Sales Is Being Rewritten. Are You Ready? | Graham Hawkins - Founder/CEO SalesTribe & Qoos.ai - Burn The Playbook

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
We'll be right back.

(00:31):
All right, welcome in.
I'm Mark Crosby, and this isBurn the Playbook.
Every week, we rethink thestrategies that actually move
the needle, not with any fads orgimmicks, but unlocking growth
in markets where everybody looksthe same.
This show is for ones willing tochallenge the status quo and the
ones that want to buildsomething truly different.
Today's guest has done exactlythat, especially in sales, and

(00:51):
we're going deep into the movesthat help them stand out, win
trusts, and grow on their terms.
Graham Hawkins is a B2B salesspecialist with a contemporary
view on how sales must align tothe new buyer-led era.
Recently voted by Crunchbase asone of the world's top 25 sales
leaders, Graham is an AmazonInternational bestselling

(01:12):
author, LinkedIn Top Voice Awardwinner in 2018, and today he is
the founder and CEO ofSalesTribe, and he's also the
CEO and co-founder of theworld's first AI-guided selling
platform, Qs.ai.
Welcome, Graham.
Thank you, Mark.
Great to be here.
Appreciate it.
And let's just jump right intoit because I would love to hear

(01:32):
more about your journey.
Obviously, you've been in salesfor over 30 plus years and have
a lot of experience.
And I would love to share thatwith the rest of the world,
especially beyond the techindustry, because I know that at
least the segments that I servein manufacturing could probably
learn a lot about how to sellbetter.
One of the things that keepscoming up, at least in my feeds

(01:52):
and things like that, is thatthe buyers are pretty much 60%
of the way there, 70% of the waythere, 80% of the way there.
before they even want to talk toa salesperson.
So are we getting to 90% as faras just they don't need
salespeople anymore?
How do you see it today?
And how do we change our salesand marketing approaches to
adapt to that?

SPEAKER_01 (02:11):
It's an unbelievably complex story, Mark.
As you know, I've recentlypublished a book called Deep
Selling, How to Drive Growth inthe Age of AI.
My co-author, Mark McAuliffe, inthis particular book, has just
finished a six-year PhD indigital transformation and sales
leadership.
A lot of the research that Markhas done has gone into the book,

(02:33):
obviously, but it's fascinatingto see exactly what you said.
It's how much of the buyingjourney is being now before that
buyer ever engages with a vendoror a supplier.
Forbes put some stats outrecently that nine out of 10 B2B
buyers are now using Gen AI.
I did a keynote just a littlewhile back in London where I

(02:59):
outlined all of the activitiesthat a B2B buyer goes through,
Mark, all of those routinerepetitive elements of the
buying process.
And I cross-referenced thisagainst Claude and DeepSeek and
the various others as well, GPT.
And it said to me, and thisfloored me really, it said that
60 to 70% of B2B buying will beautomated or become, you know,

(03:23):
or done by an agent within thenext 18 months or so by 2027.
Oh, wow.
So if you think about that incontext, what are buyers doing?
They're landing on perplexityand they're saying, give me the
top three suppliers for the CRMsystem.
We need a new CRM.
And they're getting all of thatresearch done and all of those
recommendations made before theyever speak to a salesperson.

(03:47):
So what happens?
Sales guys, we all come in latenow.
We come in when the buyer'salready selected their preferred
supplier.
So yeah, I think to yourquestion, lots and lots of B2B
buying is being done in thedark.
We don't even know what'shappening.
They're leveraging GPT andeverything else, all of the Gen
AI tools to make vendorselections.

(04:10):
And so as a salesperson, I showup with limited opportunities to

SPEAKER_00 (04:16):
influence the outcome.
Yeah, and that's a good point.
And I think also it probably wasa little bit easier three, four
years ago because you could justgo to that same process.
as far as just putting in aGoogle search and understand
what they're being exposed to.
I think now it's a little bitmore challenging because, you
know, they're putting in avariety of different types of
prompts and you don't know ifthey're going to be a one line

(04:36):
prompt or, you know, a full pageprompt and you don't know what
that output is going to be.
So I think you're going kind ofin a little bit more of the dark
and you have to be moreprepared, I think, as far as
just answering any objections,answering any potential
hallucinations, because youdon't know what that journey is,
you know, as clearly or theynever really was.
is clear, but it's going to geta little bit more muddy as far

(04:59):
as when you're using artificialintelligence and which platform,
because, you know, who knowswhat direction they went down.
So I guess with that said, Imean, I think that there's
probably a way to probably maybeprepare against that a little
bit, maybe by doing your own GPTsearches kind of in the same
way.
So at least you can, at leastwhen you get to the meeting or
you have a call, you're a littlebit more prepared in the same

(05:21):
way.
But what would you recommendlike a salesperson does
utilizing AI to kind of putyourself in the customer's shoes
before you actually have thatconversation with them.

