Adam Torres and Ken Lundin discuss AI and sales.
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Show Notes:
Can AI make sales efforts more effective? In this episode, Adam Torres and Ken Lundin, Founder & President at RevHeat, explore RevHeat and how AI is enabling businesses to grow their sales efforts.
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About RevHeat
At REVHEAT, they understand the challenges that come with growing a company. Sales goals that feel out of reach, pressure on margins, disjointed sales processes, a low number of strategic accounts, and missed opportunities to land bigger deals – these are all problems that can hold back even the most ambitious of businesses. But they’re here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be that way. With over 4 billion dollars’ worth of practical experience and data on the sales teams of over 33,000 companies, we’ve developed a science-backed method for accelerating company growth by improving the effectiveness of your sales team. Their proprietary Sales Alpha Roadmap is the solution you’ve been looking for. We’ll tell you how much more your company can sell, how long it will take, and exactly what to do to make it happen. And we’ll do it all before any long-term contracts and with a 100% money-back guarantee. So don’t wait any longer, schedule a strategy call today and become the market leader your team is capable of being. At REVHEAT, they don’t just talk theory, they deliver results.
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’s guest is Ken Lundin, and he’s founder and president over at RevHeat.
Ken, welcome to the show. Awesome, Adam. I’m super fired up. This’ll be a good one. Oh man. So AI enabling sales environments. First off two of my favorite topics in a long time. We’re combining them. AI I’m been, I mean, I’m fascinated by it and who isn’t right now. And then sales come out, man. Like that’s my bread and butter.
That’s where I was born out of a sale. So excited to get into this. But before we get into it, can we’ll start this episode the way that we start them all with what we like to call our mission matters minute. So Ken, at Mission Matters, our aim and our goal is to amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts.
That’s our mission. Ken, what mission matters to you? Thanks, Adam. At RevHeat, our mission is to empower organizations to actually reach the potential That they’ve set out for. We’ve all heard the story of the great technology that never quite got to market or the great product or service that just couldn’t find an audience.
So we don’t want any of those things to die in that great world of entrepreneurial spirit. We want to make sure that all of those can get out there. So we do that by enabling sales teams and organizations to be more effective at communicating their message. And putting their products and services out into the market to grow their impact.
It’s awesome, Ken. Well, great having you on. And I guess just to dive right in, I see the word founder. Were you an entrepreneur type growing up? Or like where’d all that entrepreneur, the entrepreneurship side of things come for you? Well, let’s just put it this way. When I was a kid, we, we moved every two and a half years.
And so I think you either have to be an entrepreneur or a seller. And I happened to end up being both. My dad was in the retired from the air forces, a Lieutenant Colonel. And so we lived in great places like outside of rapid city, South Dakota and airport space. So that’s where it came from. I think, I think it came from that natural knack to have to kind of let’s, I got to meet new friends.
I got to meet new people and I got to be open to new ideas. Every couple years. What was one of those early businesses? Gimme an early one, man. I want an early one. Oh, well, I had the newspaper route, which I would tell you, oh, you did a newspaper route. I’m so jealous of everybody that did a newspaper route.
I feel like that’s what I missed out on in life. Go ahead. I’m just always jealous about, I had baseball cards, I had some candy, some other things like that, but I never got the newspaper route. Well, here’s the scam on the native booster route. And so I said, I had the newspaper out and you would think that’s a business.
Well, at least that’s the way they sold it to you when you were 12 and you were riding your BMX bike around at five in the morning and getting yelled at because when you threw the paper, it actually hit someone’s flower pot or their planter instead of their actual front porch. So. That’s probably the first one, but it did teach me, you gotta get up and it did teach me that you gotta go to work.
Yeah. I just always like the Warren Buffetts and all the others where they’re like, Oh, well, the newspaper route of this that I’m like, man, I never got to do that one. Well, whatever. So progressing a little bit, like, when did you know that entrepreneurship, like, when did you know that was going to be for you?
