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AI-Powered Seller
Stop Using Outdated Playbooks Like MEDDIC & BANT
We explore how the sales landscape is transforming with AI, requiring leaders to rewire their problem-solving approaches and update outdated methodologies with more effective frameworks like the Four C's.
• Commitment to technology and AI proficiency is crucial for sales leaders to understand what's possible
• Most revenue leaders have outsourced knowledge of tech capabilities to overwhelmed RevOps teams
• The 80-15-5 principle helps leaders balance immediate business needs with future-focused development
• Current go-to-market strategies must evolve beyond outdated frameworks like Predictable Revenue
• Today's outbound approach should focus on meaningful conversations, not just activity metrics
• Customized sales journeys need to recognize different buyer types using the VEX framework
• The "magic email" technique helps identify buyer knowledge level 48 hours before first calls
• Companies are artificially slowing down sales cycles by treating all buyers the same
• MedPick should be used as a deal evaluation framework, not a sales methodology
• INTENT framework (Next steps, Teams, Education level, Numerical priority, Time to impact) addresses modern buying realities
• When implementing new technology, focus on solving top revenue bottlenecks and creating power users
Most of the people listening to this were not in the workforce. When we went from no internet to internet, I wasn't in the workforce, but somebody had to train John. Hey, we're going to send an email, we're going to go online and search for things. We're not going to go to the phone book or we're not going to go to the library or an encyclopedia Like guys. That was a huge, monumental shift in how we solve problems. We stopped going to the library and looking at books and they were all curated for us in search, etc. And this is that next evolution of how we solve problems.
Speaker 1:So, as a leader if you've been in the game for 10, 15, 20, 20 plus years, we are rewiring the way that we think to solve problems. So before it's like my SDRs or my sales reps, they go, they go to Google, they go to LinkedIn, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and it's like, oh no, we're not doing any of that. Instead, I've got these assistants. They do that for me and it's a better quality and it's deeper, richer insights and it can identify where I'm missing in the deal. So it's just getting us to V1 faster, right? I tell everyone, if you're copying and pasting AI, that you are guaranteed to put yourself out of a job.
Speaker 2:Welcome. Welcome back to another episode of the Sell Like a Leader podcast, the podcast for revenue leaders who are on a mission to cultivate a high-performing sales team within their organization. I'm your host, david Krieger, president of SalesRoads, america's most trusted sales outsourcing and appointment setting company, and today we have a special treat. We've got a great revenue leader, jake Dunlap, who I've had the privilege of getting to work on some programs and just has an amazing team who helps their clients really reinvent their sales processes, and especially over the past several years, with an eye to AI. And so Jake is a founder and CEO of Scaled Consulting. They are a globally recognized sales consulting firm that has outproduced outperformed industry giants in sales consulting and again, I can attest to that firsthand. And recently he published a book that if you haven't checked out, you've got to check out the Innovative Seller, which is a USA Today bestselling book. Welcome, jake, great to have you on the show.
Speaker 1:Love that intro man. Thank you. I'm really excited about the conversation and love talking about the future of go-to-market and where we're headed, so it should be a fun one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm excited, and so, to that point, the sales landscape has rapidly changed over the past few years with the advent of AI and I think, jake, you've been on the forefront of this for selling teams, and I think one of the interesting things and where I'd like to start that you've identified is, even though sales has changed considerably, sales teams are still relying on old methodologies, from the Challenger sale to Medic to Bant. But in your book you introduced something called the Four Cs and I'd love for you to walk the listeners through what. That is why you think some of the old methodologies aren't working, so we can get your perspective.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think, yeah, I've been a vocal. I'm not even like an anti a lot of these methodologies, I just think that the application has to evolve. That's really what it comes down to, david, is that the way that we applied things you know, back in 1996 were different than you know 2025, right, as you can imagine. So. So, really, as I was writing the book, you know what I really started to think about, and I'll tell you, it's interesting. I actually, wiley, kind of contracted me to write a different book is going to be called the Everyday Guide to Exceptional Sales, and so I really wanted to write this book. That would be kind of this like you know, go to resource, so it's like anything that comes up. This is what it would be and, candidly, is like I spent way too much time writing that book and then, as I got into it, I'm like what am I doing? Like I don't want to write that. I don't want to write like a sales guide, another sales guide book. I was like, like, and I was able to use parts of it in the book too, so it ended up being a win-win. But what I really started to think about is like look, where is B2B sales headed, what is evolving, what's changing and therefore, if you want to be competitive as a seller or a leader, what are the things that you need to be able to do? And it's funny, I've never been a big acronym guy, but as I worked kind of through the process, we came up with the concept of four C's, where I was like you know, what are the attributes that I think it takes to be successful? And just from what we're seeing, you know we work with hundreds of clients every single year for a client to successful, and so that's where I came up with the four C's. You know the first.
