How to Leverage AI to Grow Your Sales Business with Richard Harris and John Barrows

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Welcome to She Sells Radio I have a very special unique interview for you today

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where I’m bringing back two of my most popular past guests Richard Harris and

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John Barrows to talk about something that we’ve actually never talked about on the podcast before which is AI and

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sales and if you are either a client of mine or a long-term listener you

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probably know that my personal passions are really more around helping you master the inner game of sales and

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business so that’s what we talk about a lot here on the show but with that said if you listen into episode 300 you heard

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me talk about how just committed I am right now to following the nudges being

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of service wherever I feel I can be of service and wherever I’m LED and lately I’ve just been bombarded with so many

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questions and opportunities around AI specifically in sales and so I followed that nudge and I wanted to bring you two

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real experts on that topic today so in a moment I’m gonna let Richard and John

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introduce themselves to you directly but if you want their full Back stories and some really really great sales interview

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content you can listen to episode 157 for my full interview with John Barrows and then episode 193 for my full

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interview with Richard Harris and I know both of these guys through the Salesforce sales influencers program I

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reached out to both of them directly to ask that they come on and speak about this topic because they’re both really

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I’ve watched them both be on the Forefront of helping their clients keep up with such a rapidly evolving business

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and sales climate like we’re in today and teaching their clients how to implement AI in really powerful ways to

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both grow their value in the marketplace as well as their revenue so John Richard welcome to cheese cells radio welcome

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back to She Sells Radio to both of you I should say yeah thanks for having us back thank you very much and John you

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know we’ve both done hosted about 400 episodes of our podcast I don’t think I’ve ever heard a better natural

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introduction natural I was gonna I was just gonna say like without reading a script or anything that was like that was like so good I’m so jealous oh my

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gosh what’s our what’s our uh parameters around language John and I love to get into debates and we might you know get a

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little aggressive and we want to be mindful to your audience we’ll put the what’s the E we’ll just put the E next

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to this episode I don’t know it’s fine you all just you you do you here on the show it’s all good that’s why I’m I’m

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really excited for this um and I’m going to kind of step back I’m going to ask some questions but I really want you

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guys to have the floor here um just because like I said like this is something that I’ve been getting a lot

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of questions on it’s not something I’ve been super focused on with my clients and I’ve just watched you two like really really Pioneer a lot of things do

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a lot of thought leadership in this space and so I’m excited to learn from both of you today too so why don’t we

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start with just super quick like who you are what you’re all about before we dive in in case somebody hasn’t listened to

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the past episodes so John I see you first on my screen just have you like introduce yourself who you are which

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you’re all about if somebody’s not familiar and then Richard will turn it over to you sure uh John Barrows’ CEO

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Silva or by CEO of JB Sales just relaunched and um yeah I would do sales

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training I work with some of the cool clients like Salesforce LinkedIn box trading all their reps on tactical stuff

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to try to stay ahead uh execute today and also prepare him for what’s coming tomorrow which is is rapidly arriving

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um Richard Harris from the Harris Consulting Group and Surf and sales um

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go to market strategy similar to John and I teach reps how to earn the right to ask questions which questions to ask

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and when um John and I do overlap people often wonder but we’re very very good friends

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like you know last year we had a nice Warrior Celtics bet and I won and this

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year we won’t um for those listening we I will say this

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that we’re not even Frenemies we’re friends and you know like it’s okay to be

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competitive with your friends absolutely I think that’s where a lot of this conversation will come into you’ll

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still feel that so I’m excited yeah it was like an intuitive nudge get them both on the show together so I’m excited

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to see uh to see what’ll come out of this and um and to get both of your perspectives on things so one quick

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thing I will say because for you as a listener you can obviously hear both of uh both John and Richard are very

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heavily involved with working with sales teams sales companies and I know we have both sales professionals and

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entrepreneurs who listen to this show so I just want to Tee It Up that regardless of whether you’re a sales leader a sales

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professional and entrepreneur you want to be really thinking about this and listening in on this because you’re

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going to get like I already know I’ve got my paper pen out here I know you’re going to get ideas for things you can be

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doing even if you’re an entrepreneur to implement this in your business and things you should be thinking about so with that gosh let’s get let’s get into

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it like let let’s just start off with what are some of the biggest ways right now so as we record this this is May

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2023 so one I think it’s important to maybe put a time stamp on that because I know this will be shifting and changing

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as we go a lot of times I do Evergreen episodes but I do want to note like this is obviously a very evolving topic as we

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speak but may 2023 what are some of the biggest ways right now and biggest use

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cases that you’re seeing for AI that you’re working on implementing with your clients um and I I don’t want to like be like

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use you know I don’t want a referee who starts first I’ll start here with Richard John jumping and then I want to be like a natural dialogue kind of from

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there so um yeah Richard you want to share what you’ve seen going on I mean I think it’s

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it’s been slowly progressing I think um I think to some extent it was a

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little bit even before chat GPT like I think the efficiency piece came and that

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wasn’t AI um per se but that’s where I think it happened

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you know that’s where it started right um with just the sales enablement platforms and then of course natural

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progression is how do we make it smarter right how do we make it better and work faster and so right now

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what I see and hear the most is around you know prospecting activities right

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um those kind of things they’re you know the that’s a piece there was and still

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is this understanding and analyzing um the psychology of an individual right

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like there’s so many tools out there now that will go tell us uh there’s a lease thing cut does Richard think how does John think and how to talk to them like

