Successful Exit Multi-Figure Exit From Marketing To Using AI & Building 6+ Figure Sales Teams -Nicholas Loise
Welcome to The Success Code w/ Ben Silverman, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, Mr. USA, National Taekwondo Champion, and content creator Benjamin Silverman. On this podcast you’ll hear the story of how Nick built and successfully exited his first marketing agency and then transition into building multiple six figure sales teams.
Learn more about Peak Performance Fitness at www.thepeakperformance.org
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The central theme of this podcast episode revolves around the insights and experiences shared by Nick Luisi, founder of the Sales Performance Team, regarding the intricate relationship between entrepreneurship, sales, and the evolving landscape of business practices, particularly in the context of artificial intelligence.
Throughout our discussion, we explore the invaluable lessons gleaned from both triumphs and tribulations encountered during Nick's entrepreneurial journey, emphasizing the necessity of resilience and continuous learning in the face of adversity.
We delve into the critical importance of effective sales processes, the art of talent acquisition, and the strategic implementation of marketing initiatives, all of which are instrumental in fostering sustainable business growth. Moreover, we examine the transformative potential of AI in enhancing sales effectiveness and nurturing a more efficient operational framework.
This episode serves not only as a source of inspiration but also as a practical guide for aspiring entrepreneurs seeking to navigate the complexities of building and scaling their enterprises.
Listeners interested in sales team development can contact Nicholas Loise via LinkedIn or at salesperformanceteam.com
Takeaways:
- The podcast emphasizes the significance of maintaining a rigorous focus on fitness for entrepreneurs, as it directly correlates to enhanced performance and energy levels.
- Nick Luisi articulates the pivotal role of effective sales processes and systems in driving the success of founder-led businesses, particularly in the current market landscape.
- AI is revolutionizing the sales space by streamlining processes and enhancing productivity, thus enabling sales teams to operate more efficiently and effectively.
- Entrepreneurs must prioritize building a strong personal brand and understanding their market positioning to differentiate themselves from competitors.
- The discussion underscores the importance of continuous training and development for sales teams to cultivate a high-performing culture that fosters growth and innovation.
- Listeners are encouraged to explore the free resources provided by Sales Performance Team to enhance their understanding of sales strategies and operational efficiency.
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker B:Welcome everyone, to the Success Code where we dive into the stories of leaders and other successful people and what made them become that way and what is keeping them that way.
Speaker B:This episode is sponsored by Peak Performance Fitness, where we help entrepreneurs and business owners to dial in their work workouts, their nutrition and their lifestyle to improve their energy, their health and their performance.
Speaker B:And today we've got Nick, Louise, Lois, Luisi.
Speaker A:Luisi.
Speaker A:There we go.
Speaker B:Founder of Sales Performance Team.
Speaker B:And they are doing some really interesting stuff in sales and marketing and scaling businesses.
Speaker B:And I'm going to pass the mic over to you and let you kind of tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker A:Yeah, well, thank you, Ben.
Speaker A:And first off, thank you for this podcast.
Speaker A:Right, thank you for all you're doing for entrepreneurs, Small business owners know, focusing on success, building a community, really lessons learned along the way.
Speaker A: and: Speaker A:And just the lessons I've learned and just, hey, listen, you're going to be okay, right?
Speaker A:This thing that you think is huge and just punching you in the face, you're going to get up off the mat.
Speaker A:So thank you for this.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:Hey, listen, it's all about fitness.
Speaker A:I think the best entrepreneurs I know are really, really super fit and really focused on their fitness and we could all do a better job at that.
Speaker A:So I want to learn some tricks and trades along the way to get my personal best up in my chest and my bench press and my squat and my deadlift and all that.
Speaker A:But thank you for this.
Speaker A:So Sales Performance Team is a company, as you said, focused on helping small to mid sized businesses.
Speaker A:We only work with founder led businesses.
Speaker A:Once in a while I'll sneak in somebody with like an executive team, but I know it's not going to work because there's going to be politics, right?
Speaker A:So I only work with founder led businesses and it's really a genesis from the work I was doing when I was at gkc, now called Magnetic Marketing, which is Dan Kennedy's company.
