbook and you're a leader, it's
worth.
I'm sure again, I haven't readit in a few years, but it could
be worth a read.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
I'll check it out.
That'll be my one book for 2026.
You can have multiple Favoritequote, mantra or saying that
inspires you as a sales leader.
Speaker 1 (43:54):
You are the person you are when nobody's looking
Nice.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
And finally, what is the most important goal or
project you're working on rightnow?
Speaker 1 (44:03):
For me right now it's launching Journey AI.
So I started a company.
That's what I needed to do.
After I've got 35 people and afull payroll, journey AI.
What we've done is kind of ourassistance that we've built out
into one platform.
So if you're a go-to-marketteam, you know you can set up,
you know we already have thesekind of seven out-of-the-box
assistance to help you doresearch, book meetings, build
(44:24):
account plans etc.
You can set up projects foreach account and then they all
know kind of the account thatthey're working on together.
It runs off of ChatGPT 5.0 andPerplexity, and so it's just
kind of out of the boxgo-to-market assistance.
So, like I said, we just sawmost people sales leaders like
please give me a box to checkthis AI thing.
And so Journey AI we literallyjust launched with Alpha.
(44:46):
You can sign up.
We'll make sure you have thelink.
You can sign up for a freetrial, check it out, let me know
what you think and we'll begoing live into full production,
probably in early Q4.
Speaker 2 (44:56):
So that's what.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
I'm pumped out about.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Well, that's exciting .
Well, jake, this was afantastic conversation.
I really appreciate youbringing your perspective your
views on AI sales leadership.
If people want to connect withyou or learn more about what
you're working on, what's thebest way?
Speaker 1 (45:14):
Yeah, come check out what we're doing at Scaled it's
skledcom.
You can check out our differentkind of AI services.
Our core business is more kindof call it you might call it
revenue operations optimizationwhere we feel like AI was just a
natural part of how you buildthat.
Go check out Journey it'smeetjourneyai and check that out
if you're interested.
And then LinkedIn I post almostevery day probably at least
(45:36):
every day on LinkedIn, so ifyou're somebody who geeks out on
tactical advice and wants tostay up to speed.
And then YouTube we're puttingout a lot of videos around AI in
particular on YouTube, so we'llmake sure you have all those
links for the show.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
We'll put them in the show notes.
All right, jake.
As always so great to chat withyou.
We'll put them in the shownotes.
All right, jake.
As always so great to chat withyou For you guys listening out
there.
Thanks so much for listening tothe Sell Like a Leader podcast.
I'm David Krieger.
Hit me up on LinkedIn with anyquestions, guests, comments,
feedback.
Thanks so much, appreciate it.
Thanks everybody.
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