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that was sort of version one now with AI it will actually do a much better job of helping me write something in a way that

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at least will want to interpret it most likely or John and that’s that’s the big

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piece and you can use that at all parts of the funnel right now we hear about it at prospecting but I would still want to

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do that you know in a first sales call Post first sales call meeting notes uh if I’m being introduced to a new person

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um if running a demo or if they’re going to go into a you know a

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POC or something like that I but still use those tools now because I could

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better write those kinds of things and um you know you can also start to use it now how do I negotiate with procurement

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like you can find different ways to use it in a different place and I’m just starting to see

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tools I only know of one so far that can actually do call coaching so if you’ve

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got a remote sales team right and you can’t coach all the time this tool will do that and that to me is super

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impressive but um you know so I’ll pause there and let John jump in yeah yeah I

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mean all those I mean I would probably summarize it right now with research writing and follow-up uh are probably

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the the three biggest use cases that I would see one is research right you know where we used to have to go to

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somebody’s website look at their social profile look at all these different tools to find some relevant reasons to

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reach out to them now with tools like chat GPT and maybe not chat CPT because it is time stamped for two I think 2021

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but there’s a lot of them that are plugging in uh tools like chat TPT into

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another AI model and unleashing it on the ability to do research right really good research on accounts

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um so as far as preparation you know you can you could even take for instance somebody’s 10K or annual report court

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and you know copy paste it into chat EPT and say hey summarize this for me with the key takeaways and so now I can use

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that to you know be more educated with my Outreach when it comes to prospecting or as I prepare for a meeting so I think

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that’s one piece of it the other piece is writing as Richard said you know it it’s real good it’s it’s good it’s not

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great but I think I’m glad that it’s not great because I want AI to to do the

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majority of the heavy lifting for me but I want to be the last mile as a sales rep before it goes out the door so and

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that’s whether that’s an email or a podcast I’m sorry or a blog or a

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LinkedIn post it’s you can still tell when the AI bot is writing these things Sir John what’s an example there because

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I I you know what how do you know that it’s better to have the human piece right I

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guess so it does actually I’ll take that back it doesn’t matter to me it it in

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general I think it matters if you are your brand and you you have a voice out

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there and the reason I say that is because when I write I’ve done more than a few examples on LinkedIn where I’ve

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posted a pure AI right and it’s obvious that it’s not me you know because people

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know my voice people know my brand it’s close and I think it’ll get absolutely get better right by by the time it

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ingests all the information of me you know I could take every podcast and I could take every video I’ve ever done and put it into the system and I you

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know I haven’t spent the time to do that yet but I’m pretty convinced it’ll start to write stuff that sounds really you

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know very close to me I mean I just posted this last week on Friday just for some fun which was the AI you know AI

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version of me right it’s a it’s an avatar that talks like me looks like kind of looks like me and we did that

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all with free tools and so if you take the next deep and you say okay well if we paid for a few tools and we waited a

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month or two I mean you’re going to get a full-on AI version of John Barrows

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that looks exactly like me and sounds like me and the question is is where is the content going to come from right and

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I think this is something garyvee Gary vaynerchuk brought up recently what I thought was fascinating which this is

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because I always wondered like blockchain and Bitcoin and all that stuff like okay like who gives a right like just because somebody knows

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where it’s coming from like I could still have my image of an MF nft and who’s going to call the blockchain

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police on somebody right but what he said was now with original artists they

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can put their content on the blockchain to genuinely prove that it is theirs and

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therefore anybody taking information chat GPT included from it is going to

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have to have some type of accountability so I think that’s where we’re going with this um but we’re not there yet but man like

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I quite frankly think I’m the reason I posted that on Friday is because I it’s gonna be really interesting where

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this goes as far as trust is concerned because right now you put the thing if I’m scared about a little bit is people

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are putting information into chatpt and then they’re taking the information out of it and treating it as gospel right they’re like okay that’s the answer it’s

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like whoa whoa whoa whoa did you Source check this did you find out where this comes from and I mean at least half

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the half the internet’s total crap right it’s it’s total fake news and so it’s pulling information that is telling

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people and then all of a sudden they’re just regurgitating it so again we’ve missed the the foundational piece of

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Education of a lot of these reps like where us I think we’ve been in the game for a long time you know the three of us

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there’s some context to it so there’s there’s a foundation of understanding how to use these tools and to make us

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better whereas reps who are coming right in or individuals who are coming right into this AI world they’re that’s where

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they’re starting they’re not starting with the foundation they’re not starting with the fundamentals they’re starting with the AI tool and I guess if you use

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that to be curious to learn to then execute then great but I don’t think most people are I think most people are

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just using it to create off operational efficiencies to be better than they would be right because let’s face it

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like AI right now is better than probably 85 of the Reps I come in contact with

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um I mean are you seeing the same yeah I think so too um

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and so what’s interesting I was listening to John and I thought you know the two roles if I were thinking about going into sales in some way the two

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things I would probably start to look at more is um one uh Revenue operations because you

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still need someone to come and that’s like if you think about what John’s saying as a sales rep if I’m using it and aggregating all this data and

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information from message I need to take an Ops perspective of like go back and like let me just double check to make

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sure that sounds right like that’s the first thing the other is um sales leadership because the biggest

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challenge I see with AI is that it makes leaders lazy already we you know C levels and and