Speaker A:And so we could help businesses kind of find their way with marketing, right?
Speaker A:And they got it and they liked it.
Speaker A:And lead generation is kind of plug and play, right?
Speaker A:You got to keep on trying different things.
Speaker A:But once you get a model, long form, copy convert video, YouTube, you know, it's all the same.
Speaker A:Where they struggled is with salespeople, hiring salespeople, telling the salespeople what to say, setting up a process.
Speaker A:They all had their hearts broken.
Speaker A:By bad hires and money wasted.
Speaker A:And so we created Sales Performance Team.
Speaker A:We kind of built out some IP while we were there and we were running weekend boot camps, if you will, or weekend, you know, boardrooms where people would pay us about $15,000 and we'd build out their sales playbook for them.
Speaker A:And I'm like, well, there's gotta be a here.
Speaker A:And so, you know, as you know with private equity, it was private equity owned.
Speaker A:I worked out a great exit.
Speaker A:They were phenomenal to me.
Speaker A:I, you know, I learned so much and you know, it launched the company and we still work with a lot of the members today.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So we're going on our fifth year, knock on wood.
Speaker A:And it's just been a fun ride and we love working with small businesses.
Speaker A:We could talk a little bit about sales and what we see in Outbound, what we see in AI today, but we're in it all the time.
Speaker A:And you know, I just earlier today gave a presentation about how to create a sales recruiting machine.
Speaker A:So I'm an open book.
Speaker A:Ask me any question you want.
Speaker B:That's awesome.
Speaker B:It sounds like you guys have done really, really exciting stuff.
Speaker B:And so one thing that I always kind of get curious when I talk to other entrepreneurs is based on my own experience of.
Speaker B:I used to be a recruiter actually.
Speaker B:Sure, okay.
Speaker B:I was very much in sales.
Speaker A:Right, yeah, of course, yeah, 24 7.
Speaker B:And what was great about recruiting was it was one, it's one of the few roles again, sales is one of the most amazing careers because you can jump into it with no background.
Speaker B:You don't need a degree to be good at sales.
Speaker B:All you gotta be is like open minded, have some tough skin and be really willing to learn and love talking to people.
Speaker B:And that launched my financial success which then led me to the point of the terrifying decision to do I quit my 9 to 5 and start a company.
Speaker A:Sure, sure.
Speaker B:And I, I, I'd love to hear your story.
Speaker B:Like what were you, what were you wrestling internally when you made that decision to leave and go out on your own?
Speaker B:And what was sort of the, I don't know, what, what, like what pushed you over the edge at what point where you're just like, I'm gonna do it.
Speaker A:So I think hubris.
Speaker A:I think, you know, I had something to prove to the world.
Speaker A:I probably had gone as high as I wanted to go in the industry that I was in.
Speaker A:So this is my first company, which was a marketing firm that we owned.
Speaker A:And it was just, I just had that burning desire right, to Kind of see if I could do it.
Speaker A: And this was in: Speaker A: From: Speaker A:And so we sold the company and then Sales Performance Team is my second venture.
Speaker A:And so I think it's the.
Speaker A:I got something I want to share with the world and I want to see if I don't want to be in the long term care facility or sitting in my home in retirement and saying, oh, I should have, right?
Speaker A:And so that was it.
Speaker A:I didn't have anything I knew I could sell, right?
Speaker A: And so in: Speaker A:And so I kind of made the mistakes along the way.
Speaker A:And I went to an MBA program that, quote, unquote, taught entrepreneurship.
Speaker A:But you can't learn it.
Speaker A:I think you got to do it, right?
Speaker A:I think you got to get, it's like, you know, you can't learn boxing by reading a book and watching videos.
Speaker A:You got to get in the ring and get punched in the face.
Speaker A:And I think that's what entrepreneurship is, right?
Speaker A:And I think entrepreneurship is getting punched in the face every day and, and learning and realizing that you're going to be okay and that you're going to be okay.
Speaker A:I got to figure this out.
Speaker A:And I love small businesses, right?
Speaker A:You know, my favorite, my uncles and my grandfather, they all had their own business.
