The B2B SaaS buying process has been broken forever. Some forward-thinking companies have adapted to reducing friction, but with new AI tools dropping every day, are we seeing the end of the inbound SDR?
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So, okay, what's up?
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How's it going?
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It's going good, going good.
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Another week in the books.
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I wanna talk about something that happened to me this week
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that I think is interesting and it was really a surprise
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to me, to be honest.
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PostScript has a, we have a big project coming up
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that required me to do a couple of demo requests
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on software companies' websites.
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I haven't done those in a while because, you know,
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people aren't, like we talked about last time,
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people aren't buying software.
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So, it's been a minute.
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And in both cases, and look, I'm not trying to like,
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you know, pump myself up here, but like,
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I'm filling out the form, it's like, Mike Mannheimer,
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here's my LinkedIn profile, like,
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Chief Marketing Officer at PostScript,
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like it's like, what's your budget range for this?
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And like, tens of thousands of dollars, right?
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In both cases, I got set up with the meeting,
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probably slower than I should have been,
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but got set up with the meeting.
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And in both cases, it was an inbound BDR qualification call.
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And I hit up Dan, my sales counterpart at PostScript,
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and I was like, what, like, is this, am I crazy?
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Like, I thought this was gone.
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Like, we have all these signals, we have all this data,
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like, what are you trying to qualify?
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Like, I get it if someone's like,
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you look them up there, like the intern or whatever,
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like you gotta like ask them to be quiet.
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But, you know, it's like, we're a large company,
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it's raised $100 million, I'm a sea level executive
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at the company, it's me, like, it's not like a fake person.
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So, he was like, well, I think everyone still does
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these calls, 'cause like, we don't do that at PostScript.
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Like, somebody does a demo request,
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we see that they're like this founder, the VP of Ecom,
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at a qualified Shopify store, we put them on with, you know,
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someone who can help answer their sales questions immediately.
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Like, we only call if we need to,
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but I could tell I was being forced through
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like a mandatory call process,
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I thought that was like a relic of the past,
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like, have you experienced this?
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What's your take on this?
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Well, first of all, I'm still waiting for your form submission
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to come through the audience plus...
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(laughing)
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No, I mean...
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- And your form is quite funny.
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- That was, oh, okay, that was funny.
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No, I'm kidding.
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You know, we know this guy very well close to the company
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named Obed Durani, and he just posted this video today
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that like, is very timely for this conversation.
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Wouldn't it be crazy if when we ask people,
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when we have a button that says talk to sales,
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if you could actually talk to sales on the other side,
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like, wouldn't that just be mind-blowing?
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So no, it's really interesting, right?
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Because, you know, I think the entire like role of the SDR
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is really being challenged a little bit in this world.
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Like back in the bull markets, back when we worked together,
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it was like, well, you have so much volume
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that you have to like qualify people through
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and you need to run them through what band or whatever
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before you get them on the phone with an AE,
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because the scarcity there was the time of the rep.
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I don't know that that's, I mean,
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I could be proven wrong, but I don't know
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that that's the current reality of the software sales reps
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day in and day out today.
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So I'm with you, I think, you know,
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if you have someone, if you're able to qualify off of a form,
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then why on earth would you introduce friction
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to the process?
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Like let's get this high-value contact
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through the process to a rep as fast as possible.
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- Yeah, and I'm not like, you know,
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I understand not letting everyone get onto an AEs calendar,
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even if the calendar has a bunch of spots on it.
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But I'm saying like, I'm knowing what I know.
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I think in both of these cases,
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I am very clearly the decision maker
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at an ICP level account.
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- Yeah.
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- And I have a bunch to say about the role of the BDR
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in the future.
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I actually think they're gonna probably be like,
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less disrupted than people currently are saying.
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But yeah, but I take like,
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it's like a customer first approach to it.
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It's like, you said with friction,
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like you don't want to introduce friction
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where it's totally unnecessary.
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And we have all the data, we have all the signals,
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you're qualifying through a form,
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you can enrich with every piece of data ever made.
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So like, why?
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Like it was really surprising to me.
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And I also had like,
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a experience with one of these vendors
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that was actually really positive to your talk to sales thing.
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The BDRs I talked to in both of these qual cases
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were very, very good, awesome.
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It was fine, good experience.
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- How long were the calls?
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- The calls were both about 15 minutes.
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- Okay.
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- The problem, like they did a really good job.
