This is the fourth episode of AI and Sales Brief, a new sub-brand of the Sales Game Changers Podcast.
Watch the video of this podcast on YouTube here.
The Sales Game Changers Podcast was recognized by YesWare as the top sales podcast. Read the announcement here.
FeedSpot named the Sales Game Changers Podcast at a top 20 Sales Podcast and top 8 Sales Leadership Podcast!
Subscribe to the Sales Game Changers Podcast now on Apple Podcasts!
Purchase Fred Diamond’s best-sellers Love, Hope, Lyme: What Family Members, Partners, and Friends Who Love a Chronic Lyme Survivor Need to Know and Insights for Sales Game Changers now!
Today’s show featured an interview with AI expert Zeev Wexler, CEO at Wexler, and sales expert Tom Snyder, Founder of Funnel Clarity.
Find Zeev on LinkedIn. Find Tom on LinkedIn.
ZEEV’S TIP: “No salesperson is going to listen to every call, capture everything that was said, and track every client response manually. But for AI, this is a matter of seconds. The more you use it, the more it learns.”
TOM’S TIP: “Do not prioritize pursuing the companies or potential clients you most want. Pursue first the target-rich pool of those who appear to most want you. It is a lot easier to chase the ones that most want us.”
THE PODCAST BEGINS HERE
Fred Diamond: Welcome back to another episode of the award-winning Sales Game Changers Podcast.
Once again, every Monday morning, we tackle a B2B enterprise sales challenge and address how AI can provide solutions to that particular problem.
I am joined by my good friends, sales expert Tom Snyder with Funnel Clarity and AI for selling expert Zeev Wexler. Gentlemen, are you ready to go with today’s sales challenge? It is good to see you both.
One problem we always hear about is the struggle companies have with getting clean, up-to-date data entered into their CRM systems. How can AI and sales best practices solve this problem? Tom, get us started.
Tom Snyder: I think this is one of the most profound and unrecognized advantages and uses of AI in sales, at least from the perspective of the people I speak with.
If you look at the average CRM, it is populated with very poor data. Why? Because we do not actually give salespeople any guidance on how to enter the data. Further, we do not really know how to make the CRM work for salespeople. It works for every other constituency in the business. There are fancy charts and beautiful reports, and I have no problem with that. The problem is that if it is not producing anything but more work for the salesperson, what value does it really provide?
Properly configured, a CRM can be a huge boost to seller performance. But the biggest improvement comes when you marry AI to it. It is phenomenal because AI does something very specific. I will let Zeev answer that question. Zeev, this is much more your area than mine.
Zeev Wexler: This is not only one of the easiest ways AI can help sales, but also one of the most fundamental. I will give you a live example of something I recently did.
We worked with a company that had very poor information in its CRM because, again, salespeople are busy and do not always want to put the right information in. We built an AI system that connects with the prep call information and the actual client call. It then automates all of that into the CRM in the way the salesperson wants it entered.
This is not data for the sake of data. It is data that helps us sell forward, and it is all automated.
Imagine we are doing a prep call and preparing for a meeting with a major client. All of that information is analyzed according to rules that the salespeople and leadership decide. Then the client call is recorded and analyzed. All of that information is synchronized and entered into the CRM automatically, and it produces recommendations for the next stage.
Everything is factual. It is based on the prep meeting, the client data that AI can source and verify, and the actual meeting with the client. None of it requires the salesperson to click through fields or manually enter information.
Now we have the data we need in order to move the sale forward and close more business. This is easy in the sense that AI technology does this very well. We do not make the salesperson type everything in. We take the information, synthesize it in the way we want, and put it directly into the CRM so it can guide future steps.
Now everything is there, and we are selling more.
Tom Snyder: The second thing I want to say is that one of the things you have taught me, Zeev, is that one of the applications of AI is that it is outstanding at pattern recognition. Make a comment, if you would, about a sales force of, let’s say, one hundred people. If everyone is equipped with the kind of system you just described, would it not be possible for AI to look for patterns inside that CRM?
