(888) 815-0802Sales 3.0: Shaping the Future of Customer Engagement, with Maha Pula [Episode 1136]
This week, Howard and Alastair are joined by Maha Pula, the VP of Global Pre-sales at Cloudflare, to talk about the evolving landscape of sales, highlighting the shift towards a customer-centric approach and the impact of automation and AI on the buying journey. They emphasize the need for organizations to adapt to the changing dynamics, considering tasks over traditional stages, and enabling buyers to engage with digital resources while offering human assistance when necessary. The conversation underscores the importance of understanding the buyer’s journey, optimizing processes, and preparing for a future where customer-led growth drives sales strategies.
Podcast Transcript:
Speaker
Welcome back, everybody, to this week’s Sales Strategy and Enablement podcast. I’m Alastair Woolcock, Chief Strategy & Revenue Officer here at Revenue.io. I’m joined by my infamous cohost, Howard Brown, pioneer in artificial intelligence, all things revenue science. We are both thrilled to have with us today Maha Pula, the vice president of Global Pre-sales at Cloudflare. Also part of stage two limited partners, Ignite and just being a phenomenal thought leader in the world of sales and how it is changing my heart.
00:00:50:08 – 00:01:10:19
Speaker
It’s great to have you with us. It’s a pleasure to be here. And is there now. Well, we always like to start off with News of the Week, and I’m going to go back to my roots here of Gardner and cite a Gardner news article and they actually just released a few days ago their latest updates to the worldwide contact center market.
00:01:11:10 – 00:01:45:07
Speaker
Why would a reference that is just they achieve a fascinating call out in there and they said that the global conversational AI and virtual assistant market now represents the fastest growing segment in the world today in that area, helping spur 24% this coming year is the prediction. And they further go on to say, look, decision makers need to incorporate conversational AI as part of their long term strategy to reduce reliance on live agents and, you know, you said there are there’s a lot to unpack.
00:01:45:07 – 00:02:06:12
Speaker
Contact centers are often the the front end of kind of the volume side of sales and all of those things and just customer interaction. But as I think of that news where I love to lean in with you today is if they’re saying that for that segment, what are we seeing in disruption in general across sales and the world that we are quickly moving towards now?
00:02:06:17 – 00:02:37:04
Speaker
Your thoughts, Mohan, that we’re not surprised to see that 24% in fact, I’m more surprised that it’s not higher. And why do I say that? Because the contact centers have always been one of the areas where optimization first hits right? I mean, look at the shift left conversations. All of those started with support centers and they’re there with people interactions, trying to optimize how long it takes to resolve an issue, how many steps it takes to resolve an issue, how many escalations.
00:02:37:04 – 00:03:04:03
Speaker
Right. So that’s the area which prime for optimization and then the knowledge and knowledge management, content management that supports and the ship left methodology happened. So it’s not surprising and perhaps I’d say that a little bit more of digging. There probably be more of those, you know, there’s more probably more like 30% or 35% that is probably well on its way to going contact, less contact centers.
00:03:04:07 – 00:03:31:20
Speaker
Right. And so while this is going to definitely have an impact on our ability on how we sell, let’s not talk about it as sales, but how we sell, how we contact customers. We’ve seen this happen, even pre-COVID. Colgate. Has this accelerated momentum that is already well underway. Ed John, we’ve been talking about virtual selling as a methodology and using more insights.
00:03:31:20 – 00:03:59:11
Speaker
Sales Right. You know, optimizing the sales process so more and more of the sellers can sell more and more. And then you’ve got the the bigger ones like it’s call them enterprise sellers shrinking over time right inside sales used to be when I started my career and inside sales was was a was a small team and most of my enterprise sellers with a larger team But then over time you see now it’s gone to 35%, 40%.
00:03:59:11 – 00:04:26:19
Speaker
And now organizations are shifting and that shift is not happening just for the people, but it’s what kind of customers, what kind of segments that they support as well. So we’ll get into that in a further down. But yes, optimization is happening and it is absolutely already having an impact on sales and how sales organizations are developed. And I’m going to see that happen more until there’s maybe a reversal of how sales organizations are going to be designed and built.
00:04:27:05 – 00:04:49:18
Speaker
Howard, as we think about that book and you think about the changes that we’re seeing in the enterprise space, Amazon’s exactly right. This isn’t an evolution. It’s a revolution that is now occurring. And I think a lot of organizations are struggling to revolutionize how they approach that. Right. So you still have especially this past year, Ryman was right coming into COVID.
00:04:49:23 – 00:05:08:09
Speaker
It created the impetus to drive virtual selling all that this past year being a tough economic environment for a lot of companies. And what do lots of heads of sales and what did lots of CEOs do then They go back to the, you know, their 1990s playbook. Oh, well, we’ll retrench. We’ll just add people and whip harder, right deeper.
00:05:08:14 – 00:05:31:11
Speaker
It’s more data if we just do more volume and add more people will get there. And yet the buyer, the buyer is now saying sellers are not getting the time. They are not meeting the expectation. Right. We know the sellers are only getting 19% of a deal cycle. Now when they talk that comment in the statistically, what buyers say is the conversations are worthless.
