September 24, 2025 • 45 mins
Your champion just went silent. That 90% deal just died — and it wasn't killed by the person you were talking to. It was derailed by stakeholders you never knew existed.
Host Jake Dunlap sits down with Gal Agha, CEO of Aligned, to break down why traditional sales methodologies like MEDPIC are failing in today's complex buying environment. With clients cutting sales cycles by 30% and increasing win rates by 15%, Gal reveals what he calls "buying process as a service."
What You'll Learn:
- Why MEDPIC is built for 1950s buyers, not today's complex stakeholder groups
- How to use AI for scenario planning and competitive intelligence
- The difference between hierarchy and "powerarchy" in modern deals
- Why 95% of buying happens without you — and how to influence it
- Tactical frameworks for accommodating vetted, educated, and self-service buyers
Key Takeaway: The future belongs to sellers who deliver "buying process as a service" — becoming an extension of the buyer's team rather than an obstacle to navigate.
Check out:
- The Innovative Seller: https://a.co/d/cbh8hM3
- JourneyAI: https://meetjourney.ai
Subscribe: New episodes every week on your favorite podcast platform. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts to help us reach more sales professionals.
Remember: AI won't replace sellers — sellers who know how to use AI will replace those who don't.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Nobody is going to want to talk to a salesperson if
they can't add incrementalvalue to the conversation.
If you cannot add incrementalvalue above and beyond what I
can read on a piece of paper ora video I can watch, that's a
one-size-fits-all demo why wouldI want to talk to you?
I?
Speaker 2 (00:16):
don't.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Most people only want to talk to the customer success
people, because that's thepeople they're going to interact
with anyway.
That is the person who's got tomake sure I actually use the
product and it's successful, notthe salesperson who's going to
hey.
I feel like every buyer shouldask this one question in the
very first call Are you going tohand me off at the end of this
if you close the deal?
And if the answer is yes, youshould say hey, not a problem,
(00:38):
jake, I love that.
On the next call call, I needthe CS rep I'm going to be
assigned to because I need tomake sure they actually know
what the heck they're talkingabout and that they're involved
from day one.
That is what every buyer shoulddo that AI powered seller.
All right, welcome to today'sepisode.
You are going to have aridiculous amount of takeaways.
If you've ever wondered how towin those deals when it seems
like 95% of the buying happenswithout you in the room, well,
(01:02):
today's guest has cracked thatcode.
We are going to talk to the CEOand co-founder of Aligned, mr
Gal Agha.
He's built a reputation fortransforming B2B sellers and
buyers through digital salesrooms.
This guy's got almost 20 yearsof sales experience, has worked
with a ton of organizations.
They've got 50,000 plus repsIntel, hubspot, you name it and
(01:26):
his clients are cutting theirsales cycle by 30% and
increasing win rates by 15%.
I think we all want that, andwhat I'm really excited about is
, in this episode we're going togo deep on really two areas.
We're going to talk just alittle more sales.
We're going to branch out ofJust AI.
We're going to talk about theevolving customer journey, ai.
We're going to talk about kindof the evolving customer journey
and we're also going to talkabout how some very tactical
(01:49):
ways that we can use AI toreally master this evolving
customer journey.
So super, super excited for theepisode and let's get into it.
All right, gal, welcome to theshow.
Excited to have you, lookingforward to the conversation.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Thanks so much for having me.
Really excited to be here.
Very excited it's going to be afun one.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yeah, it's going to be a fun one.
You've got, you know, you'veput a lot of conversation, a lot
of content out around the buyerexperience.
That's something I'm obviouslypassionate about.
So I think, when it comes topeople that are trying to figure
out ways to use AI and thinkabout AI and the customer
experience in particular, thisis going to be a great episode
for everybody.
So you've coined I want to kindof kick it off with this
(02:30):
concept you coined this conceptof buying process as a service,
which I think is interesting.
I truly believe we are enteringa complete paradigm shift in
B2B sales, where we no longercan try to take this approach of
like we're qualifying them andwe have all the answers and we
(02:51):
have all the information, andreally the power is truly
flipped, I feel like in 2025,2026, to the buyer.
And so let's talk about this alittle bit and kind of break
down you know how buying processas a service works versus maybe
like a traditional sellingapproach.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, absolutely, first glad it resonates and you
know it's a topic I write abouta lot.
And basically it all startedfor me that sentence.
Really I didn't say it for thefirst time.
It all started from the idea ofactually building our company
when my co-founder and I we werein sales I'd been in sales for
(03:33):
17 years before founding Lineand I was VP sales.
He was sales director likeeveryone else out there.
We were obsessed with trying tofigure out what makes the
difference between really thetop great sellers and the rest.
We had a very complex motionand there was this one deal one
day that just like wascompletely unbelievable, like
(03:55):
one of these really unique deals440K outbound, closed in 90
days and the AU closed.
They just did everything reallyby the book, like her.
Her calls really felt likethere's no us in the game and
she project managed the deal andshe enabled all the time the
champion and multi-threaded anddid everything right.
(04:16):
And when she closed it, webasically we asked her what did
you do differently?
How did you?
How do you do that?
And well, this friday afternoonwe raised the toast and I won't
forget that.
She basically said it was thefirst time that I felt that I'm
not selling.
The buyer is seeing me as ifI'm providing a buying process
that they pay a premium for andthat's kind of for me that was a
(04:40):
aha moment.
it beyond, and I'll put actuallythe things that are changing
aside for a second.
I think that it's always beenthis way.
Like the top reps have alwaysbeen about extreme buyer
centricity, they've always beenabout it's not you and them on
(05:01):
opposite directions.
They're like an extension ofyour team.
They're all about reducingfriction, facilitating the
process and it feels likethey're offering a buying
process as a service like ajourney that you really pay
premium for, and that's whybuyers work with them, that's
why they spend time with them,that's why they give them access
(05:23):
to stakeholders, that's whythey can expand beyond just the
calls where most salespeoplefocus on, that's why they guest
less ghosted and that's whythey're able to really go so
deep into the business of theirprospect and create a compelling
business case and equip themwith everything they need to get
(05:44):
a bigger deal.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
So I think that was always really the skill.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
It was always that mindset, you know, is driving a
lot of different skills, but Ithink that was always it.
But and sorry for going on along answer here, but you know
it's just a deep process andI'll connect it to I think just
things change right.
You mentioned 2025, 2026,things are changing and the
(06:11):
power is shifted to the buyer.
I think that's great, that's agreat call out and it's the
right way to look at it, butthey've been changing for a long
time.
Okay.
So if you look at, growth at allcosts right until the 2021,
2022, it was, you know, Zerp.
(06:32):
Money was cheap.
We hired REs of under-trainedSDRs, gave them the 16 step
sequence.
Personalization was just, youknow, hey, you're hiring, or
something like that, Played thefirst game and then you know we
allow the, a hiring or somethinglike that.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Played the first game .
Speaker 2 (06:46):
And then you know, we allowed AEs to go out there
really at rookie level.
Here's a script for a demo andhere are the questions that you
need to ask.
And they interrogated and allthat, and it worked.
Why did it work?
It's not that it was what thebuyer wanted.
I don't think that things havefundamentally changed in what
(07:06):
good selling is about.
I think that thingsfundamentally changed in the
forces right, in theexpectations, in the dynamics,
in the complexity, so we wereable to get away with it.
Okay, that's the bottom linethere.
And now fast forward to today.
Think about post-COVID, thedownturn.
(07:28):
Everyone are now closing theirpockets.
I read that 79% of buyers saythat CFOs are now the new DM and
70-something.
I don't remember exactly.
How much is CXO involved inevery purchasing process?
Last decade, the number ofstakeholders have quadrupled, no
(07:51):
, tripled, sorry.
Number of categories grew.
The number of buying steps iscontinuously increasing.
So buying is just getting morecomplex.
And now you have anotherbehavioral shift.
On the buyer side, where youhave Gen Z, the majority of
buyers right now are Gen Z, gen.
The buyer side, where you haveGen Z, the majority of buyers
right now are Gen Z, gen Y okay,millennials and Gen Z.
They're just completelydifferent digital natives and
(08:13):
you have AI now being used tobuy and self-service right is
the norm.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
So buyers can do so much more without you.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
So long story short, we can just get away with it,
things are getting more complexon the buying side.
Buyers are more empoweredbuyers that can easily avoid
unhelpful reps and have beenburned in the past and will
avoid if you just don't dobetter.
So we just have to do better.
Okay, buying experience can bejust a match.
I'm trying.
(08:43):
It has to be a strategy, aframework, something that you do
across the organization, andselling skills really have to
get to that level where everyonelearns how to deliver buying
processes and service how to bethat for their customers.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
That's it.
Yeah, you hit on a few thingsin there and I think what I hope
a lot of people heard.
One is you mentionedself-service.
I'm a former, you know.
In my book Innovative Seller, Iwrote about this concept of
we've got I called it VEX whichis that we have to be able to
account for buyers that arevetted.
You know these are buyers thathave used your competitor, they
used you in the past and they'reready to start at step three.
(09:18):
They've already went to chat,gpt, they've done a table,
they've compared you and thenyou've got educated, which is
like a flavor of that.
Then you have cold and you haveself-service and that you need
to be able to accommodate allfour of those buyer types.
Somebody comes to you and says,hey, jake, look, can we, can
please?
For the love of God, do I nothave to get on this stupid
qualification call?
Like I'm already ready, I'vealready approved budget.
(09:39):
I used you two companies ago.
I use your biggest competitor.
I talked to five people at thisevent about you, like, can we,
can we please just start at stepfour?
And I think I actually see uslike artificially slowing down
the buying cycle a lot becausewe're so used to putting people
through our one size fits allconveyor belt.
Everybody has to start here.