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Founders particularly you know in this SAS startup world that a lot of us live in I don’t I don’t know about you Elyse you know they think that sales people

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are TurnKey they think that anybody can manage a sales person and they can’t and even when they learn that lesson it

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takes them a long time I mean there’s a reason that VPS of sales only last 16 to 18 months it’s because their leadership

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doesn’t understand um what it takes and so I think the AI is going to help

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at a certain level but still that managing of a human right is still has

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to be a skill learned and I think that’s nobody’s going to want to be completely managed by a machine you know that’s

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lonely and isolated and so I think yes but uh by the way it’s

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not yes but it’s yes and but I don’t agree don’t just say no all right no I

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guess well I think let me put it this way yes I agree with you for the for the for the near term I questioned that in

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the long term and the reason I say that is because we’re all at an age where none of us grew up with AI native so we

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are always going to Crave that human interaction but my daughter’s 12 okay on

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Snapchat there’s an AI function on Snapchat that is her AI friend and what

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happens is and thank God it doesn’t prompt her automatically she prompts it so but if she prompts it at the end of

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the day saying hey how you doing it’ll re it’ll come back it’s like great how was your day and then she engages and

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engages and engages and the more she engages the more it learns from her because it’s on Snapchat it learns her what she likes and what she doesn’t like

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and all these different things and it becomes an extremely empathy and extremely friendly person to talk to

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now if you marry some AI Bots to that in

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the sense of like uh video right where it’s just an AI Avatar who’s talking to her as opposed to a chat

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now let’s think about her at school and I’m not saying this is my daughter my daughter’s you know pretty well adjusted

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she doesn’t get into this stuff you know I’ve held her but in general say you’re a kid and you’re at school and you pick you get picked on all the time you get

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you know called you know whatever you get called and you get picked on all the time and then you go home and you start engaging with this AI bot who’s super

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friendly super nice and super empathetic and has a has a face to it

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um as we fast forward this out how much are people going to really want to interact with people that’s the

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question I have right now it’s it’s I think we are always going to Crave interaction but I I’m curious about the

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10 to 16 year olds right now who 10 to 18 year olds right now who are trying to figure out this world in this such a

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up spot right and getting picked on all over the place getting harassed on social media and getting probably not

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good feedback from parents or friends or colleagues or work or any of that stuff and all of a sudden an AI bot was super

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nice and super knowledgeable can sit there with a bunch of answers right because my fear on on you know the

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reason I posted that on Friday was who would you rather talk to John or super John because I am one person and I

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have my own opinions and you could take all of my content you’ve ever seen and put it into a bot and then you could ask

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me not just that you can take every single piece of content from Sandler Richard Harris uh winning by you know

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every sales Guru on the planet and pump it through me and it’ll sound like I’m

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giving you the advice so the question yeah I’m just scared now like now we’re all gonna live

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in caves like Jesus am I wrong about that like I I just I I

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want you to be wrong about it how’s that for an answer I really hope I’m wrong about it but I I’m just watching what’s

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happening in front of us right now and I’m noticed I’m seeing how people engage and they want to engage more and more

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with robots I mean there’s there’s a study that came out with Gartner that said the client wants if you J if you um

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General out or advertise average out Millennials gen Z and Boomers

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uh 43 percent want a rep free experience 43 of clients in B2B want a rep free

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experience and that doesn’t include gen Z now the bet the the positive side of

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that the you know the benefit or I guess the good news is is that of those 43

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that wanted in a rep free and experience they had a 23 higher regret rate so they

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regretted the decision 23 more when they did not involve a sales rep so that to

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me tells me there’s there’s a chance right we still are a vital part of the sales process it’s just we got to change

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what that means we got to change what value looks like we got to figure out what we can do that a computer can’t and we have to engage at a human level

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because until computers buy from computers we’re no we you know there’s still a chance but once once computers start

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buying from computers then it’s a totally different story uh but I think there’s still a chance it’s just we got to keep evolving faster than ever now

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because I think the days of the no value interaction um from a client rep standpoint I think

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those days are over uh if you’re not adding value in a conversation right now as a rep then there’s no chance I’m

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going to pay attention to you if you’re going to just drone through your bank questions you know going through your stupid PowerPoint presentation and then

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throw a proposal at me like there’s I don’t I see Zero benefit and erupt doing those things

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yeah anything you want to yeah I was just gonna say like the the part that that

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that I’m connecting with with what John’s saying and I’ve been saying for a while and you know

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plug I’m working on a book is is you know bringing that Humanity back into sales right the the 43 percent

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probably believe that because of all the bad experiences right

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um now there is some value to look like if I go to Best Buy I go do my research

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before I show up and then I go ask questions at the end right that’s what I’m doing um in some cases right now I you know

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you know it also becomes interesting too the the piece that’s accelerating this

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around this not wanting a buyer you know not wanting a salesperson I believe is is coming out of the pandemic

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right everything shifted to zoom and you know good old-fashioned you know inside

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sales right people ask me all the time I don’t have to ask you John like bring my team on inside sales I’m like there’s no

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difference right you know there’s no difference um and so now the buyer their experience

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has changed there’s no such thing as a buyer starting their experience has changed and so they’re more comfortable having these conversations of 50 100 200

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300 Grand decisions and they’re realizing oh my God I don’t have to travel I don’t have to do this I don’t

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have to do that office space so that actually I think unintentionally has helped accelerate

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this AI piece on the back end from an experience perspective so it’s really kind of a couple of things that are happening into that Gartner study and in