Like, cause obviously when we’re young, we’re, we’re, we’re doing things where, you know, you, as you said, making friends, you’re moving around, but like, when did you know where you’re like, man, you know, I think I’m a pretty much be an entrepreneur in this life. I think I probably had a similar path to what many people go through.
So I was working for somebody else and we had great success. It was right there, you know, and it was right in Phoenix, Arizona. And we had been in with a company that had been able to grow from two to 80 million over the course of four years. And so it was an incredible success. Fantastic thing. Right. It was, we were inc FiveHundred rated as part of the management team.
And at that time I kept looking and looking and looking and trying to figure out, like there’s something, there’s something like I knew it in me or something where I had to go out and I had to, I’m camp my own path, but, but it took, you know, you had, because I think at the end of the day, you’ve got to be, okay, just kind of burning the boats.
Yeah. And most people say they are. The man when you’re playing without a safety net, the world, yeah. It’s very different. Yeah, I remember burning my boat, man. When I burned my boat, I remember I gave up my licenses. So I was in finance almost 14 years. And I, and when I decided to go full time in media, which I’ve been doing for a solid eight, nine years now, we’re going to nine years this December.
I gave up my licenses and I was like, man, I spent 14 years. 14 years working on this career and having all these things. And, you know, CFP series seven, six 63, you name it. I had it. Right. And for me, that was my like burning the boat moment. Did you have like, and then everybody around me when I had that moment, by the way, they thought I was crazy.
They’re like, what is going on with Adam? Like you got a big practice. You’ve been doing this your whole life. This is what we know. We know financial advisor, Adam, and now you’re going to interview people. You’re going to publish people. You’re going to help people with their, like. Market branding. Like how, how’s that?
How, where’d that come from? What was your scariest thing though? What was the, the one thing that terrified you in that move? I know you went and did it. Oh, everything. Oh, everything, man. I was, I’m an accidental entrepreneur for me. The, the challenge of this or the interesting part about it was that our mission matters in general, which was then called another name, which was money matters.
Cause again, I was a financial advisor. It was making the decision of. Both of them are going pretty well. So it was like, I can always go back to being a financial advisor, possibly, possibly, and get my licenses again. But can I always ride this wave that is now mission matters. And so that was the, like, is this just going to be like a here today, gone tomorrow thing?
Or like, I didn’t, I didn’t go to school for media. I didn’t say I wanted to be a podcaster when I grow up. I don’t even know if podcasting was around when we were in college. I don’t know. Well, for you, you’re burning the boat moment. Like, well, how, what was that like? Or like, what was even the support system around you?
Like, cause people thought I was crazy. Like, what, what was your experience? Yeah, I was a little insane. So that company I told you about that went, you know, two to four years, they had a bunch of locations across the United States. It was a franchise or manufacturer. And so I bought their only other corporate location in Atlanta, Georgia, where I live today.
And the burning the boat moment, which upon reflection is very obvious. But at the time I was like, I don’t know, what’s, what’s the problem with this? I like where this is going already. Yeah. I mean, I, I took debt from the CEO of that company. He said he’d finance it. Little did I know he was in the middle of doing a massive private equity deal.
That’s why he wanted out of that location. There was, so you take on the debt and then I moved out here and Adam, it’s one of the top reasons businesses fail. It’s cause I only had three months of liquidity.
I took like, you know, that whole idea of a hundred percent commission, no salary sales. Took it to a whole nother level at that moment and just nothing, nothing in the bank. My family’s still back in Phoenix and I’m out here, you know, I’m working six in the morning until midnight. Wow. Yeah. What, what got you through that, man?
Like what got you through that? Like that’s a tough time. Like your, your backs against the wall is an understatement. Yeah. I think in that moment, when you, if you think about it, You learn what you’re capable of, right? I think that’s the big thing. Most people don’t, who don’t actually go work for themselves sometimes like you and I, right, there are things that you’ve probably experienced over the course of the last eight or nine years.
That have been light years ahead of anything you thought you would experience or thought you were capable of. And so for me, it was a dogged determination. And the fact that I had finally just kind of jumped off and said, you know what, I’m going to do this and I’m going to succeed or fail on my own merits.
