AI-Powered Seller
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AI-Powered Seller
The Truth About AI From a Private Equity Veteran Managing Billions
AI won't replace salespeople. It will replace salespeople who rely on templates | AI-Powered Seller EP12
In this eye-opening episode of AI-Powered Seller, Jake Dunlap sits down with Sean Mooney, Founder and CEO of Blue Wave, to explore the uncomfortable truth about AI's impact on sales teams.
While most leaders are panicking about AI replacing their teams, they're missing the real threat: AI will first replace the salespeople who've been trained only to follow scripts and processes without adding unique value.
Sean, who advises hundreds of PE firms and their portfolio companies on AI implementation, shares his insider perspective on:
- Why template-focused sellers are most vulnerable to AI disruption
- How the remote work era eliminated the learning-by-osmosis that created great sellers
- The three critical implementation roadblocks 80% of companies hit with AI
- Why creativity is becoming the most valuable skill in modern selling
- How custom GPTs are eliminating the need for complex prompting
If you're a sales professional worried about your future or a leader wondering how to implement AI effectively, this conversation provides the strategic framework you need right now.
The skills that make sellers irreplaceable in the AI era aren't what most think. Discover what they are in this must-watch episode.
đź“Ť Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Sean Mooney
02:15 The Template Generation Problem in Sales
05:40 Who AI Will Replace First (And Why)
10:23 Three Implementation Roadblocks to Avoid
15:37 Making AI a Tactic vs a Technology
22:14 Why Creativity Trumps Process
28:45 Custom GPTs and the End of Prompting 34:19 Future-Proofing Your Sales Career
New episodes drop every other Wednesday @ 8 AM CT / 9 AM ET
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â–şJoin the AI-Powered Seller Newsletter: https://bit.ly/ai-powered-seller-newsletter
â–şConnect with Jake: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakedunlap/
All right, what's up everybody. Welcome to another episode of the AI Powered Seller. Today, my friends, we have got a great one. I'm gonna be joined by Sean Mooney, who's founder and CEO of Blue Wave. Also, his brother's oldest son plays basketball with my son, so I got a lot of connections with Sean. You know Sean and his firm. They partner with hundreds of PE firms in their portfolio companies, helping them to find the right partners, and so why I think Sean is so unique for this conversation is this guy gets asked from the leading firms and then their port codes what in the hell should we do with AI?
Speaker 1:And so today's conversation, we're going to talk big picture, philosophical. We're going to talk about the goal. We're going to talk logistics. We're going to talk about the template generation, which is a generation of sellers that have grown up being told to implement templates versus sales process. We're going to talk about making AI a tactic versus a technology, and get into a whole bunch of other additional topics. There's, right now, a massive hype cycle around AI a massive, massive. What the heck should I do? And Sean and I are going to get into it. So, sean, big, big appreciation for you and the work that you do. Welcome to the show, excited to jump into it. All right, sean. So why don't you tell people just a little bit about your background and BlueWave? Obviously, we've known BlueWave for many, many years here and really kind of the view that it gives you across so many different industries.
Speaker 2:Yeah, great, jake, and it's great to be here with you today. I'm excited to be on the show. What we are and what BlueWave is is we're technically referred to as a market network, and so what we do is, principally, we work with many hundreds of the top private equity firms in the world, thousands of their portfolio companies.
Speaker 1:This guy is connected. I'm just going to tell you guys, if you want to get connected, this dude is connected.
Speaker 2:We know a lot of people, but that's our job is to bring really good together with really good, and so what we're doing is connecting the world's best business builders with the world's best advisors, service providers, interim executives in this really intelligent, highly calibrated way. Most of our customers are private equity firms and they're portcos, but everyday companies use this as well, and what that gives us a vantage into is what the best business builders in the world are doing, where they're doing it, why they're doing it, how they're doing it, how it changes in real time. And so it's this fascinating kind of lattice of business trends and how people reframe risk into opportunity and take on challenges.