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my belief system I don’t know how I’m sure Gartner has more data around it than I do you know

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I can go um you guys talk I’ll go check out Bard or chat

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but I mean I think that’s the that’s the thing to pay attention to right is is you know what is value look like

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these days from a sales rep what does it means exactly like I I asked my client I

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I asked reps all the time like you gotta ask yourself the question right now what can you do that a computer can

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because if you can’t really answer that question you you you’re in trouble you

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know what I mean and and if we look at you know on you know research and writing emails and sending sequences I

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mean there’s let’s put it this way the Reps who are and I don’t want to name names as far as you know tools are

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concerned but the Reps were just using the standard uh email tools to send out

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emails that are templated based on what marketing is telling them to do and effectively acting like robots there’s

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like tools out there with AI right now that can do it a thousand times better do I agree with the automated approach

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do I agree with the mass emails and the mass LinkedIn connections absolutely not but does an AI bot do it far better than

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any sales rep ever would hell yeah they do hell yeah they do so

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and I take a different approach I don’t mind that stuff I don’t I don’t mind like if I can do it

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in a way that seems genuine and human I don’t mind scaling now what I don’t like

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is spray and pray right that’s a very different approach right and so you know

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for example the one I’ll talk I’ll talk about LinkedIn tools because I use them all the time yeah I can have a LinkedIn

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tool go in pull up someone’s profile look at it and you know so if people like who

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looked at me and then I can also a day later make you like it make it make it go and like some post just click on that

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button for it so I’m doing that now the irony of that is sometimes it clicks on

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someone’s post it’s like six months ago well here’s the good news if someone only posted six months ago because it’s

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the most recent post do I care no what do I care and if nobody’s turned around and said how dare

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you to use a bot and they did I’d be like yeah I did yeah you know and I got your attention see it worked right

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so so well I don’t have a problem with some of that automation stuff um if it helps me get better at the job

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and I know that it can help people like again so John you two Elyse

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we all have a brand right we have a LinkedIn piece and we do that from the goodness of our heart we do we know to

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make more deposits than withdrawals I can’t remember who created that phrase and so when we’re putting out content I

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don’t mind using something like that because the long game is sure maybe I’ll get some business out of it sure however

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the content I’m putting out is meant to be helpful for people so for me it’s worth it if I’m a straight up

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traditional sales rep then if the to what John said some context needs to come into play

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that’s it’s such a fine line and it’s kind of it’s interesting to hear both perspectives because I’ve had some

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resistance around using any sort of automation tools there to like automate my content or put stuff out as me and

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sometimes I’m like well gosh is this just the way it’s gonna have to be if you’re going to be successful at some

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point I don’t know yeah let me ask you this would you ever have someone guest or a

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guest or ghost write a blog post for you and then you edit it and post it good question I have one of I I do I’d

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say 95 of my own writing right now I do have a really awesome but but think about it and how much time does it take

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you to write a post oh totally no it takes I mean like I’m with you it takes a while so what’s the difference between

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having a machine ghost ride it and I edit it and you know a person goes right

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and edit it and in either of those cases I’ve just created more time in my day to go do something right right so again

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it’s this context piece and being mindful to not spray and pray like in

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that sales perspective I also I mean going back to your point Richard I agree with you as far as like I I don’t mind

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the automation stuff and I actually think it’s going to ultimately be a good thing for us but not a good thing for

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sales reps uh especially front end of the pipeline sales reps and the reason I say that is because right now if you

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think of spam right the reason that none of us like spam is because it’s usually completely irrelevant right it’s this

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crap that I have no interest in whatsoever yup but why do I like Instagram

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well I like Instagram because I’ve trained Instagram’s algorithm because I’ve thumbs up thumbs down their ads I

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you know I like certain things I don’t like certain things so now almost every ad that I get from Instagram is something I kind of want I’m like oh

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that’s I never thought of that before that’s pretty cool yeah definitely right so think about all the information

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that’s out there about most of us right we got our LinkedIn profile we got our social networks we got all this public

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information about us who’s to say and there’s already a bot that you know stuff that does this uh that they can’t

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go out and find hyper relevance hyper you know personalized stuff and make a

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connection to the value proposition of a business based on those things and so I think actually maybe in a year our

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inboxes are going to be full but our inboxes are going to be full with that we actually think is good and

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relevant and something I might want and quite frankly do I care on whether or not a human sent that to me and the

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answer to that one’s absolutely not I could give a of the email the cold call that left a voicemail that got me

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to think about something the LinkedIn share like based on something else like I don’t care if that’s a human I care if

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it’s a human once I want to talk to somebody that’s the part I care about but to get my attention and introduce a

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new product service solution to me I could get I could give a if it’s a sales rep or not which is why I think it’s scary for sales reps specifically

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on the front end of the pipeline I agree on the front end I think the I’m going to jump in here at least yeah go ahead

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the podcast episode right I mean just sit back I’m gonna sit back and let you guys go yeah

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this is the part and I don’t think people talk about it people don’t know how to maybe John maybe the three of us

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should do something if I’m a sales rep if I’m an SDR the one thing and I bet we all

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might agree on this is how would I use AI right now to build my brand I would

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absolutely have it helping write some posts as an SDR and start posting one LinkedIn I would help but do those

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things post about the topics I’m an SDR and I don’t know anything about the industry I’m going to have it write some

