Why 90% of Sales Teams Are Using AI Wrong

Most sales teams are using AI like it's 2023. They're asking Chat GBT to write basic emails and calling it innovation. Meanwhile, their competitors using to do deep account research in 30 seconds that used to take like four hours. They're building custom point of view decks that blow prospects away. They're coaching reps in real time. The gap between teams that actually leverage AI and team that just talk about it is getting massive And it's only going to get worse. I just sat down with Michael Ocean on the Sell Me This Pen podcast to break down exactly

how elite salesmen are using AI right now. Not the basic stuff that everyone talks about, but the advanced strategies that are actually moving the needle. We cover how to use AI for deep prospect research, how to build custom persona charts and minutes, why most sales methodologies are broken for today's buyers, and the framework I use That's more along how people actually buy. Now, this isn't theory. These are the exact prompts and processes my clients use to unlock millions in h revenue. Now, if you're new here, I'm Marcus Shan, former number one sales director at Synos

Corporation, where I led 110 person sales door to profitably deliver over 190 million TCV each year. And now I'm a sales trainer coach to the fastest growing companies and reps in the world. So, let's go ahead and dive Right in. I'm a very in the trenches type of leader. I say, "Hey, cool. It's 8:00. Cool. I'm in the bullpen with them. I'm making calls with them. I'm coaching them on the calls. I'm showing them what good looks like." I think, you know, mythologies like Bant and Medic, they're good for like a salesperson. However, the issue

I see a lot of times is companies I'll say generally speaking use as like a checklist. I truly believe people aren't going to care if it's an AI written email or outreach if it's really relevant. You can use AI to get help you understand all the personas. If you're new to a company, you want to figure out who are the key personas that we need to work with to make a deal actually happen. And typically, I look at three core levels I'm looking at. Okay? I'm going to look at the [Music] Marcus, how's it going,

brother? >> Going great. Going great. Pumped to be Here. >> Yeah, absolute pleasure. Look, today I have a superstar, you know, on the show. So, you guys better, you know, listen carefully. If you don't know who Marcus is, I don't know where you've been. But before we get started, I wanted to officially introduce himself. tell us a little bit about your journey and uh what you're working on these days. >> Awesome, man. Well, I'm Marcus Sharon. Pumped to be here. And uh if you don't Know me, that's completely fine. I'm just a regular guy out

here. Uh so I run a sales consultancy called Benley Consulting in which we work directly with, you know, organizations that have at least 25 plus accounting executives. Basically help them uncover an extra 2 to 10 million plus in hidden revenue in their team by helping them install performance systems. right now. Um, before I did this, uh, I was actually in corporate America for just over 14 Years. You know, started actually in in the field outside sales as a B2B sales rep. Almost got fired, failed horribly, is in the last recession. Eventually figured it out. Had

some pretty decent success. Got promoted 12 times my first eight years. Hit number one every single role. Got to point I was running 110% sales or doing over 200 million a year in sales. Had a lot of fun doing that. Won every single award. rode around corporate jets. You know, it was it was A great life. Eventually decided to start a side hustle uh during that journey and then went all into my side hustle in 2019 and fast forward it's been you know almost six years now. The business has grown tremendously you know we worked

with you know clients and reps from companies all around the world from you know from small startups all the way to like companies like Salesforce, Google, Microsoft etc. So, it's been a really really fun journey as a as part Of it and most time I'm just helping people basically learn the skills I knew from the very get-go. So, it's been a really fun journey and I'm pumped to be here. >> Awesome, man. Big congrats. It seems like your business is, you know, working and I have a lot of questions for you, man. I have a

lot of questions. I see you. You add a lot of value on LinkedIn, YouTube, and you're everywhere. So today we want to talk about again AI and what We need to do seriously like what's going on in the sales world what do you see you know working with all these clients where the main gaps are just share your perspective on AI in sales overall and then we take it from there. >> Yeah 100%. So, it's I think it's really interesting, right? When you talk to a lot of the sales leaders or even the reps, a

lot of them, they know obviously AI is here, right? They know it's it's not going anywhere. It's only become More prevalent, but most of them aren't really using it that well, right? They use at a very basic level, like maybe just like using like a chat GBT and asking like a couple questions and maybe can you help me write an email and stuff like that, right? So, there's that's what I see across the board. from a leadership perspective I think a lot of them are saying hey team you should use it right some of them

are scared to adopt a lot of AI tools you know part is Because you know depending on you know if it's if it's an enterprise organization there's obviously compliance and security things they're kind of worried about to they're also worried like hey this is hot now will it be hot in like six months a year from now are we we already have tech bloat already so there's like this u indecision that probably is happening even at that point Right. Uh but when I look at even the at the the rep level, You know, because reality

is they can't control what what what you know, tech the company brings in, but they can still leverage AI for themselves, right, to become far more efficient to save themselves time, but most of them aren't taking the time to go and try to figure it out. And that's definitely a core issue crossover. I'll give you a really really simple example, right? So we have a BTOC part of the business in which we have individual AES who invest between8 To $25,000 a year to get coached directly by our team and you know just even this morning