And so is that, is that extreme accountability to some extent? Yeah, I love that you bring that up, by the way, that you sometimes don’t know what you’re capable of. So even, even coming to this interview and I, I feel like the universe tests you constantly and different things like God, the universe, whatever, like just making sure that you want what you’re asking for and that, you know, you’re ready for it.
I’ll give a quick example. I’m on two hours of sleep right now and I’m okay. I was in a little bit of an accident last night and I was driving, I didn’t get back in, but man, I was, I was like, am I canceling on Ken? Am I Absolutely not. I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks. I’m like, we’re about to have some fun today.
We’re good. Our audience is waiting. They want this. They want to hear this. I know it’s a great topic. Like, so when I think, and I bring this up for the other entrepreneurs that are out there that are going through it. And the reason why I have this part of the conversation is because I want others to know, like we all go through it.
If you decide to go through that entrepreneurial journey, Like that’s a piece of it. But then on the other side of this and not to, not to bring up too much, your personal business here, Ken, but you’re, you’re getting ready for Italy soon. Right? Like, come on, I got to throw in the other side of it. We gave one side of the other side of it.
Looks like your company’s doing great. You’re growing, you’re busy and you’re on your way to Italy. Talk to me, man. Yeah, it’s fantastic. I mean, it’s. What’s the saying? What’s the cliche and overnight success in just 10 years. So it’s the grind, man. Like the things that you’re doing right now that you said, it’s, I think one of the biggest differences, are you willing to do the things others aren’t willing to do in order to have the life others aren’t willing, won’t have.
Yeah. And what that means though, in many cases, the sacrifices that you make on the front end of that thing are massive. I’ve never, ever, ever, ever. Make sure I’m right. Yep. Absolutely. Never ever, ever taken two weeks off in a row. Yeah. Wow. And that’s what’s happening for Italy. And so that for me, man, congrats.
That’s awesome. I didn’t know that part of it. That’s great. You’re getting a solid two weeks in too. That’s amazing. Yeah, yeah, we’re not we’re not hurrying. So yeah, I mean, like, you know, you said your things are great. And I think what I love what you said, two hours of sleep, you’re up, you’re on 17 cups of espresso, which is perfect.
But I think you know, you’re you’re saying is you’re willing to do the stuff others aren’t because it would have been super easy for you to be like, Hey, Ken, How about three weeks from now? And I wouldn’t give you a grief. No, no, no, dude. It’s fine. Rev heat. Let’s get back to this. So rev heat, where’d you come up with that idea?
Like how did, what, tell me about the birth of rev heat. Yeah. I’d spent a few years. So like my stories, I’m a mutt, like I’ve been in seven industries in my career. Which basically makes me a hundred percent unemployable. According to the way people hire today. Yes. Right. Cause everybody wants specialty, whatever.
So I’ve been a mutt. And so the last two companies I worked at were a SAS company and a FinTech company. And I just saw some things and saw some challenges from ownership and other things where the politics and the internal things can get in the way. And so what I wanted to do rather than kind of hitching my boat to one thing is I said, you know what?
I know something about sales. I want to go out there and I want to find the people and the companies who actually want to change things and do better. You know, there’s that, the gift for the meme or the, whatever you call it, the thing you see on social, and it’s got the two lines and the one line is everybody wants change and everybody’s got their hands up and the other one’s like, and who wants to change?
And the line’s completely empty. Yeah. You know, and so that’s the thing. I wanted to get the people who are going to that line. That’s not traveled by many. And so with rev heat, we’ve been able to pull that together where we actually help companies go grow sales, you know, improve win rates. Just we’ve had massive about of we’ve been very fortunate.
In the companies we’ve been able to work with. What kind, what kind of industries do you work with? Like when we talk about sales, like, what are you going to give me a little bit more on that one? So industries type of company size, give me some of the flavor. Sure. We work with B2B companies, so we’re not B2C.
So if you have a car dealership, we’re not your people. If you’re selling to another business or your people. Most of what we do, though, and what my books behind me are written on is if you’re selling to large enterprises, then we crush it. So it’s B2B who wants to sell to big companies, and I would say probably 80 percent of our work is somewhere around technology.