Speaker 1:It starts with, you know, commitment to technology and AI proficiency, and I truly believe, like this to me is one of the biggest issues I see is that revenue leaders have outsourced their knowledge of what is possible to a RevOps team that's already overwhelmed, and so these leaders aren't able to even you know, think about, you know, outreach sales off. These types of tools came out in 2015, 10 years old, that's it. So if you were a sales leader before that, you learned a whole new play, et cetera. Now there's 2,000, 3,000, plus sales technologies. One tool that you knew could do this does 75 things. And so I just don't see how you can be a successful sales leader in 2025 and beyond if you do not understand the art of possible with both sales technology and generative AI, which is obviously why I took the firm you know heavy there.
Speaker 1:You know we're doing four to five new deployments a month of helping companies to deploy in a structured manner gen AI deployments, because I think that's where everyone's really struggling is like we've got our reps, they're using it, what do we do? And we kind of have this jumpstart where we're like we're going to pick one department, we scope three assistants and one automation, we scope the use cases for these other departments and we really think about AI proficiency as really treating this like a product roadmap where every organization, each department AI should be a department by department, a role by role deployment and really helping companies to get there. And so that first C in particular. To me it's funny because the book came out in about a year ago and I wrote that part Gen AI was kind of coming to the forefront.
Speaker 1:It would have been probably. We went to press that November, December, before, but it was just so painfully obvious to me then just like how disruptive Gen AI was going to be, and I think most sales and revenue leaders in general are still behind, even comprehending, david, the art of possible with these tools, and so they need to start small to go big is kind of the strategy we've stayed, we've been talking about to become, you know, committed to proficiency. You know in, you know, revenue tech and and AI.
Speaker 2:And so that sales leaders can embody that. First C, I mean, are there certain things that you really recommend? I mean, for me at SalesRoads, the thing that I've been trying to preach is listen. A lot of times we don't even know exactly what the tools are going to do, what's going to work, what's not going to work, so we just need to lean in, we've got to use it. We've had clients that are basically like no, we aren't using AI, it's not secure, and I just feel like I get that there's privacy concerns, but if you don't lean in, you don't just start understanding and flexing that muscle to understand how it works, where it works, where it doesn't work, you're going to be left behind, and so is there anything in particular that you try to?
Speaker 1:embody or imbue into the sales leaders so that they can embody that first C. Yeah, look, I talked about another principle and this is a life principle that I don't think it's a revolutionary concept. I call it 80-15-5. And I feel like you know, I saw some of the you know, some of the questions you had sent over ahead of time, and one of the questions was you know, what should leaders be doing? You know, 80-15-5 is this concept of you know 80% of your time should be spent on things that are going to impact your business. In the next, you know, call it three months or so if you're a sales leader, maybe it could be, depending on how big your company is, it could be a little bit more, a little bit less 15% of your time should be things that are going to impact your business. Call it six, 12 months from now, and about 5% of your time should be dedicated to things that are going to have a big impact on your professional career and your business maybe nine, 12, 24 months from now. And so the number one piece of advice that I give is you have to block an hour or two a week. And look, and it's interesting to block an hour or two a week. And look, and it's interesting, I know what the job is, you know everyone like I know, I know the demands, I know what that means. But I also can tell you we are like you know, as I think about when I first got into this to you know, it's been two years now where I had this you know kind of conversation with a buddy of mine, kevin Dorsey. We're having beers and pizza and it's like, dude, if it can do that, it could do this and it could do that. And I was like, oh my God, he's right. And I literally emailed my team and said, guys, I need to like fire myself as CEO for a week and I need to go just like mess with this. And then I was. I was like this is this, is it? And I think, one of the most important kind of mindset shifts to maybe help you to understand. You know, yes, spending two to three hours a week is worth. It is. This is a foundational shift in how we solve problems as humans. This isn't a new technology, this is the same way.
Speaker 1:Look, you know, most of the people listening to this were not in the workforce when we went from no internet to internet. I wasn't in the workforce, but somebody had to train John. Hey, we're gonna send an email, we're gonna go online and search for things, we're not gonna go to the phone book or we're not gonna go to the library or an encyclopedia Like guys. That was a huge, monumental shift in how we solve problems. We stopped going to the library and looking at books and they were all curated for us in search, et cetera and at books, and they were all curated for us in search, et cetera. And this is that next evolution of how we solve problems.
Speaker 1:So, as a leader, if you've been in the game for 10, 15, 20, 20 plus years, we are rewiring the way that we think to solve problems. So before it was like my SDRs or my sales reps they go, they go to Google, they go to LinkedIn, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, oh no, we're not doing any of that. Instead, I've got these assistants. They do that for me and it's a better quality and it's deeper, richer insights and it can identify, like where I'm missing in the deal.
