Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 33 - Driving Business Growth: AI Sales Secrets

Episode Date: June 8, 2023

We explore the world of AI-powered sales strategies. Tommy Slocum, Founder and CEO of The SD Lab, joins us as we discuss how to use AI effectively in sales. Jordan and Tommy share their experiences in growing successful companies using AI tools like ChatGPT and Wingman.Time Stamps:[00:02:34] AI breakthrough & voice cloning scams rise[00:05:03] AI tutoring boosts learning, requires regulation[00:07:40] How The SD Lab uses AI[00:10:17] AI improves sales function and personalization[00:14:16] AI Tools to improve sales for call recording & outreach[00:19:11] The importance of ChatGPT For full show notes, head to YourEverydayAI.comTopics Covered in This Episode:- AI in Sales- Show and Tell is Effective for Teaching AI- AI Overcoming Challenges- The Power and Limits of AI- Chat GPT - An AI Tool for Learning and Sales- Awakening Interest in AI and Combatting Scams- Personalization and Relevance for Sales- AI-Powered Tools for Sales Professionals- Using AI to Capture and Analyze Details from Calls and Meetings- Call Recording and AI Tools to Monitor and Empower Sales Teams- Technical Founders Struggling with Sales- Personalizing Outreach and Creating Sales Sequences- Founder and CEO of the SD Lab Gives Insight on AI Tools- Benefits and Limitations of AI Tutoring- Need for Regulation and Monitoring of AI TutoringKeywords:sales, AI, show and tell, challenges, human touch, learning, ChatGPT, free version, paid version, recommendation, breakthrough, voice cloning scams, personalization, relevance, insights, pre-meeting recaps, live web browsing, database, call recording, body language, sentiment, Gong, Chorus, Wingman, ChatGPT, Reggie AI, CRM, predictable pipeline, lead scoring, founder, SD Lab, top-of-funnel consulting, Clery, keywords, transcripts, calculators, Chat QPT, tutoring bots, regulation, monitoring.Send Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info) Start Here ▶️Not sure where to start when it comes to AI? Start with our Start Here Series. You can listen to the first drop -- Episode 691 -- or get free access to our Inner Cricle community and all episodes: StartHereSeries.com Also, here's a link to the entire series on a Spotify playlist. 

This is the Everyday AI Show, the Everyday Podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business, and everyday life. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live and Adobe Firefly, the All In One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome. The assistant accelerates execution. Is AI listening to you in real time a bad thing?

Or should we all be doing it anyways? That is one of the things that we're going to be talking about today on everyday AI. This is your daily live stream, your daily podcast, your daily newsletter. It's everything going over what's happening in the world of AI and talking to experts to help us all understand and make use of it. One of those people that's going to be helping us talk about AI, specifically in sales today, is Tommy Slocum. He is the founder and CEO of the SD Lab. Tom, thanks for joining us.

Hey, great to be here, Jordan. Thanks for having me, sir, and excited to dive into the world of AI. Oh, let's go. It's going to be a fun conversation. As a reminder, if you are listening to this later in the day on the podcast, Spotify, Apple, please leave us a review, subscribe. But if you are tuning in live, please leave a question. for Tom on how you can use AI in sales or just how you can use it in your everyday life.

But before we get to that, let's talk about what's actually happening in the world of AI quick. So a couple of new stories to talk about before we dive in. Here's an interesting one, Tom. So a Google executive was a former FDA official has said that AI should be used in AI regulation in terms of its use in healthcare. That's right. Healthcare AI usage should be regulated by AI? What are your thoughts on that? That's interesting, right, to have it check and balance its own self. Obviously, AI isn't to the point where it has expanded beyond its own capabilities. It does need its own props and things to kind of, you know, get it to run. So I think for now, like if you can put that protective AI on top of the AI, it could work. But once this AI starts

adapting as Terminator has shown us and some of the others, how would it regulate itself, right? And how do you put those checks and balances? I still think you need like a human team to kind of balance that. But that's weird to have it, you know, check. That's like putting coaches in the NBA finals that are referees to referee the referees. It's like they're going to kind of help each other out, no? Some games that might be needed, right? Speaking of what Tom said, Make sure you're subscribed to the newsletter, Your EverydayAI.com, because there's actually a pretty big breakthrough in AI doing things that AI shouldn't technically be doing. So you'll have to read about that in the newsletter. Our second piece of news today, so a new report just talking about how rampant these new AI voice cloning scams are.