I'm showing them how to do deep account research on prospects you know enterprise accounts so you can create a really clear point of view to really enhance and tighten your outreach to them right and I'm showing them very basic stuff which you know they should know how to do already but they're like blown away right very very basic things, right? But it it you can see like the You know the gears turning in their head. They're like, "Okay, this is how I need to be doing this, right?" And they could see how much time it'll

save. I'll explain. I'm like I'm like, "Listen, before this was easily available 15 years ago, in order for me to do the same level research, I would have to go and listen to a two hours earning call. I have to take a lot of notes and create my own point of view. then it might take me three, four hours just for a single Thing. Literally, I just did it for you guys in like 30 seconds because of tools like AI, right? And that's just paying 20 bucks a month on, you know, the the chatb plan,

right? Like anybody can do this. So, it's really interesting to kind of see across the board, but most of them are not truly adopting it even at their individual level, which is a little bit scary to me. And leaders for sure are not doing it at all, even for themselves. >> This is insane, isn't it? >> I think it's absolutely wild. absolutely wild. >> I guess you know some people might call us you know nerds because it's really fascinating. We literally build a company you know on top of LLMs and we are not ashamed of

saying it >> and we see like some of these use cases that you're mentioning only a few people really and truly you know adopt to it and also when they leaders come in and You know buy a tool adoption is the new issue just to you know tackle and it's not only the tech is the mindset that we need to shift and I think can open doors for enablers and also coaches to really position themselves as strategic you know advisers rather than someone who just take orders and ship some pres presentations or you know meetings.

So I wanted to hear from your perspective how should leaders start showing this to their reps >> to get better adoption to change this mindset if you will >> 100%. So, you know, I led teams for years and one of the and I've seen I've seen different levels of leaders really rise up and be really successful and ones who absolutely struggled and I found those who are the most successful change management which is pretty much what leadership is is at all. There always is change. There's always change going on, right? How can you change and

Influence people to basically execute and do what you need them to do? The best leaders lead from the front and they also do it. I give you a really simple example, right? I remember taking over and this has nothing to do with AI, but the the principle makes sense in a second. I taken over a team and they really struggled with generating pipeline, right? And we had and there were set things where the companies, hey, listen, like every every Monday, Wednesday, the team needs to be in the office 8 to 12. They're on the phones.

They're making calls. They should be booking meetings, right? And that should be the norm. But some teams would do and some teams would not. And most teams are just not very good at it, right? And reality is most time the leaders were arbitrary quarterbacks. They say, "Hey team, you're out in the bullpen. Go make the calls and then let me know how you do." Right? And of course, the results Are just kind of up and down is what happens. Right? Now, that's not my style. I'm a very in the trenches type leader, right? So, I

say, "Hey, cool. It's 8:00." Cool. I'm in the bullpen with them. >> I'm making calls with them. I'm coaching them on a calls. I'm showing them what good looks like. I'm teaching I'm doing when I teach them frameworks, I'm executing the frameworks, right? Hey, here's a new objection handling Framework. Watch me do it live. So, they're seeing me internalize and I'm leading from the front. And what happens, you know, over time, the team starts to run more pipeline. What happened after the first year? We went team of the year. We crushed everybody, right? We sent

multiple reps of president's club. Was there anything crazy? No, I just led differently. So you bring us back to in incorporating AI and really leading from the front. So What does that look like? And I look at even my own team, you know, when AI started becoming a thing, I started using it myself to toy around just being like a nerd toying around like this is interesting. How can I start to use this for myself? And then I would show them, you know, I would show them how I'm using it, right? And when they see

like, oh, that's interesting. And then they see me like, you know, nothing crazy get tools like a Fathom or Fireflies to test Out. They're like, oh, Marcus is like actually testing out like multiple. He's kind of see how to utilize this. Oh, and I'm showing them like that. I'm actually doing it, right? So, I have I'm leading from the front. I have the growth mindset. And by doing that, it's going to help them. So, you put yourself now in the shoes of a leader. Say you're a sales leader at a large organization. Maybe they have

not adopted an AI tools across the board that you can deploy Across the board. You don't have budget for or whatever, right? But what can you do is you can start showing the team how to do things. So, hey team, listen like today we're going to do a training on how you could use even the free version a chat GBT and how we can take and we could take your last discovery call transcript from Gong. We could export it out. We can paste inside and because we're a a medic shop, okay, we use medic to

qualify our deals. I wrote a prompt Here which sounds something like this, you know, like, you know, act as a world-class sales strategist and and you lead with medicology. I want you to read this transcript carefully that I have with this person. I work at this company. This is what I sell. I want you to qualify the deal in detail. Rate me on a scale one to 10 for every single category and help me under like help me understand what I missed and then give me three recommendations what I need to Do next to make

sure the deal progresses forward. Do it live with them. Show them blow their mind. So like, oh my gosh, that's amazing. And then give them action to do it immediately. So this is what I mean by getting in the trench and lean from the front. So if you just tell them, hey, go do this. They're not going to do it. But if you show them and you help them and you remove that friction you leave from the front, it just increases the likelihood they're more Likely to actually do it. >> You know what I'm hearing