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I also think like there wasn't much information
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for me to get that like they could give me.
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I was like, hey, like looked at the website,
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I have like a general understanding about how this works.
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And then I would say what I thought
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and they'd be like, yeah, that's pretty much it.
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So we're gonna get you set up.
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I'm like, well, what was the point of this?
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It wasn't that they did a bad job.
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It was like, obviously someone was telling them
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that they had to do that.
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But it was definitely a waste of time.
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Like if I was like a jerk,
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I could have like freaked out
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and sent a scathing email to the CRO
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or even worse posted a LinkedIn, you know,
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hot take dunking on a poor and bound BDR.
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I would never do that.
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- Or quote a podcast episode.
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- Yeah.
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- They don't know.
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- Not naming names on the show.
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- Action, that was a safe.
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- Yeah, come on.
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- No, the BDRs did a great job.
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It's obviously that they're following the process.
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But I just think like the process was totally unnecessary.
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And then I actually needed information
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from one of these vendors faster
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than I could wait for this call that they got set up.
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So I hit up the rep directly on LinkedIn.
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I said like, hey, I have 10 minutes worth of questions
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that I needed to answer to them today.
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Here's my cell text to me.
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And he did in like one minute.
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And he was like, I'm free to chat for five if you want.
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And I called him.
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We hashed it out.
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It was great.
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And like that was a really good experience.
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And to your friend who said,
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like what if you click talk to sales and you talk to sales?
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That was like a way better buying experience.
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I like built rapport with this guy.
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He was available when I needed him.
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He answered the questions that I had
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and wasn't trying to like tell me his book.
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He was like, what do you need from me today
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to do what you need to do?
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Very helpful, 10 minutes long, great.
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We still have our call scheduled.
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So now coming into that call,
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like I'm more excited and happy
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and I already helped me out.
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So I don't know.
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I just think like people should really think about
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like getting to that faster.
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And in the idea of protecting someone's calendar too,
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like the calls don't all have to be 45 minute demos.
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Like the buyers really sophisticated at this point.
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Like get them what they need
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to be able to help them make a decision.
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You have to listen to what they want and be flexible
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on the call.
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But I think people are just like,
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everyone goes to RKO.
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You see the slide of like the process.
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And it's like form to inbound BDR,
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then inbound BDR call to 45 minute demo
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where the first 30 minutes is like,
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here's who invested in us.
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Here's how we think about the world.
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And like you need to educate your buyers sometimes,
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but I think nowadays with all the information we have,
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like it'd be a lot more flexible than that.
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- Do you think that's what drove it?
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- Yeah.
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- You only an SQL until you were able to like have that call
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and then there was no way because of some internal process
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or funnel like exit criteria that
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- Yeah, I think it's all process driven.
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It's like there's a process that we need to follow
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the CRM and the rules in it are driving the rep behavior.
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And so like if somebody,
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if the AE who was assigned to my account,
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saw me do the demo request,
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he would have to go like ask his manager,
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Hey, you know, Mike, the CMO at the company
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I've been trying to reach out to just did an inbound demo
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request, can I circumvent the process to be locked in?
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That's like a crazy thing to have to ask.
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- Right.
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- And it frustrates, I'm sure it frustrates the AE's
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and the BDR's, right?
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You know, what if you could go do this whole thing,
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monetize this, this lead faster?
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And it also frustrates the buyers, like, you know,
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there's a lot of information on a website.
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I can get a pretty good amount of it.
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I can go on YouTube and probably see a recorded demo
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of any software I want.
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So I just think people need to challenge their,
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you know, their process slides a little bit and say, like,
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you know, where can we fast track some of these discussions?
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Because if you move at the speed that's being dictated
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by an informed buyer, you'll probably have a higher
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likelihood of selling something faster.
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- Yeah, absolutely.
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- Like it benefits everyone.
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I was just surprised.
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I was like, oh, I didn't realize this like hard
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and fast rule was there even in cases where it's like,
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high ICP, you know, you're talking to the DM,
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you've established through the form that there's budget.
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So like we got, we got all the ingredients here.
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Like let's just sell some stuff.
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So I was surprised that's not what I was experiencing.
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- Well, I want to ask you about your comment though
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about like the future of the role itself.
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Because I view a distinction between,
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which I know these are just acronyms for everyone,
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but like SDRs versus BDRs or whatever,
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where like inbound or said another way,
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in human beings that are inbound gatekeepers
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to the sales team around inbound demand.