Medpick starts here, you knowlike, and we, we start everybody
(10:01):
, you know, at the verybeginning of the process, which
I feel is a big issue.
And so let's talk about moreand more buying happens when the
sellers aren't in the room.
I saw some stat I've seen 95%of it, I've seen 80% of the time
is your spending is not withthe buyer that they're making
(10:21):
decisions or doing things, notwith the buyer that they're
making decisions or doing things.
How can companies betterposition themselves in this new
world where we're expected to doeven more asynchronous
education?
You know buyers need to give.
You know we're definitelyentering a world of give, give,
give, not gatekeep, which iswhat all of us I mean you've
been in sales 20 plus years.
I've been in sales.
(10:42):
We were all trained the sameway Like don't talk about
pricing on the first call, right?
Or like don't do this, like, ifthey're going to do this, they
got to hop on a call.
And you're like, hop on a call,yuck, can't you just send me
like a three minute video and Ican, like you know, scroll it
like TikTok or something.
Make sure, make sure tosubscribe to the channel so you
(11:09):
get updated on all of our latestepisodes.
If you are listening to thepodcast, make sure that you get
alerts so you get automaticallydownloaded when a new episode
comes out.
So how has that evolved?
How has that kind of whenyou're not in the room evolved
and what are you seeing best inclass sales people and sales
organizations doing to competein that world people?
and sales organizations doing tocompete in that world?
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
First of all, I love what you said about you know
buyers' expectations and howthey're entering the process in
various ways, and I think that'sa big part of it.
So it's not only that less timeis spent with us and, by the
way, the different stats is justbecause of in a competitive
scenario and non-competitivescenarios.
In a non-competitive scenario,it's in that range, the 70%, and
(11:52):
in a competitive scenario eachvendor basically gets 5% to 6%.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
That's the Gartner study and so, yeah, it's both
about less time with us, butit's also about you can't fit
buyers into a box, right.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
You have to accommodate the way that they
want to buy and each journey isdifferent, each one of their
processes, and they go back fromstages, back and forth.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Such a good call-out too, and just to double-click on
that before you keep going.
The other thing thing that Itry to talk I was literally
talking to one of our clients.
We do this customer journeyworkshop with them, where we
really helped them to get tighton their various stages, so
they're very kind of aligned howthe customer actually buys
versus, you know, their democompleted or some other dumb
stage name.
Um, and the big thing that Itried to say is I was like, look
(12:41):
, salesforce and HubSpot areartificially forcing salespeople
to think of sales in 2025 or2026 as linear.
And not only that, they alsoforce us to think of one
singular process versus you know, I talk about this in the book
too like there's teams of people.
There's a buying team that needsto see the ROI, like you
(13:02):
mentioned, the CFO, and there'san end user team that needs to
make sure that you'll getutility and then, like, the
department head is usually theoverlap between the two right,
and I think so many people needto understand that it's okay
that it's not linear.
I think we want to.
It would be a lot easier, gal,if, like it was linear, because
it would be like everybody is atthe exact same step.
They do this thing exactly, butI think that's just such a good
(13:25):
call out that the buyingjourney is not only not linear
and people go forward and back,there's also multiple buying,
you know kind of cycles that arehappening inside the same deal.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah, yeah, and forward and backwards sometimes.
Oh, but they've chosen a vendor.
It's in this stage in the CRM.
We're now in proposal, butthey're now going back to
compare a few more vendors.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yes, it happens, that's the reality.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Don't have a.
Crm stage, so regionallyenforced.
So I'll break down the answer.
I think there are three thingsthat you can do, so both as a
seller and as a company, andit's it's about the training,
it's about the process and Ithink it's about just overall
how you're enforcing andthinking about standardizing.
(14:15):
So I think let's start with thesales process.
So you mentioned because it'stop of mind.
You just mention it and it'ssuch a great point.
Like you know, we're doing somany things that just should
disappear.
Like Band is from freaking the1950s Okay, it was invented in
the 1950s.
It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Medic is 96,.
For those of you keeping track,medic is 96.
Medpick is just a flavor of it,so yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
So I think we're just doing so many things that we
just, uh, we need to evolve.
The sales process is most iswe're trying to build it for
forecasting?
Uh, we're not building it tofacilitate buying, it's not.
It's not built for the buyer,it's built for.
These are the easiest names forme to remember.
For AEs to understand, you needto do a demo, you need to do a
(15:06):
trial, you need to do a thing,it's about what I need to do,
and then that's creating thatpush right.
I'm trying to push someone fromthis stage to that stage because
then my probability goes up,yeah, but the buying journey is
the fact that you've done,you're now in a POC or trial,
(15:29):
wherever you call it.
The need that the funnel doesnot mean that the buyer has
agreed that there is a problemthat can, that needs to be
solved.
There's there's enoughconsensus about solving it right
.
They might still be at thatphase and you're already trying
to be at the proof or vendorselection or whatever you're
(15:49):
trying to prove without POC.
So I think the first it reallystarts with the sales process.
We need to make sure that stagenames don't reflect things that
the seller does, ratheroutcomes on the buying side,
things that the buyer basicallywould do, like problem
(16:15):
identification or problemalignment or needs assessment.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
We call it, you know it's a good call.
We say there's discovery, thenthe next phase is initial
evaluation, which is like hey,we're trying to understand, like
is there something here?
Then the next stage is formalevaluation.
It's like, hey, so we've wentpast discovery, initial
evaluation, I've looped in otherpeople.
They also think that there'ssomething here.
And then formal evaluationmeans like we're going into
vetting, you know, we're puttingtogether a formal proposal, et
(16:42):
cetera, and I feel like thoseare kind of stage names that we
kind of go back to because theykind of fit both sides.
It helps you to understand likethat, because that's how people
buy.
Like guys, everybody buys theexact same.
You get one person on the firstcall, then they loop in other
people and then they loop inmore, like it's the same for
everybody right now again, butthe key that we're talking about
is like one is understandingthat, and then two is how do you
(17:04):
kind of show up for each ofthose meetings, based on where
the rest of the people are, youknow, in the process.
But the process itself andsometimes it accelerates the
initial informal evaluationhappen quickly if they're
already an educated or vettedbuyer.
But I think it's, you knowcompanies don't need to
overthink it.
You know it's.
You know companies don't needto overthink it.
You know it's like.
It's a pretty straightforwardway to think about it.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah, it's a pretty straightforward way because,
yeah, you identify that you havea problem and then you go and
you want to drive consensus andyou want to find solutions to
the problem and then youvalidate solutions and like,
yeah, pretty much there's alogical way that the buyer buys,
buyer buys.
But then if you try to make thestage names right about the
things that you do in your salesprocess, you're just optimizing
for the wrong things, right?
It's not.
It's not really catered to towhat the buyer is doing.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
So that's one of the problems and also the exit
criteria.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
The exit criteria is not the fact that you want to
use that they agree to take todo a trial.
The exit criteria is thatthey've uh, you know, agreed on
a problem selected a vendor uh,right, it should be about buying
outcomes.
I think it first starts.
These are.
There are multiple problemsthere on the sales process, but
(18:14):
I would really start with that.
But then, in terms of uh and of,course, all of that should be
driven by actual buying journeyresearch Like think about how,
like research, talk to realbuyers, talk to sales people, to
the sales team, try tounderstand and map out all these
different conversations, andthen the sales process is really
about that.
And it's not about the mainstage, like each stage, could
(18:37):
have a lot of different thingsthat you do right.
So even I'm in evaluation and inthat evaluation stage I'm
trying to basically help a buyerget to a point where they're
selecting a vendor.
Then I could do an evaluatingthat this is a good fit for them
in general, that this issomething that they want to now
(18:58):
move to the final stages with.
Then you could have variousthings that you could do in that
stage recommended for the rep.
You could send a competitivecomparison.
You could do a competitiveworkshop.
You could do a use case workshop.
You could go throughintegrations with this team and
give them choices of a lot ofdifferent things that they can
(19:19):
do, and then these are bakedinto the process, processes,
selections for the AE to execute.
So I think doing it this wayit's a bit less natural to some
of the junior AEs they need, ofcourse, it's easier to do things
in a linear way, right, but itjust doesn't work like that.
It will just fail and I don'tthink that there's.
(19:43):
I think that the term complexsales was a synonym of
enterprise sales.
I think that today, complexsales can be mid-market sales,
can be even SMB sales 20K, 25k,acv that's still complex sales.
We have probably five to sixstakeholders on this 100%
company buying a 20K deal.
(20:05):
That could be a long, complexdeal.
So it's no different in all ofthis.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
I think that it has always been a little bit.
I mean, it's been like this fora little bit, but, like you
said, I think we just have toaccept it.
I feel like that's part of this, too is like sales leaders.
You know it's been like thisfor a little bit but, like you
said, I think it just we justhave to accept it.
I feel like that's part of this, too, is like sales leaders.
You know, guys, wake up.
Like you know, like, justaccept it Like it is what it is.
Trust me.
If, like, if you know it's like,whenever we optimize outbound
for folks, or you know pipeline,you know improvements, it's
(20:34):
like, guys, if I could just puttogether a template and hit send
all and it worked, I would tellyou to do that.
If, like, the buyer journey wasjust simple and it's like, yeah
, you just got to run theprocess and it works, like, I
would just tell you to do thatright.
And so how do you feel?
Like you talked, we kind ofhinted around this a little bit,
but and then I want to kind ofjump into kind of more.
(20:56):
Like you know, we'll focus onsome of the AI pieces.
You know specifically more.
Like you know we'll focus onsome of the AI pieces, pieces.
You know specifically how.
How does MedPick right inparticular?
Because I see MedPick, honestly, more than anything now I feel
like it's had this resurgence.
You know where it's like well,medic wasn't good enough, we
need some P's in there.
You know what I mean.
It's like we gotta gotta add acouple extra little letters in
(21:16):
there.