They're on the rise. So, you know, high tech con artists. Well, you don't even have to be as high tech anymore because. to be able to clone someone's voice and make them to say anything that you want them to. It's easier than ever before. And these scams are just, you know, becoming easier and easier to pull off. Tom, like, what's your thoughts on this? Is this something?

Should we all be making backup plans to, you know, make sure that our friends and family know, hey, this is the safe word? Yeah, right? You've seen that stuff going around. I've got kids. I've got an almost 12 year old and almost 6 year old, right? It kind of hit me, right? To be like, wow, kind of have that safe word.

and the family to register that you all are actually talking to the real person, right? Because they could imitate my father-in-law and have them call the kids at the school, getting them to believe they need to be picked up or something. And yeah, you've seen some of these things play out in news reports. And it's, it's very scary. You've got Biggie coming back making music, right? We now get the luxury of having Biggie, you know, in our modern day world kind of redoing songs.

Like, it's weird. It's weird. Ice Cube came out and was like, don't you dare, like, use my. voice on anything, I will sue you, right? Yeah. Yeah. I think he said that it's demonizing, I think is what he said. He wasn't a fan.

He wasn't a fan of it. So Tom, you mentioned you do have two kids. So I'm very interesting in your take on this. So Khan Academy just released hours ago, their latest AI tutor bot. And they're really looking to reshape learning. So Khan Academy is probably the largest entity. in the world in terms of online education and online tutoring. So there's there's two sides of this with their new AI tutor bot. So some people are saying this is great. This brings, you know,

more affordable education to more and more kids, but also people are saying, well, should kids kind of be AI test subjects? What are your thoughts? And would you have your own kids use something like this? What a gosh, man. I mean, we, gosh, I was in grade school back in the 90s, right? We didn't, we were told by our teachers, you know, you'll never have a calculator in your pocket, you know, to do math. And here we are with calculators in our pockets. So I've used chat TPT on a couple of my son's projects, you know, in sixth grade, right? We had to do a couple things and it, like, allowed him to grasp the concept.

I think it's kind of cool. I think it can scale giving, you know, kids that access to tutors. They might not normally have. tutoring can be expensive. You have a real person coming, trying to adapt. schedules, things like that, that, you know, if I could have a little bot running with me that my kid could lean on while he's navigating his homework, I don't see wrong with it as long as you can unfortunately, you know, right, like teach your kid the right balance to it and the guidelines.

But, you know, I think it's kind of creative. I think, you know, being able to go through your homework and have this tutor guiding you, breaking down the concept, giving you examples in real time. I did online college, right? I did online college for three years. I worked in that industry. And it was hard for those folks doing online because it's self-taught. You're kind of all on their own. Your teacher isn't really there per se, right? And so having a tutor to scale that's like your, your talkative person, they're guiding you through the concept of the chapter of the topic you're learning and breaking it down for you, you know, hey, give me this concept in a fifth, you know, in a five-year-old grade level so I can comprehend it.

Yeah. I think it boost people. The issue is what I found is if you get too reliant on it, you actually learn nothing. Yes. Deep in the world of AI for months. And I got to be honest, I almost feel it's making me dumber than it is actually to learn things, right? Because normally I'd have to push myself through that to learn that topic or that they

challenge. Now, you know, chat, GBT, I could just go in. there and it's like done within seconds and I'm on to the next thing because I figured it out, right? Yeah. But I'm for it. I think it'd be really cool. Just again, needs to be regulated and keep an eye on. Yeah. Let's let's jump straight into it. And thank you, Professor Mohamed for the comment saying, yeah, business growth and AI, an excellent topic. That's what we're here for. And this is exciting. So let's just jump straight into it, Tom. So you kind of mentioned like, hey, you're using these AI tools on a daily basis. Sometimes it feels like they're,

great help and sometimes it's like, hey, what am I learning? So tell us a little bit, you know, what are you doing at SD Lab and also how have you been using AI so far? Yeah. So background, right? I'm founder and CEO of the SD Lab. Been about eight months. I got my beautiful sign right here. Let's go. And yeah, so I do top of funnel consulting, go to market, right? So I'm working with B2B clients and helping them prompt up, scale, optimize. their sales function. You know, what are their processes, what are their tech look like,

