Adam Torres and Victor Adefuye discuss sales and AI.
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Show Notes:
How is AI impacting sales & marketing organizations? In this episode, Adam Torres and Victor Adefuye, Founder & Sales Coach at Dana Consulting, explore AI and the future of sales.
About Victor Adefuye
Victor helps B2B companies design, build, accelerate and scale their sales efforts by focusing on delivering value.
With over 10 years of experience in B2B sales, He have helped clients increase their revenue by millions of dollars, whether they are founders of startups or sales leaders at scaleups or Fortune 500 companies. He specializes in sales strategy development, process & messaging design, and training sales people and managers.
His mission is to change the perception of sales as a self-interested, always-be-closing profession into one dedicated to serving customers. Research and experience suggests that this is the most reliable way to hit your revenue goals. If you’re ready to transform the way you sell,
About Dana Consulting
Help B2B companies achieve sustainable growth through their outcome-based coaching programs
They teach sellers how to engage buyers with unique insights and differentiated value by prioritizing the customer and employee experiences that impact business goals. They streamline your qualification process to target top prospects, then enhance your forecasts by confirming key sales actions, engaging all decision-makers, and reinforcing exit criteria.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on be our guest to apply. All right. So today I have Victor Adefoye on the line and he’s a founder and a sales coach over at Dana Consulting.
Victor, welcome to the show. Thank you. Nice to be here. Thanks for having me. All right, Victor. So we got a hot topic today. How to use AI to accelerate sales, productivity and results. I mean, AI sales, productivity results. That’s a, what a hook. A lot of business owners, a lot of executives that, that listen to this show and all of these things.
Things they are interested in and I assure you. So I guess just to get us kicked off here, we’ll start with our, what we like to call our mission matters minute. So Victor at mission matters, our aim and our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s what we do. Victor, what mission matters to you?
The mission that matters the most to me is supporting salespeople. I started my business career as a seller. I’ve been a sales manager. I’ve raised my own sales teams as an entrepreneur. So I’ve kind of seen the profession from various angles, including the last decade plus of being an advisor to companies on how to accelerate sales productivity.
And I find that Sales is an area where we accept a lot of things that we don’t accept in other parts of business. Usually it’s like, you know, people don’t really know what it takes to improve sales results and productivity. And so there’s a lot of hiring and firing. I mean, I, some of the stats that I’ve seen, I mean, this is borne out by my experience, somewhere in the neighborhood of.
30 percent of salespeople are let go every single year. And then on top of that sales leadership too. I think the average 10 year of VP of sales is somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 months. It’s really a churn and burn kind of career. And I don’t think it has to be that way. I think that if salespeople are given the right tools and the right training and support.
They can be successful. And if the sales people are successful, then the leadership and the organization is successful. So yeah, pretty much committed my career to helping salespeople. What your first sales gig? And I mean, you can go all the way back. Were you one of the lemonade people or our newspapers?
Like what was your first, what was your early years in sales? Give me the early one. Yeah. I mean, high school definitely would, , get involved in , different types of small business. Ideas with my friends selling tickets to I grew up on Long Island. So when we were younger going into the city, Was a big deal, New York City and and going to clubs and things like that.
And so , I would organize these club events with friends and sell tickets and various cool. Yeah. Yeah. So that was probably my first like real selling job. And then, you know, as an adult, I, my first job was in financial services sales. So working at Northwestern Mutual, helping high net worth individuals and small businesses think about, how to, , protect themselves with insurance and retirement benefits.
So that was my first real sales job and it was a real eye opener. But , obviously I’ve, I’ve, I’ve been doing that since, so I love it. Did you know, so like going back in those early days, I started in financial services as well. And I, one of the things I love about financial services, it’s like the training, if you didn’t have those types of trainings or like the corporate, like, , that’s the company you mentioned Northwest reach.
I mean, they’re, they’re big, they have formalized training programs and otherwise. And it’s kind of like, for me it was the first time I’d ever been through a systems like that is when I started working for these large companies. But Did you know back? then that, Hey, one day you could see yourself into like, , did you gravitate to that concept of sales or did you even kind of know what it was yet?
For me, I kind of didn’t even know what it was yet. I was just doing it. I was, I just considered it making money. I didn’t even think I was selling. I didn’t know any of that stuff. I was just out of college and I’m like, I’m just trying to make a check. Like I didn’t really understand. Understand what the sales side it was.
Did you take to it quickly, like understanding like those concepts in sales and like or did it take longer for you? I’m just curious about your experience. Yeah, no, it’s a great question., I don’t think I understood the full breadth of what I was getting into when I first , I played I, I went to law school and so right after undergrad, and so I actually practiced law for about three or four years and it just wasn’t for me.