SPEAKER_01 (05:29):
Well, listen, I've always preached the whole
visibility at the beginning ofthe buying journey.
If you're not visible, you don'texist.
And so I think some of the onusnow comes back onto the
marketing department too.
And so it should, right?
We're all one, should be one,sales and marketing together.
But one of the first questionsthat came out, Mark, from the
keynote that I deliveredrecently was, so what do we need

(05:51):
to do as a business to make surewe're showing up in those GPT
searches or the gen AI searches.
So we've moved from SEO to GEO,generative engine optimization,
right?
So that's the new big hot topicapparently.
Yeah, SEO was the thing, wasn'tit?
How do I make sure I appear onthat first page with the blue
links?

(06:12):
People spending lots and lots ofmoney on search engine
optimization, search enginemarketing to make sure that
you're visible when that buyerstarts their research in the
dark.
Well, now, as you said, now it'sabout, well, how are we ensuring
as a business, we do appear inthe searches on GPT?
And one of the tips I heardrecently, which was logical,

(06:36):
someone said, you need to makesure you understand the
questions that your buyers areasking.
So back to your point about theprompt, what are they prompting
GPT or others about?
And how do you make sure youunderstand exactly how your
business can solve thoseproblems?
So yeah, it's a different world,totally different process.

SPEAKER_00 (06:59):
Yeah, I think so.
And I think that also leads to,you know, one of my thoughts
recently and also just somethingI've employed in my sales career
is understanding the buyer'scustomers, understanding what
problems that they're trying tosolve.
So I think if you can, you know,take that a step further and
understand, you know, that sideof it, it'll probably get you a
little bit further than justunderstanding your immediate

(07:20):
buyer.
You really need to take that,you know, to the next tier and
understand who is their customerand how are they trying to solve
their problems.
And I think that prepares you aand probably gives you the keys
to what that prompt might looklike, I think.
And that might be the way to go.
One

SPEAKER_01 (07:36):
of my favorite catch cries is we all have to learn
how to sell smarter in a worldof smarter buyers.
Simple little approach, butyeah, and the buyer's getting
much more sophisticated aboutthe tools they're using, the
research they're leveraging, theinformation they're getting
about suppliers.
So as sellers and marketingpeople, we have to get a lot
more sophisticated ourselves inhow we do things.

(07:58):
One of the things that we'redoing with Qs at the moment,
Mark, you alluded to at theoutset, was simple old MedPick
training.
I mean, everyone's talking aboutMedPick, but getting really
clear on the metrics that yourbuyers are using to measure the
value, value realization, thevalue that your product is
bringing, both pre and postsale.

(08:21):
So it's one of the things I'veneglected personally in my
career.
I haven't been anywhere neardetailed enough with that kind
of approach.
We have to now.
We absolutely have to.

SPEAKER_00 (08:34):
Yeah.
And then that kind of leads meinto my next question as far as
when we're in Salesforce, we'rein HubSpot and we're a sales rep
and we're entering in our...
Is that even appropriate anymoreas far as what that looks like?
And then I guess the same thingfor a sales funnel.
I mean, does the sales funnellook like a typical sales funnel

(08:56):
or does that have to bere-engineered as well?
Two

SPEAKER_01 (08:59):
things there.
Firstly, I've got to shout outto Brent Adamson, who you and I
both know.
Brent's got this wonderfulconcept called the customer
verified pipeline.
And I know you're aware of this,but I've moved completely away
from that old idea of pipelineprogression and listening to the
seller give their gut feel ortheir intuition about things.

(09:23):
Brent's concept of the verifiedpipeline is all about what
actions or reactions is thecustomer taking that verifies
that this deal is moving in theright direction or it's moving
forward.
So that's the first thing to sayBack to the funnel question, I
read that great book by, and nowthe name escapes me.

(09:46):
I'll come back to the name ofthe guy who wrote the book, but
The Flipped Funnel.
It's a wonderful, simple conceptthat that used to be the funnel
where you put a whole lot ofstuff in the top and you push it
all down as hard and as fast asyou can and you close as many
deals as you can.
Obviously, hopefully, thosesales fall at the bottom of the
funnel.

(10:06):
First thing, most people have aleaky funnel.
There's all sorts of problemswith that approach.
And secondly, that idea of justput a whole lot of rubbish in
the top, that spray and praykind of mentality, that's being
pushed to the side now and beingreplaced by that idea of being a
lot more focused, narrowing thefocus.