you know, and what are their, how are they empowering their team, right? So I come in, we get under the hood, and we make some adjustments. And AIs help me in a lot, a lot of ways, kind of being a one person shop, right? It's allowed me to expand my knowledge,

get over some hurdles that, you know, five years ago, 10 years ago, some business owners starting would have really hard problems with, right, to get going. So I've used, Chat TBT to, you know, write documents up for me, write out proposals, kind of give me the

guidelines for certain things that I needed when I first started running my business because I kind of didn't have those things, right? I wasn't prepared. You know, I've been in sales for 16 years and done all these roles, but it doesn't totally set you up to run a business, right? Yeah. Little gaps there that you've got to kind of fill in and chat TBT is done. So then I use wingman by Cleary, which it jumps into your Zoom, your Microsoft teams, your Google meets, and it analyzes your phone calls, right? Your meetings. That, you know, really help me in being present in the conversation. Right. Yeah. At the time you see, you're taking notes, you have to write stuff down. You have to take a moment. You know, if I go like this,

I've broken concentration with you in the presentation. So having wingman, it just records the entire call for me. And then, and then if I say certain keywords that I have in the back end prompted, it'll come up with suggestions, right? If you talk about a competitor, it'll pop up, give me like my, my spiel or my nuggets that I need to talk about when it comes to that, right? And then on the back end, it gives all the transcript and stuff. Adobe just introduced an entirely new way to create, bringing the power and precision of its creative suite into one conversational experience. Meet Firefly AI assistant. now live in the Adobe Firefly app, the all-in-one creative AI studio.

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Adobe Firefly AI assistant now in public beta. See it today at firefly.adopi.com. Yeah, so I want to talk about that because this is a newer concept, I think. But with AI, it makes a lot of sense. So we opened the show talking like, hey, like even right now, should I have an AI listening to this interview and giving me tips and saying, hey, Jordan, you're talking too much. Or hey, ask Tom about this, right? So it sounds like a crazy concept to have AI listening and thinking about what you're saying

in real time. But what you're saying is so far, it's actually. helped you focus in being more present, right? That's it, right? I don't have to stress about what I said in the call. I can go back at the end and recapture it, right? Understand what the next steps were, you know, what did we leave in that call?

And some are even taking a step further where they're using AI to look at body sentiment, right? It's not just what's said, but is the person actually attentive during your demo? You walk out of the call, you're thinking you're jazzed, you've got this deal in the pipeline. And you read the body analysis and it's showing you they actually weren't engaged in your conversation, right, as much as you thought because they were looking elsewhere. Their body language was slouched.

So there's a lot you can do. And it just relieves you, especially in the sales function, to just be present in the call because there's way too much to overhandle, like acknowledge, look at that the AI just is in that background, be present, have a conversation. and if you forget anything or a topic comes up that you know you normally need to support in, those things will trigger accordingly and give you the ammo during that part of the conversation. So I love it. It changed the life for me as a founder and kind of going through this motion. I got to amplify what I do, right? I got to look like I'm a 10-person company by being one person. And so for me, AI has definitely made a difference.

I think for sales folks, especially SDRs, it frees up a lot of time. You know, you could do some personalization. If you've got some big C-suite people that are pretty prominent online, you can go in there and say, give me some research on this person, right? And it will give you an entire lay of the land. What are they talking about? What podcast have they been on? You know, what are their pains? And then you can go write a great email, right?

Yeah. How cool is that? Yeah. So I think you have a lot of very applicable use cases of AI for a lot of different people. So I want to talk about a couple. But first, let's talk about it. talk about something that you mentioned. So starting your own company, right? It's daunting. You know, I started, I started my company four years ago before we had all of this

generative AI. And I think it would have been a lot different. So what are some, so maybe some people who are listening and their entrepreneurs or they have a side hustle that they're trying to grow. Through your experience, maybe give people one or two very specific use cases of how you've used AI that helped you as a small business owner, as an entrepreneur, grow. Yeah. So number one, right, is the call recording stuff that changed the game for me because trying to do that in the beginning of having to have every call on Zoom and try to process what happened.

It was daunting. So now kind of having this virtual assistant to recap my calls and look over everything, kind of frees me up. It's like kind of like having a VA. Hey, here's the call recording break this down for me. that's doing that, right? The other part is, like, in my CRM, using some things in your contact management system, right? Again, if you're starting a business, please get a CRM.