00:05:31:18 – 00:06:00:10
Speaker
That requires a revolution. Well, I didn’t know there was a question there that was quite a mike drop moment and very fascinating and certainly we’re seeing it every day and we feel it every day, both as sellers and as buyers. Right. If a buyer is experiencing the same thing we all are experiencing, which is there’s lots of content, there’s lots of information, there’s sites to go get reviews, ratings on all of this stuff.
00:06:00:10 – 00:06:22:19
Speaker
And then I talked to a seller that’s sellers not adding incredible value. Why do I need that seller at all? So on the one hand, the companies are looking to optimize, as you talked about, I think very steeply. On the other hand, there is the buyer and the customer that is having a great experience when they actually engage.
00:06:23:01 – 00:06:57:11
Speaker
So we not only have to optimize, but we have to improve the performance so that when people actually get to that rep, they have that brand experience. It is a positive one, not one they want to avoid at all costs. Totally. And I also mentioned something about 19% of the buying time being available in one of the Gartner reports actually says that a buyer engages the vendor for the first time after 70% of their buyer journey is complete.
00:06:57:18 – 00:07:23:06
Speaker
Now, look at this. It’s this is unprecedented, right? Gone are those times when the customer would pick up the phone and say, Hey, can you come and tell me a little bit more about this? No, I mean, car buying revolutionized this one ages ago. Right now, the B2C selling methodologies, the expectations that customer have in the B2C space is shifting into the B2B space.
00:07:23:06 – 00:07:44:00
Speaker
And there is no excuse for not following that methodology. Right. Because the digital tools are available, the collateral is available, the medium is available, air is now ready and waiting and perhaps listening to all of us talk and, you know, the next time you Google, all we will see is something that we just talked about, just happened to me yesterday.
00:07:44:20 – 00:08:11:12
Speaker
We were talking about golf courses in the area and then literally opened up Google and it showed for top golf courses near where the town that we were talking about. It is always listening. So there are there was technology readily available to help buyers, of course, more than 70% of their journey. So the organizations that are trying to sell to these buyers, B2B buyers, will be to see.
00:08:11:12 – 00:08:36:07
Speaker
But B2B, mainly what we are talking about, have already ready made information of them. So what happens now is your degree of influence, which you are manually expecting to happen when you have this smartly turned out seller shaking hands You know, and having a discussion with a buyer is gone. You don’t get that leverage. You have to be there and influencing the buyer before.
00:08:36:07 – 00:09:11:10
Speaker
And that’s happening more and more now. So to your point out is it’s not the impact, it’s the insights. So if an organization is first to provide the insights necessary to guide the customer through their buying journey and to rate that buying process and influence it without a human, then they have already made a win because they have empower or enrich that conversation a lot more earlier without having a human on the other end so that buyer doesn’t feel the pressure.
00:09:11:10 – 00:09:29:23
Speaker
They feel like they are not influenced and then they embark on a journey will see you now as a vendor, make the top three list. So absolutely, this is sales 3.0, you know, the previous version of, you know, eight legged. Let’s go on, let’s go to a golf goals, Let’s go have rings, let’s go have it. That’s still happening.
00:09:30:08 – 00:09:57:20
Speaker
But it did not that the contracts are not written there by the contracts are not written that and sales do not happen when we add this hybrid sales model where you still throwing people at the problem, you still had a BTR and then you had inside sales and then the needs sort of travelers made its journey slowly, slowly through the funnel and then ended up with an enterprise buyer who then took out his rolled out his sales methodology playbook and said, I’m going to qualify you, Mr. Buyer.
00:09:57:20 – 00:10:16:09
Speaker
Do you have a budget? Do you have this new? And then as they go through whatever sales methodology they may have adopted, then the buyer gets to move, you know, touch the product, contact with the product at that time, trials and all those things. If I don’t have patience to do it, any of that stuff anymore, they’re going to bypass all the steps above.
00:10:16:09 – 00:10:34:09
Speaker
And I just say, you show me a demo, I know exactly what I want. Give me a car keys, I want to go and test drive this maybe. And so that process is accelerated. So significantly in organizations that cannot keep up with those. Those are the ones that are going to be falling behind, whether you are a brick and mortar company or whether you’re a startup, it doesn’t matter.
00:10:34:09 – 00:10:58:15
Speaker
It’s normalized. Across the two is an observation. My I found it’s a question there because a lot of companies are still using a fairly traditional model. They definitely people are adapting using digital and other things for sure. But, you know, let’s just pick any global enterprise and B2B sales today and they’re going to have Stars Eyesores, They can have all of that.
00:10:58:16 – 00:11:17:22
Speaker
That piece, what I think I’ve just heard you say is you don’t see a future where those functions even exist. Yes. You’re going to get me in trouble down step. But that’s exactly what I’m saying. I’m not saying the function would not exist. The tasks will exist. Who’s performing them and in what order is up to the buyer.
00:11:18:03 – 00:11:39:19
Speaker
It’s not the decision of the vendor to guide the customer through this journey that is an inside out model but has to be outside in. If I’m a buyer and I’m in a rush, can you, Mr. Vendor, sell me the way I want to buy? I have a credit card. Do you want to take my $200 a month subscription that I want to buy in now?
00:11:40:01 – 00:11:54:21
Speaker
And oh, by the way, I don’t want a subscription. I want a usage based or consumption based model. Are you ready, Mr. Vendor, to sell it to me? That way, if you don’t have a plan that can sell to me, take my credit card and then I buy it that way, then you know, what am I going to do?