is first and foremost, thanks for sharing that prompt. Literally, guys, just take it. Just get it started somewhere, right? Your point is absolutely valid. Like I can compare two of our enterprise point. We love you guys. You know, all of you are amazing. But this is about learning, right? One organization, the leader comes, I'm paying enterprise. I want your implementation team, you know, get Involved and give a little bit of training to my refs and teach them how to do stuff. I have another enterprise larger actually >> the leader actually mastered how you to use

our tool and sometimes I'm just like going in this one-on-one conversations like how the hell did you actually do this? We build this but you're so curious >> and I think that curiosity is something that your reps can notice because you Know how to use the platform perfectly. you don't really need my team to get involved. Although we get involved, but you you kind of like show them this is a transformation that I'm leading and I'm bringing to the organization starting with me. So if I screw up, >> it's me first. So guys, it's a

safe space. You can go about it and learn. So now let's um let's talk about something really interesting you recently share on LinkedIn because you mentioned medic. >> So things are changing. So in terms of conversations we're having, we see like ban medic. I would say they're serving us as a sales organization rather than the buyer. So I wanted to hear your perspective. I know you have a methodology. Why do we even need to change what we are used to like all these methodologies that we adopted for many many years and what we need to

do to be more relevant to more educated buyers in AI era. >> Yeah 100%. So I think the first piece is I think you know methodologies like bant and medic they're good for like a saleserson right can I at least uncover these things and is this at least kind of worth my time which is which is good right you do need to have something like that however the issue I see a lot of times is companies I'll say generally speaking use as like a checklist right so we use bank because banks are very simple like

okay cool do they have Budget authority needs timing we should close them well that's not that's not always the case, right? Or if they're using medic, right? They'll even they literally go and update all their stages in their pipeline to make sure it moves along the medic pipeline, right? And they believe once you get to the very last letter, like, oh, cool. We should have a really high chances of winning, which if you follow medic exactly the way it's actually supposed to be done at A very deep level, which is it's not a checklist. It's

really is a scale, you know, one to 10 for each one. Like that could guide you towards that, right? But what's also what I believe to be missing still is really that's really not how buyers buy. Like that's just not how they buy. They they buy very very differently than that, right? Like I think about even like myself as a a buyer of anything. I don't follow medic as a buyer. It's very very different. So That's actually why I came up with just a different framework methodology that I find is just a better way of

managing your deal and also managing expectations of the deal because the issue I I find with the typical sales stage is like hey we have discovery you know demo proposal negotiation close you know they think okay cool once a proposal we should be pretty close to closing them not always the case right like I've lost so many deals in that proposal stage because I Stakeholders in place, right? There's other things I'm missing because of that, right? So, that's why I created a really simple framework and I don't take 100% credit for because, you know, I

was heavily influenced by a guy named Nate Nazarella, which he wrote a fantastic book and he talks about really how buyers actually buy and it was actually very very insightful. I'm like, this is such a good point. I really should restructure my even my CRM pipeline say Kind of match this too. And once it started doing that, it was kind of kind of shockingly obvious which deals were actually most likely to close. In fact, before I would look at my pipeline, you know, for years, even big orgs, I'll be like, "Okay, cool. We're close. We're

closer to the end." My gut tells me though, I know we're not really like we're not going to be close to closing these, right? So, the new methodology I use, it's called advanced, right? A D Van CED, right? So, each one stands for different thing, right? So, first is A, which is acknowledge problem. So the first step is like the person you meet with. Do they acknowledge is a real problem? And the mistake I find a lot of people make is they focus heavily on their product and they're like, "Oh, this is a cool shiny

new thing. They're going to want to buy it because of that." And it's a nice to have, right? But there is a reason pain meds out sell Vitamins. Okay? Like pain and problem is always a driver. So number one, do they acknowledge the problem? So that's like very base level. Let's call like if they're in that stage, it's like 20% potential chances of closing, right? So that means yes, they yeah, you know what, Michael, we have a problem. I agree with you. Then it goes to D, documented issue. Now, by just be crystal clear, this

is more for like an enterprise or mid-market type, you know, Of opportunity. Did they document the issue? Right? Is it written down in a business case in a memo, etc., where it's like this is a problem we need to figure out and solve. So it's really, really clear at that point. Then there's V validated by the team. So at that point, you can only get to that stage if you have if it's complex sales like at least three or more core stakeholders >> and that's usually going to be the economic buyer, the technical buyer, You're

going to have the champion, you're going to have the user buyer. So you need to have the right players in place to make sure it's actually been like, "Yep, we all agree there is a problem and we need to solve this problem." Right? If you're there, you already had a majority of people because most people are not even have multiple stakeholders as part of the deal. Then there is a authorized by an exec. So in the perfect world, we're always at the Very top and that's not always the case. Sometimes they go mid middle or

lower and they kind of move up. So you need to also have somebody that's literally going to take give you executive sponsorship. So this is going to be the economic buyer. They can say yes when everyone else says no. They can say no when everyone else says yes. So it's very very important. So they're saying yes, we also agree this is a problem and I want you Michael to go and talk to These other stakeholders now and also get their insights before we move forward with anything. Right? That's a really powerful place to be. Okay.