Speaker A:My dad was a corporate guy because he got into computers, right, and kind of saw the, you know, that that was the future when he got out of the army.
Speaker A:But you know, my, I joke, my family business was the produce business.
Speaker A:The worst business in the world to get in, right?
Speaker A:You, as you pull away from the dock, you're, you're, your product is rotting and you got to just sell it that day.
Speaker A:Whatever you got, you got to sell.
Speaker A:I joked that it was such a bad business that my dad went to Vietnam to get out of it, right?
Speaker A:You know, he got recruit, he got, he didn't, you know, choose that.
Speaker A:He got, you know, he got pushed that way by, by the government.
Speaker A:But, you know, it's just one of those things.
Speaker A:And so I learned, you know, my, let's say the, the young has a young nick in his teens.
Speaker A:The, the fathers that I always like to talk to with the small businessmen, you know, it just was what I always wanted to do.
Speaker A:When I got out of college, I went to big work for a couple big companies.
Speaker A:They just moved too slow.
Speaker A:And, you know, I probably was brash and you Know, and I, So I started, you know, I, I worked in the financial industry, but really, you're building your own book of business in that, right?
Speaker A:And I didn't know any better.
Speaker A:They said, read this script.
Speaker A:I read the script.
Speaker A:They like, call these people.
Speaker A:I called those people, you know, and I got in early and I stayed late.
Speaker A:And I could sell and I could build rapport, and I could, I could overcome objections.
Speaker A:And there was days that that phone was really, really he.
Speaker A:You know, it's like, okay, they told me to do it, so I got to do it.
Speaker A:And, you know, you just kind of learn a rhythm.
Speaker A:And then from there, I took the sales skills to another job and then, you know, another job and sold bigger things.
Speaker A:But I always realized I kind of wanted my own.
Speaker A:My own business.
Speaker A: hed the marketing business in: Speaker A: And Ben, from: Speaker A:There was so much money floating around.
Speaker A: A little thing like: Speaker A:And at that time, about 75 to 80% of my business was home improvement, home services, contractors.
Speaker A:And so I realized I wasn't the smartest guy in the world.
Speaker A:And I just got punched in the.
Speaker A:I mean, you know, like, my biggest client went bankrupt on us.
Speaker A:And I was sitting on six figures of receivables, and it's like, oh, my gosh, you know, what do I do with this?
Speaker A:And, you know, I had staff, and at that time, we were big.
Speaker A:We were a big shop.
Speaker A:And I had about a half a million dollar line of credit.
Speaker A:And I watched the bank slowly chip away at that line of credit.
Speaker A:And I blinked and it was like 70,000.
Speaker A:And that maybe covered like the operating expenses for the businesses, but, you know, you're used to a half a million dollars.
Speaker A:And we were a direct mail shop that was kind of our bread and butter and so going out of pocket on postage, right?
Speaker A:It.
Speaker A:And so it was, it was interesting, right?
Speaker A:So you ask about how do you survive or how do you get up?
Speaker A:And it's like, you know, I was teasing the sales guys.
Speaker A:I'm like, you know, I was back on the street knocking on doors, and, you know, you're just, you know, you kind of.
Speaker A:I had a sales team and you kind of, you look taught me, never take your foot off the pedal.
Speaker A:Never take your foot off the gas.
Speaker A:From a sales perspective, always make the calls, always work the referrals.
Speaker A:Always be filled in a funnel.
Speaker A:Because it's easy when it's even if it's only going at 50 miles an hour, right.
Speaker A:Versus if it's at zero.
Speaker A:So getting from that zero to 50 is the tough part.
Speaker A:So always keep going.
Speaker A:But, yeah, I mean, we went through a couple different turns of the screw, and it was interesting.
Speaker A:And, you know, it was like, okay, you're in it, right?
Speaker A:Chase doesn't care.
Speaker A:You know, your.
Speaker A:Your mortgage, you know, they don't care.
Speaker A:You pay me.
Speaker A:So you got to figure, you got to be crafty.
Speaker A:You got to figure out a way and, you know, through hard work and, you know, perseverance and, and some really good.