00:11:54:21 – 00:12:15:14
Speaker
I’m going to go to another vendor, even if I’m part of an enterprise organization that has a contract with you, Mr. Vendor, because I’m a different buyer type within the same large and a price, you see the flexibility of being able to meet the buyer where they want to be is going to be very critical for an organization’s ongoing success, and that depends on the go to market function.
00:12:15:14 – 00:12:49:02
Speaker
Yet these are my personal beliefs, but my observation across vendors, my own interaction with customers, it has shifted significantly to a customer centric model as opposed to a vendor centric salesman. So I got a follow up question on that one. So I’m not going to agree or disagree. What I’m going to ask you is if you are and you have a lot of listeners that are sales development leaders, SDR leaders inside sales leaders as well as reps, what should they be thinking about?
00:12:49:02 – 00:13:18:06
Speaker
How should they be thinking about their future? What should they be doing right now to not just become obsolete? Understanding the end to end buyer journey Mapping the buyer journey is a really critical part. It’s a responsibility of any go to market leader is understanding what your typical buyer journey looks like. Trust and make the customer the center of that, define what the buyer journey is and then determine what role you’re going to play within that sales cycle.
00:13:18:12 – 00:13:42:16
Speaker
And if as a buyer, I realize that it looks like my buyer is well aware of my solution, it’s a very mature domain and a very mature market and the incremental value that I’m going to be bringing to the sales process is shrinking rapidly. This more for, as an example and metric would be there’s more inbound than outbound success.
00:13:43:00 – 00:14:04:12
Speaker
There’s more customers already coming in and asking me how can I buy your solution or tell me more about your solution? Then it means that there’s more inbound demand. There’s outbound demand. Outbound is one you you’re trying to either evangelize a domain or a solution, or you are trying to break into a market that is hitherto not been, you know, defined well and clearly.
00:14:04:21 – 00:14:24:07
Speaker
And so that’s why the advent conversation is a lot more. But when there’s inbound, then it’s a mature market too. The signals should be it is going to shrink even further because it can be automated, it can be curated. There are tools out there that I can go there and the chat bot will exactly lead me to the solution that I need based on our response.
00:14:24:14 – 00:14:48:18
Speaker
So there are eight tools that are out there that are becoming a lot more efficient at guiding a interested buyers. So if I were in the marketing business, I’d be looking at shifting that into a little bit of a hybrid lead development process where I use a combination of digital business development tools and or solutions and a combination of humans where there’s going to be a more engaged, complex solution sale type model.
00:14:48:18 – 00:15:18:09
Speaker
So I cannot profess to say how a BTR leader or a marketing leader should think, but I think they should understand how their buyer is shifting and shifts to their own professional motivations accordingly into the areas where they’ll have the maximum impact because the pressure is going to be on off having qualified leads right now. Well, these are all metrics that everybody’s measured on, and the more mature the market, the more qualified the buyer in the solution journey.
00:15:18:09 – 00:15:42:22
Speaker
We know the parabola and happens mature markets. If you are in emerging markets and if you are in the beginning of a breakthrough technology and or in Raman or a domain, then naturally you need more people to handhold the customer through the buying process. But once you reach that mature market area with the top of the parabola, then I would say that a good combination of digital and human engagement would be perhaps more appropriate.
00:15:43:06 – 00:16:25:03
Speaker
So we don’t see this inefficiency in the marketing process of, you know, I get 9% hit rate at 10%. Why do we need to accept that level of conversion when you could do a lot more by engaging the customer with digital assets that they may be looking for? I think my have to your point and where Howard is going on this as well, what I always thought our brand advise and attempt to do you’re absolutely right on the outside in approach right for the customer engagement and then instead of letting our screen system guide us by stages, they really is just a collection of jobs and tasks that a buyer needs to complete and they
00:16:25:03 – 00:16:50:06
Speaker
don’t do them sequentially. And so my advice to Howard’s question of your head of Stars Eyesores and beyond. Yes, know the buyer journey, but just think of the tasks and then ask who is best suited in my org to solve that task in the most capital efficient way. Right. So to your point, digital content, I actually probably still need an ESR potentially to help with certain aspects of that.
00:16:50:12 – 00:17:12:17
Speaker
And I don’t want a $400,000 a year seller to do that piece of it. Right. But that’s a task. And that task may happen in stage four as well as stage one, stage two, stage five of their whatever their sales processes and so forth. Right? So is really thinking of the jobs and tasks that need to be completed by functional area.
00:17:13:01 – 00:17:42:05
Speaker
Not so much that, hey, I did something, I passed off it’s stage two, I’m out of here, right? Because we’re trying to win more. Every company, when rates are stalling, the tasks are still needing to get done and people just kind of fall in this binary of handoff type thing. So outside in focus on the task job to be done and then think of your team as assets that are ensemble for the task as opposed to the stage.
00:17:42:11 – 00:18:11:12
Speaker
Totally, totally. I think you took a sneak peek at the e-book that we are planning to release a few weeks from now. Actually, I have two close collaborators chatting Ferrari’s as zero at Samurai Mirage and which Hasbro he is and from Inside Partners. So the three of us are collaborating on this book on revenue acceleration, and this is exactly what we are talking about in there, which is task based selling process and identifying those repeatable tasks that can be automated.