But how, how does this fit intothis new world?
You know, I've got my opinion.
I'm curious with you, gal, likehow, you know, I see so many
people going to it right, howdoes it fit in this new world,
in this world that we all livein selling?
Speaker 2 (21:32):
yeah, and I've.
This is actually a topic thatI've not given too much thought.
I think I have a point of viewaround it.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I'd be actually curious to hear why you're so
passionate about it, the waythat I'm viewing it is.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
It's basically it's a tool.
There are a lot ofmethodologies out there for
creating the internal alignmentand how you discuss deals, how
you forecast, how you runongoing discovery.
I think it makes sense to alignon a certain because you need
the same language internally.
(22:13):
Some people you know we lovegap selling, for example, for
discovery, so we talk all thetime about impact and root
causes.
We we use that language a lotinternally and that alignment
and language I think is veryimportant and I think so but I
think that the area where thisgoes off track is when people
(22:40):
are using medic to uh to enforcethe process.
So when you get to this stage,you have to have the m.
When you get to this stage, youhave to have the p like, but
the reality is, and I thinkthat's it's.
It's the problem.
That's really problem.
That relates to everything wetalked about.
(23:00):
You can't put buyers in a cage.
Aes don't want to be placed inthe cage.
The best ones will just run away, and I think that just the
reality of the buying processtoday because it's so complex,
trying to do that and have thatlevel of rigidness.
You're thinking that you'reoptimizing for forecasting but
(23:23):
you're breaking your forecastingbecause you know the fact that
someone could not move a stage.
Does that mean that you havethe right probability right now
for the deal?
And yeah, that's what I thinkis wrong with the system, but I
would love to hear if there'sanything that you're thinking
about.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
No, I think that that's right.
I'm okay if it's like well, ifwe're going to be at this formal
evaluation stage, these thingsneed to have happened.
That might not be exactly thedefinition of an X or an M or
whatever it might be.
In MedPick, I think for me,with a lot of our clients in
(24:02):
MedPick, I think for me, with alot of our clients, we've got a
framework we use called intent,and the first is focused on
teams, which I teased outearlier, which is this concept
that we need to understand whereeach team is in their buying
process as well.
And where I think MedPick fallsdown is, to your point, the
execution, where you aretraining reps subconsciously to
(24:23):
think that there is one decisionmaker, that there is one
champion and there is oneeconomic buyer.
And it's not how it works.
Today.
You are in a room you mentionedthis there is a room happening
where the person who has thehighest job title is sitting
there and they're looking at aperson who's two layers below
them and says Tim, what do youthink Tim's like?
(24:44):
I don't like it.
They're like fuck it, we're notdoing it, and I think that that
, to me, is the gap that I seethat too many people are by
overly focusing on this conceptof a singular individual, on
this concept of a singularindividual.
You are forcing salespeople tonot think.
(25:04):
How people buy today is maybe asimple way to put it.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Yeah, I haven't thought about it.
It's something that I'mspeaking about a lot.
Well, I'm sure your clients too.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
I mean you gotta be careful there, right?
Your clients are like what doyou mean MedPick?
I got you know what do you mean?
Medpick isn't that's what.
Careful there, right?
Your clients are like what doyou mean MedPick?
I got it, I got you know whatdo you mean?
Medpick isn't that's what weuse, right?
So I get it and, like I said, Ithink there still is a place
for it, but you have to deployit in reality land, which is the
fact that these individualpeople don't exist.
They don't exist.
(25:36):
There is no one economic buyer,it exists.
There is no one economic buyer,it doesn't exist.
Yeah, so as long as you havethat, that idea of like, okay,
who's on the economic buyingteam, who's on the the decision
making team, that I can get downright yeah, I can get yeah,
absolutely, there's a buyinggroup the buying group has
(25:56):
different level of power, havedifferent levels of influence.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Sometimes the above the line that has power and
can't actually kind of get abudget would not be as
influential even as someonebelow the line that just has so
much political capital withinthe organization and has so much
pull that everyone will listento.
Like we have the fact that wedo at Align, we do PLG right.
I feel it so so much on the dayto day.
(26:29):
We had a deal last quarter thatwas going through a
multi-billion dollar acquisition.
The CFO said no purchases it'scoming from the top.
We're inquired cannot buyanything One of the senior
strategic AEs director title.
(26:50):
But that's a guy that's kind ofsigning multi-million dollar
deals.
Every deal is likemulti-million dollar deals
Basically went up scheduled ameeting with the CFO.
Told him hey, I need more roomsin Aligned.
Now Like I'm closing thesedeals because of.
Aligned improving my win rateand everything.
(27:10):
I need this.
Now let's find a way.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
And he brought the deal.
Okay, that guy closed the deal.
An AE.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
So definitely the fact that, like and we even had
deals where we weren't speakingto the director level was behind
the scenes and a group of AEsstrategic AEs did everything on
their own.
The VPs because they'restrategic AEs the VP and
(27:38):
director, they trusted them somuch.
You just lead it, build thebusiness case, even experience a
little bit what it is to be onthe buying side, and they just
brought the deal right.
So in the medic world the waythat you're describing it, that
old thinking of, there's thatsingle DM sitting with a cigar,
with a suit, in a room callingthe shots.
(27:59):
Then that thing does not evensuit in a room.
Right, yeah, all the shots.
Then you know that thing doesnot even pass into a pipeline,
qualified pipeline.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Yeah, exactly.
All right, let's talk a littlemore AI.
So how do you see AI impactingthis customer journey?
Right, and, by the way,everybody, if you're you're
getting down with the podcast,you're enjoying what we're
talking about make sure tosubscribe to the channel.
We've got some links that we'regoing to add in below, too,
with some additional resourcesaround this kind of concept of
(28:28):
customer enablement.
So if you're somebody who'sreally geeking out and wanting
to learn more, definitely dothat.
Make sure to subscribe tofuture episodes as well, for
sure.
So let's jump into the AI piece.
Where do you see generative AIor tools you know enabled with
generative AI enabling thisfurther and you know whether
(28:49):
it's in your product or whatyou're seeing in your own sales
org?
I'd love to get your kind oftactical take on that.
Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
I think we all a little bit lost it with
everything that's going on withAI.
I think we lost criticalthinking to the fear of missing
out and what we're seeing.
You and I just talked about itright before we started the
episode a little bit.
I think there's either too slowto understand that we need to do
(29:19):
like.
This thing is happening andeveryone needs to think about it
and everyone needs to adopt it.
So I think we have that end ofthe spectrum.
I think we have the other endof the spectrum of people
running like a headless chicken,like just you know, trying to
do everything.
They're either going for theeasy button, like things like an
AISDR before I've ever, yeah,yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah outbound sucks or outbound sucks.
Let's hire an AI employee tohit send, all on the exact same
template.
We haven't figured outmessaging.
We haven't done it once.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Let's do this.
So we're looking for easybuttons.
Again, critical thinking issuewe're thinking automation, let's
just automate everything.
But.
But we just talked about it.
The problem is the same.
Buyers aren't answering.
You're doing more on.
They're doing more buying ontheir own.
Buying is more complex.
You're trying to automateeverything because it's just, it
(30:15):
makes sense.
That's what you do with ai, oror they're just looking at the
easy fixes and just saying, hey,we can build these agents and
these agents.
Maybe let's do that, but butyou know the way you really make
good by good decisions overallthe business is applying
critical thinking.
What are the problems that we'retrying to solve?
(30:36):
Why are we trying to solve them?
What are the?
What are the root causes?
And, yes, then start saying howcan we solve it with ai?
Find me a solution with ai.
I just had this conversationtoday with my uh vp, customer
success, and she was talkingabout how she built a lot of
these agents but she wants tonow take them into n8n and make,
(30:57):
take them to the next level andimplement them.
Then I asked her that I toldher hey, what's?
right now the biggest criticalthing in your mind?
What's kind of the biggestchallenges right now?
I need to hire.
I need to hire ASAP.
I want to get to that level ofquality that we need right now
in CS.
Just more hiring will do Okayand what else.
(31:19):
So we started going down thatrabbit hole and then we
understood which agentsspecifically would make sense
right now to implement.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
To go and solve the problem.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
So I think we first have that either formal problem
of moving too fast on things, orjust not realizing that things
are happening, that we need tomove fast and we're not moving
fast enough.
And then, practically speaking,I think, as part of that a lot
of us just go after all theseeasy agents, all the things that
(31:51):
just save AEs time, but I thinkthat the problem is still the
same problem.
You need to use AI, probably todo better instead of doing more
, and a lot of companies aretrying to use it to do more.
Let's free up their time fromupdating the CRM and doing a lot
of stuff, but then you freed uptheir time to just send more of
these crappy emails or do moreof these demo interrogations or
(32:13):
not enable buyers properly.
So what did?
You gain really by freeing uptheir time.
So that's how I'm thinkingabout it, and I think there's a
lot of ways that you can use AIto just do better research.
You can build strong POVsbefore you enter an enterprise
account.
You can prepare for meetingsbetter.
You can know, everything aboutevery stakeholder before every
(32:36):
meeting.
Throughout your process, buildaccount plans.
Your outreach can be muchsmarter Like using things like.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
More customized, right yeah, your outbound emails
and every follow-up email.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
You can just use it to help you write.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
That's the table stakes I think you know, in
buyer enablement that's a lot ofwhat we're doing in our product
you can build business cases.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
You could build competitive comparisons, roi
even have it go and draft a pocsuccess plan, customer success
plan, following the call and notonly do things faster for you
but do it better.
And I think it's getting to apoint where it can really give
you good advice, like we'reexperimenting with this a lot,
(33:20):
we're going to launch a lot ofthings in these areas, but think
about not just not just whathappened in the call, not just
the call summary, but where I'm,where am I right now in the
deal and how can I unblock thisright.