And so I wanted to get into the business world and a friend of mine was like, Hey, come join this team at Northwestern. And so I kind of thought I was getting into a finance job, but very quickly realized that, no, no, no, this is about, selling products and services to people. And it was a 100 percent commission job too.
And so it was like really being thrown into the deep end and having to figure it out. But like you said, Northwestern has one of the best sales training programs in the country that is recognized. And so that was a real experience for me and understanding. That people can be developed in this arena, right?
I think a lot of people believe that salespeople are born and not made, but Northwestern hires, you know, career changes like me or people often right out of school to and teaches them how to communicate value. Who their ideal customers are, how to handle objections, how to follow a sales process, how to know what your targets are, and how to calculate how to achieve those targets.
And so that kind of systematic thinking and the investment of in the salespeople that I learned , from Northwestern really was the foundation of the rest of my career in many ways. I knew it was possible to get more productivity out of salespeople and to accelerate their results.
So, yeah. Yeah. And all, and all those things that you mentioned, I, I liked how you broke those down because once you hear those. For those that are on the side of the fence where they say, ah, you have to be born into it. Or you’re a born sales. I’m like, I’m sorry, but I wasn’t born with those skills. Like those were all taught skills.
I think sometimes we, we confuse the concept of being born to be in sales with like somebody that has this jovial personality or like what Hollywood sales person needs to be like. But In my experience in sales, many times the top producers aren’t all that jovial. They’re just about their numbers and they’re focused , and they have processes that they’ve mastered and that they execute day in and day out and over time that adds up.
Like that’s who I know is like and to say you’re born with that mentality. I just don’t see it. That’s just me though Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think you you hit the nail on the head with process I think process solves a lot of problems and being able to educate salespeople on , how do you research your accounts?
What’s a good account look like? What’s an ideal customer look like? What does that first meeting look like? What should happen by the end of that meeting? What’s the agenda? What’s the second meeting? What’s the third meeting? What’s the proposal review? Who are the stakeholders that you need to get on board, right?
Like providing that level of guidance goes a long way because otherwise sales reps are left to figure it out on their own. And then the other thing I would say that’s critical is messaging, right? What is the value that you deliver and to whom can you quantify it? Can you speak to the benefits that you could deliver?
that are not quantifiable. Those personal wins that people get from engaging with your products or service. These are things that we were drilled on my earliest days at Northwestern. , and it really was drills. It was practice , it was like role playing a lot of that and coaching, right.
Having more senior reps help us with in deals to, go on meetings with us, but then also coach us on how to improve our skills and, and execute those meetings well on our own. So, yeah, I think , those two things being very clear, In educating salespeople on the right process.
And being very clear and educating salespeople on messaging that solves a lot of problems for sure. So fast forwarding a bit here and jumping around a little now we’re in this AI, like, how does AI play into this world of sales? Like, what are you seeing? Yeah, I mean, I, I try not to get too excited about this topic, but if you get me started on it, I can really go on forever.
I’ll try to contain my excitement of this conversation. But I genuinely believe that we are on the cusp of a revolution in sales. I mean, AI is a revolution in business and in the world, frankly. That we are just in the earliest days of understanding. But I think people don’t fully appreciate how it’s gonna impact sales.
If you think about , idea that you and I first started talking about, salespeople being born and not made, right? If you really believe that people can be developed, then AI is a powerful tool for education. By being able to deliver customized training that’s based off of the specific needs of the, of a sales rep.
Being able to understand and identify the needs of a sales rep by analyzing, , the conversations that they’re having with customers identifying patterns and their skills and where they need a little bit more improvement. AI really helps with that. I’ve got a partnership with an organization, Y Combinator startup called Hyperbound that allows You to create role play scenarios with your buyer persona.
instead of having reps, try to, get their, manager to find time to do role play with them or to find time with another colleague who may or may not be the best advisor providing you the best feedback where you can now, , train a, an AI bot. To be your buyer persona, CFO, CEO, head of marketing that you typically sell to and provide opportunities to practice those conversations.
And then when those conversations actually occur, the ability to provide guidance to the sales rep. And say, Hey, you know, you missed this question. We’re missing this information for this deal to be fully qualified. Maybe you follow up with that. Maybe you push for this next step. So AI is really a powerful tool for guidance.
the thing that is probably most exciting for salespeople Is taking off a lot of the administrative burdens of managing your sales process. So, you know, with some of my clients, some of the work that we’re doing, , we take a sales call transcript. Yeah. From that sales call transcript, we can.
Provide a report on, like I said a minute ago, how qualified is this deal? But then on top of that, we can take that transcript and turn it into a recap email. Hey, good talking to you. Here’s what we discussed. Did I get that right? , show the customer that you were listening and that you’re being customer centric.