Zeev Wexler: Not only inside the CRM. It can also identify patterns in the sales calls of the salespeople.
From there, someone like you can say, “That was a great sales call”, but you also need to ask what success looks like. That is something the AI can recognize when a salesperson is not doing it.
Inside the actual tool, over time, AI can identify patterns such as, “When these things happen, the percentage of closing a sale triples.” When those things happen, that opportunity can automatically be marked as a hot prospect.
It can see, based on time and what happens throughout the sale, which signs are actual buying signs. Not generic signs in the world, but signs specific to this salesperson, product, and company. We can start ranking what is hot. When certain things happen, the opportunity automatically moves into the A tier or whatever system a company uses.
Each company can train the AI to work according to the way it operates. No salesperson is going to listen to every call, capture everything that was said, and track every client response manually. But for AI, this is a matter of seconds.
Tom Snyder: One of the most profound things we try to teach companies is this: do not prioritize pursuing the companies or potential clients you most want. Pursue first the target-rich pool of those who appear to most want you.
That is easy to say, and it is revelatory to most people. Marketing tends to say, “Here are the big ones. Here are the ones that have a lot of potential for us. Let’s go chase them.” It is a lot easier to chase the ones that most want us.
How do you find that? It takes research in the marketplace. It takes looking for certain characteristics. Zeev and I have talked about looking for change, looking for what the customer is trying to fix, accomplish, or avoid. AI can do that for me now much better than I can. Am I right?
Zeev Wexler: Absolutely. I will give you an example that recently happened.
We helped a company that works extensively with the Japanese market. We had AI research Japanese business culture. Salespeople should do that too, of course, but AI performed the research and found that Japanese businesspeople may say yes without necessarily meaning yes.
In that context, “yes” may simply be a polite response. They may say, “Yes, yes, we want that,” but the pattern showed that this was cultural. Salespeople heard that and thought, “Oh my goodness, we have a sale. This goes up.” But the AI recognized that the response did not necessarily mean there was a real buying signal.
The actual buying signal was slightly different. It appeared when they asked certain types of questions. With that insight, we were able to save the sales team many hours they might have spent chasing Japanese companies that were saying, “Yes, yes, yes,” without truly signaling intent.
That saved the company a lot of time, and now they understand who the real hot prospects are. As salespeople, we all love when someone says yes. We think, “Let’s go. We are chasing this.” But AI can take cultural information, company information, and past actions, and combine it into something useful.
The more you use it, the more it learns. That is the beauty of this.
Fred Diamond: That is great. That is really exciting.
One of the things the IEPS is most excited about is what we call our Selling Essentials Marketplace. We have hand-selected about a dozen top resources for sales organizations. Funnel Clarity and Zeev’s company are both part of that.
It’s exciting that you both have come together to create an AI and selling effectiveness solution. I want to encourage our listeners to reach out to me, Tom, or Zeev about that.
Zeev, would you give us the elevator pitch for that?
Zeev Wexler: Absolutely. Tom Snyder is an incredible, world-class sales trainer, and he helps companies all over the world. I help sales companies all over the world automate their AI.
The “aha” moment between Tom and me was that if we bring his genius into our processes, the sum becomes much greater than its parts. That is what we are doing.
We are taking brilliant sales training that works and combining it with AI automation and AI technology that changes everything. When we bring those together, your sales team is equipped for much greater success.
Fred Diamond: Once again, we have done a lot of work over the years with Funnel Clarity and with you, Zeev, and many of our customers, clients, and members of the IEPS. The results have been tremendous.
Now, seeing you both come together for a solution that will definitely change the direction of how companies use AI, and of course improve sales performance excellence, is very exciting.
Reach out to me, Fred Diamond. Reach out to Tom Snyder or Zeev Wexler, and let’s get something going with your company.
This is the AI and Sales Brief Podcast. It is a sub-brand of the Sales Game Changers Podcast. My name is Fred Diamond.