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So whether that's a demo request
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or any other like form of hand raisers.
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And then BDRs who are human distribution, right?
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They are people that are using tools to push the message
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to your ICP, your target accounts or whatever.
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Now, I think there's a lot of,
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first of all, I think people are grouping these two
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kind of distinct roles together
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when they're kind of plotting their demise of sorts.
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I don't think that's all together a good thing.
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I would argue or I'm sitting, is that outbound
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or the kind of BDR function,
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as I'm defining it here,
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is still very important, but pretty,
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but it's changing quite a bit, right?
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Like the channel mix is changing,
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you know, is the boiler room kind of sales floor
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kind of model effective in 2024 or anymore?
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But I for one tend to believe there is something there still
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for human beings doing outbound selling basically
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into our target account list.
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But I'm not so sure about the SDR,
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maybe to your very point,
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can technology, dare I say it, AI agents,
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something help do a more efficient job
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of getting a form fill like you at least,
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maybe there's some data challenges
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with really automating a lot of this
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for someone that isn't identifying as
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a chief marketing officer for a well-known company.
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Do we need SDRs in the future?
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- Yeah, I think there are definitely a bunch of cases
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where the answer is like, absolutely yes.
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And the reason I think humans need to be involved,
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whether it's an inbound or an outbound sort of capacity,
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is because like the hard thing to do is like,
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what you're really going for in both cases is a response.
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And it's surprisingly difficult, way more difficult
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than you think, even an inbound,
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like I can't tell you the amount of like people
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who fill out a form or download our app.
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And then you're like, hey, great,
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like you look like a great fit,
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like what questions can I answer for you?
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Can I get you set up with an onboarding person?
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Like we're trying to serve their request,
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dark for a month, two months.
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- Yeah.
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- I don't think that you can totally automate
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that process at least definitely not today.
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You know, you need somebody who like understands
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your business, can use the data to decide
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who is worth trying to drive outreach to.
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And then the whole point of it isn't,
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is to create a response,
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not just to distribute something.
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You know, like, and I think that that's really,
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that's really where the crux of, you know,
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outbound and inbound prospecting
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has to have the human touch in my opinion.
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Because it's really about, you know,
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you have to do the pattern interruption
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and cut through the noise.
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The noise is just whatever everyone else
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is doing all of the time.
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So like people are like, oh, AI's gonna fix that.
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Well, when everyone's doing AI,
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that's just gonna be the new noise.
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- The noise.
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- And so what you really need is people
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who understand your business very deeply,
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high business acumen,
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and who have high creativity
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that results in responses from prospects,
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whether or not they're inbound or outbound.
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That is going to be a very long time
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until that's fully automated.
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I think that AI can help all these things be faster,
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they can help BDRs or STRs or whatever you wanna call,
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call the title.
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People who are doing prospecting,
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whether it be inbound or outbound,
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I think AI can help them a lot,
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can make them a lot smarter, a lot faster,
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can feed them insights that help them do what they need to do.
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But I think, you know,
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we're trying to get a human being
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to respond to another human being
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via creativity and business value.
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For now, and for in my opinion,
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for the foreseeable future, that's a human's job.
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- Yeah, I think that's right.
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I think that's right.
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But it's interesting enough you saw the GPT-40
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like demo or whatever,
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with the support use cases of voice,
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basically what you call an AI agent,
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two of them talking together,
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one on behalf of someone trying to return something,
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and the other one is a support rep.
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And again, this was a demo for whatever,
15:28
who knows what went into it.
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But you can start seeing a window in the future
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or at least that use case of a support,
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the customer support representative,
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which might be actually quite disruptive
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to anyone working in a call center
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from a post sales perspective, at least,
15:45
or from a BPO or something along those lines.
15:48
- I think it has to do with,
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is there a direct path?
15:53
Like, when someone needs to make a return,
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and then there's a return process.
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- Yes.
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- It's like a discrete thing, you know,
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like we're trying to go down a path
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that's been basically fully defined
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because there's a set of steps that need to be done
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to be able to make a return.
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- Yeah.
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- I see how AI can automate either all
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or a big chunk of that process.
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And I expect that that's happening today
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for working with the orgs,
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and it'll happen for a lot of orgs soon.
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Like there's, if you, whatever industry you work in,
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I can speak to this because in E.com,
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I see it all the time.