Speaker A:And some really good investors that we brought in and some people that believed in us, we were able to kind of move forward through it.
Speaker A:So, you know, I think I still have the war rooms from that, the scars, if you will.
Speaker A:But, you know, I learned a lot from that time, so.
Speaker B:And you.
Speaker B:You mentioned a couple of things really interesting, like how you kind of have to learn in the fire, right?
Speaker B:It's trial by fire.
Speaker B:You just kind of pick it up.
Speaker B:And I think you mentioned you did an MBA for entrepreneurship that turned out to be not quite as useful as you hope.
Speaker B:So what would you say?
Speaker B:What skills or what have you learned that you attribute to your current success?
Speaker B:And I think one of them that you probably mentioned was like, you know, kind of always hustling and chasing, keeping that momentum up.
Speaker B:But what else?
Speaker B:If.
Speaker B:If people are looking to become more successful or enter into entrepreneurship, what are the skill sets that they should be targeting to learn now?
Speaker A:It's a great question.
Speaker A:So I think obviously, you know, hustle and skill and scheming and.
Speaker A:And finding the deal.
Speaker A:I think you have to know so you don't get snowed by marketing firms.
Speaker A:No marketing, no lead generation.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So there's branding and there's positioning, and then there's lead generation.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:And I think you have to know all three of those.
Speaker A:And I think a lot of people today, especially a lot of young marketing people, don't know the positioning part of it and the strategy part of it, right?
Speaker A:So how are we going to differentiate ourselves in marketplace?
Speaker A:What is our positioning going to be?
Speaker A:You know, all that stuff is important, right?
Speaker A:And then it's, okay, how do I get leads?
Speaker A:How do I get people to raise their hand to get into the top of the funnel?
Speaker A:And, you know, then what media am I going to use?
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:I think that's crazy important.
Speaker A:I think sometimes entrepreneurs are also their personal brand, right?
Speaker A:So you kind of have to know that skill of how do I build up my personal brand?
Speaker A:You know, how do I use the socials, whether it's LinkedIn, which is kind of where I do most of my work, or Facebook or Instagram, TikTok.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:If it's on and off or on or off, whatever.
Speaker A:I think YouTube is the next frontier that we're looking at and we want to get going.
Speaker A:And, you know, a lot of people are doing a lot of great stuff on that.
Speaker A:So I think that those three things are important.
Speaker A:I think as a business owner too.
Speaker A:Take a step back.
Speaker A:And this did come from my mba, and I think I still live it to this day.
Speaker A:It's strategic planning and strategic thinking and the enterprise thought process.
Speaker A:And then as you get bigger, think of the operational and operational throughput.
Speaker A:And we learned that in business school.
Speaker A:And right now I say that I'm a theory, a constraint guy for sales.
Speaker A:So where's the constraint in the sales department, right?
Speaker A:So think operationally, think flowing.
Speaker A:Especially if you're building up a team and how does that work?
Speaker A:And I think leadership, right?
Speaker A:And interacting with people, especially if you have a team.
Speaker A:You can never spend enough time building your culture and building your team and investing people.
Speaker A:I'm listening to a great audio book, the Hard Thing about the Hard Thing, right?
Speaker A:Ben Horvatz, who, you know, built up a number of great Silicon Valley companies and is now a venture capitalist.
Speaker A:And he talks about Andy Grove, right, who he learned a lot from.
Speaker A:And he said, and.
Speaker A:And it's changed my mind.
Speaker A:We're in it every day.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:You have to be training, right?
Speaker A:And a lot of CEOs think that that's not their way.
Speaker A:But when we study great organizations and entrepreneurship, that's their core, right?
Speaker A:If I think about it, Disney, who's on my wall behind us and is one of the greatest entrepreneurs in America that we all want to emulate.
Speaker A:Well, they, I just interviewed somebody and they.
Speaker A:The Average server spends 30 days in training in Disney for a Disney restaurant.
Speaker A:And I said, well, what do you think about the average restaurant down the street?
Speaker A:Like, well, maybe a day, right?
Speaker A:Read the, read the venue and, and you're on the floor the next day and you're shadowing somebody, right?