Speaker 2:Just a two second backstory on me was this was the toy I wish I had, and so most of my career I was in private equity and I was like, oh, I need all these people. And I call my buddies and like, hey, do you know somebody who does this? And they're like no. So I start googling and calling friends like, hey, do you know somebody who does this? And they're like no. So I start Googling and calling friends like, hey, do you know? You know, what should I do? And then we would just square peg round hole and I said wouldn't it be great if we could create Amazon meets Gartner Magic Quadrant for business builders?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. Yeah, and I think, again, you do a great job of you of matching up the right partner for the right engagement, and so you know, look, you get a chance. You know we're going to talk a little AI, a little private equity and you know landscape today. But you know, let's talk maybe a little bit about, like, what you're seeing around AI adoption and obviously I'll share a little bit. You know we run in the same circles in terms of, you know, private equity and you know, late stage venture, et cetera. You know what are you hearing from your private equity partners around AI in particular, and maybe talk a little bit about, you know, some of the like, the failures to like what are you seeing that people are struggling with the most?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and maybe we're seeing a lot, and I'll give you a little bit of history, right. And so, jake, we've talked about this and in my mind, mind, you know, history doesn't necessarily repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes, sure, and so I like that. A lot of what's going on right now, it feels to me you know, to date myself, this feels like 1995, 1996, as we talked about where netscape came out and finally the internet was available to mere mortals, right? And then everyone was just talking about internet, internet, internet and it was all this craze and internet was a strategy.
Speaker 2:And then everyone eventually chilled out and realized it was a tactic, and so we're going. So the internet used to be nuts, and then everyone overbuilt it and then it all blew up. And then, in 2001, beautiful companies came out of that that are all the market leaders today. 2001,. Beautiful companies came out of that. That are all the market leaders today. And so, for me, where this story begins is it's 2022. This thing called ChatGPT comes out. There were some early adopters. This is really cool. 23, everyone's like AI is going to take over the world, and everyone's like AI, ai, ai. But it's still kind of like a gimmick in the beginning, right, it's like, oh, this is cool, it did my grocery list for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, it's like, oh, tell me about my something or other, and it was cool, but it would make a lot of stuff up. And then what's happened even, I think, faster now than 1995 is people have realized it's not a strategy unto itself, it's a tactic, and so people are using it very specifically to attack certain work streams that require synthesis, automation, increasingly, decision and action. And so if you go back to what we saw in the early days think about it last year, beginning of 2024, pe firms calling us off the hook and they're like we need neural networks, and we'd say, well, okay, that's great, but let's do some precursor stuff. Is your data organized? Are you visualizing it? Do you have your KPIs? Do you have this stuff that's going to really enable the cool stuff? Because unless your data is organized, all this stuff doesn't, you're never going to get to the frontier cool stuff, because unless your data is organized, all this stuff doesn't, you're not, you're never going to get to the frontier cool stuff.
Speaker 2:And so what is really cool was last year we saw waves and waves and waves of people putting in things like snowflake, where they previously didn't have that, organizing their data, structuring it, putting into kpis, cleaning it, putting in structures to keep it clean, which is the hard part, the messy part and then visualizing it. So you're the highest. Our way, most people, is still to visualize your data, understand what your KPIs are and gamify your business and then you know. Concurrent with that, there's a whole bunch of other stuff. But now it was interesting. After that precursor activity, now we're getting waves and waves and waves of P firms actually doing stuff for their port codes, activating the cool stuff. But they were really thoughtful about like let's get the foundation set so that we can build a house on it.
Speaker 1:I like that. I think that that's a really good call. Yeah, and we're seeing. I mean, it's so funny.
Speaker 1:Sean and I were talking about this before. I literally use the exact same analogy, except for I say 1996 around the internet and the way that I describe it to people and I've talked about it on the podcast many times is, you know, companies need to stop asking themselves what's our AI strategy. It's like people are founding Sean, he's like AI officer, like chief AI officer, and I'm like look for product that makes a ton of sense, right For product and how to integrate it. But you know, your IT department doesn't know what your AI strategy should be for your SDR or for your sales rep or for your marketing team. And you know, a lot of the conversations I'm having are really with business leaders and ceos being like guys, you, your it team does not know, because it's about your roles. I was like ai is a role, a role and use case, specific deployment. Yeah, the same way as internet was right, like you don't have an internet, I I what I don't know in 95, 96, was there a chief internet officer? I bet there was.
Speaker 2:It was maybe 19, 1995, probably not but 1998, if you remember like every MBA was get an MBA in internet, you know it was like we're going to be an internet company and it was just like this was a strategy unto itself.