00:18:11:19 – 00:18:31:23
Speaker
So first you optimize and then you automate those tasks and then you hand them over to a tool or some sort of a digital media and then you shift as as you identify those repeatable tasks that can be automated. Then you can slowly shift more closer to the human interactions, and there you can further optimize that human interaction by.
00:18:32:05 – 00:19:02:10
Speaker
So that’s exactly what we are propagating rather than functional silos and data silos that exists out there. We’re talking about a horizontal way in which pods can be created based on the outcome that we want to drive. And so we are actually talking there about removing these data silos and functional silos so that we can collaborate a lot more and not more polls or to get to the desired outcome and accelerate revenue.
00:19:03:05 – 00:19:30:02
Speaker
You know, what I love about this is you mentioned tasks and when you think about a lot of people and you you mentioned try to understand your buyer’s journey. And I think what Alister alluded to is a buyer’s journey is fairly convoluted today and there are multiple stakeholders in that buying committee that go through very different journeys depending on what is motivating them, what are they trying to solve for?
00:19:30:07 – 00:20:16:15
Speaker
And if we think about the customer, the buyer, and put them in the center and we think about all of the things that they need, all the assets they need to help them, don’t worry about the exact order, but make it available to them and easy for them to learn and get that information. Again, it’s more of a let them poll the type of information, make it available, and when they need the human being, make sure that human being is just like the other assets, one congruent with the same messaging and the same value prop and the same way of speaking, and to don’t shove it down their throat, wait for them to need that
00:20:16:15 – 00:20:41:19
Speaker
part of the process so that, again, it’s helping a buyer by none of us. Speaker Or maybe my wife and I’m too God bless her, but none of us are professional buyers, right? Like, it’s just not something you go to school for, except for maybe if you’re a procurement person, we need help in buying. That’s our job. As go to market teams is to help people by slowly.
00:20:42:05 – 00:21:02:00
Speaker
Sometimes we forget. We get so caught up. We were having a conversation last week with a couple of us around enablement and how enablement just keeps driving. You know, you just tell the seller, this is how you sell, Here’s this methodology, here’s everything you need to do, and you forget this is a customer at the other end of this journey.
00:21:02:07 – 00:21:23:18
Speaker
And so we put so much pressure on the seller. We enable them, we give them all these methodologies, whatever kind of sale that is out there, right? We throw all these processes at them and we give them this blue book and we put them through a forecasting process and it’s all vendor centric. There’s no customer centric conversation that happens anywhere within the process, right?
00:21:24:03 – 00:21:41:23
Speaker
The power is now in the hands of the customer, the buyer, you, me, everybody, we all our customers in our own little world that we’ve created around ourselves, we can all walk into a store and then the customers take a ticket, wait in line, and you have to go there and there and there before you go and get to your phone.
00:21:41:23 – 00:21:58:01
Speaker
And I go, okay, thank you very much. I’m going to go online. I’m going to go buy it. I know exactly what I need. I don’t need to go through a three step process to get exactly what I think I need. I may change my mind when I get to you, but I don’t want to be managed well through my buying process.
00:21:58:14 – 00:22:23:11
Speaker
So the freedom not to be managed in a buying process and so did this convergence of B to C and B to B buying processes. It’s it’s definitely a paradigm shift. It’s absolutely a paradigm shift. It’s going to it’s going to hit us there are some CEOs that are actually seriously thinking about this. They are looking at and here I’m going to step into into some dangerous territory.
00:22:23:16 – 00:22:55:12
Speaker
The sales officer was sort of this godlike person, right? Everything centered around sales and whatever sales wanted sales got. I was one of them. I still am one of them as a part of sales organization. But you know, who’s now getting a lot of importance is this customer success, the person that’s nurturing and growing customers, right? So there’s already a shift that’s going on, and CEOs are thinking about how do I grow, not just acquire.
00:22:55:22 – 00:23:18:21
Speaker
And that comes from engaging with the customer, defining what the buyer journey looks like end to end. And it doesn’t end at the contract in most cases. It begins at the contract because you’re now expanding the customer relationship. So there’s already a shift that’s going on around where is the center of gravity happening inside an organization, which is to be very sales centric or product centric, right?
00:23:19:08 – 00:23:48:01
Speaker
See, there’s all this talk about PLG, about being product led growth. I think they’re all in our rearview mirror. We’re looking at more like CLG, which is customer led growth, but the customer is going to tell us exactly where they want to go and we have to be available for them. Our to your point, exactly how they need us, where they need us and with whatever they need us to do, as long as it’s associated with our roadmap and is a definite shift that that we are seeing as well in our buyer behavior.
00:23:48:07 – 00:24:18:03
Speaker
I am chomping at the bit to bite on that. But are we are I got Dave our producer is some added you got to you got to put this on. We’re going to run out of time. I’m going to pause this there animal. Hope that we can have you back and actually dive into that more is the connectivity of growing, not just to acquiring and how we do that, where we invest in the ops changes need to occur I think is is a fantastic follow up on there.
00:24:18:11 – 00:24:36:22
Speaker
And yes, I think I think I would love to, but I am going to pause us because I got to get this through to some quick things on some trivia and then if time permitting on your schedule, I will I’ll be back and we’ll dive right into that. So with that said, you ready for this week’s trivia question that we love to ask every guest?