Speaker 1:So it's just getting us to V1 faster, right? You know, I tell everyone, if you're copying and pasting AI, that you are guaranteed to put yourself out of a job. All AI is doing the same way that Google got us to answers faster, gen AI is just getting us there even faster, and then the human brain turns on for the last 20%. But now I can get to. If I have 50 minutes to work on something, I get to V1 in 10, and by the time the 50 minutes is up, I get to V3 that I maybe never had bandwidth for. So I think, kind of bringing this full circle that is why leaders have to embrace this that you have to rewire your brain to solve problems foundationally different than what made you successful even 10 years ago, and I think that that's a very tough, david. That's a very tough pill to swallow once you get to a certain point of your career, but I don't think you can unsee that at this point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think you do have to live it, because it is so new, it is so different. For you to create some of these strategies you have to see how it's working again, see how it's not working, see also, you know, I agree with you. I think that people can now spend more time on the thinking part of things. However, what I struggle with myself and for the team is making sure that they don't go into monkey mode. They don't go because you can do things fast, it can be good and copy and paste, and so, unless you're living it as a leader, you sometimes don't see some of those temptations and think through how do I make sure that we aren't just going into monkey mode and we're actually using this to create better work? And I think that kind of transitions us into the second C which I'd love to get your perspective on is the current go-to-market strategy and what that means in this context and how you advise your clients around that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so yeah, the second C is again having a current go-to-market strategy and I think we as humans, we tend to lock into pattern recognition. If something works, we kind of struggle to then unanchor for things that work. We're like you know, think about it when you play video games, right, you tend to lock into. If you play 2K or Fortnite, you know you've got your different plays that you run and you kind of run, you know the best of the best. Players are very, you know, agile. But I think that that's what you see happening with Outbound is we're locked into plays that worked seven years ago, six years ago. And just a little history lesson for everyone here's kind of my history lesson. There's a book that everyone follows around go-to-market called Predictable Revenue. Okay, predictable Revenue. I think this is important. If you all haven't read it, your boss has read it, I promise you. Okay, um, or your vc or your pe has read it.
Speaker 1:Predictable revenue was was built around how outbound worked in the early 2000s. Not kidding, and guess what, david? It was pretty simple. The internet was brand new. Linkedin as a site for networking did not exist. Okay, it did not literally exist. It was a job site until like 2011,. Right or so or sorry. Yeah, it was only jobs right.
Speaker 1:And so imagine what were those guys doing, david. What did they do? 24, seven. They picked up the phone and so we built this kind of revenue model that said, oh, activities equals, meetings equals pipeline. And that was true when every activity was equal, because they were all high quality activities. It was a high quality phone call. I wasn't using some mass email or whatever. I wrote a meeting. I wrote a message to get a meeting with you, david. I made a call to get a meeting, so all activities were homogenous. You fast forward to today. That's not. I'm doing a LinkedIn, a blah, a blah. A bulk email versus a customized email. Those are not the same data set. And so we're still continuing to run our teams based off of a book that was written about a strategy that we're not actually even running.
Speaker 1:If every activity was a customized, one-to-one activity, well then, activities equal, meetings equal, you know, deals right, or opportunities, and so I think for a lot of companies that's why, you know, I talk about this we have to start to anchor our go-to market around the first outcome, which we call a meaningful conversation, and that just simply means, like jake connected with someone that said I'm going to put you in touch with someone. Or maybe the assistant said, hey, I'll help to book a meeting with janice or whatever it is. And so we have to stop moving. We have to realize the goal isn't account coverage, the goal is generate a meeting with that one person and somehow and I think the other kind of history lesson part of this is in, you know, look, even all the way up to 2015, there was really no way for salespeople to do bulk emails right. It didn't exist. So again, every email and every call from when that book was written to call it 2015, 2016, every activity was high quality. I had to send a one-to-one to you. I wasn't.
Speaker 1:And then what happened is there was a run between about 2016 and 2018-ish 19, where email-only sequences kind of worked. And then what happened is we started to raise a whole group of people who forgot how to call. Then 2020 hit, then you've got these new hires all starting remote and they never got to sit there in the pit. You know like, oh man, oh, that was good, jake, I like that saying et cetera. And so now you fast forward to today, and today we are trying to run a 2016-17 play, when email only kind of worked with people that don't know how to make phone calls, because we didn't train them that way and the leaders, candidly, they've grown up in the 2020-2021. They didn't learn how to call. And you know there's a lot of data that shows kind of the the omni-channel impact. And so my point is I actually think it's easier than ever for outbound yeah, I think it's easier than ever. One outbound yeah, I think it's easier than ever.
Speaker 1:One of our sister company we spun out last year, rev Optics. We had a client between literally came in in January this year between Q4 and Q1, team of 20 SDRs had a hundred more opportunities in one quarter and it was like, guess what we're going to do, guys, we're not just going to customize the first email, which, by the way, the first email is literally I, which, by the way, the first email is literally I. Have seen it in one sequence out of probably tens, if not hundreds of thousands of sequences, where the first touchpoint is the highest converting touchpoint, but yeah, that's the touchpoint everyone does. Now we're kind of moving past that. We do like a quasi like relevancy base and it's like all you have to do is pattern disrupt.