Then you have uh you have a N which is narrow to the external. So meaning that means they've just at that point yes we need to go external for the solution. They can't do anything internally. They can't just live with status quo. They have to go outside for external help. That's a really really powerful place to be, Right? Like it's like I'll give you example. I'm working opportunity right now. Like you know they because they already tried a number of other solutions. They advanced the deal much faster. You know they already acknowledged it. They already

document it. They had multiple people like yep all all the execut we need to fight. We need to this is a problem we have to solve. It's authorized by the the CEO. they they know they have to go external. So like within like the first call, we're like we're like we're moving pretty quickly through, right? Not always the case for every deal, but that's really powerful because then the next is C chosen as a vendor. So you get that level. They're like, "Hey, yes, we have to go external." And by the way, Michael, we want

your solution. They may not be fully quite there yet. So at that stage, they're like, "Okay, we want you as a vendor, but maybe we need to do a Proof of concept. Maybe we need to do a trial. We still just need we know what we're doing. is it broken? We need something external. We need your AI tool. Like we want we want to make sure you're you're the best one. It's you and like two other people, right? So now that they narrow then choose as a vendor. Boom. Great. Once they've chosen you, then you

go into e establish a timeline. So all right, now we decide it's going to be you, Michael. Okay, Here's our implementation timeline of this dead end date to to basically launch. Here are the milestones we have to basically accomplish leading to that point. It's clear. It's document. Everybody knows what it is at. You're getting pretty you're getting pretty close to the end at this point, right? And then the D deal terms finalized. Once you cool, that sounds great. Let's just make sure we take care of all the paperwork, the commercials, and you're Like 90% there

at that point. And that's really more how complex buying decisions actually are made because they use it's usually that complex of a deal. So if you if you can in make sure you're mapping your stages this way, you can just tell like okay wow this is actually pretty far along you know like for example I have a handful of deals where we've already been chosen as a vendor but there's some timing of when it's going to be implemented so we don't have The actual timeline established. So I'm like okay it's not a done deal. I'll

say we're like 70% chance that we're going to close. You know we're already decided but you know there's some t some timing they have to do some hiring they need to do. We got to wait a little bit. we'll kind of work them through before I feel really good about the deal. So that's why a framework like this can be really powerful for even whether you're an AE or you're a leader to kind of run Through your deals like hey do I have do I have all these steps if you have all these steps and

you think you're going to close chances are pretty good you're probably going to close. However, if you are missing steps here and you think you're going to close you're probably wrong. >> I love this. I love the fact that you got tactical and really you know broke it down. And what's interesting about this you know framework is that it's all About buyer. We didn't talk about like running your band to your point like hey do you have budget do you have timeline >> right >> now I wanted to ask this question because I'm sure you're

working with a lot of teams you see you know where the gaps might actually be even in your framework right now where do you see I mean case by case but for the sake of our audience midmarket enterprise CRO's VPs enablement leaders where do you see A is mostly a struggle with running the deals through their pipeline based on what you just explained >> so what's really really interesting. If we were to use the advanced framework, where do they kind of get stuck? I say number one is even having an acknowledged problem. Like literally stage

like stage zero is what I call that. Like so they're like, "Yeah, I think it's a problem, but you know what? I think I'm interested. Let me just kind Of see what it is." They get really these happy ears. >> So they, you know, they're like, "Oh, this is awesome. This person really likes me. You know, they think it's really great. They're going to go and talk to their exec now, right? And try try to get buy in for this." and it's like too late in the deal. >> Build a relationship, >> right? Build the

relationship, right? So like it's they're not even like they're Like literally stuck in like you know in a knowledge problem. They don't even move to the next stage, right? And from a very tactical perspective, you know, like where they could solve this is literally in the discovery phase like by really asking the right and deep questions and uncover what the true cost of inaction is. You know what is actually impacting what's the ripple effect towards the company? how it impacts the department, the company, Etc., how it impacts other stakehold momentum through the deal, right? The

next place I really see because let's say for example, because sometimes, you know, they get a little bit lucky, if you will, and it's it's it's like an inbound lead. So, inbound lead generally speaking, they've already acknowledged it's a problem. So, it's like that's great. The problem is if they reached out to you, they reach out to other people as well. So, they know it's a Problem. They they might have already documented it, right? So then people get really excited and they miss the V validated by team. So they only get maybe a couple stakeholders

in the deal and they don't get all of them all the right ones to be specific and they fool themselves in thinking they have a vi viable opportunity and this happens all times for instance you I was just talking to an AE this morning and I was I was asking like what's the larger Opportunity you know where they believe got stuck. She's like, "Oh, yeah. This is this deal. We we had great rapport. We had gone through. We got the proposal, the demo. It's been amazing." And then they ghosted me for five months, you know,

and then they then finally they reached back out as a different person. They reached back out, you know, and they're maybe interested in opening conversations again. I'm like, "That's awesome. If you could look Back in hindsight, what would you do differently?" And she had no idea. She had absolutely no idea. I already knew. I'm like, "Okay, who else did you have involved in the deal?" She's like, "Well, there's like these two people." I'm like, "Cool. who's the economic buyer? >> Well, you know, you know, like I'm like good example. So, she thought this deal was

like a done deal, but here she was actually stuck literally in the earliest Stages. So, that's why I think a lot of times, you know, and from a tactical perspective, the sol realistically is if she had done a better job with discovery and also multi-threading the deal and getting executive alignment, that would have increased the likelihood of it actually progressing forward and not stalling. But the issue was she had not done a good job with the discovery and multi-threading. So she's only she's only working to solve a low-level Problem and not a high level problem.