Here is the situation.
Or how can I right now get thisthrough the finish line on time
(33:42):
by the end of the quarter?
I want to hit the target.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Where are?
Speaker 2 (33:46):
they at, and what are the different moves that I
could do?
I think there's a lot If youfit it with enough information
and you prompt it the right wayand you build everything right.
There's a lot there.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I agree.
Yeah, I mean, that is to meprobably the area I think that
is least utilized is we call itscenario planning in particular,
which is AI, is very good attaking in a lot of different key
variables.
And again, I think the otherthing is it also then is
marrying your internalinformation with external
signals too.
Like you know, it's scraping.
(34:19):
I'll give you a good example.
We were doing an example.
We've got a custom GPT calledcompetitive deal intelligence.
If you guys go check out, youcan sign up for a free trial on
meetjourneyai.
We've got all these differentgo-to-market assistance, but the
competitive deal one's a reallyinteresting one.
It's like, hey, I'm a sales rep, I work at SalesLoft, I'm
(34:40):
trying to push Gong out of thisaccount, help me build the play
for it.
And it went and it scraped.
And it saw that this company,literally a week ago and it was
the most beautiful timing, howit worked out literally a week
before put up a job posting fora gong program manager.
And so it's like, hey, you needto seed the point on
conversational intelligence, youneed to do this that, like gong
(35:01):
, is obviously embedded blah,blah, blah, blah, blah.
Instead, you need to do this,focus on this, attack them on
their engagement platform,attack them on analytics and
like this is where you win.
Like, I'm a big fan.
Like, like.
We will never create a staticbattle card, ever again, ever,
because by the time yourenablement team one takes three
months to build it Two.
(35:22):
By that time, the company'salready, you know, released 18
new features.
So, it's like you know you can'tkeep up, but the scenario
planning AI use case isabsolutely one that everybody
should be doing on every singledeal.
I cannot stress it enough, justlike how big of a game changer
it can be.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Hey, I make strategic company decisions using AI.
I don't let it be a decisionfor me, but it's structuring the
information.
It helps me think about it, ithelps me structure thinking.
Structured information,research, like all of these
things are incredible.
Yeah, definitely do it, and Icouldn't agree more.
(36:02):
I think that the whole funnelof going to product marketing or
enablement, wherever, is incharge of all that stuff, and
then it's outdated and it's nottailored, that's going to
disappear from the world.
I think, and you know, that'spart of the vision for our
product.
Beyond just bringing everythinginto one place, it's all going
to be like an Ironman suit forthe modern seller the entire
(36:24):
execution is going to be poweredby AI, and part of it is that
buyer enablement.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Content is going to be just so tailored, based on
information from public sourcesand information from all of the
internal conversations to justdraft these resources directly
in the environment where yousell, where you run the sales
process, which is that that'sright.
Yeah, and like we created aplatform, meet Journey.
It's that you know how we lookat.
This is these assistants arealmost, like you know we call
(36:51):
them digital teammates that youknow there's kind of the Iron
man suit analogy.
But I also think it's more oflike you know your Avengers
strategy, where it's like you'reIron man and you know this one
is your Captain America, youknow.
This one is your Hulk, you know.
And like they all do differentthings Right.
Like this one is really strongat account research, you know,
and then you've got your what'sthat guy?
(37:14):
Account research, you know, andthen you've got your what's
that guy?
Nighthawk, you know.
He's really good at annualreport summarizing, you know.
And Black Widow she's reallygood at social media post
writing.
You know what I mean Likethat's kind of how I think about
this is that these teammates,the future is we're all going to
be surrounded and, like youmentioned, as an executive, I
couldn't agree more.
You know I use generative AI.
(37:35):
I've probably spent three hoursFriday night, you know, working
through our kind of Q4 projectmanagement for my chief of staff
.
But we're all going to havethese digital teammates that go
do stuff for us and do work andyou're going to have to learn
how to.
You know the people that knowwhat they call delegate and
elevate.
Right, you delegate and elevate, and that is the future is
we're going to delegate to theseassistants.
(37:57):
You know these different peopleto do these things for us.
So we should therefore behaving richer conversations,
more structured conversations,because, you know, kind of
taking this whole thing fullcircle, nobody is going to want
to talk to a salesperson if theycan't add incremental value to
the conversation.
Yeah, if you cannot addincremental value above and
(38:18):
beyond what I can read on apiece of paper or a video I can
watch, that's a one size fitsall demo why would I want to
talk to you?
I don't, I would prefer to talkto you.
I'm this kind of high horsegall.
I really feel like most peopleonly want to talk to the
customer success people, becausethat's the people they're going
to interact with anyway.
(38:40):
That is the person who's got tomake sure I actually use the
product and it's successful, notthe salesperson who's going to.
Hey, I feel like every buyershould ask this one question in
the very first call Are yougoing to hand me off at the end
of this if you close the dealand if the answer is yes, you
should say, hey, not a problem,jake, I love that.
On the next call, I need the CSrep I'm going to be assigned to
, because I need to make surethey actually know what the heck
(39:01):
they're talking about and thatthey're involved from day one.
That is what every buyer shoulddo.
That and every sales teamshould be prepared for that,
because that is how peopleactually want to buy.
I want to talk to the personwho's going to make me
successful with a product andyou know, also like the days of
the sales rep having to go get asolutions engineer for some
(39:21):
basic, stupid question, deadlike yeah just put that person
on the phone.
Why like and again, we've got aiassistance to just do that
anyway.
It's like it just tells you inreal time like, yes, we can
integrate with this azure layerfrom an infant.
It'll just do it for you.
I just feel like thesalesperson of the future has
got to be this kind ofsuperpowered Avengers mindset
(39:45):
where they are adding so muchvalue when they are in that 5%
gall that they becomeindispensable because they are
such experts.
I love it so much.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
I'll add a few more things to this.
First of all, this is thebiggest why now, behind the
entire message of thisconversation about
buyer-centricity, experience,buyer enablement, whatever you
call it right, like if a buyerright now can use ai to take
your freaking deck and build abetter business case, to take
(40:20):
your deck and your competitivedeck and build a competitive
comparison.
If they can do all these things, which are the skills of the,
the good seller, right?
That's?
That's where you're trying tofacilitate the decision and to
enable them and equip them andinfluence, you're losing
influence.
So if all your value is is toprovide product information that
(40:43):
anyone can just find, drop allthe assets that your product
marketing created, which, okay,just put them on the website for
me and then push to the close,then it's commodity, like it's
just.
It has to die.
That's transactional sales.
It just has to disappear fromthe world.
(41:04):
I think we're going to level upthe motions.
I think every salesperson isjust going to be have that
complex selling skills.
So I think all of these thingsexactly should happen.
And then I forgot the secondpoint.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Don't worry about it, we'll put it in the show notes
afterwards.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
So last thoughts If I want to be successful a year
from now, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,yeah, and I remember, we can
edit this a little bit.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Yeah, of course we can edit it.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
All right, so why?
Speaker 1 (41:35):
don't you just go into, like, why don't you just
start my second point and thenjust go into it?
Speaker 2 (41:39):
yeah, so my second point you talked about how do we
?
optimize the five percent.
But there's another thing I'lladd to that is how do we expand,
how do we drive theconversation that's happening
around about us when we're notthere?
How do we expand thesalesperson, make them influence
(42:01):
the rest of the 95?
And the way that you do that isby focusing on their async
selling skills and theirchampion enablement skills and
their multi-threading skillsright, all of these things that
you can do to drive moreinfluence, the more that you're
offering buying processes as aservice, right, it means you're
(42:23):
more of an extension of theirteam.
So now you're part of.
How do I pitch to the CFO?
Right, you're part of.
Who should I even involve here?
Okay, and how do I approachthem?
So you're part of.
Who should I even involve hereand how do I approach them?
So, you're part of even how dowe now agree that this is really
the problem here that we needto tackle Now?
(42:45):
You're getting into theseintimate conversations because
you're offering a betterexperience.
You know you're offering abetter experience.
So just by doing better and bydriving these enablement tools,
by focusing on in the betweenconversation skills, you're
basically expanding yourinfluence, you're becoming more
(43:06):
valuable and going beyond that.
5%.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
Yeah, I love that.
I think that's a good point towrap up on, but I'm going to ask
you one last question, which iswhere is this headed?
If I said, hey, in a year ortwo years from now, what are the
things out of what we justtalked about?
If you had to pick, maybe oneor two, what would you leave
people with as like, these arethe two things.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Yeah, so I think it's one.
Instead of buyers using AIalone, salespeople will have to
bring them into their own AIworkflows that they facilitate.
(43:52):
That's one.
It means that you have anenvironment where you have AI
working for them.
Then you're not afraid of itand it's doing the things that
they will do with their AI, butjust better, and you're
orchestrating it.
I think that's one thing, andthe second thing is just what we
(44:14):
said right now you just have todo better.
You have to offer buyingprocess as a service.
It's just non-negotiable.
You just have to do better thanthe AI empowered buyer.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
That's the point?
I think so, and you have tounderstand that if you're not
using AI to understand whatbuyers are finding out about you
too, go do that right now too.
Go say, hey, if you were goingto buy my product, what would
you compare?
What do you think buyers aredoing?
How are they talking about it?
Is there a competition, etcetera.
(44:51):
So I think that's a reallygreat tactical something that
somebody could go and act onright now.
So that's a wrap.
Thank you, man.
I enjoyed the conversation.
I think we covered a lot.
I think we got deep into youknow the details on why people
should start to think about this.
You know kind of buyer-centricjourney, some tactical ways that
they can leverage AI and andjust also mindset shift, you
(45:13):
know, to meet people there.
So big thank you for joining me, man.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
I really enjoyed it.
Yeah, me too.
Thanks so much, it was fun.
I think exactly, yeah, wetouched both of us.