(10:27):
So the flipped funnel, we'vegone from that to that, right?
And so we should.
We're in this new era ofproduct-led growth and
subscription models, consumptionmodels.
The prevailing business modelsof the time almost require that
you have to land and expandthrough the funnel where the

(10:51):
dynamic is a much longerengagement with each buyer,
hopefully.
So I've spent 30 years doing thetraditional approach, just put
as much rubbish in the top asyou can.
Three to five times quota inyour pipeline, Mark, all that
stuff.
It's a flawed approach,particularly now.

(11:11):
So yeah, I love the flippedfunnel concept.

SPEAKER_00 (11:16):
Gotcha.
I agree, certainly.
And I think beyond that, one ofthe other things that typically
comes up as a gatekeeper or theprocurement won't let me talk to
anybody else.
And there's this concept thatI've heard about
multi-threading.
Are you familiar with that asfar as what that looks like in
your world?

SPEAKER_01 (11:34):
Yeah, certainly am.
In fact, excuse me, frog in thethroat.
Certainly, yeah, with the Q'splatform, we're addressing that
particular problem around stayengagement, so multi-threading.
How do we make sure we'regetting across those 11.6, I
think Gartner said, 11.6 buyersin most complex B2B sales

(11:58):
scenarios?
So yeah, and yet LinkedIn cameout with a stat recently.
You probably saw it, Mark.
Most sellers, I think 78% ofsellers are single-threaded.
I believe it, yeah.
Yeah, they've got their onechampion, they've got their one
account contact, and they relytoo heavily on that one person.
So multi-threading, absolutelycritical.

SPEAKER_00 (12:21):
Yeah, I think another aspect of understanding
your customers is an activitythat I believe I heard you talk
about, I forget it was a dozenyears ago when you did your MBA,
about how you went out and youspoke to buyers and tried to get
a better sense of, you know,basically why they buy from you,
right?
And I don't think that that'sprobably deployed enough as far

(12:42):
as a strategy from a salesperspective is really, you know,
getting down to asking yourcustomers point blank.
Like, why do you buy from us?
Is it pricing?
Is it quality?
Is it speed?
Is it me?
Is it the executives?
Like, what is it?
So why do you think that, Iguess we don't see more of that
and people just default tosurveys, NPS scores and things
like that to try to understandtheir customers?

(13:04):
Yeah, we

SPEAKER_01 (13:06):
pay lip service to that, don't we?
And I am guilty of this myself.
I've got a friend down here inSydney, in Australia, Kian
McLaughlin, who set up abusiness some years ago, a
around win-loss analysis.
And so he dives into this wholearea in a very deep way and has
built a software platform thatcan help companies get that

(13:27):
better understanding of why wewin and why we lose.
But yeah, we very rarely go outand talk to the buyer about what
did you enjoy when you dealtwith us?
Were we easy to deal with?
Was there friction in theprocess?
If so, where?
Let's get clear on what sort ofbuy experience we create for our

(13:48):
buyers pre and post sale.
So yeah, check out Trinity,which is Kian's company.
They do a terrific job ofwin-loss analysis.
Others are doing this stuff aswell, but yeah, most companies
don't do any of it.
Right.

SPEAKER_00 (14:03):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's certainly a good activityto go through, especially, well,
both of them, whether you win orwhether you lose.
I think most people just get thewin.
They throw their hands up andthey say, yay, and they move on
to the next one without takingthe opportunity to really find
out why.
Yeah.
You learn nothing from the win,right?
You learn

SPEAKER_01 (14:19):
zero.

SPEAKER_00 (14:20):
Yeah.
Because if you want on aparticular, I guess, aspect of
that business, you need to keepnurturing that through because
the next step is to keep thecustomer.

SPEAKER_01 (14:30):
100%.
Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 (14:31):
Yep.
Back to the prevailing businessmodels of the time.
It's a different dynamic now.
It is.
Speaking of a different dynamicnow, as it relates to your first
book, you have three books,correct?
Yeah.
And so what What's changed sinceyou wrote your first book to
your most recent book as far aswhat selling looks like?

(14:51):
I know there's been a lot ofchanges, but what's been the
biggest shift?
Maybe it's AI, maybe it'ssomething else, but as far as
the thought process that wentinto writing the newest one, how
did your mindset change?
Yeah, really interesting.

SPEAKER_01 (15:06):
The simple answer to that is AI.
When I published this one, Mark,in The Future of the Sales
Profession, I published that in2017.
And that was the result of theMBA biobehavior study that I
did.
The fascinating thing about thatis, and the hint is in the
title, I looked into the futureand I thought, what's going to

(15:27):
be happening in five, in 10years for B2B salespeople?
And I was clearly way off.
I could not have imagined howquickly AI would take hold in
the last couple of years,really.
And so, yeah, I think Icertainly underestimated how
quickly all of this wouldaccelerate.