So she gets stuck down here and the deal stalls out. >> I really like this. Like to your point, it really starts at discovery. Do we have a business problem to solve? But you actually took it a little bit further, hey, do we have the right people actually in the room or who's going to be involved? Because sometimes, you know, we get the champion and they're excited, we're excited, Everybody gets happier. Let's walk through this path together and then, >> you know, we we miss the deal and we don't even know, you know, what what

happened. >> Considering the fact that many of that, at least I spoke to, they don't know about the buyer persona. They don't know about their challenges. They don't know how to project manage that deal, especially midm market enterprise, >> right? to really actually teach the Buyer, especially if you don't have, you know, high level economic buyers or technical buyers. You got your champion who needs to navigate this internally. And so many things happen when you're not in the room. >> That's right. >> So that champion goes in and maybe they don't know how to navigate.

They don't know your value proposition. They don't know how to position you. How can we leverage AI? Maybe it's just a loaded Question >> to even learn this as an individual. Just imagine my company doesn't want to change its medic whatever it might be. >> How can I do >> better myself >> educating my champion to basically sell this you know solution internally? Well, I think the first piece is is you can use AI to help even get help you understand all the personas, right? So, realistically, like the first thing you Want to do is

if you're new to a company, you want to figure out who are the key personas that we need to work with to make a deal actually happen, right? And typically, I look at three core levels I'm looking at. Okay? I'm going to look at the end the end user level, right? This is like a lowlevel. This is a manager, director, maybe even lower than that. So that's that's one persona. Then we have department level the oversee a department that's usually VP maybe a director but VPs and directors and then we have like company level which

is usually execs and I'm not talking about VPs I'm talking about like sea level right so identify what are those core personas and I'll literally use AI and say you know act as a as a as a world-class sales strategist I am an AE I am a sales leader who works at this company put in the website. This is what I sell. This is the solution. Here are the personas I sell to. Please list out, You know, the titles that fall within these persona groups and these type of companies we sell into and list out

what their pains and frustration challenge they run into and their core initiatives. And then also share with me exactly how we can link our solution to each level. Put it all into the table so it's really organized so I can look at it very easily as a cheat sheet. Just by doing that, you already had the game, right? It'll spit out more and obviously You can reprompt to get even tighter and tighter and tighter, but it'll give you a very strong baseline of having a persona chart based off the problems and frustrations that you can

start targeting. Right? That's the first step. Just by simply doing that, just by doing that, this will improve your outreach. This will improve how you run discoveries because then you utilize like, okay, cool. So, I'm preparing for exact conversation at the C level. How, You know, what type of questions should I be asking? what level insight should I provide for them so they know it's worth their time and you can start to build out these things to make it far easier if you want to get really really advanced right let's say for example you're preparing

for an executive level conversation you're new at a company right you do the same exercise I mentioned and then you say okay cool like like help me like like if if I'm I'm meeting with this title at this company this is this is working out I want to create a really clear point of view slide in which I can provide I can share industry insights of other challenges this title is running into that's relevant to them and then I want you to bridge it with how I can help them with just like two three clear

bullet points. Okay, write it out for me. Have it write it out. Boom. It's going to give you some something Probably better than you you'll probably create yourself unless you just happen to be really really smart. You take that, you go use a tool like Gamma AI or something like that. Okay? And Gamma AI is a tool. I'm not endorsed by them anyway, but they can go it'll go and make you a slide deck that's like probably way more beautiful that you can do in like seconds. >> You take that, right? You throw the POV

data inside and you can throw their logo On and boom, it'll spit out this like beautiful like two, three slide POV deck. So now you can utilize that and then you could start and then you you go into your meeting your first meeting that person and they're expecting you to probably ask a bunch of stupid questions that are very low level right and instead you can say hey listen you know Michael based on a conversation like I mentioned we work with company A B and C in your same industry which we help them Achieve this

amazing transformation now obviously you know like I want to find out more about your company but since I reached out to you cold I'm guessing you probably learn you probably want to learn more about what we do first before we dive into That fair to say? Yeah, sure. Awesome. Would you mind also sharing some key insights that might be useful for you? Because I do speak with CRO's like you all the time. Would you would that be okay? Great. You pull your Deck up and you're like, cool. Insight number one. And they're like, "Oh my

god." And you can make it turn into Hey, insight number two. How how's how are these two insights, how are they showing up in your world? Oh my god, this happens all the time. This is exact problem we're into. Got it. And what are you doing right now to try to solve that? Wow, this is what we're focused on. Now again, because you are so clear in your persona, you did all this work, Right? Using AI, your conversations are flowing much easier. The key is is like you're using to do a lot of heavy work