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There's at least a handful of people
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who are attacking AI in support-related use cases.
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And I think the reason that we're seeing it there
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is because the processes that people need to do.
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In E.com, it's like, where's my order?
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I need to make a return.
16:53
- Yeah.
16:54
- I ordered the wrong thing, like all of that sort of stuff.
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There's those kick off set paths
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of things that need to be done
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to resolve the customer's issue.
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The AIs can be pretty good at that
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'cause it's trying to move through a set of paths.
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What I'm talking about with the BDR is like,
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what, like the AI would have to say,
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what does a CMO care about?
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What does my product do that attaches to those things?
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How is this CMO's particular company performing
17:26
in the market?
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Are there opportunities for me to like,
17:29
give some business value to them
17:31
and cause them to respond to me?
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That's just like a, there's no set path for that.
17:36
That requires, I think, a lot of human creativity.
17:41
- Yep.
17:42
- And I'm open to being totally wrong about this,
17:45
but I just don't see a world where it's doing all of that
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and then let's call it the next like three years.
17:56
Could it be 10 years that's happening?
18:00
- Maybe.
18:01
I'm not totally sure.
18:03
But getting back to where we started this conversation,
18:07
like it doesn't require AI to see that like your ICP DM
18:12
at your ICP account filled out a HubSpot form on your website.
18:19
And like, it's just funny to me.
18:21
Like even this, even what we're talking about,
18:23
what about like one day, could you automate out everything?
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People can't even get me on the phone with the rep
18:28
within the hour of me basically being like,
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I have money here, like somebody talked to me and take it.
18:34
We can't even do that.
18:35
We're talking about like automating these like crazy,
18:39
crazy business processes.
18:41
So I think, you know, there's probably between now
18:45
and when AI takes your job,
18:46
there's probably a lot of opportunity for like you
18:51
to clean up your house, build a better business process,
18:55
do things that make the revenue cycle happen faster
19:00
and create better experiences for your buyers.
19:02
Right now, you don't need AI to do that.
19:04
That's just about letting your really smart humans
19:08
do the right thing for the customer
19:10
based on what they can see from the form submission.
19:15
I think based on my experience this week,
19:17
a lot of companies still aren't even doing that.
19:20
- So I agree with your broader point.
19:22
- Yeah.
19:23
- No doubt about it.
19:24
But I'll challenge kind of how you got there a little bit.
19:26
- Okay.
19:27
- From my perspective, like what I'm learning.
19:29
I agree that, or where I thought you were headed with that
19:35
was the difference between support and an inside sales
19:38
kind of call process or whatever is,
19:41
there's really not a need for creativity in post sales,
19:46
like, you know, read the sort of like standard operating
19:50
procedure, move the customer through the set process
19:54
and do what you have to do.
19:56
There's, I mean, again, with full respect to that role,
19:58
there's just not a lot of like room or margin
20:01
for creativity, it's not needed.
20:03
Whereas your broader point around from a quality perspective,
20:08
from getting a response perspective,
20:10
from an attention 1000%, completely agree with you.
20:14
What I've been surprised by,
20:17
really in the last couple of weeks,
20:19
is studying kind of what AI has been able to do
20:24
from a place of inference.
20:27
And this is the newness, I think,
20:29
with the latest models that's really interesting,
20:32
is certainly they can,
20:35
what I imagine could happen is when somebody fills it,
20:38
when you fill out that form, they have your name,
20:41
they have your title and they have your company, right?
20:45
Amazing.
20:46
They can scrape your LinkedIn profile,
20:48
they can have a AI process that basically goes to LinkedIn,
20:51
scrapes your profile, ingest all of your data in real time,
20:54
or maybe in a couple of minutes, whatever it is,
20:56
asks GPT40 or whatever to consume all of it,
21:00
including all of your latest posts,
21:02
any articles that you've been referenced in,
21:05
infer or use all of that data,
21:08
go into PostScript to understand what your product does,
21:11
who you sell to, and kind of basically build
21:14
almost like a dossier for you in real time.
21:19
And I think that what makes AI a little crazy now
21:24
is going from being basically a word calculator,
21:27
which is basically taking all these things
21:29
and kind of spitting out a new profile of sorts of mic.
21:34
It's using that data to make inferences
21:37
that we're trying to get answers to.
21:39
So for example, I don't know what products
21:41
you were kind of filling out a form about,
21:44
but these are the specific features within our own product
21:48
that Mike might be interested in.