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posts about the industry and I guess yes I’m going to audit it and those things but that to me is where AI can really

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help sales people and over time the thing I do like about AI is as a

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whole is that our EQ goes up we learn things we figure things out we can write things we can we can learn to be more

27:28

empathetic because we can get to better knowledge to understand so that would be the one thing I would tell

27:33

people they need to do is they should start working on their brand because I think I did a I mean I don’t have my

27:40

business without my brand right and um I got lucky when I got started and I had someone like John

27:47

there to kick me in the ass to say just go do this Richard you can do it however I still had to figure out some of the

27:53

other stuff along the way so the brand would be the big thing that it ties in with the question I was going to ask

27:58

both of you because I think it’s interesting to see how this conversation unfolds and to me it feels like there’s there’s kind of these two different

28:04

categories I want to touch on today through the rest of our conversation one is okay what are the highlights we

28:10

talked a little bit of like bad news of where we see it potentially going but what are the highlights and use cases

28:16

for both SDR someone in sales as well as I want to hear for both of you as entrepreneurs how are you using it

28:22

um and then two I think John it was to your point of like what does value look like now and how do we Richard like with

28:28

the book that you’re writing humanizing the process so I think let’s talk let’s talk good part of AI let’s talk a bit

28:35

like especially for I think it would be interesting to hear for both of you as entrepreneurs how you’re using it right

28:40

now in your business Richard you mentioned some already with LinkedIn but let’s talk that and then we’ll come back

28:45

to the human element from there so who wants to who wants to share some of

28:51

the tools the tips the things that you’re seeing it do well for you right now in business

28:56

yeah I mean I’ll jump in I think it’s I I think it’s a lot about the efficiency stuff right it’s research it’s curiosity

29:04

um one of the things that you know Richard said he’s writing a book I was you know still I’m still going to write a book but I was sitting on it for a

29:10

long time and I’ll give you an example and I you know when I had the chapter layouts if I wanted it and one of them

29:16

was you know start first one is uh the history of sales like a brief history of sales just so people have context

29:22

because you know our friend Todd Capone always jokes around about how like literally what’s happening right now

29:27

happened back in 1914 whether you believe it or not right there was a whole thing of oh is the you know

29:32

newspaper gonna uh you know replace the sales rep or something like that it’s like holy right so there’s

29:38

Innovation all over the place um and I didn’t know from a you know from a history standpoint I know a

29:43

little bit about sales history but I don’t know a ton and so all I did was type into Chachi BT hey write a story

29:48

you know write a chapter of a book called This is sales coming from John Barrows you know LinkedIn profile here

29:54

and talk about the history sales starting at 1918 and going up to present day and hitting these milestones and it

30:01

wrote something and I was like holy I’m like this is stuff like this is fascinating like I never knew that and

30:08

it forced me to go be curious to go learn more about it and to make sure it was validated and everything else so I think anything like a you know a starter

30:15

pack if you will like if you if you’re trying to get started doing anything I think AI is the place I would start even

30:20

as as stupid as this sounds people like you know well how can I use AI to be more effective in my business well guess

30:26

who you should ask that question to dead serious say hey I am a sales rep

30:32

and this is my role and this is the company I work for I’m trying to figure out how to use chat GPT to be effective

30:37

how should I use it and it will tell you it will straight up tell you and so I think those you know writing emails and

30:44

getting it almost there before it goes out the doors is great you know doing research on accounts I think is

30:49

fantastic you know and then and and then just having fun with it I mean my recommendation for everybody right now

30:54

is just start playing around with it it doesn’t matter what you’re doing just understand how prompts work because

31:00

that’s going to be the key it’s not going to be who writes well it’s it’s whoever comes up with the better prompts and tells the machine what to do because

31:06

the more specific you are with what you’re telling it to do the better answers you get and so that’s why I think just go in there and start asking

31:13

it to write a song for you create a poem you know uh do a love letter your wife or husband or significant other you know

31:20

what I mean don’t do that one [Laughter]

31:31

a South Park episode where uh one of the kids is you know all of a sudden you

31:38

know Cartman’s all pissed off because one of these kids is getting all the girls to be attracted to him and Carmen’s like what the hell and he’s

31:44

like you know because he’s chatting back and forth texting her and he’s like just watch he’s like every time she texts me I copy paste that and put it into chat

31:50

GPT and say give me a response it gives him a response he cuts and pastes and sends her and he sounds like the most

31:56

romantic understanding and he’s you know a kid so that’s I mean yes I agree with

32:01

you you don’t want to do that if you want to be authentic with your wife with your significant other but you know there’s again as long as it doesn’t Val

32:08

violate your values and as long as it’s close to your voice and as long as you take a look at it before it goes out the door I mean why not let it do 99 of work

32:16

before you can fire off some stuff there so gosh this episode is going down in history for multiple reasons one

32:21

including I think the first South Park mentioned ever on the she sells radio episode so

32:27

yeah so yeah I gotta ask a favor because I

32:34

can’t tell if it’s John’s long-windedness or my ADHD I can’t remember the original question I know we’re going to talk about the humanity

32:41

so we’re gonna so let me prompt you Richard I have one follow-up for John and I’m going to prompt you again all

32:46

the questions so well high level we’re talking like right now what are the use cases that

32:52

you’re seeing for AI in your business how are you using it but before super quick I want to just circle back to

32:57

something John said so John can you give an example if someone has never used chat GPT or Bard in that way like