(15:47):
But it's all fairly, if you stepback and think about it, Mark,
it's all fairly predictable in away.
I mean, anything that's routineand repetitive is going to be
automated.
One of the key tenets of thatbook was if you're a generalist
salesperson, if you're down atthat low end of the commodity
curve in a transactional or apackage solution type sale, then

(16:09):
you will be automated out of thebusiness.
There's no question.
So the challenge for salespeopleis to become that deep domain
expert, that specialist, thatconsultative salesperson that
the buyer will actually value.
So getting up the commoditycurve, if you like, is a really
important point.
But yeah, that book, 2017, mymindset has totally changed

(16:34):
again now, given how quickly AIis advancing.

SPEAKER_00 (16:40):
It is.
And I guess with that said,would you say that, I guess the
typical sales job, is that injeopardy no matter what
industry?
I mean, if it's a commodityproduct, generic product, should
you, I guess, upskill yourselfand try to figure out how to
leverage AI to do somethingelse?
Or what does that look like?
Well,

SPEAKER_01 (16:59):
I think we should upskill ourselves irrespective.
There's so much happening now inevery role.
And Mark, I often laugh, and Iknow you and I have talked about
this before, but I often laughthat For some reason, it's the
sales profession that thinksthat it's the only profession in
the world that should neverchange.
I still come across salesleaders who are doing what I was

(17:20):
doing in 1989.
It's that numbers game, alwaysbe closing, all of those
old-fashioned approaches to thebusiness.
So, yeah, we should all bechanging no matter what and
upskilling.
But even more so now, I think ifyou are one of those–
transactional sellers doing highvolume kind of stuff, then

(17:43):
agentic AI is coming for yourjob, no doubt.
The nice part about it though,Mark, I think when you look at,
I've delved into, I'm sure youhave too, the average sales
activities breakdown, dailybreakdown of sales activities.
Depending on who you read, it'sbetween 20% and 30% of your
daily sales activities are spentactually selling.

(18:04):
True.
There's all of this other stuffthat a B2B salesperson does from
order processing to quoting, tofilling out the CRM, to
attending internal meetings andall of that stuff that's just,
to be honest, it's fluff.
It's wasted time.
So I like the fact, and this isthe positive spin here, I like
the fact that AI is going tofree us up from a lot of those

(18:27):
routine repetitive tasks andallow the salesperson to do what
we do best, which is buildtrust.
It's build relationships.
It's those human things that Ithink the really savvy,
successful sellers of thefuture, if you can get all of
those human elements combinedwith the AI and get that nice,

(18:50):
not juxtaposition, but that nicething working together, then
you're going to be veryvaluable.

SPEAKER_00 (18:55):
Yeah, I think so.
And I guess even to take that astep further, if we're
automating positions, what doesthe sales manager look like?
Since I think a lot of thosejobs are probably a lot of
spreadsheets and reporting outand analysis and insights and
things that frankly, you know,AI can do.
So I haven't read any statisticsas far as those go, but have you
heard anything about that or doyou have an opinion?

SPEAKER_01 (19:17):
Look, I've got an opinion about everything
relating to sales, but I haven'tspecifically written too much
about the sales leader role orread too much about the sales
leader role.
It's obvious that thespreadsheet jockey that I worked
for many years ago, the boss whosat in the office and just
looked at the forecast and thenMonday morning grilled you on

(19:38):
your opportunities, that role isdead.
More and more of today's salesleaders are actively out there
with the team, buildingrelationships and helping out in
that servant leadership sort ofcapacity.
So yeah, the role is definitelyevolving.
And now when you think about theagentic workforce that's coming,

(20:02):
it's going to be a case of thatleader being a true servant
leader, which is there to helpnot just the human workforce,
but the digital workforce aswell.
I mean, I was fascinated, Mark,to read recently the guys at
Workday, great company.
They're building onboarding nowfor agents.

(20:23):
So as this swarm of agents comesto the workforce, they are going
to be onboarded into mostcompanies the same way a human
is or in many ways the same waya human is.
Interesting.
This whole explosion of agenticAI, I think salespeople will
probably have two or three oftheir own agents that they might
bring with them.

(20:44):
I know salespeople right now whoare working on little agents
that can go off and do this andthat for them, do some research,
buyer identification andproductivity.
So yeah, maybe there's asituation in the future where
the salesperson brings theiragents with them and that's what
you're getting.
You buy the whole package.