Speaker 2:And then eventually people realized no, it's a tactic in service of your strategy. This is about moving information seamlessly from place to place and up and down, and doing it much more efficiently. And so, as I think about this and this is kind of a provocative take that some people get upset this is just a long progression between the fusion of human and machine. And so industrial revolution goes on. You start getting machine and humans working much more. You get all the way down to like the 70s and 80s. Computers start coming out 80s. You bring the computer to yourself, but you can't get any data there. It's just a computer.
Speaker 2:And then you go into the 90s. You get the internet. Now you can bring the computer data to your machine. And then you get the internet. Now you can bring the compute, the data, to your machine. And then you get into 2000,. You get these little iPhones. Now you bring the data and the compute power that was stronger than the best crate supercomputer in the 90s in your hand. And then in the 2010s, you get the cloud, where it's all about everywhere at mass. And now where we're entering is with AI. It's it's about synthesis, it's about then doing something with it. So it's not just about moving it to places. You are more efficiently in, greater data. Now you can take the sum total of human knowledge, synthesize it in a second and help you make a decision and action Increasingly. It's going to do that action for you.
Speaker 1:That's right, yeah. And the other big kind of kind of I, the other big kind of evolution I I talk about too, sean, is, this is a. You know, when I try to talk to people, it's like this isn't a technology, this is a transformation, how we solve problems as humans. And if you think about it, it was, you know, we, we used to have to, and, sean, you're you'll, you'll recognize the Dewey decimal system. It's like guys, you used to get answers. You either had encyclopedias at your house or you went to a library and you kind of like comb through books and use it in microfiche, right. And then we got the Internet and Google, and then Google summarized, kind of like, some answer ideas, yeah, and that was a huge leap in time, savings in the quality of answer, etc. This is the same leap, right 15,. You know, 20 years later now we're at that next bridge, where now you give the machine everything instead of like five words of broken English. You tell it everything and it gives you an answer.
Speaker 1:And then, I think, you know, when you talk about the fusing of the human, I think this is where a lot of people are struggling. I think that there's a lot of people that say are like is this going to replace me, and we'll get into that part of it later but it's, it's AI is meant to get us, like, I can get to V1 and it's, and it's a really good V1 so fast, and then I turn my brain on and I turn it into V5, and the same amount of time it would have taken me to get to a rough draft, Right, and that's the same thing as, like you know, when you had to go read a bunch of books and half of them you didn't even need the insights in them. You know you probably saved 10, 20, 30, 40 X more time when Google came out. Well, guess what, guys? That's where we're at now. We're at our next 40 X in terms of time savings.
Speaker 1:And the beautiful part about this technology too, sean, is this is the first technology where you know that we've seen over the last 15, 20 years where not only can I do more of something, the quality is also going up. That's exactly you know, and that's unlike any. And when I talk to a lot of revenue operations leaders, go-to-market leaders, I think that one thing is where they're really their brain can't comprehend it. It's like they're trying to automate everything I want to get you know. I got into a quasi-argument with a on Monday and he's like, yeah, but look, if this doesn't integrate, the salespeople aren't going to do it. And I'm like your salespeople are already using ChatGPT every day.
Speaker 2:They better be.
Speaker 1:Go survey your teams. They're all already using it and they know more about it than you do. And so I think we're kind of at this weird juncture around what I really see happening to Sean. I'd be curious. I feel like the frontline people are actually way better at kind of adopting AI than a lot of the leadership. So I'm curious, you know, for you, like what are the? What are the things you're hearing about, like the portfolio company leaders? You know, are you are you hearing about them kind of jumping in? You know, like, are you getting a sentiment of? You know, are we moving past like curiosity to execution or somewhere in between?
Speaker 2:I think it depends on what segment and type of business you have. The tech ecosystem is running towards this as fast as it can because that's natural to them. The industrial world and even the business services world is trying to figure out how you use it because it's not a native tool to their everyday life. And so one of the things that I think that we do a lot of these teach-ins for PE firms or we'll bring in resources and groups to them to help get them over it. We're in this point for a lot of the economy, whether it's Porcos or not, where they're like, fear is overriding opportunity and they just don't know where to start. Is this friend or foe? And we'll always say, like you know, the first thing you got to do is just start using it. Get everyone in your company should have access to an llm take your choices at.
Speaker 2:Perplexity is a chat, gpt is a gemini. Just do one and make it available.
Speaker 1:And everyone should have like a sticker on their computer like ask, chat, gpt, ask gemini ask john, you are literally like, it's like I feel like you're saying I say my stick it. Note that I say is I tell people stop going to Google?
