Reshaping Business with AI: Insights from Sales Master Victor Antonio
Step into the world of success with Victor Antonio, an international sales expert, author, and renowned speaker. In this episode, Victor shares his inspiring journey from a modest upbringing to a sales and training leader. Discover how he turned obstacles into opportunities and depersonalized rejection, using failures as stepping stones to success.
Explore the impact of AI on the sales industry, with Victor highlighting its role in customer conversation analysis, product searching, and call centers. Gain invaluable advice on goal setting, resilience, purpose, and motivation. Join us on this enlightening journey of success, strategy, and AI's transformative power.
About Victor Antonio
Victor Antonio, an Electrical Engineering grad with an MBA, had a thriving 20-year sales career, becoming CEO of a multimillion-dollar tech company after being President of Global Sales for a $420M firm. As VP of International Sales in a Fortune 500, he was chosen from 500 sales managers for the President's Advisory Council. Victor's global experience spans Europe, Asia, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Latin America, the Middle East, China, UAE, and South Africa. A renowned speaker on sales and AI, he authored 14 books, including "Sales Ex Machina," and founded SalesVelocityAcademy.com, offering 60+ sales courses.
Click here to learn more : https://victorantonio.com/
About Brad Sugars
Internationally known as one of the most influential entrepreneurs, Brad Sugars is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, and the #1 business coach in the world. Over the course of his 30-year career as an entrepreneur, Brad has become the CEO of 9+ companies and is the owner of the multimillion-dollar franchise ActionCOACH®. As a husband and father of five, Brad is equally as passionate about his family as he is about business. That’s why, Brad is a strong advocate for building a business that works without you – so you can spend more time doing what really matters to you. Over the years of starting, scaling and selling many businesses, Brad has earned his fair share of scars. Being an entrepreneur is not an easy road. But if you can learn from those who have gone before you, it becomes a lot easier than going at it alone.
Please click here to learn more about Brad Sugars: https://bradsugars.com/
Build a Business That Gives You More Time, Money & Life:
Get The $100M Playbook: https://go.bradsugars.com/100m-playbook-ebook
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WEBVTT 00:00:01.423 --> 00:00:09.311 <v Speaker 1>Welcome to the Big Success podcast, cutting edge conversations on business and personal success, as well as how to level up. 00:00:09.311 --> 00:00:14.050 <v Speaker 1>Here's your host, number one business coach in the world, brad Shokers. 00:00:16.585 --> 00:00:16.905 <v Speaker 2>Dang. 00:00:16.905 --> 00:00:21.085 <v Speaker 2>We covered so much on sales success, Not just see on the Big Success podcast. 00:00:21.085 --> 00:00:22.570 <v Speaker 2>You know we talk about success, right? 00:00:22.570 --> 00:00:25.108 <v Speaker 2>Well, Victor Antonio is my guest here today. 00:00:25.108 --> 00:00:27.547 <v Speaker 2>He's super salesman, built the whole sales thing. 00:00:27.547 --> 00:00:29.626 <v Speaker 2>Then he went into training and teaching sales. 00:00:29.626 --> 00:00:38.966 <v Speaker 2>A lot of it's from the buyer's side the sales strategy, With the way marketing is impacting sales today and how the sales people have to take customers that are far more educated. 00:00:38.966 --> 00:00:42.670 <v Speaker 2>He's got an engineering background, so that'll be the whole thing. 