for you that you nor before to manually do and then you build in high level sales skills to leverage it together. So you're like a super rep at this point. That's how you use AI. >> I love it. That's how you drop value. You give another product to But look, this is this is really interesting. It sounds very simple and that's actually Make it more powerful so people don't confuse like okay add this and that go build a master prompt it's just simple questions you have EQ you can really ask those questions and I love

the fact that when you go on that let's say discovery call instead of like starting with a typical that's how you differentiate yourself right let's set up the agenda let's ask these questions I start building the trust up front by saying look I've done my work I have something Relevant to you let's have a conversation around this let's say three topics and there's something and if there is nothing relevant to this ex they correct you it's like look none of these things are you know relevant to me but let's talk about this because at least

you earn that respect >> exactly >> Marcus you mentioned you we can use this for prospecting we can use this basically for our outreach let's talk About top of a funnel right now >> we paid too much attention to hopefully you guys got some good value from this let's talk about our SDR or BDR Mhm. >> With AI, we have more noise. Obviously, >> your LinkedIn I'm sure is just full of messages. >> Oh yeah. >> Same as your emails. I don't see to be honest like much difference compared to a year, two years years

ago. People still try to spam but we get more you Know spams right now. So how should we really differentiate whether it's LinkedIn, email, cold calls, there are different channels. How can we sound different? >> Yeah. So I think the first piece is is relevancy is the most important thing right that's like the number one thing right so like what what you what you want to think is when you reach out are you actually relevant to the world right and I think the mistake is because of a Lot of these AI emails you get now

it's like it's pulling really generic stuff out so the first one is just very generic hey Marcus you see you've been running this business for six years that's very cool pitch right like how can you get so relev relevant to the point where let me back up. I truly believe people aren't going to care if it's an AI written email or outreach if it's really relevant. And and let me give you a really simple example. We've All been those done those things where we we we search for something that we're trying to get. For example,

I was looking up some new new running shoes for like some some like some hocas. I'm looking it up, right? And what happens after that? I get these targeted ads non-stop, okay, from shoe companies. But do I mind that much? Actually, not that much because I'm actually in the market for the shoes. I know they're using machine learning and AI to retarget me And I'm I don't really don't care because I'm actually in the market, right? It makes sense to me, right? Now, some ads are better than others, okay? Just like anything else, but at

least it's relevant. So, I share the same thing as well where if you are re if it's really relevant to them, it's really clear you know their problems, they're more likely to pay more attention. Now, there's little things you can do to really take it to the next Level, right? For instance, like, you know, like you can make sure it's it's it's a it's it's more human like in the email. You know, you can add like PS, PS, by the way, you know, like love your you love the love the time piece you wore in

that picture, Marcus, and blah blah blah, whatever. You can get really specific you want, right? Like that makes it very very nice. Um, but then also, how can you use like maybe video, right? How can you create them a custom Loom video embedded inside? But then on top of that, how can you make sure you're on multiple channels? So that means you're engaging in different ways. So even with our outreach sequence, once we identify a prospect, we don't start doing outreach directly. We do a little bit of a buildup, right? So like we add them

to a sequence. It's like first we engage and comment on their stuff for like two weeks at different intervals, right? So we sort of building that Presence, then a connection crisis in between, right? We don't send a pitch immediately, right? So we're still doing all this buildup. Then we send them a video message, a custom video message, right? But with very targeted research and we're just leading with relevancy, right? So it's like for instance like for what we do a little little research like you know earnings calls trans because we use AI to do all

the research, right? We find out what's most Relevant. We figure out key triggers, right? So, you know, for us, like couple key things we like to look for is like, you know, number one, like are they growing in sales, job openings that shows like there's probably open territories or they're expanding expanding growth or they had turnover. Those are all things potentially that means people are not performing. You know, we're looking at other things mentioned, maybe earnings transfer, Maybe they're missing their number or whatever, right? Same thing with the rep view scores. So, now it's like

we're able to like create a really custom message. It's like it's like, hey, you know, on on the phone, hey, Michael, reach out because let's listen to your earnings transcript. saw that you guys are focused on growing double digits you know for the next fiscal year. Also did notice that you know you your you grow your job opening growth is like 40% over You know this past three months and also on refuge shows that the average attainment is like 22%. So I have to imagine your number one challenge right now is making sure your team

is performing while your new hires also ramp up too. That's something we specialize in. Are you open to a conversation? So it's like super relevant and it's super personalized and it's video. I'm cutting through the noise in many different ways and we're In multiple different channels. So it's like we have calls, we have emails, we have LinkedIn on the comments, we have the DMs, we have like multiple ways to engage with them, right? We even have gifting built in too. So that's how you start to stand out. We leverage as a whole ecosystem versus just

like one single path. Now I'm talking these are all enterprise opportunities. So like we have less opportunities so we be far more Targeted. If you're an as in an SMB where you have like thousands and thousands of prospects potentially a little bit different, right? You can kind of hit them in one single way. But I think if you're also if you're you know if your company does really good marketing, they should be leveraging their marketing to really help help guide the prospect as well from the back end from retargeting and ads and different ways to