Good point.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
Love it, man, all right.
Well, thank you, Appreciateeveryone for listening and we'll
see you on next week's episode.
Nobody is going to want to talk to a salesperson if
they can't add incrementalvalue to the conversation.
If you cannot add incrementalvalue above and beyond what I
can read on a piece of paper ora video I can watch, that's a
one-size-fits-all demo why wouldI want to talk to you?
I?
Speaker 2 (00:16):
don't.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Most people only want to talk to the customer success
people, because that's thepeople they're going to interact
with anyway.
That is the person who's got tomake sure I actually use the
product and it's successful, notthe salesperson who's going to
hey.
I feel like every buyer shouldask this one question in the
very first call Are you going tohand me off at the end of this
if you close the deal?
And if the answer is yes, youshould say hey, not a problem,
(00:38):
jake, I love that.
On the next call call, I needthe CS rep I'm going to be
assigned to because I need tomake sure they actually know
what the heck they're talkingabout and that they're involved
from day one.
That is what every buyer shoulddo that AI powered seller.
All right, welcome to today'sepisode.
You are going to have aridiculous amount of takeaways.
If you've ever wondered how towin those deals when it seems
like 95% of the buying happenswithout you in the room, well,
(01:02):
today's guest has cracked thatcode.
We are going to talk to the CEOand co-founder of Aligned, mr
Gal Agha.
He's built a reputation fortransforming B2B sellers and
buyers through digital salesrooms.
This guy's got almost 20 yearsof sales experience, has worked
with a ton of organizations.
They've got 50,000 plus repsIntel, hubspot, you name it and
(01:26):
his clients are cutting theirsales cycle by 30% and
increasing win rates by 15%.
I think we all want that, andwhat I'm really excited about is
, in this episode we're going togo deep on really two areas.
We're going to talk just alittle more sales.
We're going to branch out ofJust AI.
We're going to talk about theevolving customer journey, ai.
We're going to talk about kindof the evolving customer journey
and we're also going to talkabout how some very tactical
(01:49):
ways that we can use AI toreally master this evolving
customer journey.
So super, super excited for theepisode and let's get into it.
All right, gal, welcome to theshow.
Excited to have you, lookingforward to the conversation.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Thanks so much for having me.
Really excited to be here.
Very excited it's going to be afun one.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
Yeah, it's going to be a fun one.
You've got, you know, you'veput a lot of conversation, a lot
of content out around the buyerexperience.
That's something I'm obviouslypassionate about.
So I think, when it comes topeople that are trying to figure
out ways to use AI and thinkabout AI and the customer
experience in particular, thisis going to be a great episode
for everybody.
So you've coined I want to kindof kick it off with this
(02:30):
concept you coined this conceptof buying process as a service,
which I think is interesting.
I truly believe we are enteringa complete paradigm shift in
B2B sales, where we no longercan try to take this approach of
like we're qualifying them andwe have all the answers and we
(02:51):
have all the information, andreally the power is truly
flipped, I feel like in 2025,2026, to the buyer.
And so let's talk about this alittle bit and kind of break
down you know how buying processas a service works versus maybe
like a traditional sellingapproach.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah, absolutely, first glad it resonates and you
know it's a topic I write abouta lot.
And basically it all startedfor me that sentence.
Really I didn't say it for thefirst time.
It all started from the idea ofactually building our company
when my co-founder and I we werein sales I'd been in sales for
(03:33):
17 years before founding Lineand I was VP sales.
He was sales director likeeveryone else out there.
We were obsessed with trying tofigure out what makes the
difference between really thetop great sellers and the rest.
We had a very complex motionand there was this one deal one
day that just like wascompletely unbelievable, like
(03:55):
one of these really unique deals440K outbound, closed in 90
days and the AU closed.
They just did everything reallyby the book, like her.
Her calls really felt likethere's no us in the game and
she project managed the deal andshe enabled all the time the
champion and multi-threaded anddid everything right.
(04:16):
And when she closed it, webasically we asked her what did
you do differently?
How did you?
How do you do that?
And well, this friday afternoonwe raised the toast and I won't
forget that.
She basically said it was thefirst time that I felt that I'm
not selling.
The buyer is seeing me as ifI'm providing a buying process
that they pay a premium for andthat's kind of for me that was a
(04:40):
aha moment.
it beyond, and I'll put actuallythe things that are changing
aside for a second.
I think that it's always beenthis way.
Like the top reps have alwaysbeen about extreme buyer
centricity, they've always beenabout it's not you and them on
(05:01):
opposite directions.
They're like an extension ofyour team.
They're all about reducingfriction, facilitating the
process and it feels likethey're offering a buying
process as a service like ajourney that you really pay
premium for, and that's whybuyers work with them, that's
why they spend time with them,that's why they give them access
(05:23):
to stakeholders, that's whythey can expand beyond just the
calls where most salespeoplefocus on, that's why they guest
less ghosted and that's whythey're able to really go so
deep into the business of theirprospect and create a compelling
business case and equip themwith everything they need to get
(05:44):
a bigger deal.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
So I think that was always really the skill.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
It was always that mindset, you know, is driving a
lot of different skills, but Ithink that was always it.
But and sorry for going on along answer here, but you know
it's just a deep process andI'll connect it to I think just
things change right.
You mentioned 2025, 2026,things are changing and the
(06:11):
power is shifted to the buyer.
I think that's great, that's agreat call out and it's the
right way to look at it, butthey've been changing for a long
time.
Okay.
So if you look at, growth at allcosts right until the 2021,
2022, it was, you know, Zerp.
(06:32):
Money was cheap.
We hired REs of under-trainedSDRs, gave them the 16 step
sequence.
Personalization was just, youknow, hey, you're hiring, or
something like that, Played thefirst game and then you know we
allow the, a hiring or somethinglike that.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
Played the first game .
Speaker 2 (06:46):
And then you know, we allowed AEs to go out there
really at rookie level.
Here's a script for a demo andhere are the questions that you
need to ask.
And they interrogated and allthat, and it worked.
Why did it work?
It's not that it was what thebuyer wanted.
I don't think that things havefundamentally changed in what
(07:06):
good selling is about.
I think that thingsfundamentally changed in the
forces right, in theexpectations, in the dynamics,
in the complexity, so we wereable to get away with it.
Okay, that's the bottom linethere.
And now fast forward to today.
Think about post-COVID, thedownturn.
(07:28):
Everyone are now closing theirpockets.
I read that 79% of buyers saythat CFOs are now the new DM and
70-something.
I don't remember exactly.
How much is CXO involved inevery purchasing process?
Last decade, the number ofstakeholders have quadrupled, no
(07:51):
, tripled, sorry.
Number of categories grew.
The number of buying steps iscontinuously increasing.
So buying is just getting morecomplex.
And now you have anotherbehavioral shift.
On the buyer side, where youhave Gen Z, the majority of
buyers right now are Gen Z, gen.
The buyer side, where you haveGen Z, the majority of buyers
right now are Gen Z, gen Y okay,millennials and Gen Z.
They're just completelydifferent digital natives and
(08:13):
you have AI now being used tobuy and self-service right is
the norm.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
So buyers can do so much more without you.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
So long story short, we can just get away with it,
things are getting more complexon the buying side.
Buyers are more empoweredbuyers that can easily avoid
unhelpful reps and have beenburned in the past and will
avoid if you just don't dobetter.
So we just have to do better.
Okay, buying experience can bejust a match.
I'm trying.
(08:43):
It has to be a strategy, aframework, something that you do
across the organization, andselling skills really have to
get to that level where everyonelearns how to deliver buying
processes and service how to bethat for their customers.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
That's it.
Yeah, you hit on a few thingsin there and I think what I hope
a lot of people heard.
One is you mentionedself-service.
I'm a former, you know.
In my book Innovative Seller, Iwrote about this concept of
we've got I called it VEX whichis that we have to be able to
account for buyers that arevetted.
You know these are buyers thathave used your competitor, they
used you in the past and they'reready to start at step three.
(09:18):
They've already went to chat,gpt, they've done a table,
they've compared you and thenyou've got educated, which is
like a flavor of that.
Then you have cold and you haveself-service and that you need
to be able to accommodate allfour of those buyer types.
Somebody comes to you and says,hey, jake, look, can we, can
please?
For the love of God, do I nothave to get on this stupid
qualification call?
Like I'm already ready, I'vealready approved budget.
(09:39):
I used you two companies ago.
I use your biggest competitor.
I talked to five people at thisevent about you, like, can we,
can we please just start at stepfour?
And I think I actually see uslike artificially slowing down
the buying cycle a lot becausewe're so used to putting people
through our one size fits allconveyor belt.
Everybody has to start here.
Medpick starts here, you knowlike, and we, we start everybody
(10:01):
, you know, at the verybeginning of the process, which
I feel is a big issue.
And so let's talk about moreand more buying happens when the
sellers aren't in the room.
I saw some stat I've seen 95%of it, I've seen 80% of the time
is your spending is not withthe buyer that they're making
(10:21):
decisions or doing things, notwith the buyer that they're
making decisions or doing things.
How can companies betterposition themselves in this new
world where we're expected to doeven more asynchronous
education?
You know buyers need to give.
You know we're definitelyentering a world of give, give,
give, not gatekeep, which iswhat all of us I mean you've
been in sales 20 plus years.
I've been in sales.
(10:42):
We were all trained the sameway Like don't talk about
pricing on the first call, right?
Or like don't do this, like, ifthey're going to do this, they
got to hop on a call.
And you're like, hop on a call,yuck, can't you just send me
like a three minute video and Ican, like you know, scroll it
like TikTok or something.
Make sure, make sure tosubscribe to the channel so you
(11:09):
get updated on all of our latestepisodes.
If you are listening to thepodcast, make sure that you get
alerts so you get automaticallydownloaded when a new episode
comes out.