00:24:37:06 – 00:24:56:14
Speaker
Oh, okay. All right. Now, I’d be a little unfair on this one because you’re one of the more experienced people that we’ve had on that knows a lot of facts and figures and you’re heads down and that, you know, the future of sales and making predictions. And I’m going to give you a piece of trivia here from 2018.
00:24:57:02 – 00:25:34:16
Speaker
So the question is, according to Gartner’s prediction, what percent of all B2B sales jobs may be eliminated by 2023 years ago due to artificial intelligence and advance automation? One, did they say 15% to 33%? See? 50%. Hmm. 15 seems too low. 50 seems too high, 33 seems apt, but Gartner’s never average, so I’ll probably go with 50%. I appreciate the call out of Gartner never being averages recovering analyst myself.
00:25:34:16 – 00:25:59:13
Speaker
They actually went with 33% was the prediction they made in 2080. Now I want to bring that up to set the stage for our next conversation as well, because Gardner got that wrong massively because what has actually happened from 2018 through to here we are in 2023 today, all of these teams have expanded, all of these teams have got bigger, all of the investments have got more complex.
00:25:59:13 – 00:26:25:02
Speaker
And the technology has got even more robust. And I love to suggest that artificial intelligence is actually going to be an accelerator of more of these jobs. But it’s a question of what the job is. So when you say Gartner back in 2018 was wrong, was this a piece of research that you did that you’re going to include the role you’ll because I mean, I was there in 2018, so I’ll plead the fit.
00:26:25:03 – 00:26:45:14
Speaker
How about that? Well, we’ll go from there. It is been an absolute pleasure to have you on as co-host. I’m going to cut Howard off before he chops my knees up further with the Gartner stuff. And we would love to have you back on the future episode where we’ll dive into more of the ops changes, the roles changes and where sales 3.0 is headed.
00:26:45:20 – 00:59:07:03
Speaker
Looking forward to continuing this. Thank you. Thanks so much. And everybody, please remember to like and subscribe. Don’t forget to call in your questions as well. Howard and I will always do our best to answer them on a future episode and we’ll see you next Thursday. Right? All right. That was fun. Great job, Emma. Thank you. That was wonderful.
00:59:07:21 – 00:59:38:16
Speaker
Yeah, I’m prepared. I know, I know. You know, what is going to happen is I’m going to get a lot of hate mail from my BD Bambi, Dear manager friends and I. Yeah, I think. I think engagement is the way we want to go, right? Is that the only way we can change is if they’re thinking. Yeah, but I do like just, just Alister as a kick off to the next section, we did talk about that role and how much it’s going to change and how let us into the focus customer success.
00:59:38:16 – 01:00:05:09
Speaker
Right? And I do think that retooling some of the BTR function and people to add more to the existing customers through understanding the metrics, the utilization of the product, so that these buyers or whoever were retooling should now be reaching out and saying, Hey, I noticed X about how you’re using the product. Maybe we can help you deliver more value.
01:00:05:09 – 01:00:26:08
Speaker
So maybe we could like jump to that because all the people that are going to be writing her hate mail in listen the following week and get great career advice. I mean, that’s exactly what I was hoping we would go to is because buyers are so much focused on customer acquisition and not on growth. But you are missing we are missing a tremendous thing.
01:00:26:08 – 01:00:51:11
Speaker
I mean, ABM has always been around like a cloud based marketing, but that is more about just spamming me with all the new products that you have just released. I am never going to read it. What is the human beings going to call me? Not a very expensive sales rep, but if a human being is going to call me and say, Hey, Mr. Customer, I understand you’re using I don’t know this are the solution.
01:00:51:11 – 01:01:10:02
Speaker
And how about are you going to email phishing host How you solving create email phishing problem? And I go, actually, I don’t. I do get a ton of email, you know, a phishing emails. So let me let me so that is that’s a shift from the top of the funnel to the middle of the funnel to the inverted funnel, right?
01:01:10:03 – 01:01:32:11
Speaker
That we are talking about inverting the funnel. Right. I greet the girl so hurt me. Sorry, I’m going to partially because I may get us on the record is what I’ll do. So let let us. That is exactly right. So let’s dive in there. Okay. I’m going to quickly re intro go through the same setup again and then we will add a new piece which will set the tone for that.
01:01:32:11 – 01:02:03:14
Speaker
And we will will rock roll. All right. Real three to welcome back everybody to this week’s Sales Strategy Enablement podcast. I’m Alister Woolcock, chief strategy review officer here at Revenue IO, joined by my infamous co-host, founder, AI guru and all things revenue science, Howard Brown. And today we are thrilled to have with us Mob hoola is back with part two on sales 3.0 and where we are headed in this market.
01:02:03:14 – 01:02:39:07
Speaker
And for context, 70 Mya is a phenomenal leader. Vice President. Global pre-sales at Cloudflare has been part of Ignite Stage two Capital, a long, storied history of building awesome sales organizations around the world. Mark, great to have you back. Thank you. Unendurable. If I may say, while I am with that right, let’s dive right in. And as you know, we always love to start with some recent news and just August 3rd, there is a recent report that Gardner made.
01:02:39:07 – 01:03:04:11
Speaker
And I read you a statement and it says that generative AI is going to lead to a 20 to 30% reduction of customer success and service agents, but it’s going to create eight new jobs in that area. Now, in a way, I don’t know that that’s overly provocative, but it’s really interesting they’re putting that out there to say what it is.