SPEAKER_00 (21:04):
I know you say you have a lot of opinions.
One of my opinions right now isaround buyer intent.
And I know I've seen a lot oftools out there that they give
you a percentage or they givesome signals or something like
that that's based on researchand AI and things like that.
But do you feel that's aneffective, I guess, tool to use

(21:24):
or a measurement or what do youdo with that?
It's got to be, hasn't it?
It's got to be.

SPEAKER_01 (21:30):
I mean, data led everything now.
I I'm never again chasing a lowintent, no intent buyer.
I think we've all wasted so muchtime and company resource doing
that kind of activity.
Go back to the spray and praytype thing.
Trying to convert a passivebuyer when the passive buyer's

(21:53):
shown zero intent, that'sinsane, utterly insane.
So yes, we have to use the data.
We have to use the signals.
I call it the hi-fi custom Highfit, high intent.
You've got to find thosecustomers and work with those
exclusively and go deep withthose customers.
That's the whole premise of thisbook is to go deep.

(22:16):
Mark, I've spent...
You're embarrassed now.
I've spent probably 25 yearsbeing a mile wide and an inch
deep in all of my accounts.

SPEAKER_00 (22:26):
Yes, I know the feeling.
As far as getting a mile deepand using AI, Q's is one that
you can use.
What are some of the otherfavorite tools that you have
today to use AI in order to geta mile deep?

SPEAKER_01 (22:45):
Yeah, great question.
I've stumbled across perplexityrecently and I love using that
just to get insights andresearch into companies quickly.
Obviously, I'm a huge advocatefor Sales Navigator.
I frankly don't know how anyonecan compete if they don't have
Sales Navigator because accountIQ and the account mapping, the

(23:05):
relationship mapping, all ofthat good stuff that comes out
of the box with Sales Navigatorand then where it's going as
well.
I've seen some insights into thefuture roadmap for for LinkedIn
Sales Navigator.
So yeah, those two in terms ofresearch, understanding the
market, getting some intent.
Then you go into platforms likeClay, getting those signals and

(23:29):
those insights.
There's another company downhere in Australia that's popped
up recently that's doing somepretty cool stuff around intent.
I'll mention those at somepoint.
And then the other one that I'vestumbled across recently, which
I love is Trumpet.
Trumpet out of the UK.
digital sales rooms.
Mark, you and I have been aroundthe game a long time.

(23:52):
First rule of sales,differentiate.
How do you stand out in thiscrowded, noisy marketplace that
we're all in now?
How do you stand out?
How do you differentiate?
And I love what Trumpet'sbuilding insofar as I can now
engage the buyer in a much in amuch more enjoyable way with a

(24:13):
trumpet digital sales room orpod as they call it.
So yeah, look, there's a ton oftools that are popping up and
platforms.
The Q's platform that we'rebuilding at the moment is trying
to address the challenge thatsalespeople spend too much time
chasing deals that are nevergoing to close.
40% to 60%, according to MattDixon, 40% to 60% of deals end

(24:35):
in no decision.
How do we remove that wastagethat goes on inside most
companies?
So lots of tools, lots ofplatforms, but it's got to be
about the data, hasn't it?
I

SPEAKER_00 (24:48):
say data, by the way, you say data.
digital tools, AI tools,whatever it might be.

(25:11):
And I think that Q's kind ofticked a lot of the boxes, even
just the UX of it, userexperience, as far as just how
easy it was to use theintegration into CRM.
And so, like I said, I've usedother tools and they're kind of
clunky or didn't work well, orthey spit out something that I
already knew, or I could justGoogle it.

(25:31):
But how does Q's set itself fromthe pack and differentiate
amongst all the other AI sellingtools?
out there.

SPEAKER_01 (25:40):
Great question.
So we started with what's theproblem, obviously.
You start with the problem thatyou're trying to solve.
And I mentioned one of them,which is good old qualifying.
How do I make sure I'm notwasting company time and money
chasing deals that are nevergoing to create any kind of
return?
So qualifying seemed to be thenumber one thing when we did the
research.
Brent, myself, and Darren Watts,the three founders of the Q's

(26:01):
business, went back and spoke toa whole lot of buyers.
And they told us, mostly CROs,heads of sales, they said, yeah,
our sellers are chasing too manyof the wrong types of customers.
So let's address that problem ifwe can.
And the second one, which we'vetouched on already here today,
is that multi-threading piece.
So how do we get insights intothe stakeholders that are

(26:27):
influencing the purchasedecisions that we're involved
in?
So we began building thisplatform with those two things
in mind.
How do we help sellers becomemore effective and more
efficient at how they sell, howthey qualify, and also how
they...
engage their stakeholders.
So that's where it started.