So how has that evolved?
How has that kind of whenyou're not in the room evolved
and what are you seeing best inclass sales people and sales
organizations doing to competein that world people?
and sales organizations doing tocompete in that world?
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
First of all, I love what you said about you know
buyers' expectations and howthey're entering the process in
various ways, and I think that'sa big part of it.
So it's not only that less timeis spent with us and, by the
way, the different stats is justbecause of in a competitive
scenario and non-competitivescenarios.
In a non-competitive scenario,it's in that range, the 70%, and
(11:52):
in a competitive scenario eachvendor basically gets 5% to 6%.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
That's the Gartner study and so, yeah, it's both
about less time with us, butit's also about you can't fit
buyers into a box, right.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
You have to accommodate the way that they
want to buy and each journey isdifferent, each one of their
processes, and they go back fromstages, back and forth.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Such a good call-out too, and just to double-click on
that before you keep going.
The other thing thing that Itry to talk I was literally
talking to one of our clients.
We do this customer journeyworkshop with them, where we
really helped them to get tighton their various stages, so
they're very kind of aligned howthe customer actually buys
versus, you know, their democompleted or some other dumb
stage name.
Um, and the big thing that Itried to say is I was like, look
(12:41):
, salesforce and HubSpot areartificially forcing salespeople
to think of sales in 2025 or2026 as linear.
And not only that, they alsoforce us to think of one
singular process versus you know, I talk about this in the book
too like there's teams of people.
There's a buying team that needsto see the ROI, like you
(13:02):
mentioned, the CFO, and there'san end user team that needs to
make sure that you'll getutility and then, like, the
department head is usually theoverlap between the two right,
and I think so many people needto understand that it's okay
that it's not linear.
I think we want to.
It would be a lot easier, gal,if, like it was linear, because
it would be like everybody is atthe exact same step.
They do this thing exactly, butI think that's just such a good
(13:25):
call out that the buyingjourney is not only not linear
and people go forward and back,there's also multiple buying,
you know kind of cycles that arehappening inside the same deal.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Yeah, yeah, and forward and backwards sometimes.
Oh, but they've chosen a vendor.
It's in this stage in the CRM.
We're now in proposal, butthey're now going back to
compare a few more vendors.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yes, it happens, that's the reality.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Don't have a.
Crm stage, so regionallyenforced.
So I'll break down the answer.
I think there are three thingsthat you can do, so both as a
seller and as a company, andit's it's about the training,
it's about the process and Ithink it's about just overall
how you're enforcing andthinking about standardizing.
(14:15):
So I think let's start with thesales process.
So you mentioned because it'stop of mind.
You just mention it and it'ssuch a great point.
Like you know, we're doing somany things that just should
disappear.
Like Band is from freaking the1950s Okay, it was invented in
the 1950s.
It's crazy.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Medic is 96,.
For those of you keeping track,medic is 96.
Medpick is just a flavor of it,so yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
So I think we're just doing so many things that we
just, uh, we need to evolve.
The sales process is most iswe're trying to build it for
forecasting?
Uh, we're not building it tofacilitate buying, it's not.
It's not built for the buyer,it's built for.
These are the easiest names forme to remember.
For AEs to understand, you needto do a demo, you need to do a
(15:06):
trial, you need to do a thing,it's about what I need to do,
and then that's creating thatpush right.
I'm trying to push someone fromthis stage to that stage because
then my probability goes up,yeah, but the buying journey is
the fact that you've done,you're now in a POC or trial,
(15:29):
wherever you call it.
The need that the funnel doesnot mean that the buyer has
agreed that there is a problemthat can, that needs to be
solved.
There's there's enoughconsensus about solving it right
.
They might still be at thatphase and you're already trying
to be at the proof or vendorselection or whatever you're
(15:49):
trying to prove without POC.
So I think the first it reallystarts with the sales process.
We need to make sure that stagenames don't reflect things that
the seller does, ratheroutcomes on the buying side,
things that the buyer basicallywould do, like problem
(16:15):
identification or problemalignment or needs assessment.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
We call it, you know it's a good call.
We say there's discovery, thenthe next phase is initial
evaluation, which is like hey,we're trying to understand, like
is there something here?
Then the next stage is formalevaluation.
It's like, hey, so we've wentpast discovery, initial
evaluation, I've looped in otherpeople.
They also think that there'ssomething here.
And then formal evaluationmeans like we're going into
vetting, you know, we're puttingtogether a formal proposal, et
(16:42):
cetera, and I feel like thoseare kind of stage names that we
kind of go back to because theykind of fit both sides.
It helps you to understand likethat, because that's how people
buy.
Like guys, everybody buys theexact same.
You get one person on the firstcall, then they loop in other
people and then they loop inmore, like it's the same for
everybody right now again, butthe key that we're talking about
is like one is understandingthat, and then two is how do you
(17:04):
kind of show up for each ofthose meetings, based on where
the rest of the people are, youknow, in the process.
But the process itself andsometimes it accelerates the
initial informal evaluationhappen quickly if they're
already an educated or vettedbuyer.
But I think it's, you knowcompanies don't need to
overthink it.
You know it's.
You know companies don't needto overthink it.
You know it's like.
It's a pretty straightforwardway to think about it.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
Yeah, it's a pretty straightforward way because,
yeah, you identify that you havea problem and then you go and
you want to drive consensus andyou want to find solutions to
the problem and then youvalidate solutions and like,
yeah, pretty much there's alogical way that the buyer buys,
buyer buys.
But then if you try to make thestage names right about the
things that you do in your salesprocess, you're just optimizing
for the wrong things, right?
It's not.
It's not really catered to towhat the buyer is doing.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
So that's one of the problems and also the exit
criteria.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
The exit criteria is not the fact that you want to
use that they agree to take todo a trial.
The exit criteria is thatthey've uh, you know, agreed on
a problem selected a vendor uh,right, it should be about buying
outcomes.
I think it first starts.
These are.
There are multiple problemsthere on the sales process, but
(18:14):
I would really start with that.
But then, in terms of uh and of,course, all of that should be
driven by actual buying journeyresearch Like think about how,
like research, talk to realbuyers, talk to sales people, to
the sales team, try tounderstand and map out all these
different conversations, andthen the sales process is really
about that.
And it's not about the mainstage, like each stage, could
(18:37):
have a lot of different thingsthat you do right.
So even I'm in evaluation and inthat evaluation stage I'm
trying to basically help a buyerget to a point where they're
selecting a vendor.
Then I could do an evaluatingthat this is a good fit for them
in general, that this issomething that they want to now
(18:58):
move to the final stages with.
Then you could have variousthings that you could do in that
stage recommended for the rep.
You could send a competitivecomparison.
You could do a competitiveworkshop.
You could do a use case workshop.
You could go throughintegrations with this team and
give them choices of a lot ofdifferent things that they can
(19:19):
do, and then these are bakedinto the process, processes,
selections for the AE to execute.
So I think doing it this wayit's a bit less natural to some
of the junior AEs they need, ofcourse, it's easier to do things
in a linear way, right, but itjust doesn't work like that.
It will just fail and I don'tthink that there's.
(19:43):
I think that the term complexsales was a synonym of
enterprise sales.
I think that today, complexsales can be mid-market sales,
can be even SMB sales 20K, 25k,acv that's still complex sales.
We have probably five to sixstakeholders on this 100%
company buying a 20K deal.
(20:05):
That could be a long, complexdeal.
So it's no different in all ofthis.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
I think that it has always been a little bit.
I mean, it's been like this fora little bit, but, like you
said, I think we just have toaccept it.
I feel like that's part of this, too is like sales leaders.
You know it's been like thisfor a little bit but, like you
said, I think it just we justhave to accept it.
I feel like that's part of this, too, is like sales leaders.
You know, guys, wake up.
Like you know, like, justaccept it Like it is what it is.
Trust me.
If, like, if you know it's like,whenever we optimize outbound
for folks, or you know pipeline,you know improvements, it's
(20:34):
like, guys, if I could just puttogether a template and hit send
all and it worked, I would tellyou to do that.
If, like, the buyer journey wasjust simple and it's like, yeah
, you just got to run theprocess and it works, like, I
would just tell you to do thatright.
And so how do you feel?
Like you talked, we kind ofhinted around this a little bit,
but and then I want to kind ofjump into kind of more.
(20:56):
Like you know, we'll focus onsome of the AI pieces.
You know specifically more.
Like you know we'll focus onsome of the AI pieces, pieces.
You know specifically how.
How does MedPick right inparticular?
Because I see MedPick, honestly, more than anything now I feel
like it's had this resurgence.
You know where it's like well,medic wasn't good enough, we
need some P's in there.
You know what I mean.
It's like we gotta gotta add acouple extra little letters in
(21:16):
there.
But how, how does this fit intothis new world?
You know, I've got my opinion.
I'm curious with you, gal, likehow, you know, I see so many
people going to it right, howdoes it fit in this new world,
in this world that we all livein selling?
Speaker 2 (21:32):
yeah, and I've.
This is actually a topic thatI've not given too much thought.
I think I have a point of viewaround it.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I'd be actually curious to hear why you're so
passionate about it, the waythat I'm viewing it is.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
It's basically it's a tool.
There are a lot ofmethodologies out there for
creating the internal alignmentand how you discuss deals, how
you forecast, how you runongoing discovery.
I think it makes sense to alignon a certain because you need
the same language internally.
(22:13):
Some people you know we lovegap selling, for example, for
discovery, so we talk all thetime about impact and root
causes.
We we use that language a lotinternally and that alignment
and language I think is veryimportant and I think so but I
think that the area where thisgoes off track is when people
(22:40):
are using medic to uh to enforcethe process.
So when you get to this stage,you have to have the m.
When you get to this stage, youhave to have the p like, but
the reality is, and I thinkthat's it's.