Speaker A:So we don't spend enough time training.
Speaker A:So if you start getting people in, it's now become your responsibility.
Speaker A:Yeah, they need the core skills and the core ability for the job that you h them for.
Speaker A:But you got to take, you got to talk to them about your culture and what, what it means to work here and what is the brand, what's the brand promise to the marketplace?
Speaker A:But most importantly is how to do the job in your environment.
Speaker A:Because they're going to bring their own skill set, right?
Speaker A:And that might be good or bad, but you really want to enhance it.
Speaker A:So I think as a business owner it's strategically where am I at positioning in the marketplace?
Speaker A:If I'm serving X, what is going on with the market and do I need to go to Y?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So is there any blue oceans that I could go after?
Speaker A:And then from a marketing perspective you need to understand that from an operations perspective and then from a leadership and training in people.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:And I think it's just the basics, right?
Speaker A:The four is the, the seven principles of business, right?
Speaker A:It's it's people, it's brand, it's strategy, it's marketing, it's sales, it's operations, it's finance.
Speaker A:And you know, is, is it a cash flow business?
Speaker A:Is it an accrual business?
Speaker A:What does it look like?
Speaker A:How are you running IT account?
Speaker A:I had somebody teach me once, I was a young man and like, you know, accounting is the language of business, finance is the language of business.
Speaker A:So you have to know how to read a P and L, you have to know how to read, you know your operations, you know your operations sheets and you have to understand all that stuff.
Speaker B:I think there's so much truth in what you're saying.
Speaker B:I mean obviously, but.
Speaker B:Well, thanks but through my own experience because I talk to so many new fitness coaches personally trying to start an online business and this is very, very prevalent in the fitness space.
Speaker B:But I would imagine in many different industries of the entrepreneur or private practice, small business owner that is so hyper focused on creating the perfect product and forgetting everything other, every other aspect of business.
Speaker B:Like as long as you have a good product, everything else will fall in place.
Speaker B:And I always think it's the opposite.
Speaker B:A good product is just the, it's a given.
Speaker B:If you don't have a good product, you don't have a business.
Speaker A:It's table stakes, it's how you get in the game.
Speaker A:You need to anti that.
Speaker B:Yeah, like that's a given.
Speaker B:But then it's everything else that makes a good business.
Speaker B:It's your, like you said, your ability to generate leads, your ability to close those leads, your ability to understand money flow and, and people.
Speaker B:People.
Speaker B:As an ex recruiter, I can't imagine, I can't even remember how many times I've had discussions about how critical talent is.
Speaker B:And it comes into not just hiring but like you said, you mentioned in your, your first company you had some partners and bringing on investment.
Speaker B:It's all, it's all related.
Speaker B:Your ability to find, align with and recruit the right people is also, in my experience, but such a critical skill to leaders.
Speaker A:I think it's mission critical.
Speaker A:And so there were times, especially in, early in my entrepreneurship, where I thought I was the brightest guy in the room.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And my ego, until I got humbled by the marketplace and then said, okay, I'm going to learn, I'm going to be open, I'm going to be a sponge.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:That I think is critical if you're going to build a business that has an exit multiple.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:That if you want to sell it, want to build a business that someday you could walk away from, at least take a vacation.
Speaker A:That is not.
Speaker A:You're not going to be tethered to it.
Speaker A:You need staff, you need employees, you need people.
Speaker A:As you said, Ben and I think that we, as entrepreneurs, one is we assume that they're going to act like us, and that's not fair.
Speaker A:And I deal with that all the time with clients.
Speaker A:They're like, well, I wish they'd think like an owner.
Speaker A:I said, well, they're not.
Speaker A:They're an employee.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:You know, if.
Speaker A:Then you'd have competition because they'd spin off, they'd take a piece of your business, you know, like you.
Speaker B:They'd be doing it like you.
Speaker A:Yeah, right.
Speaker A:You don't want that.
Speaker A:But I think two is business.
Speaker A:The really bright entrepreneurs really focus on building people and building processes and systems that will just outlive them.