01:03:04:11 – 01:03:37:05
Speaker
And and Howard, I want to dive into where we left off from last episode. And that’s the notion that a lot of these functions are changing. They’re changing rapidly. But I would suggest they’re going to increase in scope, they’re going to increase in volume, but the job is going to be different. And how we grow our company isn’t just acquisition, but it’s also growing what we, you know, so I know you had some initial thoughts on this and you know where we’re going.
01:03:37:05 – 01:04:04:14
Speaker
Maybe I’ll start with you this week and just, you know, let’s dive into that transition and then I’d love to get your thoughts on, you know, where where these roles are headed. Yeah. Thanks, Alister. I Maha, last week was talking about how the buyer is at the center of everything and how we need to stop pushing and really help the buyer make those buying decisions.
01:04:04:14 – 01:04:33:10
Speaker
And I think one of the things that Maha brought up was not to throw you on there, you know, throw you out to the lions here, but how the role of the BTR SDR needs to change and how a lot of that outbound motion is really starting to change, and that people who are in those roles and the leaders around those roles need to think about how to add value to the customers, how to add value to the buyers.
01:04:34:00 – 01:05:02:13
Speaker
And I think the notion that systems customer success, that is a huge opportunity for all of us to think about our customers and how we continue to add value to them, how we continue to service our customers so one, they can grow their business and get the most value from our products and service and to help our companies grow sustainable revenue and customers for the long haul.
01:05:03:10 – 01:05:33:21
Speaker
There is a huge opportunity to retool a lot of the SDR and BTR roles, which is typically thought of as top funnel. Yeah, to how do we add value to the customer further down once they are a customer, once they’ve already started, use our product and service, we are now the expert, not just in our product, but how to help them get more value, grow their business enhance the value of their company.
01:05:33:21 – 01:06:06:13
Speaker
And so if you think about all the ways generative today has started to help people, how how it’s optimizing processes, one of the things we’re seeing at revenue audio is we’re seeing people move from thinking about engagement platforms as just not top of funnel, constant top of funnel, but how do we use these interactions that we have with our customers, all the data that we have on our customers and their utilization to be even more helpful.
01:06:06:18 – 01:06:50:01
Speaker
So engaging our customers in a helpful way as opposed to spamming customers or just more and more, more. And I see that as a really positive trend. I’d love your thoughts more. You know, you you said all of the things that were going on in my head around this value added BTR, right? The concept of the the business development function as being sort of a pilot of the solution to someone who is going to continue to be with you on the journey in some form or manner, reminding you about all the additional value that you can gain from this engagement vendor.
01:06:50:05 – 01:07:30:18
Speaker
So really becoming a CO a journey, a stage journey. MAN Is it correct? Lord No, But as someone who’s a copilot almost, and and can take you through this journey with, with this vendor, right. So what, what do we mean by that? There is sort of a way in which the BTR can over the lifecycle of that customer, your mind, the customer over you know in a in a periodic in of roles, maybe even touch base with them and sort of grow into a sort of a hybrid customer success person.
01:07:31:01 – 01:07:51:21
Speaker
Right. A You we talked about in the previous episode, we talked about what happens to a BTR, they just go away, they don’t go, but it sort of merges into the customer journey. And we all know a BTR does not stay in that role for no more than two max. Three years is what we get out of a BTR before they go into a kind of a role, a sales role, right?
01:07:52:03 – 01:08:16:01
Speaker
So in the 2 to 3 years, there are possibilities for them to be doing other things as well. Like on their journey, they could go in a customer success. They know how the customer buys. What is it that motivated the customer to engage with the vendor in the first place and then take that one and take it forward and talk about some of the signals that they may be leveraging from the customer to take the customer further down the buyer journey.
01:08:16:05 – 01:08:42:03
Speaker
And so they can transition into as a as a great career path into customer success. But to your point, as you said, you know, even customer success roles could be impacted by I as solutions and automation, but they’re never going to go away. Customers are always going to need assistance in their adoption journey. So there are possibilities. There are other things that function can be doing over the course and nights like that.
01:08:42:14 – 01:09:05:12
Speaker
Then we talk about on a UX, so go ahead. Well, I was just here the same. Thank you. The, you know, our last episode, I’m going to paraphrase it all down to this statement that I think, you know, our partially said as well, which is it was not just about helping sellers sell us by helping buyers buy and that that’s the world that is fundamentally was shifting in the world of sales right now.
01:09:05:18 – 01:09:37:13
Speaker
And when you think of that now the customer success world, what I would suggest is, is absolutely one of the most key aspects of growth company today without you, you have to have good investments there, arguably creeping up to as much as you may out in sales. Learn it now the ever lution of that is customer success isn’t any more just about making the customer is successful with what you’ve sold them.
01:09:37:13 – 01:10:03:19
Speaker
Customer success is now about sparking exploration. And when I think of BTR as I think advisors, I think of sales teams, what a good sales sales teams are usually good at. Hey, Matt Howard, here’s an idea. Here’s something I’ve seen. Here’s what I think is possible in your to solve X, y, z problem. And I got an idea that I think is going to shift that forward for you.
01:10:04:21 – 01:10:35:02
Speaker
People want to listen. They want to know others are doing where that’s going and says this is now this world of sparking exploration, not selling, sparking exploration that shows how they can help transform their customers organizations where it sells. And I think that’s if our sellers are helping buyers and our systems are sparking exploration, that’s a huge step forwards, I think, for most of these organizations.