33:04

and you talked about the importance of the prompts which I understand is really critical right like the quality of the prompt or the question will determine

33:10

the quality of the answer if I wanted it to compose a really great email to you

33:16

like what would be the prompt that I would put in specifically just so someone can hear what that would sound like yeah I mean I think you have to

33:22

have the inputs right so you have to have the person and the company that you want to reach out to and so you would

33:28

say write an email to LinkedIn Pro you know Richard Harris and then I would put his

33:34

LinkedIn profile in there um from the Harris Consulting Group put their

33:39

website in there about how I John Barrows can help support uh Richard’s

33:47

growth initiatives based on some either social posts he’s just sent or you know

33:52

some news about his business and see what it comes up with interesting you know that’s not a perfect one but it gives you the sense

33:59

like you say basically go look at this person and their company and then write an email as if it was coming from me

34:05

about how we can best support their growth efforts see what it comes up with and then it’ll go out there and it’ll

34:10

research and we’ll find some stuff now again be cautious because again chat gbt is a time stamp thing that only goes up

34:17

to 2021 so it’s only going to be pulling that’s why it’s not great that’s why there’s some of these other additional

34:22

tools that you have to use to get it open to the current Internet if you will

34:27

um but those are the type of things I would write in or you know you could take your messaging that you’ve already

34:32

created and say hey could you write them an email right if you have some elevator pitches or whatever they are could you

34:39

write an email to this Persona about based on some of their priorities in

34:45

today’s in today’s market and how our solution can help

34:50

awesome um I had a follow-up I lost it I mean come back Richard go ahead tell us you

34:58

already shared LinkedIn some of the ways that you’re using it yeah I’ve actually had it um write a contract for me I have

35:04

heard it yeah I’ve heard about that I’ve had it review a contract and I’ve said you know if my concern or these things

35:12

are out getting paid or whatever you know what should I look for in this contract I’m also you know like I’m not

35:18

hiring a lawyer I’m sure if I were you know if I’d have a lawyer and if and if it’s a if it’s a big enough deal I’ll

35:25

have a lawyer look at it right like God I know John has a much bigger deal so I would assume he’s got uh well he has

35:31

someone on staff actually I know that that does some of the stuff for him so those are the interesting places that I

35:37

think it’s really helpful um I did uh I did use it to write a song

35:42

and to Britney Spears like and I said oops I missed it again and I had it right along like I missed my goal like I

35:48

missed my whatever legal oops I missed it again and uh and then our buddy Scott Lee’s

35:54

had some had to do something too so uh for a song I can’t remember maybe it was a Dylan tune I’m not sure but uh

36:00

those are the places I see it I see it um yeah I used I’ve always been a fan of

36:06

whenever I would negotiate with someone from a different anywhere really in the south in New York or you know Boston or

36:13

in Germany or Italy or whatever I will I would go to I would go to Google and say negotiating

36:19

with someone in Boston right and it would tell me how you know someone has written that article

36:24

now I can get an aggregation of that information right from different places and different sources so I’m not

36:30

spending my time clicking on 12 links right the little magic Blue Links so that’s a way that I I like to use it in

36:37

a healthy way um and so I you know I’m always trying to look at what what am I doing that I hate

36:44

about the job and then I’ll ask chat GPT or I use Bard a little bit more

36:51

um is you know what suggestions do you have to make this faster

36:57

um and so that to me is is an important piece um

37:02

and and then I’ve asked for people I’m gonna go like how should I talk to you know like John said but a little bit you

37:07

know how should I negotiate with this person versus you know how should I approach them so those those are the

37:14

places in my business I’ve been using it um and I have used it to write some blog posts I have used it to get me started

37:21

on some things and then I still have to go spend 20 minutes you know 10 minutes editing

37:27

it um but part of that it could go faster if I wasn’t such a perfectionist trying to outsmart the machine I know

37:34

plenty of people who take it and be like okay three minutes scan yep change that that’s it I think with that I’ve done

37:40

that too I don’t have a problem with it I actually think that’s a really interesting takeaway that I have not used it for

37:46

before like you know what I should do I just thought of this so I use active campaigns right I wonder it would be

37:52

cool which is my newsletter if I went to if I could put a chat GPT

37:57

and say what is consistently making my highest open rates my highest open rates

38:03

and have it tell me you know how would you I don’t know I need an integration

38:09

because it needs some sort of integration okay different emails and check the data right you’re gonna need some kind of integration

38:15

I just thought about that now like that to me would be really helpful and I could see a lot of people using it to do

38:22

something like that so totally which ties back in and I want this to probably be like from here we’ll talk more about

38:28

the humanity piece of this but final question just off of what you both said is that it’s really interesting to think

38:34

about so the tools that Bard chat GPT need to integrate with you know John you

38:40

talked about like chat GPT needs something to make it relevant past 2021 Richard the example you just brought up

38:45

there need to be something to integrate with activecampaign are you all comfortable mentioning like some of the other tools you’re using or things

38:51

you’re seeing for integration like what else again just think about someone who’s like a novice here like what other

38:57

tools do you need to make this successful yeah I don’t know the technical I don’t

39:04

know the technical details I just know that there’s a lot of different tools that I’m looking at whether the ones that I’ve I I personally have yet to

39:11

integrate uh like a chat TBT with said tool to be able to do this but there’s a lot of tools out there that are free or

39:17

whatever but Bard is a good one right because Bard is it that is the the internet right so that is leveraging