00:00:42.670 --> 00:00:49.640 <v Speaker 2>He wrote one of the first ever books on AI in sales In 2017, he wrote the book, and it was released in 2018. 00:00:49.901 --> 00:00:59.283 <v Speaker 2>I think he's getting more stuff on that today, but we look at how he's actually teaching you to scale up your sales, to do massive things in your sales. 00:00:59.283 --> 00:01:02.990 <v Speaker 2>Not just that, though, but how to be successful in all areas of business. 00:01:02.990 --> 00:01:04.365 <v Speaker 2>I think you'll learn a bunch of it. 00:01:04.365 --> 00:01:09.543 <v Speaker 2>So he's got international experience, worked all over the world, built with tech companies, sales and tech companies. 00:01:09.543 --> 00:01:10.423 <v Speaker 2>He's the man. 00:01:10.423 --> 00:01:13.489 <v Speaker 2>Let's welcome Victor Antonio to the Big Success podcast. 00:01:13.489 --> 00:01:20.527 <v Speaker 2>All right, Victor, we got to ask you the first question here on the Big Success podcast how do you define success? 00:01:20.527 --> 00:01:22.623 <v Speaker 2>What is success in Victor's mind? 00:01:23.585 --> 00:01:24.668 <v Speaker 4>I used to think it was money, brad. 00:01:24.668 --> 00:01:26.132 <v Speaker 4>I got to be honest, I used to think it was money. 00:01:26.132 --> 00:01:28.046 <v Speaker 4>I had a poor upbringing. 00:01:28.046 --> 00:01:32.305 <v Speaker 4>I'm not going to give you the whole violin story, but when you don't have a lot growing up, you think money is the key. 00:01:32.305 --> 00:01:37.864 <v Speaker 4>Over time, though, I've realized I always call it quality of life, now QOL. 00:01:37.864 --> 00:01:42.188 <v Speaker 4>To me it's quality of life, and that is the ability to have options to do what you want to do. 00:01:42.188 --> 00:01:43.763 <v Speaker 4>I think that's the key. 00:01:43.763 --> 00:01:44.525 <v Speaker 4>That's the key. 00:01:45.460 --> 00:01:46.807 <v Speaker 2>Where did it change then? 00:01:46.807 --> 00:01:50.570 <v Speaker 2>Where do you think in your mind that shifted from money to that? 00:01:50.570 --> 00:01:51.462 <v Speaker 2>How did that shift? 00:01:52.579 --> 00:01:53.283 <v Speaker 4>I made a jump. 00:01:53.283 --> 00:02:02.302 <v Speaker 4>So my background is I started out in engineering right and the reason I went into engineering was to make money right, so I thought that was it. 00:02:02.302 --> 00:02:10.406 <v Speaker 4>Got my degree, got into engineering, didn't like it, so then I moved into sales because I wanted the money and so I moved into sales. 00:02:10.406 --> 00:02:14.447 <v Speaker 4>It became very successful in sales At the time I was president of sales and market. 00:02:14.479 --> 00:02:19.473 <v Speaker 4>It was a $420 million company and I remember I wasn't happy, matt. 00:02:19.473 --> 00:02:22.520 <v Speaker 4>I just wasn't happy and I'm like how is this possible? 00:02:22.520 --> 00:02:26.960 <v Speaker 4>And I remember talking to my mother and she's like you know, you want to quit. 00:02:26.960 --> 00:02:28.759 <v Speaker 4>I go, yeah, I don't want to do this anymore. 00:02:28.759 --> 00:02:32.759 <v Speaker 4>I felt like Forrest Gump when he's running and he stops me so that I just want to go home. 00:02:32.759 --> 00:02:38.539 <v Speaker 4>I felt just like that and that was the first time I realized that money will only make you happy up to a point. 00:02:38.539 --> 00:02:42.539 <v Speaker 4>Now I always say money won't buy you happiness, but it will buy you options. 00:02:42.539 --> 00:02:47.370 <v Speaker 4>And it bought me the option to actually go on my own and launch my own business. 