Speaker 2:Exactly when these first started coming out. One little trick we did at our company we were very early adopters on all of these things and part of it is just we use our business on our business and so just as like a family business or a company or a portco or someone uses us, we just do the same thing. So we get to see these trends early. And one of the things that we did was we started we created an api we put in so, because confidentiality is still key I know there's like some talk about is it is the, the mix and the soup, so big now you can't pull out the parts, but we're still pretty careful about it overall because you can be if you take just a little extra effort. But what we started doing was we started in our Monday morning kind of huddle what we do with all hands every week. We started doing a league table to see who was using it the most. We started making it competitive so we would track the number of times people accessed it and then everyone started using it because no one wanted to be on the bottom of the leaderboard. So they all started playing and using it and they all figured it out.
Speaker 2:Because if you realize that particularly the LLMs, which is one tool they're parroting humans, and if you realize it's like talking to a 22 old, it's just a conversation, then they all start figuring it out. When you realize it's not, it's not Google command response, it's conversation, and you've got to iterate and then you get to the answer, just like when you're talking to a 22 year old, like a really smart intern, like they're not gonna be able to do it the first time, right. But if you realize like no, it's the third part of the conversation, and then you finally take the end product and make it the exact way you want it at the end, then it becomes really powerful. And so I think we're seeing a lot of that, like the industrial world is picking it up really quickly Sales and marketing teams, everywhere. It's phenomenal, as you know better than anyone, as you've talked about this on your podcast. It's a huge game changer for everything in sales and marketing, in particular as it relates to content, call centers, totally changing the game.
Speaker 1:Oh, especially inbound, Inbound. Anything is the first to go.
Speaker 2:It's funny when they built these things initially they thought it was going to have robotics applications in the manufacturing center. That's always been the mindset with any innovation. Really, in the history of our lives and beyond, that has been like frontline tip of the spear production that get impacted first. This is the first technology that is impacting white collar first. That's exactly it.
Speaker 1:Man, that is exactly it. Yeah, I think that that's a really great point right. Actually, it's a really interesting point, right when you think about that, and that's why, you know, for me on the go to market side, and then what I want to do next is we'll get into some like really tactical. Like you know, for me, like most AI investments right now are a complete waste of money, like what people are touting as AI is still like V1, but now, because of Gen AI, they just kind of pile it on and most people don't kind of comprehend the difference between the two, and so I see a lot of people just spinning their wheels on on that side of it.
Speaker 1:But on the on the go-to-market side, you know, sean, one of the things that I am most worried about is that you know this COVID generation of people that came into sales and leadership, um, and you know people that started their jobs probably late 2010s, um. The issue I see is is sales leaders and maybe RevOps is driving this too. They're really focused on everything is uniform, everything is did you do this step in the process and we've started to train, and I think we missed the office environment. So all these sellers didn't grow up listening and getting better faster, and so what I see happening is you have a generation probably, like you know, anybody with like seven years of experience and under really of go-to-market people that really have not been trained into how to have quality interactions and they're being told to follow this methodology that I feel like what's going to happen is AI. Those are the people that are going to be replaced.
Speaker 1:You know, on the go-to-market side, you know, and are the people that are going to be replaced. You know, on the go-to-market side, you know, and are the people that have learned. You know they're copying and pasting someone else's stuff and then just parroting it, and I I really feel like that is what we're gonna. You know, I think that that's gonna be a really tough time. So if you're in sales right now or any go-to-market function, you've got to say like, hey, am I? Am I using AI to its full capability? Do I know how to use it? And then am I turning my, my brain on and so how do you see it impacting? Go to market.
Speaker 2:It's a really good point and I think what people, you're right, we've kind of, particularly in COVID it went everyone went to like templates because no one was around humans anymore. We, you know, we've been a tribal species for tens of thousands and millions of years and then they broke everyone into these little digital boxes and at first people loved it, but we're, you know, we're a mostly in-person office and we're we're getting people knocking on our door because it is awful lonely. You know, particularly if a salesperson where your, you know, particularly if a salesperson where your, your job is to be an intelligent connector and in consultative seller of solutions and problem solving and then suddenly you're on these little islands all by yourself. You know they say you are the extroverts of the world and now you've been locked into your bedrooms and so I think that templatization it's kind of there's, there's a whole generation that's been done a huge disservice, because they kind of think like, okay, just follow a process and do it and then get to SoulCycle and then when, in reality is, you know, your job is to create alpha per hour.