21:51
And we're inferring that based on the industry
21:53
of the company that he's in, his current role,
21:56
any latest blog posts that they might have written,
21:59
so on and so forth.
22:01
And what I have seen is actually probably not ready
22:06
to be implemented in replacing humans,
22:11
but I don't think 10 years off is the future
22:14
where it is ready.
22:16
I would argue it's probably maybe not to replace humans,
22:18
'cause again, the creativity point made earlier,
22:20
but I think the idea for AI to actually infer
22:24
and reason is getting better, which is actually, again,
22:29
interesting for business and terrifying for life,
22:33
but really getting pretty good.
22:35
And if you want an example of this,
22:36
I think it's a company called dossier.gpt or something.
22:39
They produce this concept and then Darmesh,
22:44
a hub spot has been building,
22:45
I think it's agent.ai,
22:47
where you can effectively just plug in a company name,
22:50
and it's quite powerful to see what comes out the other end.
22:53
So again, agree with your broader point,
22:56
but I've been spooked a little bit
22:59
and intrigued as a technology company founder or whatever
23:04
about just how good that reasoning engine is getting.
23:11
- Yeah, I really believe in the idea
23:16
that AI is going to be like everyone stepping
23:22
into their own Iron Man suit, right?
23:26
Like they get new powers,
23:27
they can do all the things they need to do way better, et cetera.
23:31
I 100% believe in that.
23:33
I think people are getting some value like that now,
23:36
and the value that is going to go up.
23:39
Where I'm still very skeptical is the replacement,
23:44
the AI actually took my full job away.
23:51
- Totally.
23:52
- I think that that's pretty far away,
23:55
but I totally agree with you that AI can tell us a lot
24:00
about people who are evaluating our products,
24:04
it can give us answers to questions,
24:05
it can, I put in into GPT just to see what it came up with,
24:10
and it was pretty dang good.
24:14
I was like, hey, if you had to compare PostScript
24:16
to its main competitors as a Shopify merchant,
24:19
like what do you think the strengths and weaknesses are?
24:22
The response was extremely credible,
24:24
like the type of thing that I would say,
24:27
if someone asked me that question on a sales call.
24:29
So I get all that value.
24:32
I think that what it is is it's going to allow people
24:36
to do things that spend their time doing things
24:39
that the AI can't do,
24:41
which I think is gonna be more of the creativity aspect.
24:46
- Yeah, I can't remember if I referenced this
24:48
on a previous episode, but we, I saw this tweet
24:53
about AI where someone was like saying,
24:59
I don't want like AI to like learn how to do poetry
25:03
so I can spend more time doing the dishes.
25:05
I want AI to figure out how to do the dishes
25:07
so I can spend my time doing my poetry.
25:10
And I think like that's where we're headed.
25:14
And I think that that's good.
25:16
I just think like the full automation idea
25:21
is like the wrong idea.
25:23
Like I don't like it when people start the AI conversation.
25:26
Like the executives eyes get all big
25:28
and they're like, how many roles can I replace with this?
25:31
You know, it's like,
25:32
- Right. Oh yeah.
25:33
- Yeah.
25:34
- And I feel like a lot of people are like,
25:35
that's like they're starting from like,
25:38
that's the value prop.
25:39
And I'm more saying that like,
25:41
I think a lot of the value prop should be about
25:46
how can you take all of the things that people have to do,
25:49
which a lot of it is mundane, you know,
25:52
box checking type work.
25:54
- Right.
25:54
- And get that off their plate so that they can reach
25:58
their full creative potential in whatever role
26:01
that they're in.
26:02
- Yeah.
26:03
- And theoretically that would yield overall
26:06
better results.
26:09
Even in the support use case, right?
26:11
If 60% of the tickets that come in for any commerce brand
26:15
are where is my order tickets
26:17
and AI can handle those,
26:18
then your CX team can focus on the more complicated stuff
26:23
or the surprise and delight moments for customers
26:25
that they can see are buying lots of things
26:27
and asking questions.
26:28
And so that's where it's like,
26:30
you automate to create more business value
26:33
with the folks that you have.
26:34
I think like that's the world we're like in and headed
26:38
towards, which is a great world.
26:39
The world where it's like,
26:42
oh, you know, we're gonna have,
26:46
like and no one's gonna have a job in two years.
26:50
I don't believe in that world today.