00:02:48.572 --> 00:02:48.953 <v Speaker 2>I love it. 00:02:48.953 --> 00:02:49.373 <v Speaker 2>I love it. 00:02:49.373 --> 00:02:54.781 <v Speaker 2>So, if you think back in your life, when do you think you chose success Like? 00:02:54.781 --> 00:03:00.889 <v Speaker 2>Was success something that was just natural to you, or was there a point in time where you said I'm going to be successful? 00:03:02.219 --> 00:03:06.497 <v Speaker 4>I think I just wanted to get ahead, and I'll define what that means is. 00:03:06.497 --> 00:03:09.889 <v Speaker 4>I've been motivated from, I think, from day one, so to speak, with fear. 00:03:09.889 --> 00:03:19.044 <v Speaker 4>People always think, you know, I embrace fear because I think when I'm afraid I run faster, and so when you're, when you don't have a lot, you're afraid to not have it, so you work hard for it. 00:03:19.044 --> 00:03:22.746 <v Speaker 4>Right, you put in the time, and so fear is my greatest motivator. 00:03:22.746 --> 00:03:29.067 <v Speaker 4>There wasn't a time where I can say, because everything in life is transitory, right, you know, you can have one good day, then another bad day. 00:03:29.067 --> 00:03:33.867 <v Speaker 4>Things can go well one year, they're bad another year, and I think it's trying to find that balance is, then right. 00:03:34.460 --> 00:03:44.429 <v Speaker 4>You know there was I think it was Lao Zhu who said the greatest disease is to be for or against, and I've always loved that because it talks about the middle way, and I think success is about finding that balance. 00:03:44.429 --> 00:03:49.305 <v Speaker 4>You want to make money, but at the same time, you don't want to make so much money where you're burdened by other things. 00:03:49.305 --> 00:03:57.287 <v Speaker 4>For example, I have a lot of friends who are killing, I mean Brad, just making a big denaro, but they're working hard, and you know I mean they're. 00:03:57.287 --> 00:04:02.186 <v Speaker 4>They're working hard in their sacrifice and they're doing the 70, 80 hours and I believe in family right. 00:04:02.186 --> 00:04:06.521 <v Speaker 4>I've been now married, I think, 37 years right and not to me. 00:04:06.521 --> 00:04:11.668 <v Speaker 4>Is is the biggest success I have, because we have a great family life and I bring it back to quality of life. 00:04:12.532 --> 00:04:14.264 <v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, I love that quality of life. 00:04:14.264 --> 00:04:16.048 <v Speaker 2>You know it's interesting progress. 00:04:16.048 --> 00:04:29.648 <v Speaker 2>I mean I was having a debate with a friend the other day about progress and success and you know, is a dollar burger progress and success when it actually kills the planet and kills the person later on, sort of thing? 00:04:29.648 --> 00:04:30.682 <v Speaker 2>There's. 00:04:30.682 --> 00:04:32.889 <v Speaker 2>I love your definition quality of life. 00:04:32.889 --> 00:04:41.266 <v Speaker 2>So over the years then you must have created some sort of a formula or some sort of methodology says this is how success happens. 00:04:41.266 --> 00:04:46.009 <v Speaker 2>What's Victor Antonio's methodology that says this is how success happens. 00:04:47.019 --> 00:04:47.903 <v Speaker 4>So there were two moments. 00:04:47.903 --> 00:04:50.206 <v Speaker 4>So anyway, I quit that job, right. 00:04:50.206 --> 00:04:52.925 <v Speaker 4>This present sales market is big dollars. 00:04:52.925 --> 00:04:53.447 <v Speaker 4>I quit. 00:04:53.447 --> 00:04:56.548 <v Speaker 4>I don't have a plan B, but I know I don't want to do that anymore. 00:04:56.548 --> 00:04:59.750 <v Speaker 4>I had what I have what is called that quiet discontent. 