Speaker A:If you think about one of the, certainly one of the greatest entrepreneurs in our time is Bill Gates.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And I remember reading an article, I think he said when he got to the point where it was pretty big company, he spent 70% of his time interviewing and recruiting people.
Speaker A:Yeah, that's pretty impressive.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:You know, it's just focusing on getting the right people on the bus and focusing on realizing that people is my asset.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And then I remember reading that, you know, Microsoft really didn't have to go public, but he needed that to recruit people because people want options and stock, you know, and investing and all that.
Speaker A:So, you know, if you want to grow a business that is beyond you, that you have the ability to sell, focus on people.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:And kind of on that point, let's transition a little bit to selling and growing because I think that's kind of part of what you guys probably do a lot of on the sales side, because ultimately As a private owned business, if you're a solopreneur or you have a very small team, you're probably doing the selling yourself.
Speaker B:And at a certain point you hit a wall where you can only do so many sales calls or so many appointments a day.
Speaker B:So tell us a little bit, what are you seeing in sales?
Speaker B:What's going on?
Speaker B:What are you guys kind of doing and, and what kind of people can you help?
Speaker A:So it's a great question.
Speaker A:So I'm going to give the yin and the yang, the good and the bad of kind of what I see in sales.
Speaker A:Is that okay?
Speaker B:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:So what I see currently, especially in let's say online education or influencer businesses or coaching and consulting businesses, is we have what's called like the high ticket closer.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:You know, the, and there's a lot of people that shouldn't be in sales and they are, they, they've taken a course and it doesn't make a bad people.
Speaker A:It's just they shouldn't.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Their personality is not driven from that.
Speaker A:Their skill set is not driven for this.
Speaker A:But they've invested in this course and maybe they got kind of got sold the dream by a handful of people that are selling the dream to people.
Speaker A:And now they're like, you know, the business owner is just saying, well they didn't cost me anything because they're commission only.
Speaker A:I'm saying, well, yeah, but you're missing opportunity, right?
Speaker A:You're also de.
Speaker A:Establishing your brand in the marketpl if they have a horrible interaction with a salesperson.
Speaker A:So what I'm seeing, that's the bad or the yin or the yang.
Speaker A:And you lived in Japan so you could tell me what's the good and the bad one, if there is a good or a bad.
Speaker A:But it's that there's a lot of people that really shouldn't be in sales that are in sales, right?
Speaker A:And then no and then a lot then they're hopping from offer to offer to offer.
Speaker A:And you know, you never get a rhythm.
Speaker A:You got to take reps, right?
Speaker A:So if you're bouncing from offer to offer to offer, you ain't going to get, you know, you're not going to become successful.
Speaker A:So there's that, that.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And that's the bad part of it.
Speaker A:The good part of it is, hey listen, there's a lot of opportunity.
Speaker A:There is as long as you are in an offer that the marketing is, is kind of wired in and the, and the offering is wired in, in the marketplace.
Speaker A:You know, you're gonna you're gonna do well if you follow a proven system, right?
Speaker A:Proven and repeatable system.
Speaker A:And so the other thing too, I think it's like the wild, wild west with AI.
Speaker A:It is so cool, right.
Speaker A:And I'm so excited on a number of things that AI is going to do, I think for the traditional businesses, right?
Speaker A:Because a certain percentage of our business is we work with traditional businesses compared to the coach consultant in information marketing and a certain percentage of our business is that.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So 70, 30, 50, 50 depends on the month and the quarter.
Speaker A:But in traditional businesses, like with pre account planning and going out and ICP and doing prospecting lists, not inbound only shops, they have outbound teams.
Speaker A:The, the stuff that we're doing with AI is just so cool, right?
Speaker A:And what used to take an sdr sales development rep or BDR Business development rep, you know, the front end person, the fronter, if you will.
Speaker A:I'm old enough to know they were called appointment setters when I was paying them out of my pocket.
Speaker A:But you know, we can make them much more productive.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So at one point it used to be that you needed one to two FTEs and an SDR to keep one full time account executive full.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:He wants five to eight meetings that are going to show up, you know, every day.
Speaker A:Well, you need a lot of manpower for that.
Speaker A:Well, now with AI, we're able to cut that down and maybe it's a half of an FTE to keep one of them full.