26:52
- Yeah, no, I'm with you.
26:53
I'm with you on that.
26:54
I actually think we completely agree on this in general.
26:57
I do wanna just for fun,
27:00
do you wanna do a little demo together?
27:03
- Sure.
27:04
- Tell me to pound sand if you think it's a bad idea,
27:07
but it could be fun just like do a moment in time
27:12
of where is the reasoning engine today
27:14
at the publishing date of this episode?
27:16
And then we can revisit this in a couple years.
27:18
- Okay, cool.
27:19
- Yeah, where we're at.
27:19
But I need your written, I need your verbal consent
27:22
that I can search your name.
27:24
I don't wanna know. - Oh, no, oh.
27:25
- If you don't want to, we don't have to.
27:27
- Go ahead.
27:29
- You sure?
27:31
- Oh, God.
27:32
I don't know, edit the sound if it comes up
27:34
or something crazy.
27:35
(laughs)
27:35
- No, but the question is, and it's still processing.
27:39
Hopefully by the time I click this, it's on live.
27:41
The question is like, how good is this inference thing?
27:45
How good is the reasoning of this platform?
27:47
- What's the prompt?
27:49
- Nothing.
27:50
Your name and your company.
27:52
- Ooh. - That's all that was put in.
27:54
So this is again, this could be off of a lead gen form.
27:57
- Okay. - Right, or off of anything.
27:59
It comes out dossier, GPT, or I guess it comes out,
28:03
ammonia, al-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-m-i, I think.
28:08
But this came out live this week,
28:10
so this is actually brand new, right off of the GPT-40.
28:13
I think it's built on 40.
28:14
It has been more than three minutes,
28:17
so this is probably edited at some point here, Todd.
28:22
- No, this is proving my point.
28:25
- It is true, it is too old.
28:26
- If it pops up and it says PostScript is the best,
28:30
Mike Mannheimer is the smartest.
28:31
Everyone should use PostScript if you have a shop at Firestore,
28:34
then that I'm a believer I'll change my tune instantly.
28:37
- Then it's worth it.
28:38
- Yeah, then I'm like, everyone, just use AI for everything.
28:41
(laughing)
28:43
- It's a good idea.
28:44
- Yeah, it's great.
28:45
Take everyone.
28:46
- Oh, here you go, look at this.
28:47
- Perfect, okay.
28:48
So look, it pulled on the left side
28:50
of the screen your LinkedIn profile,
28:52
so ignore that for a second, right?
28:54
So here's what it's telling us about you.
28:56
Mike, current position, location,
28:59
all of this information, right?
29:00
- It's all right.
29:00
- Some mics, season, market,
29:02
you're a seasoned marketing executive,
29:03
the strong focus on B2B and sales is gonna work a strategy.
29:05
- Isn't it funny that we call each other seasoned?
29:08
Like that's like--
29:09
- I know.
29:10
- It's like a food.
29:11
(laughing)
29:12
- Nope, maybe.
29:13
- Maybe. - Maybe have a reason.
29:15
Maybe to your point, I've done this about five, six times.
29:17
Everyone has been seasoned.
29:19
- Everyone has been heavily seasoned.
29:21
- Don't forget to-- - Okay, go ahead, sorry.
29:23
- That was good.
29:24
- All right, so the question is like,
29:25
now these interests are inferred.
29:27
This is not like just a word calculator,
29:30
so it's inferring, and so you tell me
29:31
if this is true or not.
29:33
That you're interested in professionally, of course.
29:36
SMS marketing, strong use of SMS and B2B to see.
29:41
Promoter score, growth marketing, continuous learning.
29:46
- Are those--
29:49
- I mean, that's not wrong, but that's not wrong.
29:53
No, yeah, that's accurate.
29:56
I would say, hold on, I'm looking at this right now.
29:59
- I'm all sure that's with you, of course.
30:00
- Yeah, I think, yes, some of these are more on than others.
30:05
Like the SMS marketing write up that it did
30:09
is like really, that's pretty strong.
30:12
- Pretty strong, yeah, that one,
30:14
that one I felt pretty good about
30:15
and knowing you, of course,
30:16
and the work you're doing at PostScript.
30:18
Net Promoter score, I mean, unless there's something--
30:21
- I wrote a blog post about NPS a long time ago,
30:26
so it must've found that.
30:28
And then like, summarized it and used it
30:30
as like a personal interest.