, taking that same transcript or a bunch of transcripts of conversations with customers and writing the first draft of a proposal, right? These are tedious administrative tasks that, are really, really important to take a little bit of skill, but they also take time. And AI is the perfect tool for at least getting you a very solid first draft.
To these different customer communications. And in the past, what you just described, like, having the meeting, drafting the proposal, taking the even taking the notes during the meeting, like, all of , that breaks your customer, you know, that energy, even if it’s just a meeting.
Slightly, whatever the percentage is, but taking the notes during the meeting, all of that, like what, what kind of time savings does that mean? And then times it by how many meetings a day, a month, a year are you having? And before you know it, like the math gets scary. It’s like, wow, you just saved like a lifetime.
Yep, exactly. And that’s why I’m so excited about this stuff. Right. Because. My understanding is that there are a lot of people out there who businesses that are trying to figure out. How do we infuse AI into their processes? the challenges that companies are having is, where can we insert AI and be able to produce a positive ROI that’s measurable?
And to me, sales is like the perfect answer, right? Because if I can save time, right? If I can increase conversion rates and win rates because I write a better proposal, because I ask the right questions, right? Because I’m being prompted by the marketing content that my company has ahead of a call that says, Hey, you’re about to talk to the CFO.
These are the areas that you should dig into. These are the best case studies that we have for that persona and that industry, like, that is the thing that is a very targeted intervention. We can baseline where the organization was before. And then after we insert AI into it, we can see, have we improved conversion, shortened sales cycle, increased our contract values, and all of those, you don’t need to be a, , a complicated mathematician to figure out like, a 1 percent increase in this or 2 percent increase in that.
And be able to boil that down to hard dollars, right? Because that’s why we’re doing what we’re doing, right? We want to make a positive impact and a return on our investment. And I think, yeah, inserting AI into sales is the most straightforward way. What have you seen on the prospecting side of things?
Like what kind of things, like use case or otherwise, like what kind of things have you seen on prospecting, getting leads and all that? Cause that’s gotta be pretty exciting too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there are two things that I’m seeing there that are very, very exciting. So one of them is research. , tools like Perplexity that are, , going after Google.
Gone are the days where you do a Google search and then you have to Like sit through all these late. And there’s detectives spending a half an hour as a detective to figure out who that next person is coming in your office. So you don’t look dumb with something that you could have found in Google.
Cause that’s the main thing. You don’t want to look like you don’t know who the person is. Yeah, exactly. Right. And so let’s, let’s so first of all, how many salespeople are really doing that level of research? Not because they’re bad people, but it’s just a tedious thing. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody teaches them the right way.
Right. Right. And so and so the fact that today you can at minimum go to perplexity and just be like, what do I need to know about this company latest news on this person or this industry and give you a direct summary very, very quickly. That is really, really powerful. And then there are a lot of solutions out there today.
And if, if you don’t want to buy a solution, you can build your own that will deliver that research right into the inbox of the rep right before they get on the call, right? And so that I think is a really powerful tool for lead generation, just the ability for. A. I. To do really, really quick and in depth research.
And then the other part of it is customization, right? So, everybody knows that tailoring your message to, what you find about a given prospect, what what’s going on in their world, the output of the research or even just their title and an assumption of. The types of challenges that they’re having as a result, that level of personalization, we all know that it produces better response rates and engages the right customer.
But again, tedious, labor intensive work. So a big thing that I’m seeing a use case with AI and prospecting is taking the results of a bunch of research and then writing very quickly I leave customized messages that speak to the unique needs of your prospect again, very measurable. We can baseline.
All right. What was our response rates before doing this? What is our response rate afterwards? And if you believe that being more customer centric, if you believe that tailoring. Your value message to the prospect is going to lead to higher return. , AI just accelerated that. Yeah. And whatever, and whatever that looks like, whether it’s retention, even on the customer service part of sales, right?
Like just having somebody, even after you get them through, maybe there’s a certain amount of relationship management that goes on depending on the job, right. And the role and everything else. Depending again then even that retention factor, I mean, there’s just I see why you’re like, let me stay controlled, because I could get real excited about this one, because you want to hit him over the head, because you know, and you’re living, and I see it too, like you’re taking me back to when I was in the seat, and just thinking about, man, all those days, like every time I had to enter notes, that took me 10 minutes after every meeting, and I had maybe four For meetings a day minimum.
And those are by compliance. Those have to be in there. So you’re in trouble if you don’t do those, that’s already 40 minutes right there of my day saved right there, probably down to five minutes of just checking or doing something else pretty quickly. So I’m at least cutting that in half. So let’s call it 30 minutes a day.