01:10:35:02 – 01:11:02:07
Speaker
And that’s where generative I can fill the gap and could augment all of these resources today. I think with the content and the queries and the large language models, they need to supplement that acumen. Absolutely. I am looking at some tools that are out there to help my own team get to the information that they need faster and the and in the language of their choice.
01:11:02:07 – 01:11:22:04
Speaker
I mean, I have a global team. I’m not going to be able to work with a a generative tool that is just going to give me the responses in English language. It has to be in all the languages where my teams are, and the more remote my teams, the more important it is that they have access to the information in the language that they need it because they are in a different time zone.
01:11:22:04 – 01:11:46:05
Speaker
They don’t have access to the air, to the people and or resources have this information with them. So these sources of information have become so critical for us to integrate into the seller, into the selling team or the customer facing teams, let’s call them, because not everybody selling somebody actively engaged in adoption, somebody is actively engaged in exploration, like you said, or sparking interest.
01:11:46:05 – 01:12:05:22
Speaker
And not everybody is selling, even though that’s that outcome you want to drive to. But it’s not the intent with which you engage with the customer. So the intent is giving the customer when they need it, how they need it in the language that they need it. You can give them, you know, a whole lot of information, say you go figure how you want to get this one.
01:12:05:22 – 01:12:31:22
Speaker
Translate it. So we are looking at generative buy. So that specific reason is looking at the solutions that may be able to provide access to the information to my team as quickly as possible and in the language that they can get to so they can serve their customers better. Again, customer centered the universe and they can get access, give the customer access to the information that they need in the shortest possible time.
01:12:31:22 – 01:13:19:09
Speaker
How hard I feel like that is a Howard Brown moment here. The media is inadvertently set up. Yeah, I mean, eight are real. What what is effectively is the real time pieces. Yeah. You know, but let’s just give some context there a little bit that makes sense. Well, I think what Martha is speaking about is again, the mission that hopefully we are all on, which is delivering the most value to our buyers and customers and using whatever technology we have to empower them as well as and a lot of people forget about this empowering our own teams because we try and bring on people and turn them into experts and we don’t tool them, right?
01:13:19:09 – 01:13:43:03
Speaker
We throw a bunch of information at them, we throw them in training, and we expect them to just go sell or deliver value and they’re not equipped to do it. So where have we focus? We have focused on the moments that matter when people are engaging with their customers. They care to know everything the customer knows about the customer’s business.
01:13:43:10 – 01:14:15:11
Speaker
They can’t know everything about the business acumen they need about their product that they’re selling, about all the competitors, enabling our sellers, our customer success reps with the information they need in the moment, in the language, in the localization that they need to address that buyer and that customer. That’s what we’re all about, real time in the moment, not after, not a monday morning quarterback sitting and telling you what they should have done.
01:14:15:16 – 01:14:40:05
Speaker
I want the audible in my ear. I want my reps to have the information available the minute their customer asks about a ED or a value or a problem. That is what we are building. That’s what we all should be thinking. Absolutely. Is that does that address the moment? Alister Well matter. What do you think? You’re you’re in there, you’re doing the global rollout.
01:14:40:05 – 01:15:14:04
Speaker
Yeah, you’re, you’re interfacing with these companies and you’re about to write the book on sales 3.0. But thoughts we are made already. You know, customers are moving faster than we are able to catch up because we are so mired in how we are set up internally. Our processes are centered around the people and the functions. And these vertical silos that we’ve built, we’re unable to get out of our own way to think horizontally in terms of serving customers.
01:15:14:04 – 01:15:41:20
Speaker
Right. And so it is going to take time and organizations are not going to just break down all these and say, Oh, yeah, all right, let’s go create pods of different functions that’s going to go and address a particular customer segment because it’s just not going to happen. It’s not going to happen overnight. But what can happen is bringing access to the information repositories that sits across these various functions using generative.
01:15:41:23 – 01:16:07:03
Speaker
I like tools that can then will mine the data needed to give a seller or a customer facing person the information they need quickly while people are all trying to figure it out otherwise and all the process. The lack of this is I send an email out or I create a ticket or I create a case study or I go into JIRA, I go into another tool, like I create request systems that are very, very direct.
01:16:07:13 – 01:16:34:09
Speaker
You know, I have to send it or send a request, and then I’ll wait for the response. Why the customer is out there chomping at the bit to get response to the answers. What I can do now is go in and look at an GPT solution and say, Go look up all my repositories, not a search engine, go look up all my repositories and get paid to me with the most intelligent response I can give back to the customer while I go and buy some time to go research this information.
01:16:34:15 – 01:17:00:11
Speaker
But it has to be authoritative sources that would be authentic and authoritative sources that I can go in and rely on this information. Of course, deployment of these tools are not so easy because sometimes information that is sitting out, sitting within corporate systems are dated and are not the most recent. So authoritative systems can be integrated together intelligently to provide me a customized facing individual the information I need to provide to that customer.
01:17:00:11 – 01:17:20:07
Speaker
Why would I not one if I was ahead of sales or I was head of customer success or I was a CEO? CIA, why would I not want to have something like this within my within my solution? I would love something like that today or yesterday so that I can get more out of my team’s time when they are customer facing.