Speaker 2:You know you need to be going out there and understanding and doing, and these AI tools are tremendous tools, but it's not soup to nuts and if it's soup to nuts, like call center, you're out of a job. That's right. If you don't have, if you don't, if you don't have the judgment part, you can't demonstrate that you're the first to go. And so I was to like run towards this stuff as a tool, but don't forget the humanity portion of it, because if you, if you don't not doing the humanity portion, that gets automated real. You, if you're not doing the humanity portion, that gets automated real quick.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you're not turning your brain on I mean that's what I try to consistently say is the guy you know bucket the same amount of time that you would to do something and then get to V1 and V2 really quick, and then you turn the brain on and say I like that. And then you prompt and then like hey, give me two more really good ideas. Ooh, I like that. That one won't fit. Delete that out. I mean again, we'll get that. I think that's a good precursor. Let's talk like tangible examples, right? So what you know, are there any consistent use cases that you are seeing? You know PEs you know coming and asking about? You know, hey, can we automate this or can AI help with this? Like, are there one or two?
Speaker 2:kind of tangible use cases that you're seeing more frequently. Yeah, I think the big one we talked about already is call centers. That is getting replicated very quickly and really what it's enabling is better service and faster service for your customers so your costs could go down. But really it's that when there's going to be 20% of those use cases, it'll always require almost always require human intervention.
Speaker 1:Or human in the loop, right, it's just maybe later in the process. That's how I think about this. People are going to be so far down a certain funnel. It's like I still want a person, but it's like here versus back here, yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's the stuff you want the people like doing, like the easy stuff.
Speaker 2:They don't like doing that stupid answer. So, like the, the metaphor I use in my mind is like radiology, like five years ago, if you go to a radiologist, they would look at every single slide and then it would take you like three months to get your answer and like, oh my god, now I'm like really sick. And then they started using machine learning, which is now called ai, and you know they look side by side each other. And then, but you know, fast forward to today, the machines do all the easy stuff, the radiologists do the hard stuff. They still need more radiologists.
Speaker 2:It's just the difference is you get your answers back the same day now on the really hard stuff, versus waiting three months. So it's the same way, like in the call call centers, where it's the easy stuff that you can do it. I don't know about you, but when I'm on those I'm like first like pretty resistant and then like that was pretty good, like I didn't wait three hours of getting ticked off, or even like 30 minutes, which is probably more, like the answer Right, exactly.
Speaker 1:And then if I needed it, it got me to that person quickly and I was just like I love this company. Well, that's it too Right, like that. You know it's getting better too. Right, that's the. I think the key is, you know, yes, you hated it before because it was, like you said, machine learning, but the call center one now.
Speaker 1:And the example I always use is, like, the inbound SDR is the first role to go on and the B2B side, right, like wouldn't I would much if I'm already at step three. I'm like I know who you are, I know what the comp I already use your competitor. Like do I want to be qualified? Like, wait, wait, wait, you're qualifying me. It's like I want to talk to someone. I would rather talk to AI, where I can say, hey, great. Hey, Jake, I'm going to get you booked with someone. Let me answer a few questions for you. What brought you here? Okay? Well, yeah, actually here's the answer to that question. And so I feel like, look, I will choose that option if I can get answers, you know and like great. And then make sure that then, when the sales rep gets looped in now, the sales rep already has their SC and their customer success person on the first call, and so I just I think that there's a speed to um, you know, in the inbound world and what's?
Speaker 2:what's so key about this and I think you've done a great job talking about this on your show is that you know it's and you've made the point here again again. You got to use the word and not or it's not like you're just going to turn this all over to the robots, right, you've got to. The human's going to stay in the loop. You're going to have the robots do the stuff the robots are good at, but you got to keep the people in for the judgment, the service, the nuance, the outliers. But if you could have the robots do the really just basic stuff that no human wants to do, why wouldn't you and why don't your people want to do that too?
Speaker 2:And so like run towards that stuff. Don't, don't like we. We make it, we make everyone, we don't make we we. Everyone in our company reads this book at least once a year, called who moved my cheese.
Speaker 1:I've heard that it's a good one.