There's a lot of options. They're super inexpensive. You don't have to go to Salesforce, HubSpot. There are some things, but, like, get a CRM. And then in that CRM, right, use things that can give you predictable pipeline, right, to where you can start looking at some common factors once you get some conversations. some conversations going. You can start to analyze your highest scored stuff.

So that'll open up lead scoring, right? You can use like latest. And then that helped me, right? And once I got about 30, 40, 50 meetings under my belt, I kind of started understanding where things were going, where I was losing things. And so in your forecasting and your lead scoring, it'll prioritize kind of where your attention goes.

Because as a founder and as you get into it, you know this. Every minute of your day matters. And what are you doing with it and where are you putting it to? So if you've only got an hour to prospect for that day, you know, to keep your pipeline going, where are you going to put it? Exactly. That's one.

Gong, chorus is a cool one, especially if you have a sales team and you want to monitor, not monitor, but empower them in their phone calls, in their conversations, their demos. Gong and chorus are really great. Same with Wingman, right? They'll come in, they'll manage the conversations. They'll kind of give you the insights you need to navigate. those calls, especially for founders. Most of them are technical founders.

So they have a hard time transitioning to the founder-led sales motion or knowing how to go into the sales motion. So having these call recordings, review to game tape, baby, right? Look at it. Like learn how you're talking to your clients. I have a friend right now who can get the top of the funnel, the meetings on the book, but it's struggling on that backside on closing, right, and understanding that portion. So having a call recording tool and an AI tool to break down your transcripts,

give you some insights, makes it better, right? It will push you. So those are some things that, you know, I use when I first started. ChatGBTGBT is great for personalizing outreach. If you do want to go to that executive, you can go look them up, kind of get yourself a good sales message. It can create you cadences. I use reggie.

I use emoji and Elliot, right? It writes sequences. Man, listen, quick story, two seconds. Back in the day, right, I'd have to manage all my messaging for my team. Every Sunday night, I'd spend a few hours writing new cadences, new sequences they could leverage. And it was time consuming. Now, using AI, like reggie. com, A.I or just chat CBT as a whole, you can get a sequence written for you that'll give you the appropriate days between your outreach.

You know, all these things that most founders, they've never been in the top of the funnel. I'm very fortunate. I've got a leg up. I prospect of my entire life. That part of my business is not hard, right? Most it is. They don't know how to go to market. They're asking for coffee meets.

They're asking other founders who just pick their brain on their product, right? You love that. You got to love that, right? Everyone wanting to pick the brains. Tim, thank you. Tim, thanks for the comment saying, you know, hey, never thought of doing research on an individual.

That's a great, great use case. Jupiter, thank you for the comment saying this is quickly becoming one of my favorite live streams on the internet. And it's on LinkedIn. Go figure. Jupiter, shout out. Thank you. So, Tim, you know, one thing.

And my wife actually says this all the time. She says everyone's in sales. Like in the end, even if you're not an SDR, so, you know, if you're not a sales executive, we're all trying to convince someone or some company to do something. So in your experience, you know, what is the best? And maybe even for the everyday person who hasn't even used a lot of AI and maybe they're not super familiar. What would you recommend as the one best way to use AI to convince someone or to sell something? I know that's a tough question, but you've been knocking them out of the park so far.

I think it's about the personalization and the relevance, right? Again, use it to kind of get into the world of your buyer, right? I go in and look at, you know, what is a VP of Sales, a chief revenue officer, completely focused on, like what keeps them up at night? Now I can go tailor a sequence and a cadence kind of to that topic, right? Or I can go into a great demo discovery call because I had it pull together the entire internet database to kind of tell me what this person is focused on. What podcast have they been on recently, right?

It enriches that conversation versus me manually trying to pull all that through. And some tools are now doing that. They're giving you pre-meeting recaps given by AI that as you go into the call, it's already given you that stuff, right? some of those bullet points. And so that's where I recommend is, is use it to dig into your buyer or a specific individual. That's, that's my best advice is it does. It could scrub the entire internet. And if you upgrade, now, mind you, if you're on chat, TPD, there are two levels. One is very limited to prior to 2021. So you will run into roadblocks. And if you want an ego boost,

go ask it if it knows about you and it'll hurt your feelings. because it's like I don't know who this person is. It's like, cool. So it is very limited. But then if you go and upgrade right to the bigger one, it does have live web browsing. So it does, you know,

you can put in the LinkedIn profile and say, give me some things around this person that would highlight kind of their concerns, what they're looking to do. And then you can tie that in or bring up a podcast at a left field and say, Jordan, I love last week when you were on that podcast talking about

XYZ, you know, where you're completely in alignment. Can't wait to show you in the, this call how we'll tie into that kind of focus you have right now. Yeah. And they're like, oh, it's true. Okay. You know, so it enriches that.