01:17:20:07 – 01:17:39:05
Speaker
It’s precious. Well, you and I are spending 20 minutes together, maybe 30 minutes together or face to face. I’ve got to captive audience. Why would I lose and waste any moment of that information by not giving you exactly what you need? Your time is just as precious as mine is. And so I want to be able to make this valuable for you.
01:17:39:08 – 01:18:02:01
Speaker
The more value, though, you treat a customer’s time and their engagement with us, the more they’re to respect you for it, because they know that you haven’t wasted their time, you know, trying to put them through some sort of mundane process that they don’t even understand and are not familiar. Of course I would use it. I have a final question for you both on this.
01:18:02:01 – 01:18:26:08
Speaker
And Michael, maybe I’ll start with you and Howard then. You you said something interesting and that is, look, people, companies in particular, global enterprises can’t just go in and start creating pods and, you know, change all the roles and do all of these things. But we all agree we need to be outside and we all import. Yeah, we’re looking at the changes generated.
01:18:26:08 – 01:18:52:17
Speaker
We see it impacting the roles. So how slow can these leaders be today and still be successful? Because we’re making all the excuses in the world of why they can’t. So how slow can they be versus competition right now and still still survive? Boy, is that a T ball or what? I think it was. So you should go first out How slow.
01:18:52:17 – 01:19:30:12
Speaker
That’s like a you can’t go slow period. The days of going slow are gone. Go to LinkedIn open up, attack anything. Look on the news. Generative is taking over quickly. If you’re not adapting this incredibly fast moving world, which by the way, is so exciting, embrace it, try it, get involved. Then you’re going to miss it because the companies that deliver that better customer experience, that better buying experience, that consistency of value are going to blow the doors off of the competitors.
01:19:30:17 – 01:20:06:21
Speaker
So you either get with it and you get with it quickly, or you’re going to be explaining to boards or investors why you missed it. Absolutely. You will be you will be held accountable for the outcomes of not knowing fast enough. Absolutely. Anyone with the ability to influence or the ability to make a decision on process optimization within their own organization, irrespective of whether it is a selling process, a buying process, a success or a customer support process.
01:20:06:21 – 01:20:31:09
Speaker
It doesn’t matter. Anything that interacts with a customer billing billing cycles, you don’t think about that legal areas like anything that is there to serve a customer. Pretty much everything that is out there to serve a customer should be considering this in some form or manner, otherwise they will be left behind. So no, they cannot go slow. It’s only a how fast can you go.
01:20:32:11 – 01:20:50:22
Speaker
Obviously security and all of those things are into internal to an organization is really key. But how safely fast can you go? That’s right. It’s going to be the question, not how slow can you go slow, as should not even be the vocabulary of any of the need to do that. It was a challenging question because of how asked it, but I think we got to the answer.
01:20:51:12 – 01:21:36:11
Speaker
I think though. Do I think so too? Yeah, that’s right. With, as I said, we are we are getting to time again and my and our you know, what a absolutely scintillating conversation. Right. When we think about where this is going, the market and the sheer speed and change that is there. And also you know, I like the fact that while we see the SDR, I saw in these functions and see us all rapidly changing and the predictions often are about all these jobs are going away, jobs evolve, let’s job revolutions revolutionize it and rapidly help these people understand how to use the tools, because that’s a competitive edge.
01:21:36:17 – 01:22:14:11
Speaker
And I’m big on job creation, not job deconstruction. Now, final trivia there for you. We only have one more to go. No, but this market performance is a current one this time, unlike last week’s episode. So I’m going to read it off to you. So a recent Forbes article titled Embracing the Future How AI has Revolutionized Revolutionizing Sales and Marketing, asked a question about what roles that A.I. generates IT salespeople are predicted to excel in over the next seven years.
01:22:14:20 – 01:22:47:08
Speaker
So these are AI generated sales over the next seven years. One is a lead generation and data analysis. Two is a product demos and customer engagement. Three is a writing emails to different segments or industries, which is the top one predicted to be most influenced by AI generated salespeople. One Hmm. Okay. You said product demos. Yeah, yeah. Email and lead generation.
01:22:49:02 – 01:23:11:05
Speaker
Is there like a D? All of the above or I was going to ask that is that kind of thing? Yeah I think I’m going to go with you two and say all of the above. The answer is actually lead generation is the number one predicted area, but I think you both are absolutely bang on. We’re talking percentages of difference here.
01:23:11:05 – 01:23:38:13
Speaker
All areas are going to be fundamentally impacted and augmented by this. And to Howard’s point, if you are experimenting today, you’re already being left behind by. Thank you so much for joining us. It’s been an absolute pleasure having you on and we hope to have you back in the very near future. Yeah, I face ride this and I get calls by my biafrans and my son about himself is a big deal.
01:23:38:13 – 01:24:00:17
Speaker
He’s going to call me right now. I don’t know. I think you charted his future for him to be on right now. But thank you so much for having me on the call. It was a lot of fun. Have everybody listening and please don’t forget to like and subscribe and tune in next week’s episode. And as always, submit your questions to Howard and I will do our best to address them on a future episode.
01:24:01:06 – 01:24:14:04
Speaker
Thank you. Our thank you, everyone. See you next Thursday. Thanks, Alistair. And that was awesome. You were fabulous. And this was fun. Thank you so much. You were rock, and that was great.