Speaker 1:Send a video, send a LinkedIn voice note. I don't really care what you do. Send a video, send a LinkedIn voice note. I don't really care what you do. Send a handwritten note Coupled with just keep adding value. It's literally that easy. Like, if your current go-to-market strategy is focused on generating outcomes and not generating account coverage, you're gonna be wildly more successful than somebody who's like account coverage only focus. So that's a little bit of a rant there on that one, but it's just again. Sometimes I swear to you, I feel like I'm living in bizarro world. Like we'll be talking to a client. I'm like okay, jake, but what happens when activity goes down? I go, we're talking about outcomes, but I get it Like there's pressure from your board and your board is running the playbook. I told you so I look, I I get it. I've been in that seat and I've worked with you. Know enough. You know thousands of you know cro's over my career.
Speaker 2:Now like I get it's easier said than done a little bit, but at the end of the day, if you're driving outcomes, that's what people care about, you know yeah, I mean, activity is such a short-term metric and and it's in a virtual world and all those things, it's it an easier metric, at least on a day-to-day, to at least see that people are working. But at the end of the day, the thing that is going to keep you in the CRO seat is the outcomes, and so it is definitely short-sighted, and when you're too short-sighted then you don't have a long-term future.
Speaker 1:And this is where leadership comes in, david. Look, people have been making fake dials since forever, right, like I remember this is 2007,. Maybe I was running a team and this dude he actually ended up becoming a pretty successful sales guy. I stay in touch with him. All of a sudden, I went up to one of my new hires and they had this list of phone numbers. I'm like, what is this? They're like, they're like, uh, uh, they're like.
Speaker 1:And one of our reps had come up because we had the most ridiculous minimums. It was a hundred dials and two and a half hours of talk time a day. It was a lot like in, right, it was too much. And he had a list of fake phone numbers. Right, there's another kid. I remember I caught him, um, like the, it flagged me hey, this number has been called like 30 times in the last like two months, and it was a fax machine. So it's like, I call the number. It's like, and I'm like dude, come on, chris, man, like, so, look, this idea of fake activities is has been happening since before the auto stuff, right, but but again, I think there's a happy medium, because I'm all for there's. You know, if people can't manage to an outcome, then you need to kind of look at some of the leading indicators and coach there right. But again, I want them doing high quality activities. I don't want them to just do punch the button activities. And I've said this before too.
Speaker 1:If you are an SDR or a sales rep and I want you to listen to this If you're a leader too, and I want you to tell me how this is not logical.
Speaker 1:If you're an sdr or sales rep and your manager or your company is telling you to kind of hit, send on these templates and just do this, you're putting yourself out of a job. Right, you're putting yourself out of a job because you're just saying guess what ai can just do that, like we're already doing tests. Like a hubspot just releases breeze ai agent and it's like just hit, sit to hit a template, that's like pretty good. It's pretty, pretty good. Like you know, we haven't seen any of these outbound ones that are like really doing it at scale. But you know, I think it's like we just have to really encourage our people to turn their brain on that. 10 to 20% know their personas, know the value we provide those personas, so they can, you know, you know, be that trusted advisor that somebody wants to meet with, versus, you know, just getting out as much of activity as possible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think there's two aspects to that. Which one? Maybe AI will get to a point where it can replace it, but personally I don't think it's. There is that creative spark and doing the real good pattern interrupt or whatnot and really making something creative and different than you AI humans still, I think, can outperform in that way. Eventually, I think AI and maybe with some of the right prompts, it can be there now.
Speaker 2:But then the second part is the trusted advisor. Right, if we don't position ourselves as salespeople as that trusted advisor, you know, creating that type of relationship, you know that's something that is harder for AI to replicate. Now there are certain personalities that are creating relationships with AIs right now, but it's different and it always is going to at least I personally think will be fundamentally different. And that's where salespeople can play and build their network as an AI. Who can't build a network, can't build trust over 10 years, over 15 years, over a year of working with somebody. And so with that, with your third C, the customized sales journey you touched on it a little bit, but maybe you could break it down a little bit. For sales leaders, if they're looking at their current go-to-market strategy, they say oh, you know what? Jake is right. I'm still using the predictable revenue playbook. How do you think through with them, or how do they think about customizing that sales journey with the tools that are available now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so customized sales journey. This is a really important part of the book and probably one of the I don't know, I think one of the most important for people to read and really internalize what this actually means for B2B sales in particular. I'll make the analogy first of B2C sales. If you think about how we buy things as consumers today, every X number of months it gets more tailored to us, more tailored to us perfect recommendations. Click to buy for this person. More information survey for this person.
Speaker 1:We are being trained as buyers, like if something's not hyper relevant, I've got no time for it, right? And the analogy I always use is I go. How many times in the last two weeks have you looked up an item in Amazon? It wasn't available to get shipped to you later, today or tomorrow, so you picked a different product that gets there today or tomorrow, or something that would literally get there like three days later, like just think about that behavior. That is a very new, that is a like less than five year, six year, maybe six year old behavior that just continues to perpetuate in our brains a speed to information, the ability to consume content. You know we all consume tons and tons of video content. B2b companies are atrocious at providing consumable content to people, even though more and more people, you know, want to learn about things asynchronously. And so you know customized sales journey. Really, there's a couple of concepts in there.