So I think, I think this is a great way to, as long as we don't have any other, just super hot comments or questions come in. I'd love to end on this, Tom. So, you know, you've mentioned chat GPT from the beginning of the show to the end. I think that for people who are really serious about learning and leveraging AI, chat GPT seems like, you know, a good spot to start. So you mentioned, you know, kind of the free version and then the paid version. And obviously the paid version really opens, opens the doors to a lot of possibilities.

So if you were to say to anyone listening out there, you know, maybe they're like, oh, I don't need chat GPT or, hey, I don't need to learn it. How would you convince them, based on your experience? No, you should be using chat GPT. here's how it helped me very specifically with my role or growing my company. How would you convince someone? I have them give me an example. The best way is show and tell. That's how I look at it and everything.

Anytime there is apprehension, you know, there's people that aren't ready to do anything. I just show them and it blows their mind, right? Like, Jordan, what is the biggest challenge that you're facing, you know, right now with a magic wand? And you're like this, I'm stuck here. Cool. Let me show you something real quick. I'm going to prompt this into chat, GBT. I'm going to put this in here, watch my response to you and what I can get from you.

And I give them that and they're like, holy crap. And I'm like, I'm telling you like, it's a powerful tool if you want it to be. It's a supporter. It's a friend. Just don't lean into it. Like I said, it can make it kind of dumber because you get, you don't push yourself as much, right, to learn these things. So, you know, keep that balance. But I lead by show and tell.

I'm just going to show you an example. I'm going to walk you through. I thought I blew my wife, mine. my wife didn't know what it was and she was doing something for my son's school project and I said come here let me show you this and I just had to create me like like a subject name or a title for his report and she was like whoa and I was like I put in the keywords what we're trying to focus on and here's eight titles you can give that report and like my son loved them all and was like I want that one and I was like well there you go now my wife's like dude I love this thing and I'm like it's just got to show people if you're confident and you use AI and you're good with it like she's show people how you're leveraging it, like let them see it. Like I said, I'll talk to them about how I'm using it. And I'm like, other founders and consultants are like, Tom, how are you moving so fast? And I'm like, I'm leaning into this.

And they're like, well, wait a minute, I can't get the prompts to work for me. I can't get it to do what I need it to do. Jump on for a 30 minute call. I walk them through that. And they're like, what? I'm like, yeah. It's really, just talk to it like a friend, you know, put the prompts in, keep it very tight. You got a tweak.

It is not perfect. Yes. and all of this to end on, there's still a need for human touch. AI is not capable in replacing us just yet. But, you know, you've got to, you know, juice it up a little bit, tweak it a little bit. But it could be a resource for you. It doesn't have to be a scary thing. Take, use it.

Go learn books. I started doing it to learn books. Like podcast, break down the idea, you know. It speeds you up. It gives you what you need and cuts out all the fluff and the other stuff. and just gets down to the nitty gritty for you. I love it. So much value in 22 minutes this morning from you, Tom.

So you mentioned kind of show and tell. So he's been showing us a lot of what he's doing behind the scenes. And we're going to tell you about it in the newsletter. So if you couldn't type notes fast enough or if you didn't have an AI listening to this conversation for you and giving you feedback like Tom is doing, don't worry. Go to your Everyday AI.com. Sign up for the newsletter. We're going to be sending you a lot of these resources that Tom was talking about, some of the different tools that he's using and techniques.

Tom, thank you so much for coming on the show. Bright and early West Coast time, may I add. Thank you. Thank you for joining. Really appreciate it. Absolutely. Brother, thanks for having me. All right.

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shoot me an email info at your everyday a.a.com. I have a little surprise for you. So, thank you for joining us today. We hope to see you back tomorrow and every day on everyday AI. Thank you. Meet Firefly AI assistant. Now live in Adobe Firefly, the Allman One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create in your own words and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome while the assistant accelerates execution. Stand control with the ability to step in and refine at any time.

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