Speaker A:There's some cool things with AI voice, right.
Speaker A:It's not perfect yet, but you know, if you and I get back together at the end of this year, my guess is, you know, it's gonna, it's gonna really be cool.
Speaker A:I think there's some great stuff going on with like Claude and writing, right.
Speaker A:And copywriting.
Speaker A:Even if it's just giving you base, right.
Speaker A:If it's just giving you baseline, it's really, really, really cool.
Speaker A:I, I paid somebody to kind of create my own chatbot.
Speaker A:I have clients, I've created my own chatbot.
Speaker A:So writing is getting easier in the voice of the person.
Speaker A:But where I'm most excited about it, Ben, is what's going to happen in the coaching space of coaching salespeople of the call recording space and taking all of that information and giving them real time feedback that it used to take like a manager, you know, you had to listen to these calls and it took like, you know, even if he had a 1.5, you still have sometimes slow it down, you know, because you know what did they say?
Speaker A:What.
Speaker A:You know, so, so this is really.
Speaker A:I think it's going to be great and I think then the getting reps up by having objections.
Speaker A:Listening in on this call and having objections happen in real time is sexy.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:And I know it's kind of, I'm kind of geeking out on it.
Speaker A:You know, I get excited about it but I think it's really gonna onboard and ramp up reps a lot quicker and it's gonna constantly learn and improve.
Speaker A:So it's just gonna be a different world.
Speaker A:And you know, I think it's.
Speaker A:I don't know if it's a.
Speaker A:The.
Speaker A:It's not going to have the impact that the telephone did on sales but it's going to be, you know, it's going to impact sales pretty well.
Speaker A:And so you know, I think it's, it's going to be interesting.
Speaker B:It kind of sounds like you're saying it's like it's going to shorten the learning curve drastically.
Speaker A:I think that's where it's going to.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:So I think where it's going to do is the pre call planning and the out and doing the research on companies.
Speaker A:If you're selling B2B and the traditional B2B and need to do a lot of research on different avatars and different people and different buying committees, it's going to shorten that for you.
Speaker A:I think it's going to go out and get into the voice and have you a better understanding of your icp, your ideal customer profile, your avatar kind of understanding that and understand their pains if you will.
Speaker A:I think it's going to really shorten and really be a game changer on those that take advantage of it in the training and the call recording and the you know, the real time live call things.
Speaker A:You should be saying this.
Speaker A:Here's an, you know, just the visual cues of dealing with objections.
Speaker A:Just you know, just the, you know like you and I, you know, I've got Fathom on.
Speaker A:I should have turned it off but you know I'm going to get a really cool.
Speaker A:Here are everything you guys talked about.
Speaker A:Well, you know as well as I do Ben and every business owner out there what is the number one complaint about salespeople besides they don't sell enough is they don't put anything in the croat.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:They don't take notes.
Speaker A:We don't have to anymore.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:The notes are being taken and so we teach Fathom to take the notes and to create all these great things and now you know, I was on the phone with an, with an account executive for one of my clients this morning.
Speaker A:He's like, oh my God, so and so's notes are great now.
Speaker A:I'm like, well that's because we turned fathom on, you know, and you know, so now.
Speaker A:But what we got notes now in the CRM and now we got, you know, so now we're not making XYZ Prospect repeat himself 15 times.
Speaker A:Like we're a doctor's office that nobody talks to each other.
Speaker B:They say, right, the money's made in the follow up and with the money's.
Speaker A:Made in the bottoms and really good notes and, and I don't now have to cut things down in writing.
Speaker A:I could stay engaged with you like I am here and then I could read, view my notes if I'm disciplined enough to do that and send the notes to you and say, Ben, here's a copy of everything that we talked about.
Speaker A:Here are the next steps.
Speaker A:I just wanted you to have everything that I have.
Speaker A:I've included XYZ 1, 2, 3.
Speaker A:Here's some testimonials, here's some case studies, all that good stuff.
Speaker A:But I, I don't know if it's going to shorten buying cycles.
Speaker A:Maybe it will.
Speaker A:Time will tell, right?