kind of push them Through the process as part of it too. >> You know what I love about this like you didn't you didn't exclude anything. was like even five years ago you still do omni channel because >> some people are not just on LinkedIn and some people you know don't answer their phones and that's fine but you you still don't want to lose your opportunity and when you get closer to your ICP you know someone for example in manufacturing you know they still pick up their phone they Don't hang out on LinkedIn so >>

you can again refine it but your main point was relevancy that's what I love you don't need to come up with some crazy funny fancy ideas just to personalize because I've seen this is a train you know add a funny you know give these things are cool but if relevancy is not there I might smile and said okay thank you very much spam goodbye next speaking of again research you you shared a great example for you know B2B Space you got reps you got you know their self you know LinkedIn navigator you can see headcount

growth this is amazing for someone who doesn't have access to or sell they don't actually sell to B2B SAS buyers let's just simplify they have target audience that you know might not share a lot of information. Mhm. >> Where should we start our research? Like LMs are very smart right now. >> But what other ways we can actually get this insight for return? >> Yeah. So like so a good example is this, right? So I was literally just in that call I had earlier today. The company they're looking into is like they're I mean they're

actually in tech, but they're just a smaller company. So there's not a ton of data around, right? There's no earnings transcript. There's no 10K report. There's nothing like that at all. Right? So like the first step is Like number one you pull up your favorite LLM right you search it there okay if it's not there then you go maybe you try perplexity AI okay you search them you know but also search that person too so search the individual you're actually going after as well right and if you still can't find anything then you go and

you take a look at their website you see what's actually available because maybe they're so new or maybe they're so like below the radar You just start to research them and see what can you find out there, right? Like that's why when we do a search, we'll we'll start with AI first now, but then we can't find we'll still go to Google just to see is there somewhere else in the interwebs, if you will, that we can find. Now, let's just say for example, they're a ghost. That happens every now and then, especially some of

these maybe older industries like they don't put any content out. They don't post a single Thing. Like if you look if you try to look them up on even on LinkedIn, they're not even on LinkedIn the contacts, right? or if they are on there, it's just like there's no there's no headsh shot and like they've never commented like there's like nothing on there. There are profiles like CEO at the company 1989. That's all it says, you know, like you're like, "All right, there's like n they're not on Facebook, they're not on Instagram, they're not They're

like nowhere, right? >> That's okay. So, if you're going to do your in in the perfect world, you can have a level personalization." This is why I mentioned one of the first steps is you need to know your personas inside out. So then you have to think, okay, cool. So what persona does this person fall into? So then you create a hypothesis of what you believe about that person and you go from there, right? It may or may not hit, but at Least you're at least you're coming in educated with a guess of probably what

they are. So let's say for example, like manufacturing kind of old old industry, maybe let's say they manufacture light bulbs, okay? Like they've been around for like 40 years, you know, whatever. Okay. what other manufacturing companies potentially have you work with in that at that level that's called CEO level what are the challenges they they they worry about based off the data you have You probably can figure out roughly how many employees they have right you know if you use other tool like data tools maybe estimated revenue as well okay cool if they're an estimated

$50 million a year light bulb company manufacturing company what are other manufacturers on the same level what are their problems what are the challenges that person's running into how can you tie your messaging now to that specific And if you're not sure, you can also use AI to search it. If you're not sure, hey, this is like a very specific industry I'm trying to break into. You know, they're this is a company that there's no research on them, but there this is what they are. Like help me like uncover what might be core challenges of

similar CEOs in the same industry and what might be a point I can lead with. So again, you don't have to be the master of the response, but you can be the master of The prompt. Okay? However, use some critical thinking skills and look at the data like, "Oh, does this make sense or not?" Because if it doesn't make sense, you need to challenge it because as you and I both know, it's not 100%. Like, it'll spit off. It'll sound so confident sometimes. You're like, "Am I wrong?" You know, and >> then you ask a

question >> and you ask, "Are you sure?" >> Yeah. Are you give me your probability That this is the right answer, right? Oh, 60%. Okay. How can you be 70%. and it's completely different answer, you know, like so you apply a little bit of critical thinking skills, which is critical, right, to do that. But that's how you could start to cut through the noise and actually do things a little bit different, right? But what you also want to think about as well is let's just say they're non-existent. H, you Know, online, what could you do

that's different to break through the noise? Could you do a physical mailer that's completely different? Can you do a physical drop in? You know, also like one of the most underrated ways is okay, take a look like who do you know that might be able to refer you in. You know, I was I was talking to an a really successful AE earlier today. He's been uh selling for 37 years in healthcare tech, you know, space for a very long Time and he's been really successful because he's he's known so many people over the years. So,

he's able to refer refer get referred in so many different ways. So, he has tons of credibility, right? So he doesn't even prospect because he just gets referred in just these other opportunities and they get bigger and bigger and they trust him and he's crushing his number. It hasn't for years and years and years, right? So like old school way 100% works still. 100% works. >> It's as funny as it sounds. I don't know if it hurts my business or not to share but we get 78 like 60 70% of our pipeline through referrals. >>