00:04:59.750 --> 00:05:01.264 <v Speaker 4>I can't do that anymore. 00:05:01.264 --> 00:05:06.821 <v Speaker 4>And years ago I saw Zig Ziglar speaking right and I said one day I want to be a speaker, so it's a dream. 00:05:06.882 --> 00:05:15.365 <v Speaker 4>I tucked in my back pocket for quite a while and file acid I now it's time to pull the trigger and I did the total unplug right, which I don't recommend, by the way. 00:05:15.365 --> 00:05:19.029 <v Speaker 4>I think you should have a gradual entrance ramp into another career. 00:05:19.029 --> 00:05:21.947 <v Speaker 4>But I just pulled the plug, which is the dumbest thing to do. 00:05:21.947 --> 00:05:29.891 <v Speaker 4>And thinking back I'm like oh so, anyway, I'm thinking this is going to be easy, right, write a book, publish it, successful money, make it rain. 00:05:29.891 --> 00:05:30.663 <v Speaker 4>That whole thing right. 00:05:30.663 --> 00:05:32.023 <v Speaker 4>Total delusion, right. 00:05:32.023 --> 00:05:37.050 <v Speaker 4>And so I remember my wife was like OK, if you're sure you know, go for it. 00:05:37.050 --> 00:05:39.348 <v Speaker 4>Her fist was up in your like yeah, you go for it, right. 00:05:39.348 --> 00:05:45.353 <v Speaker 4>And then after the first six months, I made a whopping 17,. 00:05:45.353 --> 00:05:49.005 <v Speaker 4>That's one, seven, 17,000 dollars in the first six months, right? 00:05:49.005 --> 00:05:53.350 <v Speaker 4>And my wife's like OK, so what are we doing here? 00:05:53.350 --> 00:05:55.547 <v Speaker 4>I said, no, this is what I want to do. 00:05:55.547 --> 00:05:56.569 <v Speaker 4>I know what I want to do. 00:05:56.569 --> 00:06:00.163 <v Speaker 4>She's like OK, but the fist wasn't that high, brad, it's just like it was. 00:06:00.163 --> 00:06:02.723 <v Speaker 4>So I had to figure this out. 00:06:03.699 --> 00:06:09.440 <v Speaker 4>So I remember there's speakers, a great speaker by the name of Randy Gage I don't know if you know Randy Gage, yeah. 00:06:09.440 --> 00:06:14.262 <v Speaker 4>So I went to one of Randy Gage's marketing seminars, right, because this is the man. 00:06:14.262 --> 00:06:18.230 <v Speaker 4>Right, this guy just knows how to market, knows how to build business, great speaking career. 00:06:18.230 --> 00:06:24.829 <v Speaker 4>And I remember, at lunch I wanted to sit next to him, brad, because I wanted to like, just do I got to get the information direct from the source, right? 00:06:24.829 --> 00:06:30.833 <v Speaker 4>So I sat next to him and I said, randy, and I start you know, I start doing the violin story. 00:06:30.833 --> 00:06:36.228 <v Speaker 4>I tried this, want, want, want that and work, and I'm just, I'm just crying all over his soup, so to speak, right. 00:06:36.228 --> 00:06:42.024 <v Speaker 4>Finally, if you know Randy, right, because he's pretty blunt, randy goes Victor, let me ask you a question. 00:06:42.024 --> 00:06:47.588 <v Speaker 4>And I always tell people when someone says let me ask you a question, I could assure you that it's not going to go your way. 00:06:47.588 --> 00:06:48.862 <v Speaker 4>Right. 00:06:49.103 --> 00:06:51.610 <v Speaker 4>So I said I said let me ask you a question. 00:06:51.610 --> 00:06:52.612 <v Speaker 4>I said what, randy? 00:06:52.612 --> 00:06:54.627 <v Speaker 4>He said, victor, what business are you in? 00:06:54.627 --> 00:06:56.687 <v Speaker 4>I said speaking business. 00:06:56.687 --> 00:06:58.286 <v Speaker 4>You know that's what we've been talking about. 00:06:58.286 --> 00:07:00.206 <v Speaker 4>He goes no, just like that. 00:07:00.206 --> 00:07:01.884 <v Speaker 4>No, what business are you in? 00:07:01.884 --> 00:07:03.601 <v Speaker 4>I don't know. 00:07:03.601 --> 00:07:04.867 <v Speaker 4>I'm in the training business. 