It's the problem.
That's really problem.
That relates to everything wetalked about.
(23:00):
You can't put buyers in a cage.
Aes don't want to be placed inthe cage.
The best ones will just run away, and I think that just the
reality of the buying processtoday because it's so complex,
trying to do that and have thatlevel of rigidness.
You're thinking that you'reoptimizing for forecasting but
(23:23):
you're breaking your forecastingbecause you know the fact that
someone could not move a stage.
Does that mean that you havethe right probability right now
for the deal?
And yeah, that's what I thinkis wrong with the system, but I
would love to hear if there'sanything that you're thinking
about.
Speaker 1 (23:42):
No, I think that that's right.
I'm okay if it's like well, ifwe're going to be at this formal
evaluation stage, these thingsneed to have happened.
That might not be exactly thedefinition of an X or an M or
whatever it might be.
In MedPick, I think for me,with a lot of our clients in
(24:02):
MedPick, I think for me, with alot of our clients, we've got a
framework we use called intent,and the first is focused on
teams, which I teased outearlier, which is this concept
that we need to understand whereeach team is in their buying
process as well.
And where I think MedPick fallsdown is, to your point, the
execution, where you aretraining reps subconsciously to
(24:23):
think that there is one decisionmaker, that there is one
champion and there is oneeconomic buyer.
And it's not how it works.
Today.
You are in a room you mentionedthis there is a room happening
where the person who has thehighest job title is sitting
there and they're looking at aperson who's two layers below
them and says Tim, what do youthink Tim's like?
(24:44):
I don't like it.
They're like fuck it, we're notdoing it, and I think that that
, to me, is the gap that I seethat too many people are by
overly focusing on this conceptof a singular individual, on
this concept of a singularindividual.
You are forcing salespeople tonot think.
(25:04):
How people buy today is maybe asimple way to put it.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Yeah, I haven't thought about it.
It's something that I'mspeaking about a lot.
Well, I'm sure your clients too.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
I mean you gotta be careful there, right?
Your clients are like what doyou mean MedPick?
I got you know what do you mean?
Medpick isn't that's what.
Careful there, right?
Your clients are like what doyou mean MedPick?
I got it, I got you know whatdo you mean?
Medpick isn't that's what weuse, right?
So I get it and, like I said, Ithink there still is a place
for it, but you have to deployit in reality land, which is the
fact that these individualpeople don't exist.
They don't exist.
(25:36):
There is no one economic buyer,it exists.
There is no one economic buyer,it doesn't exist.
Yeah, so as long as you havethat, that idea of like, okay,
who's on the economic buyingteam, who's on the the decision
making team, that I can get downright yeah, I can get yeah,
absolutely, there's a buyinggroup the buying group has
(25:56):
different level of power, havedifferent levels of influence.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Sometimes the above the line that has power and
can't actually kind of get abudget would not be as
influential even as someonebelow the line that just has so
much political capital withinthe organization and has so much
pull that everyone will listento.
Like we have the fact that wedo at Align, we do PLG right.
I feel it so so much on the dayto day.
(26:29):
We had a deal last quarter thatwas going through a
multi-billion dollar acquisition.
The CFO said no purchases it'scoming from the top.
We're inquired cannot buyanything One of the senior
strategic AEs director title.
(26:50):
But that's a guy that's kind ofsigning multi-million dollar
deals.
Every deal is likemulti-million dollar deals
Basically went up scheduled ameeting with the CFO.
Told him hey, I need more roomsin Aligned.
Now Like I'm closing thesedeals because of.
Aligned improving my win rateand everything.
(27:10):
I need this.
Now let's find a way.
Speaker 1 (27:14):
And he brought the deal.
Okay, that guy closed the deal.
An AE.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
So definitely the fact that, like and we even had
deals where we weren't speakingto the director level was behind
the scenes and a group of AEsstrategic AEs did everything on
their own.
The VPs because they'restrategic AEs the VP and
(27:38):
director, they trusted them somuch.
You just lead it, build thebusiness case, even experience a
little bit what it is to be onthe buying side, and they just
brought the deal right.
So in the medic world the waythat you're describing it, that
old thinking of, there's thatsingle DM sitting with a cigar,
with a suit, in a room callingthe shots.
(27:59):
Then that thing does not evensuit in a room.
Right, yeah, all the shots.
Then you know that thing doesnot even pass into a pipeline,
qualified pipeline.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
Yeah, exactly.
All right, let's talk a littlemore AI.
So how do you see AI impactingthis customer journey?
Right, and, by the way,everybody, if you're you're
getting down with the podcast,you're enjoying what we're
talking about make sure tosubscribe to the channel.
We've got some links that we'regoing to add in below, too,
with some additional resourcesaround this kind of concept of
(28:28):
customer enablement.
So if you're somebody who'sreally geeking out and wanting
to learn more, definitely dothat.
Make sure to subscribe tofuture episodes as well, for
sure.
So let's jump into the AI piece.
Where do you see generative AIor tools you know enabled with
generative AI enabling thisfurther and you know whether
(28:49):
it's in your product or whatyou're seeing in your own sales
org?
I'd love to get your kind oftactical take on that.
Yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
I think we all a little bit lost it with
everything that's going on withAI.
I think we lost criticalthinking to the fear of missing
out and what we're seeing.
You and I just talked about itright before we started the
episode a little bit.
I think there's either too slowto understand that we need to do
(29:19):
like.
This thing is happening andeveryone needs to think about it
and everyone needs to adopt it.
So I think we have that end ofthe spectrum.
I think we have the other endof the spectrum of people
running like a headless chicken,like just you know, trying to
do everything.
They're either going for theeasy button, like things like an
AISDR before I've ever, yeah,yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah outbound sucks or outbound sucks.
Let's hire an AI employee tohit send, all on the exact same
template.
We haven't figured outmessaging.
We haven't done it once.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Let's do this.
So we're looking for easybuttons.
Again, critical thinking issuewe're thinking automation, let's
just automate everything.
But.
But we just talked about it.
The problem is the same.
Buyers aren't answering.
You're doing more on.
They're doing more buying ontheir own.
Buying is more complex.
You're trying to automateeverything because it's just, it
(30:15):
makes sense.
That's what you do with ai, oror they're just looking at the
easy fixes and just saying, hey,we can build these agents and
these agents.
Maybe let's do that, but butyou know the way you really make
good by good decisions overallthe business is applying
critical thinking.
What are the problems that we'retrying to solve?
(30:36):
Why are we trying to solve them?
What are the?
What are the root causes?
And, yes, then start saying howcan we solve it with ai?
Find me a solution with ai.
I just had this conversationtoday with my uh vp, customer
success, and she was talkingabout how she built a lot of
these agents but she wants tonow take them into n8n and make,
(30:57):
take them to the next level andimplement them.
Then I asked her that I toldher hey, what's?
right now the biggest criticalthing in your mind?
What's kind of the biggestchallenges right now?
I need to hire.
I need to hire ASAP.
I want to get to that level ofquality that we need right now
in CS.
Just more hiring will do Okayand what else.
(31:19):
So we started going down thatrabbit hole and then we
understood which agentsspecifically would make sense
right now to implement.
Speaker 1 (31:27):
To go and solve the problem.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
So I think we first have that either formal problem
of moving too fast on things, orjust not realizing that things
are happening, that we need tomove fast and we're not moving
fast enough.
And then, practically speaking,I think, as part of that a lot
of us just go after all theseeasy agents, all the things that
(31:51):
just save AEs time, but I thinkthat the problem is still the
same problem.
You need to use AI, probably todo better instead of doing more
, and a lot of companies aretrying to use it to do more.
Let's free up their time fromupdating the CRM and doing a lot
of stuff, but then you freed uptheir time to just send more of
these crappy emails or do moreof these demo interrogations or
(32:13):
not enable buyers properly.
So what did?
You gain really by freeing uptheir time.
So that's how I'm thinkingabout it, and I think there's a
lot of ways that you can use AIto just do better research.
You can build strong POVsbefore you enter an enterprise
account.
You can prepare for meetingsbetter.
You can know, everything aboutevery stakeholder before every
(32:36):
meeting.
Throughout your process, buildaccount plans.
Your outreach can be muchsmarter Like using things like.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
More customized, right yeah, your outbound emails
and every follow-up email.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
You can just use it to help you write.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
That's the table stakes I think you know, in
buyer enablement that's a lot ofwhat we're doing in our product
you can build business cases.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
You could build competitive comparisons, roi
even have it go and draft a pocsuccess plan, customer success
plan, following the call and notonly do things faster for you
but do it better.
And I think it's getting to apoint where it can really give
you good advice, like we'reexperimenting with this a lot,
(33:20):
we're going to launch a lot ofthings in these areas, but think
about not just not just whathappened in the call, not just
the call summary, but where I'm,where am I right now in the
deal and how can I unblock thisright.
Here is the situation.
Or how can I right now get thisthrough the finish line on time
(33:42):
by the end of the quarter?
I want to hit the target.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Where are?
Speaker 2 (33:46):
they at, and what are the different moves that I
could do?
I think there's a lot If youfit it with enough information
and you prompt it the right wayand you build everything right.
There's a lot there.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
I agree.
Yeah, I mean, that is to meprobably the area I think that
is least utilized is we call itscenario planning in particular,
which is AI, is very good attaking in a lot of different key
variables.
And again, I think the otherthing is it also then is
marrying your internalinformation with external
signals too.
Like you know, it's scraping.
(34:19):
I'll give you a good example.
We were doing an example.
We've got a custom GPT calledcompetitive deal intelligence.
If you guys go check out, youcan sign up for a free trial on
meetjourneyai.
We've got all these differentgo-to-market assistance, but the
competitive deal one's a reallyinteresting one.