39:23

openai but it’s also pointing at the the entirety of the internet which is why it’s probably better than chat GPT in a

39:29

lot of ways but the Integrations I think that’s where what you look for is you look for the different segments that you

39:35

can automate that you can use this tool and you use the free stuff that’s out there and then if you can find that

39:41

efficiency if you can find that real world use case it’s going to save you a bunch of time then you go look for the

39:46

integration component to it whether it’s an integration or a separate excuse me separate tool that does the same thing

39:52

but has the integration already built in because all these all these big companies specifically are integrating

39:58

It Anyways like micros I actually think Microsoft’s gonna come out on top way out on top on this one

40:03

um and and you know they’re the sleeper that nobody’s talking about because I saw their release of open AI into office

40:11

365. and you’re now in your PowerPoint presentation and you can just tell it

40:16

hey put together a PowerPoint presentation for my upcoming meet meeting with the board of directors or

40:22

whatever and it’ll do it for you um Excel hey go look in this Excel sheet mix and you know create a create a chart

40:28

that shows this that and the other thing and it’ll do it and it’s all going to be native in the email client right because

40:33

Office 365 that’s where people live that’s where I know I live I haven’t moved you know I don’t have Gmail Gmail’s doing the same thing though

40:39

Gmail is going to embed it into their Gmail system and so if you think of that like I I I worry for a lot of the

40:47

platforms Point Solutions all that stuff because a lot of these big ones who are embedded with where we work right

40:53

anytime you ask somebody to go outside of where you work on a day-to-day basis that’s a bad that’s you know you’re

40:59

losing adoption just by asking me to click one step outside of whatever it is

41:04

so if you can come inside my email and live in there and help me write and everything else then I think a lot of

41:10

these other companies are going to be in real real trouble so that’s why I think it’s about looking and finding the operational efficiencies and the areas

41:16

that you can use this and then then looking for either a potential tool that can integrate or a platform that already

41:23

has it or whatever um yeah it’s interesting um you know I don’t know I mean I just

41:29

live in this world right here you know John say Office 365 and I’m like I know I’m technically older than John but he

41:36

acts older than me just wait man just wait it’s coming back

41:41

again and I agree with him I it’s interesting I think there’ll be two or

41:46

three leaders out there and then there will be a lot of Niche players right like there’s going to be somebody for

41:51

code development that that chat can’t you know someone’s just gonna get better

41:57

at it right um and they’ll probably build it off of chat GPT and you know and then just make

42:02

it accelerate and stuff like that um do you want actual tool names or do you want to know what the tools do like

42:07

I think actual tool names and what they do and like like brief yeah brief synopsis would be helpful so and so it

42:13

is a race right so I you know I think gong and chorus you know will do it uh

42:18

Outreach and sales Loft and um those places I think Atrium will do I

42:24

think atrium’s got real unique play uh there’s a new one you know like Atrium

42:30

and I’m an advisor for so I always like to let people know that um and then uh there’s a new one I’m an

42:36

advisor for called Wonder way coach and that’s the one that’s actually you’re gonna you know have your call recording

42:42

and it’ll give feedback to the rep coaching the rep like so that remote sales team piece where they can get some

42:49

level of feedback as opposed to taking a Gong call and having to listen to it and

42:54

do those things and I think the Integrations there will happen um that to me is that to me is like one

43:00

of the best ideas and I’m hoping I’m hoping those guys I’m an advisor so but

43:05

I’m hoping I’ve yet to see anybody who has that yet like I even asked John before I told him what it was that he

43:11

seen it’s like no I think the biggest thing people need to look out for if you’re thinking about Ai and any of

43:16

these tools is is it really AI or is it just aggregating a bunch of right because they’re all claiming they have

43:23

ai right and it’s like yeah I don’t know maybe you know you got a link right

43:29

um yeah sure if you can help me write an email that’s that’s ai-ish right

43:35

um you know but is it I mean I I guess it is you know so it’s and the funny thing

43:41

is you know it became public in November it got legs in February like in the

43:49

general public so to speak started to get the legs and now we’re here in May of 2023 and in three months it’ll change

43:56

again absolutely like it’s just Excel because it just accelerates right it’s Sky now like this thing’s just gonna

44:01

keep learning absolutely yeah this is gosh I’ve learned so much from both of

44:07

you in this um and I think I want to so I want to wrap with just one question

44:12

for each of you and uh because I want to be I want to be mindful of everyone’s time here but just tying it all together

44:18

here so it’s kind of like we’ve talked about ways in which this could go a dark path we’ve talked about some really cool

44:24

uses that you’re both seeing both for sdrs for entrepreneurs let’s talk about

44:30

bringing it home like how do we how do we continue to bring value right what does that look like

44:37

um you know John you talked about changing what value looks like Richard you’re obviously you’re focused on

44:42

Humanity of sales and I want to give you each just like a minute let’s let’s call it a minute in case you go a little over

44:48

but let’s call it a minute to talk about what you’re thinking about now what you’re coaching your clients to do now

44:54

before we we rap and tell people how to connect with you yeah you want me to go or yeah yeah yeah

45:01

um so I think the the key is to work on right now are and I know it sounds old

45:07

school but fundamentals so like we’ve lost we’ve over engineered the sales process over the past years we’ve looked

45:13

for the sign we’ve looked to solve the problem with technology and now it’s getting exponentially worse and the