(26:47):
And we feel like we're at phaseone.
There's so much more we want tobuild and so many different
directions the platform can go.
But what the market's tellingus, Mark, no surprise, is that
Salespeople are reallystruggling now just to start a
conversation.
It used to always be closing.

(27:08):
Well, now opening is the newclosing.
How do I open a conversationwith a buyer who's got access to
information?
They're educated.
They don't want to hear from me.
They'll reach out when they'reready.
They'll show intent when they'reready.
So yeah, starting conversationsis a big challenge.

(27:29):
And so by giving the Thesalesperson insights into
stakeholder personality, personainformation, pain points,
metrics, all of those things isenormously valuable for the
salesperson to create a uniqueengagement.
I'm not just reaching out with ageneric message anymore.

(27:52):
Everything has to behyper-personalized.
So that's kind of where we'refocused.

SPEAKER_00 (27:58):
I think one of the things and one of the classic
sales activities as far astraining is role playing.
And you kind of just have tolearn by repetition and by
having a conversation.
So if there's a new salespersonout there and they are looking
at queues, especially if it's inthe CRM, how is that going to
help me, I guess, get those repsin?

(28:19):
Is there anything within theplatform that does that?

SPEAKER_01 (28:22):
We haven't built a role play specifically into it
yet, although we're talking witha It might be a logical bolt on
at some stage, but you're right,building that muscle memory and
getting sellers to understandthat the buyer has changed now
and whatever you thought youwere doing previously, rethink
it quickly because if thebuyer's showing up having done

(28:45):
60, 70, 80% of their researchand they know exactly what they
want, then the old approach toselling, which was discovery
long winded qualifying process.
And those sort of activitieshave to change pretty quickly.
So yeah, that's what we'retrying to do with Q's is to help

(29:09):
create the guardrails, if youlike, and remove some of the
guesswork, Mark.
I mean, we touched on it earlierwith Brent's customer verified
pipeline.
So much of what I've done in mycareer has been guesswork, gut
feel, intuition.
Is this deal moving forward?
Have I got a good relationshipwith this customer.
We're trying to bring withqueues the guardrails that can

(29:35):
help remove that guesswork.

SPEAKER_00 (29:38):
Yeah.
And probably saves a lot of timetoo, because if they haven't had
the time to read a dozendifferent sales books or look at
a bunch of different videos orwhatever that looks like, the
answer is right there.
They don't have to do any moreresearch because, hey, what's
the next step?
There's the cue.

SPEAKER_01 (29:54):
Correct.
Correct.
Yes.
Play on words, cues and prompts.
Next best action is where we'regoing with this thing pretty
quickly.
But you're right.
We built a large language model.
We put all of the IP that wecould from the books, et cetera,
into that large language model.
So that a salesperson can getthe answer quickly.
By the way, here's the otherthing.
The sales leader's role waslargely a coach role, sometimes

(30:18):
a player coach, but The coachingthat occurs inside most
businesses is negligent.
It's negligible, I should say.
It's very, very small.
So having cues there as a littleco-pilot helps the salesperson
when the boss is too busy orthey're out doing something
else.

SPEAKER_00 (30:37):
Yeah, because I imagine that in a lot of sales
organizations, you get onboardedfor a day, maybe a week and have
at it.
And where did your coach go?
Because he's probably busydealing with forecasting and
trying to solve other problems.
within the organization.

SPEAKER_01 (30:53):
Yeah, it's fascinatingly rudimentary, isn't
it?
When you think back about, youknow, here's your territory,
Graham.
Here's a week of training.
Now off you go like a littlecoin-operated robot out into the
territory and don't miss yournumber, Graham.
Quick, hurry, close that deal,Graham.
More, more, more.
And

SPEAKER_00 (31:09):
I imagine that this Q's update, you know, as, you
know, six months, 12 months as,you know, trends emerge and
obviously they're emerging veryquickly.
And, you know, I was kind ofthinking about it today.
You have three books.
If I were to start writing abook today, by the time It's
probably going to be, you know,outdated by the time, you know,
someone has a chance to read itand I'll have to like start on
the next book as soon as thatone's done.

(31:31):
So that's got to be a benefit ofhaving that, you know, on your
platform as far as just liveinformation constantly getting
updated.
Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 (31:39):
That's the plan where we're going to be looking
at making sure it's current andit's relevant and it stays, you
know, stays up to date.

SPEAKER_00 (31:47):
Nice.
Very cool.

UNKNOWN (31:49):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 (31:49):
All right.
Well, I'm looking forward tousing that myself more often.
Like I said, that's kind of justwhere we got connected was just
like me promoting it and justloving it and just tagging you
and all that.
And anyone that asks about, hey,how do I provide learning
management to my team in a moreeffective way?
My answer is always cues, cues,and more cues.