And so it could be IT consulting, it could be services, digital transformation, SaaS. But we’ve also worked in manufacturing and distribution, some other ones, but I would say the vast majority of it is, Hey, we’ve got a product offering that’s probably in excess of 50 to 75, 000 on one time. And then there’s a lifetime value beyond that.
And so that’s, that’s where so much of our work is done. How do you see the advent and all this introduction to AI? Like what’s that doing to the sales environment? Cause you’ve been, even before we’ve been having this as a conversation, just AI in general, I mean, you’ve been in the field, like you’ve been in, you’ve been in the trenches, you’ve been doing other things.
So as you mentioned, so how does this like play into the mix? Yeah, I look at AI as a form of just think about it in phases. And right now it’s been phase, you know, zero to one has happened very quick. Right. It was something everybody was talking about 10 years ago. And then all of a sudden in the last six or nine months, like you have it on your desktop.
Yeah, it’s kind of crazy. Oh yeah. And it’s in the VAT and how fast it’s improving. And so I really look at this in three phases. I think today we’re in the reluctant buyer and seller phase. And that’s because, you know, you look at this, you’ve got a seller and they’re doing their thing. They’re probably not successful because quite frankly, our research says 50 percent of sellers don’t have the skills to be successful and 75 percent of sellers missed quota the first half of this year.
So there’s some truth to that, but they don’t want to change anything, but at the same time, they’re feeling like they’re forced into it. And then you have the buyer and the buyers really kind of getting paranoid, like talking to a human and that buyer, by the way, for sure. I’m paranoid. I’m like, it’s all good.
Well, but think about it this way. Can you imagine a world where sales teams no longer relied on instinct? Where the, because of AI driven insights, they could predict buyer behavior with unbelievable accuracy. Yeah. You know, it’s like, it knows, you know, like off of all the pattern, all the learning, otherwise that becomes, I mean, that becomes interesting though.
Right. Like, how does, how do you see that like unfolding for, for your field? Like, I think it becomes interesting. Yeah, I think it’ll be super fast. I think you’ll continue to see reluctance through the end of this year. I think in next year. What you’ll tend to see is you’ll start to see more and more people get on it.
Because what’s happening though, is that you’re finding that everybody says like Nvidia, if you watch stocks at all, which you probably will do Nvidia, you know, Oh, well, they’re, they’ve got the backbone of AI, their stocks can be worth 73 trillion. So you see all that stuff coming, but what you don’t see is the following, which I see from an insider’s look from our client, yeah, they’re talking about AI, but.
Companies still don’t know what to do with it, how to put it into play or how to tie it to their strategic objectives. And so we’re already in budgeting for next year. And I think that’ll remain true. You’ll see budgets go up. But I think it’ll be 20, 000, 2026 when you’ll really start to see this, but there’s some cool stuff we’re already doing, trying to get where we can take an AI, can stick it in a Slack instance.
And you can actually get on the on demand coaching. That’s 95 percent in alignment with what you would have got from me live. So there’s some really cool stuff you can do. Yeah. So talk to me about how you mentioned this is you’ve been able to help many companies with this and like you’ve been able to help them improve their sales environments and their sales.
Like talk to me about what that looks like or how that can happen and you don’t have to send him a company. If you want to name drop, you’re welcome to, I mean, but just talking about what that looks like. Well, I won’t name drop big, but I’ll set the stage please because the belief that the belief that we have is this.
Is that while products and services may be different from company to company, the path to sales growth is not right. It is a process and a system that you can do. And so with that, we’ve worked with companies that are, you know, well backed, well funded VC based companies all the way through and up to Samsung.
And in all cases, you find that there’s things. that are happening. And so we’ve been very fortunate to work with a lot of these companies and help them do a few things. One of them is we typically see them triple their win rates on new logo. And that helps, you know, everybody says, I want more new business and they all go, I want leads.