Speaker 2:And it's this great little parable about mice in a maze and the cheese gets moved and then the world changes and you eat, the smart ones just run and get, and they still get fat and happy, eat a lot of cheese. He doesn't love cheese, I love cheese. And then but the other ones like resist, you, like I'm not gonna, it's gonna come back, and it's the people and they wither away and at the end of the story, like you know, you make and and some they make some kind of like hints that those two mice are no longer with us. But it's like you can. You can be afraid of this stuff and just change, will catch up and win, or you can run towards it, and so I choose to run towards it, like get excited about it, just start a little day, every day.
Speaker 1:I love that. So we got call centers. What other tactical you know? These kind of like in bat, like we'll call these, like you know. I mean they are getting more nuanced but I'm gonna call it like interactions that aren't, you know, overly, overly involve lots of people necessarily, and I can get basic back and forth on what are there other kinds of tactical use cases that people are? You know that you're kind of hearing bubbling up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the agents are at the early days. There's everyone's trying to figure this out. So you know N a N is like one of the acronyms that everyone knows, and it's great where it's no code, low code, right, and so even like code is going away, you know. And so what we're seeing is on, you know, like can you, almost can you? You know, mere mortals now can do these things that used to take months of direct coding.
Speaker 1:It's 100%. I can do it. I can build something in innate in right, if that tells you just the the low efficacy that it takes.
Speaker 2:And even a little story. Like I know nothing about coding whatsoever, I, I've, I've, never, I you know maybe other than basic and eighth grade, when they made us make a little game, you know?
Speaker 1:man, that's I mean guys. Do you want to know? Oh OG, coders respect basic yeah.
Speaker 2:Until I was curious about it. It was a rainy day in Nashville, I had nothing to do. My kids are older and my one of my son does this thing called quiz bowl, which is like competitive jeopardy in high school and like part of the challenge is you can't keep the score, like no one knows what it is. They don't show it to you. So I was like you know what? I bet you I could just make an app. And then one afternoon I went to I used this program called Vercel and it had me make an entire app. That was the exact thing I ever wanted in my life, all in one afternoon. That probably would have taken our dev team a year ago, probably like a month to make. It was 2,000 lines of code and it was the perfect thing I wanted.
Speaker 2:The hard part was getting it into the damn app store. You know that took me twice as long. But making the app I always wanted was with zero coding skills and they just embedded a, a, an LLM into the dev shop and I just had conversations with them. No, I want this, not that, and it's the same thing that's coming out with with that. So I think the agents are coming. I want this, not that, and it's the same thing that's coming out with that. So I think the agents are coming. I still think they're not quite ready for prime time, but they're getting there fast. Yeah, I'd love your perspective on that, because I think you're probably farther ahead than we are on that.
Speaker 1:Well, there's some cool stuff, man. Most people don't realize. I mean ChatGPT. I think I'm going to do a future episode of the podcast, probably in the next, you know, a few weeks here. Chad dbt just released 40 tasks.
Speaker 1:So if you're using the paid version, I feel like this is some feature I don't can't like nobody's talking about this and you know it's kind of v1 of like a built-in agent where you can be like uh, I want you to monitor uh for octa's quarterly filings on a consistent basis. It'll go immediately. Be like oh, octa last did this? Do you want that one? I will go and check octa for that. You know. Go like, so you can like I mean imagine future go to market. Is you know what we're doing with our clients? Dude, we're gonna have every rep set up like 500 of these freaking things, every single one.
Speaker 1:So the agents, you know and again the word agents gets thrown around it can mean like yeah, we kind of delineate. There's like the agents are like the proactive things. Assistants are the things that are like that prompt you like discovery call prep. It's like the agents are like the proactive things. Assistants are the things that are like that prompt you like discovery call prep. It's like give me a link to the company and the job title, here's your discovery call prep, and then automations are things that you know say, oh, I just saw this new thing, let me run that custom GPT and then I'll pipe it in to you.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and what I'm seeing is you know it's interesting, you had hinted to this before in the very beginning is a lot of PE firms I feel like are finally moving toward, like we just need to get our portcodes helped, like they're not going to do this shit, like they're not going to do it, like we're training them Like I can't imagine, sean, I've probably in the last nine months, spoken at at least 12 different PE conferences about about Gen AI, and the consistent is either like one, the revenue leaders many of them are like what in the hell is this right and then two, it's like we follow up, like oh yeah, we haven't done, we still are kicking tires, and I feel like many of the PE firms that we're talking to are finally like you just have to have somebody do it for you. And it's like which is good for our business, right? I feel like what with our business? How it's transitioning is like you know, we've always been kind of this rev performance, some mix of like strategy, enablement operations and kind of how do you bring these things together? And now I feel like we've got this, this part of our business that's like website hosting 92, where I'm like let me explain the internet and websites to you.