(32:10):
Love it.
Thank you, sir.
Good stuff.
But let's move on a little bitto our next segment called Burn
It or Build It.
This is where we kind ofseparate some game-changing
ideas and the ones that alsoneed to go away.
There's a lot of trends, Ithink, even on your LinkedIn
feed.
You know, this is dead, that'sdead.
But let's really, you know,let's figure it out real quick

(32:31):
as far as just burningsomething.
We need to get rid of it orbuild it.
And then give me a little bit ofa why.
So we'll come to the first one,AI conversation intelligence
tools.
You know, tools like Gong, notpicking on them, but burn it or
build it.

SPEAKER_01 (32:46):
No, listen, I'm very much in the build-it camp here.
I think Gong is a wonderfulplatform and has brought amazing
new insights to lots ofcompanies around how the
salesperson is conversing withthe buyer and what's happening,
what's the dynamic of all ofthat.
So I love those tools.
I think, yeah, definitely buildon that.

(33:06):
I think where it's goingpotentially around the
role-playing that you mentionedbefore is really important to
build muscle memory and to makesalespeople more effective.

SPEAKER_00 (33:16):
Gotcha.
We kind of already touched onthis a little bit, but as far as
generated AI for outreach anddiscovery, and let's maybe just
focus on discovery, burn it orbuild it.
I

SPEAKER_01 (33:28):
think definitely build it.
There's enormous value in beingable to speed up that research
process that a salesperson doesthrough discovery.
I was just yesterday, again, onperplexity, typing in what's the
most important thing to a CFOwho's running an insurance
company right now?
What are the key metrics thatthey're measuring?

(33:51):
And within five seconds, I'vegot five bullet points that are
really important bullet points,two of them, by the way, things
I've never heard of.
And I'm about to go and have ameeting with this person, and I
can have those five things inthe back of my mind all written
down so that I can referencethem, and I sound immediately
like, I know what this person'sworld is.

(34:12):
I mean, go back to what thesolution selling book many, many
years ago, I think it was in the80s.
The two things that a buyer islooking for from a salesperson,
empathy and authority.
How do I very, very quicklythese days establish that I
understand you?
You're my buyer.
I understand you.

(34:33):
I empathize.
So I think, yeah, tools likePerplexity and all the other gen
AI tools that can quickly giveme information is wonderful.
So build it for sure.
Build it.
Got it.
Sorry, on the other hand,quickly, the generative AI in
the outreach, so anything thatlooks like scaled outreach, burn

(34:58):
it quickly.
I have no time for these emailsequences that allow me to send
emails you know, more and moreemails and more and more
connection requests or more andmore in-mails to people.
I think that's just impersonal,intrusive, and nobody likes it.
So burn those things.
Brent's got a great way ofsaying, a lot of those tools

(35:21):
allow me to do more and more ofwhat matters less and less.

SPEAKER_00 (35:25):
Exactly.
And yes, I'm very against thoseautomated tools too.
I refuse to use them.
I've gotten previews of them,but I'm not a big fan.
And every time I get a DM or anemail that comes directly from
something like that, it's justvery frustrating because it
takes more of my time to deletethose and block them.

SPEAKER_01 (35:42):
We can see it immediately too, can't you?
I don't know what it is, but youcan tell straight away, is this
a hyper-personalized email to meor is this just a broadcast
message from a bot?

SPEAKER_00 (35:53):
Exactly.
Either way, I'm deleting it.
Yeah.
Which leads me to my nextquestion, cold outbound.
And I guess I'll break this upinto two ways.
Cold outbound emails.

SPEAKER_01 (36:05):
I'll try to be diplomatic and I'll just say
waste of time.
I'm a CEO of a small company.
I get bombarded with all theusual rubbish that we all get
bombarded with.
I don't respond to any of them.
I just divert them straight intothe other folder.
So anything that looks like it'scold, anything that looks like
it's not relevant, it's notpersonalized deleted.

(36:26):
The return on any of that stuff,Mark, is so low now.
Why would you have a human doingthat stuff?
Right.

SPEAKER_00 (36:37):
Exactly.
The next cold one is going to betelephone.
A lot of people, I guess thesedays, new generation, they don't
even know what a telephone is,but there's still a camp that
believes that cold calls,picking up the phone and dialing
somebody, works.
Burn it or build it.
Yeah,

SPEAKER_01 (36:54):
burn it.
I burned it 10 years ago.
I haven't answered a cold callin 10 years.
I haven't done a cold call in 10years.
I've been a pretty vocalopponent of cold anything really
because it doesn't take much towarm the cold call.
Do a little tiny bit ofresearch.
I call it the two by two.