I want leads. No, you need to do is be more effective. We say you need tiger teams of salespeople who are fantastic instead of a boiler room full of 75 of them who most of them stink. So, you know, from a standpoint, that’s who we work with, the types of companies we work with. And yeah, you know, we’ll do everything from when you stand by what it looks like.
It’s everything from the way we do it. I should back up. The way we do it is we actually go in and do an audit very much like a doctor’s consultative approach then. Yes. Yeah. Here’s the problem. The sales training and consulting industry is largely broken. I’ll say it. So nobody else has to, okay. We sell you guys stuff like you, we would never tell you to sell your own customers.
Yeah, it’s ridiculous. So we changed it up. We said, look, I can’t, I can’t properly give you a diagnosis of what we need to do for you. Unless we do a couple of things and we need to look at your systems and processes. And so we’re going to do an audit of that. Yes. Second, think about how powerful this is.
We actually do an audit of the 21 core selling competencies all the way down to the individual on the street. Because you can get processed and everything else, right. But if you don’t have individual people who can put it into action. Yeah. So we’re actually audited them against a 21 core selling competency.
So we can tell you, this is why you stink, or this is how you compare to industry. And this is what you’re missing too, though, right? So it’s like they and you correct me if I’m wrong in this, but I’m just want to make sure I’m understanding this. So, after you go through those 21 competencies, and you’re looking at it, like, maybe some people are great at one spot, but they’re not great at another.
And then if you can even lift some of those, get some lift in some of those areas, then the overall, like, gain should be like, should be substantial. Am I understanding that right? Yeah, that is absolutely it. Because we’ll even in that audit, one of the things we do is we say, this is how much we can lift your revenue by in this time period with these people.
So I just always felt like sales consulting and training in general sold wrong. I didn’t feel like we did it, did it right. So that’s the bottom line of ours is that baseline. And we use that for the prognosis, but the cool thing is the seller. So, you know, you talk about, I love the idea. Right. Mattering and what are you, what do you care about?
And so let’s just, I don’t want to, I’m not going to use his name publicly, but let’s say his name is Gene. Okay. So Gene, the sales rep we started working with a number of years ago. Gene was on a pit plan. And for those of you don’t know what that is, that’s a performance improvement plan, which is code for, I’m trying to find a way to fire you, but HR has made me do something else instead.
Yes. Okay. So he’s on a pit plan. Hasn’t sold anything in the nine months he’s been at the company. Ouch. So yeah, things are imminent, right? So we get to, we start working with, and here’s what happens. He sells two and a half million dollars in the next six months, four and a half million in the next 12.
And then in two years later, he sells 21. 5 million. He’s the number one seller in the world for his company. Hmm. Most companies can’t, there are so many companies that can’t fathom selling 21 million themselves. And we were able to help get one seller. But the reason I get up in the morning is because he was able to put his kids in the school district.
He and his spouse were able to make choices about who works, who doesn’t, who has assignments. He was able to actually get up and improve the quality of his life and his family’s life. And so that’s, you know, when you talk about, Hey, what do you guys do? Well, we do all this other stuff and we have a process for it.
That’s rock solid, but it’s that kind of thing that makes, it just still gives me goosebumps to the impact on the individual. That’s I mean, cause that’s real life too, for those that are out there that have, you know, companies that listen to a program like this and they hear this and they’re wondering like, Is it possible for my people?
Like, does this matter to me? I guess what I’d have to ask you, Ken, is who, like, who is this Right. For, like, what are the types of organizations that, that you feel get the most benefit out of working with your team? I would say it’s easy to say from a certain part of it. So it’s B2B enterprise sales.
Sure, sure. Things that are going longer. That’s the obvious. Mm-Hmm. . That’s the simple stuff. Yeah. But who’s right for it? You gotta be willing to actually put some skin in the game and change. So I don’t care if you’re sales leadership, you’re a CEO, you have to be okay. Understanding that one thing is critical above it all.
It’s not important to you. It’s not important to them. And so if you just throw money at us and you don’t do the thing that allows them to understand that you’re in with them, that you’re in with your team, that you think it’s important. We’ll come in and we’ll make an impact, but it’ll be small. But if you want to have an impact, like we had on big nerd ranch, where we took them from two and a half year revenue slide down to 10 million, they were maxed out on credit cards, had to miss a management payroll to adding four and a half million in six months, 12.