Speaker 1:And then there's again a lot of fear in the market, a lot of these and for a lot of these companies. I think it goes back to what both of us said, which is, you know, it doesn't matter, like for your company in particular, identify the use case right, like one of the ones that we found, you know, with with some of our like more non-tech is like, uh, what's the next product I should recommend? You know, we worked with a company called Koozie Group HIG back company and we helped them to develop an agent that's like you know they got a ton of different SKUs. It's like, hey, this is what they're doing with us. What should they do with us next? And it's saving the reps three to four hours a week. Like the math is real. You're talking about getting a month to two months of additional productivity out of every single person in your go-to-market team with one like little assistant.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, here's an example, even like a year old example. This is like the beginning. Actually, this is the beginning of. August. This was like. This is like two years ago. Actually, in our firm, our, you think about every marketing team there's huge advantage about content creation. Oh god, it's two years ago. You know, our, our head of marketing came up to us and said, hey, I want, I need more content writers. I go. Well, no, there's this thing called chat gpt that just came out yeah and there's a thing called jasper.
Speaker 2:You can use both of those. Try that out. Long story long, two years ago our content production went up 500% for $40 a month in subscriptions and the ask was like multiple $100,000 of content writers. The content was better, it was more SEOed, it was more well-written, once you kind of figure out how to, particularly then to prompt it. But now it's just, you know, but that's going to create new problems, right? The cheese didn't get moved because now the world's just exploding with content. Oh my God. You know, seo is almost impossible now because everyone's creating so much content.
Speaker 1:Well, the content one's a really good tactical one for people and, sean, like pro tip, you know, for you and your team, we upgraded so that a brand new the chat GBT, oh, one pro reasoning model came out in late January. It's $200 a month when you, it is insane. So, like our marketing team, now we pay two. We have three or four people at the company, five people now that we pay $200 a month just so they can have access to the pro. I mean that's a lot of money. If you think about it.
Speaker 1:Our marketing team, when you turn on the O1 pro reasoning with deep research, it can literally put together the best five, six page white paper you've seen. Cite 29 sources. And so now our marketing team is putting out a white paper a day, yeah, a day. And the key is you know what Becca does. She then spends two hours making it awesome, yeah, so it's like she gets to V1 and then spends two hours, you know, refining the prompts, blah, blah, blah, a little bit more of that. And then just like editing, moving this, deleting, I mean it's unfathomable, like most, most, I mean, and even for back, like I think about my marketing team. It's like I I had to get her comfortable, of like you can like that this is even possible right. Of like you can do this and like you're going to be better for it, more productive, etc it's a lot of things like creating, like case study engines.
Speaker 2:It's. It's amazing. I totally agree with that, and so it's it you talked about. It's a distillation in in speed enhancer. You still have to check it. You do your magic. Like I said, it's like the world's best 22 year old entry level employee. You know like yeah, but then also knows everything yeah.
Speaker 1:They have a matrix brain to where it's like I can access. I created my first voice agent in 11 labs and it's me and it's trained on like discovery call best practices and what it does is. But you can start to challenge it and be like well, jake, I don't think you actually know like anything about the discovery call for my quantum computing tech company. Can you explain quantum computing to me? And then I just start spouting all this knowledge about quantum computing and these things. And then I just start spouting all this knowledge about quantum computing and these things.
Speaker 1:So it's pretty, it's pretty interesting we'll put the phone number in the show notes so you guys can give me a call and check it out and and I'll tell, like the one other thing you asked, like what are people tactically doing?
Speaker 2:that anyone can do any. You know, virtually every company now today has software right and and even manufacturing companies, and if they don't, then now they can. And the, the software development, is the other big area where everyone has to be on this, and so what we're seeing is massive, massive, massive productivity enhancements by using these LLMs. To code, gemini's new one is amazing, and so you know, I think we just doubled our productivity in the last month.
Speaker 1:And so that's wild.
Speaker 2:Now. Now what's creating is for people are doing this, what you have to be aware of now it's creating other bottlenecks, and so it's just like any kind of system. So read the book, the goal, which is an old line, right Manufacturing book, the best Everything's a process right.