It's like, hey, I'm a sales rep, I work at SalesLoft, I'm
(34:40):
trying to push Gong out of thisaccount, help me build the play
for it.
And it went and it scraped.
And it saw that this company,literally a week ago and it was
the most beautiful timing, howit worked out literally a week
before put up a job posting fora gong program manager.
And so it's like, hey, you needto seed the point on
conversational intelligence, youneed to do this that, like gong
(35:01):
, is obviously embedded blah,blah, blah, blah, blah.
Instead, you need to do this,focus on this, attack them on
their engagement platform,attack them on analytics and
like this is where you win.
Like, I'm a big fan.
Like, like.
We will never create a staticbattle card, ever again, ever,
because by the time yourenablement team one takes three
months to build it Two.
(35:22):
By that time, the company'salready, you know, released 18
new features.
So, it's like you know you can'tkeep up, but the scenario
planning AI use case isabsolutely one that everybody
should be doing on every singledeal.
I cannot stress it enough, justlike how big of a game changer
it can be.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
Hey, I make strategic company decisions using AI.
I don't let it be a decisionfor me, but it's structuring the
information.
It helps me think about it, ithelps me structure thinking.
Structured information,research, like all of these
things are incredible.
Yeah, definitely do it, and Icouldn't agree more.
(36:02):
I think that the whole funnelof going to product marketing or
enablement, wherever, is incharge of all that stuff, and
then it's outdated and it's nottailored, that's going to
disappear from the world.
I think, and you know, that'spart of the vision for our
product.
Beyond just bringing everythinginto one place, it's all going
to be like an Ironman suit forthe modern seller the entire
(36:24):
execution is going to be poweredby AI, and part of it is that
buyer enablement.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Content is going to be just so tailored, based on
information from public sourcesand information from all of the
internal conversations to justdraft these resources directly
in the environment where yousell, where you run the sales
process, which is that that'sright.
Yeah, and like we created aplatform, meet Journey.
It's that you know how we lookat.
This is these assistants arealmost, like you know we call
(36:51):
them digital teammates that youknow there's kind of the Iron
man suit analogy.
But I also think it's more oflike you know your Avengers
strategy, where it's like you'reIron man and you know this one
is your Captain America, youknow.
This one is your Hulk, you know.
And like they all do differentthings Right.
Like this one is really strongat account research, you know,
and then you've got your what'sthat guy?
(37:14):
Account research, you know, andthen you've got your what's
that guy?
Nighthawk, you know.
He's really good at annualreport summarizing, you know.
And Black Widow she's reallygood at social media post
writing.
You know what I mean Likethat's kind of how I think about
this is that these teammates,the future is we're all going to
be surrounded and, like youmentioned, as an executive, I
couldn't agree more.
You know I use generative AI.
(37:35):
I've probably spent three hoursFriday night, you know, working
through our kind of Q4 projectmanagement for my chief of staff
.
But we're all going to havethese digital teammates that go
do stuff for us and do work andyou're going to have to learn
how to.
You know the people that knowwhat they call delegate and
elevate.
Right, you delegate and elevate, and that is the future is
we're going to delegate to theseassistants.
(37:57):
You know these different peopleto do these things for us.
So we should therefore behaving richer conversations,
more structured conversations,because, you know, kind of
taking this whole thing fullcircle, nobody is going to want
to talk to a salesperson if theycan't add incremental value to
the conversation.
Yeah, if you cannot addincremental value above and
(38:18):
beyond what I can read on apiece of paper or a video I can
watch, that's a one size fitsall demo why would I want to
talk to you?
I don't, I would prefer to talkto you.
I'm this kind of high horsegall.
I really feel like most peopleonly want to talk to the
customer success people, becausethat's the people they're going
to interact with anyway.
(38:40):
That is the person who's got tomake sure I actually use the
product and it's successful, notthe salesperson who's going to.
Hey, I feel like every buyershould ask this one question in
the very first call Are yougoing to hand me off at the end
of this if you close the dealand if the answer is yes, you
should say, hey, not a problem,jake, I love that.
On the next call, I need the CSrep I'm going to be assigned to
, because I need to make surethey actually know what the heck
(39:01):
they're talking about and thatthey're involved from day one.
That is what every buyer shoulddo.
That and every sales teamshould be prepared for that,
because that is how peopleactually want to buy.
I want to talk to the personwho's going to make me
successful with a product andyou know, also like the days of
the sales rep having to go get asolutions engineer for some
(39:21):
basic, stupid question, deadlike yeah just put that person
on the phone.
Why like and again, we've got aiassistance to just do that
anyway.
It's like it just tells you inreal time like, yes, we can
integrate with this azure layerfrom an infant.
It'll just do it for you.
I just feel like thesalesperson of the future has
got to be this kind ofsuperpowered Avengers mindset
(39:45):
where they are adding so muchvalue when they are in that 5%
gall that they becomeindispensable because they are
such experts.
I love it so much.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
I'll add a few more things to this.
First of all, this is thebiggest why now, behind the
entire message of thisconversation about
buyer-centricity, experience,buyer enablement, whatever you
call it right, like if a buyerright now can use ai to take
your freaking deck and build abetter business case, to take
(40:20):
your deck and your competitivedeck and build a competitive
comparison.
If they can do all these things, which are the skills of the,
the good seller, right?
That's?
That's where you're trying tofacilitate the decision and to
enable them and equip them andinfluence, you're losing
influence.
So if all your value is is toprovide product information that
(40:43):
anyone can just find, drop allthe assets that your product
marketing created, which, okay,just put them on the website for
me and then push to the close,then it's commodity, like it's
just.
It has to die.
That's transactional sales.
It just has to disappear fromthe world.
(41:04):
I think we're going to level upthe motions.
I think every salesperson isjust going to be have that
complex selling skills.
So I think all of these thingsexactly should happen.
And then I forgot the secondpoint.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
Don't worry about it, we'll put it in the show notes
afterwards.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
So last thoughts If I want to be successful a year
from now, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,yeah, and I remember, we can
edit this a little bit.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Yeah, of course we can edit it.
Speaker 2 (41:35):
All right, so why?
Speaker 1 (41:35):
don't you just go into, like, why don't you just
start my second point and thenjust go into it?
Speaker 2 (41:39):
yeah, so my second point you talked about how do we
?
optimize the five percent.
But there's another thing I'lladd to that is how do we expand,
how do we drive theconversation that's happening
around about us when we're notthere?
How do we expand thesalesperson, make them influence
(42:01):
the rest of the 95?
And the way that you do that isby focusing on their async
selling skills and theirchampion enablement skills and
their multi-threading skillsright, all of these things that
you can do to drive moreinfluence, the more that you're
offering buying processes as aservice, right, it means you're
(42:23):
more of an extension of theirteam.
So now you're part of.
How do I pitch to the CFO?
Right, you're part of.
Who should I even involve here?
Okay, and how do I approachthem?
So you're part of.
Who should I even involve hereand how do I approach them?
So, you're part of even how dowe now agree that this is really
the problem here that we needto tackle Now?
(42:45):
You're getting into theseintimate conversations because
you're offering a betterexperience.
You know you're offering abetter experience.
So just by doing better and bydriving these enablement tools,
by focusing on in the betweenconversation skills, you're
basically expanding yourinfluence, you're becoming more
(43:06):
valuable and going beyond that.
5%.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
Yeah, I love that.
I think that's a good point towrap up on, but I'm going to ask
you one last question, which iswhere is this headed?
If I said, hey, in a year ortwo years from now, what are the
things out of what we justtalked about?
If you had to pick, maybe oneor two, what would you leave
people with as like, these arethe two things.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Yeah, so I think it's one.
Instead of buyers using AIalone, salespeople will have to
bring them into their own AIworkflows that they facilitate.
(43:52):
That's one.
It means that you have anenvironment where you have AI
working for them.
Then you're not afraid of itand it's doing the things that
they will do with their AI, butjust better, and you're
orchestrating it.
I think that's one thing, andthe second thing is just what we
(44:14):
said right now you just have todo better.
You have to offer buyingprocess as a service.
It's just non-negotiable.
You just have to do better thanthe AI empowered buyer.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
That's the point?
I think so, and you have tounderstand that if you're not
using AI to understand whatbuyers are finding out about you
too, go do that right now too.
Go say, hey, if you were goingto buy my product, what would
you compare?
What do you think buyers aredoing?
How are they talking about it?
Is there a competition, etcetera.
(44:51):
So I think that's a reallygreat tactical something that
somebody could go and act onright now.
So that's a wrap.
Thank you, man.
I enjoyed the conversation.
I think we covered a lot.
I think we got deep into youknow the details on why people
should start to think about this.
You know kind of buyer-centricjourney, some tactical ways that
they can leverage AI and andjust also mindset shift, you
(45:13):
know, to meet people there.
So big thank you for joining me, man.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
I really enjoyed it.
Yeah, me too.
Thanks so much, it was fun.
I think exactly, yeah, wetouched both of us.
Good point.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
Love it, man, all right.
Well, thank you, Appreciateeveryone for listening and we'll
see you on next week's episode.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Cardiac Cowboys
The heart was always off-limits to surgeons. Cutting into it spelled instant death for the patient. That is, until a ragtag group of doctors scattered across the Midwest and Texas decided to throw out the rule book. Working in makeshift laboratories and home garages, using medical devices made from scavenged machine parts and beer tubes, these men and women invented the field of open heart surgery. Odds are, someone you know is alive because of them. So why has history left them behind? Presented by Chris Pine, CARDIAC COWBOYS tells the gripping true story behind the birth of heart surgery, and the young, Greatest Generation doctors who made it happen. For years, they competed and feuded, racing to be the first, the best, and the most prolific. Some appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, operated on kings and advised presidents. Others ended up disgraced, penniless, and convicted of felonies. Together, they ignited a revolution in medicine, and changed the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.