Speaker 1:The first I'll talk about is this concept called VEX, which we talk about in the book V-E-C-S. Vex, which says that look, today customers are coming to you. There's a vetted group of buyers. I think that that's probably anywhere between 10 to 20% of buyers now that say hey, david, look, I already use your competitor, bro, I used you guys three years ago. I've already done chat, gpt research. Can we go? Why are we having this conversation, man? Do I really have to sit here? The inbound SDR is one of the worst roles that exists, candidly, in current go-to-market. That's like, hey, jake, I want to understand some information. It's like, dude, I already know more than you. Why are we waiting another week? Like, I think companies are artificially slowing down their sales cycle left and right because they're not appreciating the vetted. And then the next is educated, which is someone who might not have all those attributes but maybe they again, they either use a competitor, they're a warm referral from a current client Each company we kind of encourage if they check three or five of these boxes and we treat them as vetted and that means the first call. We're showing up with a solutions engineer, we do this, we do this and I'll kind of get to more of those details. Educated, we show up basically where we would at step two. Basically we're at step two. Cold, you know, is the C, so V-E-C, cold and self-service, right?
Speaker 1:Mckinsey did a study. I talked about it in the book. Mckinsey said look by about now and next year, about 20 to 30% of people will be ready to self-service at anything under 50,000. And I think for most people they're like but I need to talk to somebody. I'm like no, I don't, I already. It's like again, think, if it's a known space, like I'm not educating on why the space is important, I've worked with somebody in your like, like your, like your competitive set. Guys, I'm already, I'm already there, I'm at step four. I don't need you to convince me or sell me on the education around why the space is important, I'm already there. And so I think what we do a really bad job of is understanding that you cannot treat every buyer like a conveyor belt, and I think what happens today is everybody starts at the beginning, whether you're vetted, whether you're educated, whether you're cold or even if you're like God, I'd love to self service. You know that would be amazing, and so you know, one of the easiest things you can do to get real tactical here we call it that magic email and I'm telling you within a week you will be blown away Is at least 48 hours before your call first call, you have your reps send out and you can automate this.
Speaker 1:Obviously, reps send out an email that says hey, david, I'm really looking forward to our conversation coming up on Friday morning. When I talk to VPs of blank, they're either one like already familiar with the space, might have used us, or competitor in the past, and I want to make sure I can show up prepared with the right people from our team or two. They're kind of still exploratory, still trying to kind of understand details, and we'll need to go a little bit deeper into kind of the why. Let me know where you fit on this continuum and I'll make sure that we're prepared for that conversation on Friday. That's all you got to do. Yeah, you do that. I'm telling you your reps within a week. I promise you a rep is going to flag to the manager and he's going to go or she's going to go. Oh my gosh, jake said that he was this, this and this. I think you need to get on the first call, and so we have to be able to adjust to where you know it used to be. Because, again, let's rewind behavior In 2010,.
Speaker 1:Just 15 years ago, my ability to find out anything about a B2B company was like zero. It's like there weren't all these groups. G2 didn't exist. I don't know if people still use G2 that much, but like none of this existed, right, so fast forward. It's like HubSpot started talking about this like 2010, 11, 12, that buyers are more educated, talking about this like 2010, 11, 12, that buyers are more educated. It was kind of BS then, but if you kind of continue as we get access to more and more and more, and now we have chat, gpt where I'm telling you, what people are doing now is they're saying, hey, I'm looking for somebody in the sales engagement space. I've already used them. I want these three options. Give me a wild card option of a company that's raised at least 50 million and boom, I'm coming in hot. And so we're.
Speaker 1:Just, we still have not adjusted our journey to appreciate that people are coming in more educated. And that is what I think, david, the scariest part is, I think that what could end up being like the death nail for B2B sales as a discipline, that instead of outside of the ultra, ultra enterprise or ultra relationship based sale, I think if we can't adapt to this, buyers are not going to want to talk to anybody in b2b sales. They're going to say, look, let me self-guide, let me. And if you think about modern sales today, I really don't want to talk to the salesperson, I just want to talk to the customer success person I'm going to work with, because, at the end of the day, I'm going to get handed off and all I care about is am I using the product? And so what value is the salesperson going to add if they're spending time trying to qualify me and I already know more than they do? Yeah, and so that is the scariest trend for me over the next two to five years that if companies do not adapt to have a more customized journey, more and more buyers are going to go work with your competition and opt out of your sales process because they're like, dude, wait, you know the whole mindset and this is what I learned too.
Speaker 1:Got to hop on a call. Oh hey, jacob. Oh yeah, great question, can you hop on a call? I'm like just send me a video of, like the two minute demo I can send to my team, for the love of God, right, like? And to me it's both Like.