Speaker 1:Eli Goldrath, is that right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, eli Goldrath, exactly right, and it's a great book and it's told through a story, and so I read this. When I was a young pup investor in industrial companies, I read that and I could walk any plant in the world, but really it's just a process. And so now what's happening is our devs are working at like light speed. They're cranking through so much code it's impossible. Now it's it's testing and, more most importantly, product that can't keep up. Right, and so you're gonna have to now, but but what's coming right behind that testing? Automated testing solutions are coming very close. Product is is like there's tools that are making our product people faster. So you know, one of the things you have to be really thoughtful about these things is look at your entire system and map it and understand where your constraints are, cause you're going to make certain parts really fast, yeah, you're gonna make certain parts really fast, but the others I'm going to keep up in.
Speaker 2:The whole engine won't move as fast as the slowest piece.
Speaker 1:So shout out to the goal. Yeah, I read that in business school years. It's a great book. Uh, everyone, I really feel like everybody should read the goal. It really helps in terms of just knowing how to tackle problems and do like good project management, of just, yeah, understanding the theory of constraints but being able to read it in like a fictional environment, I don't know like. It's like, oh, makes sense, and then like now, every problem, you quickly, you, you eliminate the noise and you go where's the bottleneck?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's. It's so important now because certain part of people's businesses now are moving so fast. Right, but if you can't speed up the bottlenecks you're going to, you're not going to keep it. Your whole business won't move fast store, it's just parts of it will. And then you're gonna have a lot of people like reading ESPN, you know, dot com, nothing left to do. I'm waiting.
Speaker 1:I'm waiting on Herbie to catch up here. Shout out, herbie, by the way, is the fictional kid that they that creates the bottleneck, and so you can read all about it. So, look, I've got a ton of notes here. I've got this for go to market. It's a tactic in service of your strategy. I thought that was like really, really good. I love the leaderboard idea. I'm stealing that one immediately for our team. Everyone on our team has access to chat GBT teams as well. So there's a lot of really good stuff in here. So, sean, you know one appreciate you joining. Take us home. Final thoughts. You know somebody who's listening saying you know, I'm in a go to market function. You get a chance to talk to a lot of these folks. You know what's maybe the one thing that either we didn't cover or kind of one final point you think that you know people need to hear.
Speaker 2:I think so much of this is a change management issue and what I would say it's more this is more kind of just conceptual than a than a tactic or life hack is you've got to like you can run towards this and you can thrive, or you can resist it and wither and for, particularly, go to market people.
Speaker 2:Those are people who look towards the world and run towards it and so take that same mentality that brought you into this job in the first place and get super excited about it. And it's really really kind of daunting to take the first step and I was in private equity, which we are the most risk-averse people of all time. That's right. But if you can take you know all it is is that first step and then you take the next step. Put a little sticker. I got this from a guy named Connor Grennan and he's like just put a sticker on your monitor that says ask ChatGPT or ask Claude or Gemini, and it's amazing how often I just look at that on my own and I do it and you get it's just and you go oh, why am I doing what I'm doing right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just better and faster. And talk to the LLMs like it's a person. Realize that they were trained to parrot. People train to parrot. People ask it a question. Tell them who you are, tell them who they are, tell them what the objective is, check their work, cite their sources and ask questions they want to know, and you'll get amazing outputs from it. It'll tell you what to do, and so just use it every day, run towards it, take one step at a time. And it's the old cliche. I didn't come up with this, but chat, gpt or AI in general is not going to replace your job, but someone who is using it will.
Speaker 1:That's right. That's right. That's a good note. And, by the way, I just wrote down I'm replacing it. I just wrote down Ask Chai GBT. I'm literally doing it as we speak here. You know no need to, and again, I think I'm a power user, as is, but again I constantly catch myself being like, why am I? Oh, oh crap, Go do this now. So, sean, appreciate you, my man, we'll catch up next time. I'm in Nashville, for sure. Sorry I missed last week, but hopefully everyone out there like I feel like this was a super mix of I need to get my butt in gear with you know some tactical ways. You can think about getting started as well too, which is always you is always what we're trying to bring on the podcast. So, sean, big shout out, big thank you to you, my man.
Speaker 2:Likewise, jake, great seeing you.
Speaker 1:All right, you too.