2 million in 18, 18 months, and then getting to 60 million from 10 in five years, then you got to lean in. And so if you’re somebody who wants to lean in and is willing to do that, just don’t even wait for me to stop talking. Just go to our website. Let’s chat. Yeah. It’s amazing. How do you so you mentioned the consultative approach, like take me through a little bit more of that user journey.
So you start with the audit, then what happens next? Like talk to me about implementation a little bit, and I know that’s going to be different per company, per size, per I get all of that, but give me a general, some general like things to work with. You bet. The sales, what we call it is the sales alpha roadmap process.
And so the sales alpha roadmap is this. We start with the audit or the baseline that then leads us into a revenue prescription program, which then says, based upon the analysis that we’ve done, here are the things that you need to fix first. So we have a very, it’s very different from what companies are used to because it’s a very clear, like, okay, here’s what we’re going to go attack.
And then we say, okay, now that you’ve got this plan, do you want to work with us? We give our clients, our clients are working with us multiple outs. Like if there’s a point where they feel like they can do it without us, or they just need strategic advice, we’re cool. Yeah. But if they need full implementation help, what it’s typically going to end up being from there is it’s going to be some form of coaching.
It’s going to be some form of training and group training. That’s going to be some sort of help from a sales hiring perspective, which why in the world does everybody ignore sales hiring? I don’t like it’s the highest turnover industry 30 percent the average 10 years under 18 months. And that’s the 50 percent who can’t sell.
Anyway, got me on a soapbox. So, but we go through, we can fix any of those types of processes because we have a full go to market focus. So as an example, we have, I have CMOs who work for me, so we can even come in and we’ve got one company as an example that does fantastic technology. And we’re in there actually putting in the full go to market.
So my CMO is then acting as a fractional CMO and I’m at, and in there acting as a fractional head of sales. Yeah, that’s great. Well, well, Ken man, first off, this has been a lot of fun having you on the show and just getting more into rev heat, get in more into like the growth The company where it started, you even as an entrepreneur, like it’s great, man.
I’m still jealous. You had the paper route, but it’s all good. I’ll get over it. And, and congrats again on the Italy. And like, I mean, you’ve been working hard. I’m, I’m happy to hear that you’re, you’re doing a solid vacation. You deserve it, man. But that being said for those that are listening or watching this rev heat, you mentioned, go to the website, learn more.
How, how do people follow this? Like, give me some more. Awesome. Great. Well, first so I wrote a book. It’s called strategic selling unleashed. And if you’ll go to the website, driving traction. com, I’ll let you have a free copy of it. It’s 30 bucks. I think I’m Kindle, but you come there, you’ll get a free copy.
That’s a great way for you to kind of just engage and see what our methodology is all about. But other than that, you know, we’re up on all the social channels and I would say definitely follow us. And I’m going to put a special shout out to some of my peeps. Yeah. You’re somebody like Jean who wants to change your life.
The way that you go to market, you want to have a personal and professional life that’s worthy of what you want it to be. We’re launching a new service in the first quarter and a newsletter is coming with it called sales fit. What we’re doing is combining the idea of saying that you can not only be successful in your professional disciplines, but also in your personal life.
And that will allow you to achieve more. It’s kind of the idea of healthier, wealthier. And unstoppable. So certainly follow us for that, but come download the book. I promise you, whether you never talk to us again, there are goodies in this thing that’ll help you sell more amazing Ken. Well, again, again, thank you for that.
And to the audience thank you for tuning in. If this is, we’re going to put all the links to the, the, the sites that Ken mentioned in the show notes. So you can just click on them and head right on over and sign up. Speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with mission matters and you haven’t hit the subscribe or follow button yet, we welcome you to do so.
This is a daily show each and every day. We’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and Ken Matt, enjoy the vacay. And again, congrats on the success, the growth of the company. And again, thank you so much for coming on.
It’s awesome. We’ll see you guys soon.