Speaker 1:It's not that there isn't a right time to hop on a call, you know. It's like there's friction in the process or something. But very few companies do a very good job of asynchronous education. You know, I think at last that was 24% of your time is actually spent with the customer and customer, and so this customized journey is where are they at in their process? And am I giving them asynchronous ways to absorb content, to learn content, to learn about us? Do I have a demo that's tailored to a CFO versus VP of operations versus a VP of marketing that I can send really quickly as a leave behind three separate emails? And the answer for about 98% of companies is no. And I think that's what scares me most about the customized journey is we just refuse to believe that people are educated and that people are actually smart enough to learn asynchronously without your sales rep hopping on a phone, and those, I think, are the biggest trends on why this matters more than ever.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think the idea that you have is a good workaround, because I think a lot of times, especially on the inbound side, it's that they need the discovery because they don't have the information. So either just ask the question, like you do, which is a great simple workaround, or even like inbound forms, or however you're collecting your leads yeah, sure, and it can be more. It's stuck before generative AI. There's no reason why inbound forms can't be generative to some extent. They don't have to be. Just click a button as part of the form. I can ask a few questions and generate and get some of that information, so you can start customizing the journey right out of the gate. From an inbound perspective, and I think you're absolutely right. I mean, we've all been on with a salesperson who's wasting our time and there's no patience for that right now.
Speaker 1:And that's the craziest part, david, just about that last part Go ask your average sales leader the last time they bought anything. Go ask them and I guarantee you at least 75%. I'll go ahead and say one out of four is fine. We'll say, oh my God, it was brutal. And then I go and I've posted about this on LinkedIn. I'm like when is the last time you audited your process? It's the same. You're doing the same thing. Like what do you mean? It's brutal. You're literally doing the exact same process. So I just feel like this is, I feel like this edit, anything in the book is probably one of the more easy concepts to grasp, because we know how we like to buy as consumers, and if we can take that mindset of meeting people where they are, letting people learn asynchronously at the right times and human interventions at the right time as well, too, we're going to win and you're going to build a more, you know, future-proof team. And one thing I will say and then you know we can move on is look, and this is where I think MedPick and some of these methodologies have an opportunity but are also dangerous, because one of the biggest behavior shifts that I see right now is we're starting to treat MedPick like a sales methodology versus a deal review framework. Right, it was never meant to be. Hey, jake, to run a good discovery call, did you get these three data points? Because guess what A real bad rep can go get those data points right.
Speaker 1:And again, a little history lesson, guys. Medic, which was the precursor to MedPick, was invented in 1996. Do you know what buying was like, guys in 1996? There's a guy in a mahogany office and he would just like buy stuff. Like the buying committee was like two people, the owner or the CEO, whoever, but they just buy stuff. Like the buying committees were probably I don't even know how to guess one fifth the size that they are today. The competition and amount of companies doing something similar to you was probably either non-existent or 1, 30th of what it is today. You know we had more free time. There wasn't social media. There was like, think about that. Like that medic was developed around a buyer process from 1996.
Speaker 1:Now, do I think you can adapt it to today? Absolutely, but you can't make it your methodology. And that's what a lot of our clients I'm like look, we actually don't have to necessarily get rid of MedPick. We have a framework called intent. That we think is more accurate that we call it.
Speaker 1:The N is for next steps. We found that today and I put this in the book. It's like a last minute edition Because I was like why are deals actually struggling today, with all these people involved and where did I feel like some of them fell down? So next steps right now. Momentum is the killer. If you are not driving next steps, the deals won't get done. This mythical champion is not going to do it. They got too many things.
Speaker 1:The T is for teams. This concept of one decision maker or one economic buyer is insane, right, and the decision maker today could be somebody two levels below the SVP, who's a squeaky wheel in the room. So you got to understand the teams. Education level I talked about education as a part of it.
Speaker 1:Numerical priority over pains If you are not a top three numerical priority for that department over the next two quarters, your deal is not getting done. So, moving away from this concept of pain, I can tell you I get eight leaders together. They all listen to the call for say yep, there's a pain to say, and two are like nah, numerical priority is like non refutable. Is this a top three numerical priority for your department as a part of it. And then T is the last. T is time to impact, and that means when does the customer need to see results?
Speaker 1:By right, and I think MedPick has a version that called compelling event, but it's like next steps. If I know the next steps and I'm driving that, I know the teams that are involved. There's usually a buyer team and an end user team, sometimes a vetting team, right, I understand the education level on meeting people where they're at and educating them asynchronously Right, I understand I'm solving a top three numerical priority, right, and I understand when the customer needs to actually see the benefit of what we do. But I'm in the deal, like, I know, I'm like there, and so that's kind of how we evolved medpick. Again, I we have clients where we've evolved it for them. But you still have to think about this, these weaving in the concepts of intent there too, of like not just saying what's the economic buyer, saying what's the economic buyer team of people. So we've we've had some really good success. Uh, yeah, adapting it yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:I think that makes that makes a lot of sense. Uh, this, this day and age, and amazing, this 1996, that's like 30 years ago.