And now you times that by the whole week. And I’m like, what do you know what a salesperson gives to be able to make another 2. 5 hours of calls a week. Exactly. That adds that, that adds up. That’s all. That’s 20 hours. That’s a part-time job of calls per month with the same amount of effort. Come on. Yep.
Yep. Exactly. 20 hours. Exactly. That’s, that’s another part-time employee. Like, think about when you’re, when you’re trying to equate, right? , like cost and ROI like, that’s another part-time employee. And assuming their compensation is aligned with their productivity. That’s a whole nother discussion, but assuming it is, then you can kind of predict what that outcome should be.
Absolutely. And, I actually think that , I want, this is a surprising insight that I’ve learned over, The last year and a half of exploring these tools and implementing them with clients since they came out it’s hard to be to pay full attention when you’re in a call, right?
There’s, you’re trying to listen. You’re trying to think about what your next follow up question is going to be like. You’re trying to write notes. And so, yes, there’s a lot of time saved, not only with transferring notes into a CRM, but even the richness of those notes are enhanced with, , these AI powered call recording tools, right?
Because I, what I found with working with clients is that oftentimes when I put together a report. Or I share with them a report. Hey, this is how that call went. , this is how you did they would often say to me, the sales rep should say to me, , Can you send me that report? I missed a lot of these details, right?
Because they’re listening and, you ask somebody a question, how , tell me why we’re talking today. And then they give you a 2 or 3 minute long response that explains a little bit about their pain, their desired outcomes , what their buying criteria is, who else might be involved, right?
It’s just a winding response. But it’s really hard to get all those details and categorize them and understand what you have versus what you don’t have. And so,, I think the bare minimum, if anybody’s listening to this conversation and any of this sounds interesting, the first thing you need to do is start recording all of your calls with customers and,, with tools like Zoom others.
That’s a lot easier these days. But it’s a really rich source of insight about even conversations that you were participating in and to make sure that you don’t miss those details that could really make or break the sale. Yeah, definitely see that and one thing that’s gonna go though is our short term memory for sure.
Like when I was a kid, I still remember I knew a lot of phone numbers, like I knew a lot of phone numbers, and the cell phone came around, I don’t know anybody’s phone number, I don’t even know area codes anymore, nothing like that. I don’t even know if they’re called area codes or zip codes, no I do know, I’m just saying.
But I’m just saying they’re gone now. So I’m like, I’m just thinking back. I’m like, yeah, this is it’s going to be, it’s going to be good though. All the data will be there. I’ve died up, but I’m like, man, our, our short, and what’s going to happen. They are short term memories are shot. What? Let me check my notes.
I’ll tell you what we talked about. Yes, exactly. But then if you have a competitor in salespeople, aren’t depending on their short term memory, using these tools. And because of these tools, they have deeper insights into the customer. The customer gets the feeling that they’re really listening to them and tailoring their solutions.
You’re going to get left in the dust. Right. And so for sure, that’s what I think is there’s like this small window of opportunity. Where companies over the next few years could really differentiate themselves from competitors by adopting these tools and get a real competitive advantage. So I think it’s not just about the potential impact.
It’s. Potential impact on industries by early adopters really taking this stuff and running. Victor, man, this has been a lot of fun. I like it. I like where you’re going with this and I hope the audience understood, got it. , and if they want to follow up, learn more about what you’re doing over at Dana consulting and also connect with you and your team.
How do they do that? Yeah, the best way is to reach out to me over email. Frankly victor Dana consulting. com. There’s a hyphen between the D a N a and the word consulting. So Dana dash consulting. com. You can also look for me on LinkedIn and Victor definitely. Yeah. And yeah, just feel free to reach out.
And if any of the stuff that you heard in this conversation, you want. I’m always happy to jump on the phone, share resources, even if there’s not an immediate opportunity to work together. I just really, really passionate about this work. And I’m, like we said at the beginning, I want to help salespeople.
So to the extent that I can offer advice and counsel, always happy to do that. Amazing. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll put Victor’s LinkedIn link , in the show notes so that , you can just click on it and click head right on over and connect. And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with mission matters and you haven’t done it yet, this is a daily show, which means hit that follow button.
It’s a daily show. So guess what? Tomorrow, another episode’s coming out. We bring on business owners, entrepreneurs, and executives. With the hope that you’re inspired through their stories to reach your dreams and your goals as well. So again, hit that subscribe button and Victor, thank you so much for coming out, man.
And I can’t, now you got me all fired about and sales and I’m like, ah, not, we got to start thinking about this even more. So I appreciate you seriously, all the work you’re doing out there for our sales people. So again, . Thanks again for coming on the show. Thank you very much for having me. This was fun.