(37:14):
Take two minutes, find out twothings before you try and send
any cold email or make a coldcall.
So warm the call up before youdo it if you have to, but The
modern generation, I've gotteenage kids, Mark, they're not
answering the phone.
They're not responding to coldemails.

(37:35):
If it's not completely dead,it's almost dead.

SPEAKER_00 (37:39):
Gotcha.
Yes, I agree.
Which kind of leads me to mynext question, which is for this
generation, which ispersonalized video prospecting.
So I'm not going to send a coldcall or a cold email, but I'm
going to do a short loom.
Maybe it's 30 seconds, kind ofdoing the same thing, but it's
short form video.
Differentiate yourself as far asall these cold callers and cold
emails.

(38:00):
Burn it or build it.

SPEAKER_01 (38:01):
I'll build it for sure.
Love it.
I do this myself.
I use Vidyard.
Any target prospect that is, youknow, really interesting and
within my ICP that might beshowing intent, a little video
introduction, a grabber,something that gets their
attention, as you said,differentiates pure gold.
Nice.
Love it.

SPEAKER_00 (38:21):
I agree.
Build it.
Let's do it.
That's the end of the Burn It orBuild It segment of this show.
So let's just give one finaltakeaway for our listeners.
We've covered a lot of groundfrom the beginning and the
middle and the end.
I'm sure that we could probablytalk for another hour or two and
probably unpack a lot of thosetopics, maybe for another day,
perhaps on another show.

(38:42):
But if I'm a VP of sales and I'mdriving into work tomorrow or
probably not driving, I'mprobably sitting at the desk
What's one question they shouldask their team to expose and
change legacy thinking andsales?

SPEAKER_01 (38:57):
Yeah, we could talk an hour on this one too.
I'd say two things.
Firstly, if I'm a sales leaderin any kind of business now, it
doesn't matter what industry,you've got to start to think
seriously about how are youmeasuring, managing and
rewarding your sellers?
The game has changed.
It's never going back to the wayit was.

(39:18):
And if you're expecting behaviorA, then don't reward behavior B,
right?
So get the rewards aligned, getthe compensation aligned, get
everything aligned around totalexperience, that is total buying
experience.
Give your buyers the experiencethey now expect.
That'll be the first thing.

(39:39):
In amongst all of that, You nowhave to also question how are we
developing our salespeople?
Given this new agentic worldthat we're entering and
artificial superintelligence isaround the corner, how are we
developing the skills of oursales team to make sure that
they stay relevant?

(40:00):
Go back to the average salesdaily breakdown of activities.
Those activities that I spentmost of my career doing,
irrelevant.
I need to be learning a wholelot of new skills around mostly
those people skills, the EQ andthe building trust and rapport
and all of those things becomeeven more important, I think, in
this AI-dominated world.

(40:23):
Yeah, I agree.
Those would be the two things Iwould say.

SPEAKER_00 (40:27):
Okay.
Sounds good.
How do people get in touch withyou?
And are there any other eventsthat you're speaking at this
year?
And what's the best way to getin touch with you?

SPEAKER_01 (40:37):
Yeah, listen, I'm delighted to be over at Inbound
again in September in SanFrancisco this year.
First time they've run it,HubSpot.
They've run it in San Fran.
It's normally in Boston.
So speaking at that one, I'vegot a gig over in Slovenia with
Petra Wagner.
So Petra, I think you know Petrafrom Sales Booster Yeah, so I'm

(41:00):
heading over there and back toLondon in September as well.
So yeah, but in terms of findingme, LinkedIn, that's where I
spend most of my time.

SPEAKER_00 (41:08):
All right, sounds good.
Well, thank you for the timetoday.
It's been great chatting withyou.
I'd love to chat a little bitlonger if we could, but I will
send you on your way and hopeeverybody got something to take
away from this.
So thanks again.
Thanks for having me, Mark.
It was a pleasure and we'll doit again sometime.
All right, cheers.
Cheers.
That's how you burn theplaybook.
If this conversation fired youup Don't let it in here.

(41:29):
Subscribe wherever you get yourpodcast.
Share this episode with someonewho's tired of playing by the
old rules.
And if you're ready to challengeyour own sales approach, let's
connect.
Find me on LinkedIn at MarkCrosby or head to digital
rebels, consulting.com to seehow we help B2B teams when
differently until next week,keep burning.
What's not working and keepbuilding.
What is.

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Sales Is Being Rewritten. Are You Ready? | Graham Hawkins - Founder/CEO SalesTribe & Qoos.ai

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Sales Is Being Rewritten. Are You Ready? | Graham Hawkins - Founder/CEO SalesTribe & Qoos.ai