Speaker 1:Uh, right, crazy, I know, I know and like I said, I I don't want to, I don't want to. You know poo-poo much because, like I said, it can still be applicable. You cannot make it a deal framework Because, I'll tell you, one of the most dangerous things that we're seeing with our clients is there's a client of ours I won't talk about who they are but they had a gong initiative and they didn't really have as tight methodology but what they want to do, they wanted to make MedPick into Gong, which, by the way, I'm totally fine with that as a deal evaluation framework. But guess what ends up happening? In lieu of a tight playbook, your sales leaders start to coach to MedPick as your methodology.
Speaker 1:Jake, did you run a good call? Jake, your first call? Oh, look what Gong said, that you did One, two, three, I did great. I listened to the call. The call's terrible, you know. And so we've got to move off this idea Like, look, it's a deal evaluation framework. It doesn't equal a good call for a discovery demo proposal contract, like. Those are two different things.
Speaker 2:So, as you know, we come to then here. I do want to get into a few tech stack types of things, because I think a lot of what sales leaders are are struggling with and have frankly struggled with for a long time but I think it's on steroids now in the age of AI is there are so many different tools and we can get caught up in the promise of them. But I think we've seen and I think you even posted about it recently sometimes we can make our teams less effective because we're just throwing so many different things at them. What are your thoughts around both evaluating what you need or don't need in this current age, and are there any things that stand out as a tool that is more ubiquitous and I know a lot of times it's got to just be customized to the company and the use case.
Speaker 1:Sure, yeah, yeah. There's a couple of things in there. Um one is you have to make sure that you're prioritizing the biggest bottlenecks in your revenue org and you're focused on deploying things there. So you know if, if there's a new tool you hear about and it's not solving one of your top two or three numerical priorities for your revenue team, amazing, let's put that on the docket for November and we'll pick it back up. So you have to stay focused. You have to realize, look, technology and process improvements are meant to drive more revenue. That's it. And if it doesn't align to that and I can't say specifically, hey, look, our number one challenge is X, our number two, and this is exactly how we're going to quantify the impact of this technology or process change you may want to reconsider. Right, and it's not that you don't want to prioritize it. You might, you know, just want to think about doing it there. So you're always focused on finding solutions that are to the revenue challenge that we're having right now. That is the number one or number two bottleneck, right, and so that's kind of like my first piece, and then I'll get kind of I'm gonna come back to that. Actually, the number two piece is one piece of technology implemented at 100% is better than three pieces implemented at 30.
Speaker 1:I equate this is kind of my book analogy, actually, I don't know if I've ever made this, david. This is kind of my book analogy. Actually. I don't know if I've ever made this, david. This is an exclusive Jake analogy, but I've made it to my others before.
Speaker 1:There are these people out there how many books did you read this year? It's like, oh, I read. I mean, look, I got a bookcase, you got a bookcase. I read 35 books this year. Amazing, tell me about this book and what did you actually tactically implement? It's like crickets, right? So I think most of us are these consumers of books and we don't do anything about it. And I've put this challenge out there Most people are better reading one book a year, one book and fully executing everything that book says to do.
Speaker 1:And I think sales technology or revenue technology, is exactly like that, that where I see the biggest lift is to getting there. All the work that has to happen and I know it's a lot of work, trust me. We implement thousands probably yeah, at least thousands of sales technologies every year. We're touching or implementing, and it's a lot of work to get there. The deployment of a new technology is step zero. And when you start to have a step zero mindset that deployment and initial training is step zero and you realize the only goal of deploying a technology is to create power users within my organization it foundationally shifts how you think about deploying software.
Speaker 1:So I don't care what software you pick. You're probably better off picking less and deploying fully, which means it's baked into the company, it's baked into what they're doing and it's solving the number one bottleneck for your company over the next. You know two to four quarters. That is my. If you, if you pick that way, I think you're going to be in a good. You're going to be good, you'll be. You'll be better than like most people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that framework and that methodology is fantastic and we look at it. I've been very at Salesforce. We've been very limited in what we deploy and we don't. We tried not to tech stack up, because I think also what we forget and I think you touched on it is there's going to be a period of time where actually productivity will go down. People are confused, they're not understanding how to use the technology, all those types of things, and we think and we're sold on all these magic solves for your problems. But you have to go into it with your eyes open and with a plan, like you said, and I like the idea that you look at it as ground zero or the first step, that it is going to be a process not just to implement it but also to make sure that people are using it in the right way and the organization understands how to use it in the right way to be able to get the results that you're looking for.
Speaker 1:That's right, and I think what we tell a lot of leaders is that this is where sales leaders shoot themselves in the foot. You say, well, when do you need to see this by? And what does every leader say David, hey, when does this need to go live by?
Speaker 2:What's the answer?