Speaker A:We'll know a year from now if it shortens it.
Speaker A:But it's going to make a better buying experience, I think.
Speaker A:And it's going to make salespeople that use it better.
Speaker A:So I do think there's an analogy.
Speaker A:Like I remember last year this time I was at a convention and there was an AI guy and he's like, well, you know, we tell people all the time, you're not going to lose your job to AI, but you're going to lose your job to people that do do it better with AI, right?
Speaker A:And I'm like, I think you're going to lose deals as a business owner if your team isn't embracing AI because I think it's going to create such a better follow up experience node.
Speaker A:Experience, just experience in general for your sales team.
Speaker A:Now it's the wild, wild west.
Speaker A:And every solution that you see is the best solution.
Speaker A:You know, it's like Lake Wobegon, everybody's great.
Speaker A:You know, you're going to have to do some due diligence on your own to find the right solution for you.
Speaker A:But, but you know what we looked at a year ago that I can never really get from my clients because all my clients are small businesses.
Speaker A:And most of the solutions wanted to focus on Enterprise now is coming into the enterprise marketplace.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:So I'm super excited about that.
Speaker B:It's, it's a crazy exciting space.
Speaker A:Oh, it is to be in it.
Speaker A:It's like, it's like if you like this stuff, it's, it's like mana.
Speaker B:Well, I mean if you like money, you should like AI at the end of the day.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:You know, I don't know why somebody wouldn't want to embrace it.
Speaker A:But you know, listen, there's Luddites everywhere, right?
Speaker A:You know.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I worked for Dan for eight years and I had a fax them.
Speaker A:So you know, you know, so let's, you know, let's put it in perspective.
Speaker A:There we go.
Speaker B:Well, listen, the last couple of minutes I'd love to have you tell share a little bit more about what actually services you offer and how people listen.
Speaker B:If they're interested in learning more about it, how can they get in touch with you and what should, what should they be trying to do?
Speaker A:You're very kind for that, Ben.
Speaker A:So sales performance team, you could look us up online.
Speaker A:Nicholas Luisi on LinkedIn.
Speaker A:You can hit me up there.
Speaker A:We'll have this information in the show notes.
Speaker A:We got some, some pe, some benefits for your people.
Speaker A:I got a free book that I write that kind of gives all my philosophy and everything.
Speaker A:So if you are thinking, if you are a founder and you want to put a sales team in place, we should have a conversation.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker A:And we help founder led companies either get people to work for them so we have a recruiting army or we help them create their sales processes and their sales system so when they hire that person they get ramped up faster or we manage that person in a fractional basis or manage that team in a fractional basis.
Speaker A:So if you're thinking about having a sales team and everybody should, right.
Speaker A:If you want to have an enterprise value and an exit to your business, you need a sales team.
Speaker A:You don't need one, you need two.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:Or three or four.
Speaker A:We could help you get there faster.
Speaker A:And usually founders aren't the best at building these things out because they've got so many other things that they need to do.
Speaker A:So you know, they could come and take a look at us.
Speaker A:We got a lot of great free stuff on our, on our website, a lot of good resources.
Speaker A:If they go to salespack.salesperformanceteam.com for your, for your listeners, we're going to give them a bunch of free stuff.
Speaker A:There's free books on there, there's, there's checklists and how to create, you know, how to do a really good call review and all that good stuff.
Speaker A:So we'll be writing some more on AI right As AI gets better, you know, the problem is you don't want to create a book.
Speaker A:As soon as you create the book on AI, it's going to be outdated.
Speaker A:So, you know, but yeah, there's a lot of good stuff and we love the sales space.
Speaker A:Even if you're a founder and you got a sales problem, just hit us up and just talk to me, right?
Speaker A:We love helping.
Speaker A:You know, I believe in pay it forward and I've been blessed by a lot of people.
Speaker A:Pay it forward for me and I try to give it back and you know, and if, you know, we got a lot of good people that we've done some searches for.
Speaker A:So we have a lot of great, great salespeople that are looking for the right opportunity.
Speaker A:So let us know.
Speaker B:Awesome.
Speaker B:Thank you.