45:19

problem is is that now that their clients don’t want to talk to us more and more and the Reps don’t have the

45:24

fundamentals to fall back on uh they’re in trouble right they don’t know how to have a conversation they don’t know how to have empathy they don’t have business

45:30

Acumen they don’t have genuine curiosity and that’s what I think we need to try to figure out a way to teach them I

45:36

think we you know I think tools like open Ai and chat EBT you can use to improve your business Acumen but you

45:42

can’t just ask it the question then regurgitate the answer like you ask a question because you’re curious I actually think you can use chat CPT to

45:48

teach curiosity right keep asking keep asking keep asking um so those are the three things that I

45:54

would that I’m encouraging might you know clients that I work with to focus on on his business Acumen curiosity and

46:00

emotional intelligence and being able to use these tools and actually show the

46:06

client how to use these tools most other clients are in the same exact spot as we are as far as you know chat as far as

46:11

all this AI stuff they have no idea what’s going on so bring ways that you can you can show them how to increase

46:18

their efficiencies by using these free tools even if it has nothing to do with what you’re selling them right that’s

46:24

like we got to start getting out of the realm of adding value just based on what we have to offer with our product and

46:31

services we need to open up about how we can add value in ways that is has nothing to do with us to show people

46:37

certain things because that’s what’s going to leave an impression if I can walk into a cro’s office and show me by

46:42

the way can I show you the research how I got what prompt I use to write that email to get your attention like can I

46:48

show you how to do that and by the way if you do business with me or not like just go ahead and have your team start playing around with it like that’s going

46:54

to leave a far better impression than telling you I’m the greatest sales trainer in the world and everybody’s in a leading provider of and all that crap

46:59

so I think that’s the way we got to start looking at it well I’m just making sure that I get a full two minutes like John did because it’s like a

47:05

presidential debate over here you let him go over so I expect the same

47:11

courtesy and this last 20 take us home Richard you’re using every two minutes my friend yeah

47:17

um of course we forgot the question again no um the I agree with you with John 100

47:23

about the EQ that that’s the piece and and you know in the training I do and and I know John does this too I I very

47:30

specifically talk about psychology and how humans make decisions because I think that’s a real important thing and

47:36

so much and I think we all know so much of what we teach is life skills as much as it is sales

47:42

skills like there’s nothing we teach that you can’t apply in life right other

47:47

than Maybe I don’t know how to send a well even a cold email like you could still how do I

47:53

communicate with somebody but um so the benefits I see around the humanity side is

47:59

um is that it should help us improve our EQ so let’s say I go ask chat EBT how do I

48:04

do this and then I go do it in a sales call well now my EQ just went up right like I can

48:11

use this to self-learn and then if I do it three or four more times or if I try something it doesn’t work after a couple

48:18

of times well what this didn’t work you know Bard or Chachi BT what other suggestions like so there’s and and that

48:25

that alone just the act of having Chachi PT I think helps with the Curiosity

48:32

piece that John’s talking about like it allows you a place to go be curious in a

48:37

different way and get a more human natural response and so for me it’s about that EQ piece that I that I see

48:44

it’s such a great piece that can subliminally get back to the humanity

48:49

piece right it’s not about like I said earlier it’s not about the cold email right like that’s where we are right now

48:55

go deeper and we go deeper into the sales funnel on the sales cycle it’s going to bring up the EQ and I

49:02

think that’s going to help and I think that’s going to help a lot of early career reps accelerate in ways that just

49:10

wasn’t didn’t work for us we just we didn’t have that opportunity right like I don’t you guys are still younger than

49:15

me you then either of you know what microfiche is like yeah

49:21

I haven’t heard of it there you go there it is I’ve heard of it

49:27

I’m going to tell my kids I’m gonna say hey guys go go use this fax machine they were like what the yeah

49:34

you’re in the Dewey Decimal System world my friends right guys this was awesome thank you so much

49:40

I know we’re like right at time um normally I would go on and on with Recaps and takeaways I want to honor

49:46

everybody’s time there’s a ton I got out of this I know everyone listening did as well too John tell everyone where they

49:52

can connect with you then Richard tell everyone where they can connect with you and we’ll uh we’ll wrap yeah just check out my new site it’s jbarrows.com. So

49:59

letter j b as in boy a r r o w s.com everything there you get free content and all sorts of ways to connect with me

50:04

on Instagram on LinkedIn and everything else amazing yeah uh the Harris Consulting Group you got to put the uh

50:11

you can also find me at Richard Harris on LinkedIn I’m the one with a little goofy trademark uh you know

50:17

um so you can find me there and then here’s the part that’s always fun write this down

50:27

415-596-9149-415-596-9149 my real cell phone number John and Elyse, have it they could probably verify it I would

50:33

encourage you to text me to say hey I’m texting you from She Sells Radio so I will answer the call or respond but I

50:40

get a hold of me the funny thing is I put this out everywhere nobody ever calls like maybe one I think

50:45

that’s a fitting ending the Personal Touch to a really powerful conversation about AI so hey guys thank you both so

50:53

much amazing as always and to you my listener gosh go connect with John and Richard I promise like you will be so

50:59

you you your education levels will be insane for what you learn from them you’ll be inspired you’ll be motivated

51:05

you’ll be educated like we talked about today so go connect with them um thank you both again for being here.

51:11

Thank you to my listener for being a part of the community. We’ll see you in our next episode. Bye for now.

51:16

Elyse, thanks.