Speaker 1:Yesterday, exactly Tomorrow, right? That's answer number two. If we're playing Family Feud, that mindset is why you're struggling with technology adoption. You have to realize. I need to again. Going back to time, to impact when do you need to see impact buying? Don't give me this. Yesterday, bs, actually, what's the date? And now, how do we reverse, engineer the deployment plan to get my team to power usage and adoption by that date?
Speaker 1:And I feel like the one tool I will say and then I know we got to wrap up is you need to start deploying generative AI right now. Right now you need to pick and again, you don't need to overthink it, you don't need to say what's my gen AI strategy for my whole? Stop Again. What's my process? You're going to pick one group. We're going to find one way to deploy chat, gpt teams, gemini, copilot. The beautiful part and I think people need to hear this the switching cost to go from a chat GPT teams instance to a Gemini instance is like nothing, like the ability we have to build the exact same assistance at one versus the other. 10, 20 hours of optimization, so you're not locking in and guess what? All their UIs look the exact same. There's like a list of gems over here, or GPTs, and then there's a chat. So, like the UI different, isn't there? So just picking one solution again.
Speaker 1:What's the bottleneck I'm having in my team? What are the three ways we can deploy Gen AI? You need to start to do that now, like you have. Like you have to start to get a more standardized way that your team is using this. And a prompt library. That was great 16 months ago. We built out our first prompt library almost 24 months ago, but we're not prompting anymore. We have assistants that prompt the reps. And then it's like well, actually, let's just build an automation sales force. You hit enrich, it runs through three assistants and pipes it in. So don't get overwhelmed with all the things. I'm even saying we're going to pick one department. You're going to pick one department, we're going to decide two or three standardized use case and we're going to deploy, and so that is one where I think everyone does need to do something, now more than ever.
Speaker 2:Oh, that is awesome. Well, we are going to wrap on that. The one thing I'd like to do, jake, that we do with all of our guests, is do a few rapid fire questions if you're up for it.
Speaker 1:Of course let's do it.
Speaker 2:Run through them with the first thing that pops in your head. What is one thing that?
Speaker 1:people don't give enough value or attention to in leadership. Your job is not to fix people. Your job is to help people get to the best version of themselves that they can be, but your job is not to fix people.
Speaker 2:Love it. What is one skill? You advise everyone in sales to masters, listening Favorite business leadership or sales book.
Speaker 1:Man. I mean obviously I'm gonna say innovative seller as a part of this. You know there was a book I read really early in my career. It was called Discipline Without Punishment. It's probably 20 years old now and that book helped me to kind of understand the grappling that I think a lot of us have with accountability, coupled with kindness almost. And yeah, it's kind of a textbook, kind of boring book, honestly. But Discipline Without Punishment, I think, is one where if you haven't read that book and you're a leader, it's worth. I'm sure again, I haven't read it in a few years, but it could be worth a read.
Speaker 2:I'll check it out. That'll be my one book for 2026. You can have multiple Favorite quote, mantra or saying that inspires you as a sales leader.
Speaker 1:You are the person you are when nobody's looking Nice.
Speaker 2:And finally, what is the most important goal or project you're working on right now?
Speaker 1:For me right now it's launching Journey AI. So I started a company. That's what I needed to do. After I've got 35 people and a full payroll, journey AI. What we've done is kind of our assistance that we've built out into one platform. So if you're a go-to-market team, you know you can set up, you know we already have these kind of seven out-of-the-box assistance to help you do research, book meetings, build account plans etc. You can set up projects for each account and then they all know kind of the account that they're working on together. It runs off of ChatGPT 5.0 and Perplexity, and so it's just kind of out of the box go-to-market assistance. So, like I said, we just saw most people sales leaders like please give me a box to check this AI thing. And so Journey AI we literally just launched with Alpha. You can sign up. We'll make sure you have the link. You can sign up for a free trial, check it out, let me know what you think and we'll be going live into full production, probably in early Q4.
Speaker 2:So that's what.
Speaker 1:I'm pumped out about.
Speaker 2:Well, that's exciting. Well, jake, this was a fantastic conversation. I really appreciate you bringing your perspective your views on AI sales leadership. If people want to connect with you or learn more about what you're working on, what's the best way?
Speaker 1:Yeah, come check out what we're doing at Scaled it's skledcom. You can check out our different kind of AI services. Our core business is more kind of call it you might call it revenue operations optimization where we feel like AI was just a natural part of how you build that. Go check out Journey it's meetjourneyai and check that out if you're interested. And then LinkedIn I post almost every day probably at least every day on LinkedIn, so if you're somebody who geeks out on tactical advice and wants to stay up to speed. And then YouTube we're putting out a lot of videos around AI in particular on YouTube, so we'll make sure you have all those links for the show.
Speaker 2:We'll put them in the show notes. All right, jake. As always so great to chat with you. We'll put them in the show notes. All right, jake. As always so great to chat with you For you guys listening out there. Thanks so much for listening to the Sell Like a Leader podcast. I'm David Krieger. Hit me up on LinkedIn with any questions, guests, comments, feedback. Thanks so much, appreciate it. Thanks everybody.