30:34
- Yeah, so check us out.
30:35
So this is where the SDR comes in or whatever, right?
30:37
- Yeah. - Topics of interest for discussion
30:40
when meeting with Mike consider these following topics,
30:42
innovations in SMS marketing, I think that sounds good.
30:44
- Yeah. - 'Cause more loyalty and NPS.
30:46
Maybe I would've liked to maybe have a reference there
30:48
that you just wrote a blog post,
30:50
so I can like reference a blog post,
30:52
growth, marketing, continuous learning,
30:54
and development, e-commerce trends.
30:56
It's pretty good.
30:58
- Yeah, the thing that's, if I had to critique this,
31:01
this is pretty good.
31:02
If I had to critique this,
31:04
oh, there's the circus on the bottom.
31:06
- Yeah, it's working, I see that.
31:07
- Yeah, if I had to critique it, what I would say is,
31:10
it's basically re, it's taking what I'm talking about
31:15
in the world and trying to build a profile of me.
31:20
But it's not, like just because I'm talking about something
31:26
doesn't mean that like, it's particularly my interest, right?
31:30
Like I talk about SMS marketing for my customers all the time.
31:35
- So I'm obviously interested in SMS marketing
31:38
like for my customer and I talk about it a lot,
31:41
and that's what's coming back to this.
31:44
What I would say is, if you're trying to like get my attention,
31:48
it's not always true that parroting back stuff
31:52
that you see online is actually aligned with like,
31:55
well, the problems I'm trying to solve.
31:58
You know what I mean? - Yeah, yep.
31:59
- Like if someone was like,
32:02
"Hey, AK, I see you're really interested in owned marketing."
32:05
You'd be like, "Ah."
32:07
- Oh yeah, okay.
32:09
- Yeah.
32:10
- So there's probably like a,
32:13
again, this gets back to the human component, right?
32:17
It's like a human would say,
32:19
what does Mike, the CMO at PostScript care about?
32:23
Like I probably care about like winning business
32:29
from my competitors.
32:30
You might have better luck sending me an email
32:33
that's like, "Hey, Mike, here's some things
32:36
that competitor A or doing that I thought
32:38
would be interesting to you."
32:40
Versus being like, "Hey, Mike,
32:42
I think you're really interested in SMS marketing."
32:44
- Yeah, totally.
32:45
- And so like that's like the extra level.
32:47
And when I think about like noise and response
32:51
and like all of that,
32:53
like the bar's just going up and up and up.
32:55
So it's like, I almost think that there's probably a chart
32:57
that's like the bar for getting attention
33:02
is going up at some, at the same ratio
33:08
that AI's getting better, right?
33:11
It's like they're happening at the same clip.
33:15
And that's, that Delta is creating the continued need
33:20
for human reasoning, business acumen, creativity
33:25
to continue to exist.
33:26
And maybe the slope of the graphs change
33:28
and AI like closes that gap.
33:31
But I think that that's like the image I have in my head.
33:34
Like there's two lines going up at the same time.
33:37
AI is getting way smarter
33:38
and the bar to capture someone's attention is going way up.
33:41
And they're both going 100 miles an hour
33:43
in the same direction and maybe one day they'll intersect.
33:45
- Yeah, it's funny.
33:46
I was thinking about too, like it's only gonna be so good
33:49
as the information we feed it.
33:51
And it's almost like, I think we talked about
33:54
this in a previous episode, LinkedIn,
33:55
and sometimes can become like the Instagram for work
33:59
where we're painting this picture
34:00
that everything's great and we're killing it
34:02
when things are really hard.
34:04
So yeah, you know, I don't know if there's,
34:09
if there's a perfect way for even a human to know this,
34:12
but you know, you might be,
34:14
like the discussions happening internally
34:16
and the problems you're looking to solve
34:17
aren't always like publicly disclosed.
34:19
And so it's not being fed into any type of algorithm
34:23
that could infer anything really.
34:25
- Yeah, what you really need is like,
34:28
it's like a bunch of inferences that lead to like
34:31
background knowledge, a bunch of inferences
34:33
that lead to something, you know?
34:36
And so yeah, I think that what you showed
34:41
was definitely way better than I thought.
34:44
I also think that if you're gonna be in like
34:47
the top 10% of outreach to Mike Mannheimer,
34:50
you probably need to like think about it for a sec.
34:53
well done. And yeah.