Love it. for people that we know, you know, word of mouth. And I guess especially for, you know, company like ours being bootstrapped, it makes a lot of sense. We don't need to really spend, you know, ton of money on marketing and ads. >> Your CAC, your CAC goes down drastically because you don't you don't have to worry about the actually acquiring customer at the same price point. >> I love it. Look, I have so many questions for you. Maybe we should do another one. But I'm going to ask a quick questions. I want really

quick answers just to wrap it up if that sounds good to you. Okay, so let's finish the sentences. Sales leaders will be more effective if they only >> coach more. >> There we go. Coaching. This is another topic that we can definitely cover. >> Instead of sell me this in 2025, sell me this >> pain. >> I love that. It's a good one. How your sales career impacted your personal development? M well it it jump started it because I almost failed and I realized I was actually really bad at my job. So I had to

get better at my job. If I had hadn't failed, I'd probably be like a mediocre rep. Realistically convincing myself this is the best it's going to be by almost getting fired. I'm like I need to basically turn my game around. >> I love that. Previous guest on the show, Matt Luro, he's the VP of global commercial sales at this product. He asked you a question. Let me just read it as he actually phrased it. >> How does Marcus view the agentic Experience from a learnings perspective for people in all different positions within a sale selling

organization? Can I make it more specific for my selfish need? >> Yeah. >> How do you train the trainers or coach to coach AI? Let's talk about that. >> I think the mistakes that I see sometimes is like you have it's like you have to like log in to have like coach you and do whatever. Right. Right. and Or you have to you know like you have to ask a question like for example there's some tools out there hey like all your calls go inside here and then you can ask it a bunch of questions

>> now that requires you then using that tool to ask yourself questions and challenges and only a certain percentage of people are actually going to do that right um so I think the ideal situation is you actually have an AI that's literally coaching you throughout so Like literally like um you know I think of like Iron Man. Iron Man's a great example. Iron Man had Jarvis in his ear. Okay, >> he's not asking. I mean, yes, he's talking to Jarvis and asking for different things, but Jarvis is warning him, hey, look ahead. Watch out for

this. You know, you're running low on this. Hey, you're approaching altitude. It's going to be way too high. So, it's coaching like in live time at all times, Right? >> And in the future, I see that as a very real possibility where we have these types of agents that are coaching us at all times. You know, like I was talking to my buddy um he's using a new AI tool. It's a pendant that you wear that records all conversations. Very very cool. And he says at the end of each day, it actually gives him like

say here's here's kind of the outline for the day. And it even gives him a little Bit of coaching that he he has set up that way, right? Like for instance, like hey, when you're talking to your kid, you're a little bit rude. You probably shouldn't be doing this. Now imagine if that's real time. So, it's like it's like it's like it's like as you're like in the moment with a prospect, in the moment with an an AE trying to coach them and maybe you're not at your best self or you're not sure what to

say. It's in your ear saying, "Hey, they did A really good job with this. Start with this." It's like, "Oh, cool. Good. Okay. Okay." You know, hey, Michael, just want to say first off, really great job leading the call off. Really strong agenda. Really set the tone is really, really great. Okay. Now focus on, you know, the first question you asked because it was a little generic and like a very generic answer. For instance, say it like this. Boom. Hey, so here's your opportunity, Michael. In your first Question, you said this. Not bad. Here's what

I recommend instead. Boom. So, it's literally in an inline. So that's what I see as really the key way for the future to help you become far more effective as a leader, as an AE, or really in any role is having that a coach at all times that's in your ear to help guide you. >> That's awesome. I'm going to build you, Marcus. I'm going to put it in my ear. >> Beautiful. >> So our next guest is Christopher Swanson. >> He is the VP of digital learning and development at a company called the Mac.

So what's anything you wanted to ask him as our next guest that you could share with us >> in in the world of today's AI? How do you what's the decision process criteria you walk through to make decisions for the right type of AI for your business from a short-term perspective and long-term perspective? And how do you Justify that internally to get buy in other stakeholders? >> I love that. It's a great question, Marcus. I really enjoyed this conversation. Get um it's a pleasure having you on the show. If someone wants to reach out, can

they >> super easy? You can hit me up on LinkedIn. Just look at Marcus Shan. It's pretty easy to find. Or head to benleyconsulting.com and send me a note from there as well. Look, here's Reality. AI isn't going to replace all salespeople, but sales people who use AI effectively are going to replace sales people who don't. The team that figure how to use AI for deep research, custom messaging, and real-time coaching are going to absolutely dominate. the team that stick to basic email generation going to get left behind. We covered a lot of ground today.

The advanced framework that maps to how buyers actually buy, the exact promise of Building buyer persona charts, how to do enterprise level research in second set of hours. But this is just the beginning. AI is evolving fast and the sales team that stay ahead of the curve are the ones who will win. Now, speaking of staying ahead, if you want our help to scale your or how to use AI to drive results, make sure head below to book a call with my team. And if this breakdown added value, make sure to hit subscribe as well.

Whatever platform you're Listening on, I share the real strategy and system that top orgs are using dominating the markets today. I'll see you in the next one.