00:07:04.867 --> 00:07:07.389 <v Speaker 4>No, what business are you in? 00:07:07.620 --> 00:07:09.670 <v Speaker 4>And I, like you know, I, you know, I'd like consulted. 00:07:09.670 --> 00:07:11.346 <v Speaker 4>You know I was trying to come up with something. 00:07:11.346 --> 00:07:13.839 <v Speaker 4>Finally, I got so frustrated that Chicago side comes out of me. 00:07:13.839 --> 00:07:16.129 <v Speaker 4>I said, all right, you tell me what business I mean. 00:07:16.129 --> 00:07:17.365 <v Speaker 4>Apparently, I don't know anything. 00:07:18.420 --> 00:07:19.846 <v Speaker 4>He says this to me without missing a beat. 00:07:19.846 --> 00:07:24.290 <v Speaker 4>He said, victor, you're in the marketing business first, everything else second. 00:07:24.290 --> 00:07:30.007 <v Speaker 4>And you know, when you hear something, Brad, that you don't want to hear, it's like cognitive dissonance. 00:07:30.007 --> 00:07:35.026 <v Speaker 4>You're like and in my immediate reaction, like, screw you, randy Cage, but the more. 00:07:35.026 --> 00:07:38.404 <v Speaker 4>But you know, when you hear the truth, it like hits bottom after one. 00:07:38.404 --> 00:07:40.822 <v Speaker 4>I go he's right, right, this is he's right. 00:07:40.822 --> 00:07:42.269 <v Speaker 4>And this was around 2007. 00:07:42.269 --> 00:07:49.288 <v Speaker 4>Now here's what's interesting Around that time, gary V published as a book, right Called I think it was crushing it or crush it right. 00:07:49.821 --> 00:07:52.517 <v Speaker 4>And Gary, he was like all video, all video. 00:07:52.517 --> 00:07:56.672 <v Speaker 4>Right Around that time Google buys you to a signal to me all video. 00:07:56.672 --> 00:07:59.853 <v Speaker 4>So I'm hearing Randy marketing, I'm reading Gary Vee. 00:07:59.853 --> 00:08:01.831 <v Speaker 4>He says video is the way to market. 00:08:01.831 --> 00:08:06.732 <v Speaker 4>And I pushed my chips all in on video and that's when it all changed for me. 00:08:06.732 --> 00:08:08.711 <v Speaker 4>I pushed it all in and all that happened. 00:08:08.711 --> 00:08:13.591 <v Speaker 4>And I remember there's a sun sue phrase that says attack your enemy where they're weakest. 00:08:13.591 --> 00:08:19.232 <v Speaker 4>And at that point you had all these great sales trainers out there and I said, but what aren't they doing Video? 00:08:19.232 --> 00:08:25.730 <v Speaker 4>So I went all in on video and that's actually how I got my speaking career, you know, in the air, so to speak. 00:08:26.704 --> 00:08:28.271 <v Speaker 2>So let's break that down then. 00:08:28.271 --> 00:08:31.274 <v Speaker 2>What is the formula behind that success? 00:08:31.274 --> 00:08:34.951 <v Speaker 2>Then what's the methodology Is going all in a part of that formula? 00:08:35.945 --> 00:08:36.607 <v Speaker 4>All in on. 00:08:36.607 --> 00:08:38.474 <v Speaker 4>I believe you have to have a banner. 00:08:38.474 --> 00:08:41.951 <v Speaker 4>I'm very specific in a niche right, so I picked the niche sales training. 00:08:41.951 --> 00:08:42.888 <v Speaker 4>It was too broad. 00:08:42.888 --> 00:08:55.270 <v Speaker 4>And then I read a book by Dr Robert Chaldeany called influence right, which talks about behavioral economics, which I'm sure you know, and so at that point it hit me you know, why don't I talk about, instead of how to sell, why don't I talk about how to buy? 00:08:55.270 --> 00:09:06.392 <v Speaker 4>So I came up with the phrase sales influence subtitle finding the why and how people buy and I told myself I'll look at it from a neuroscience standpoint and that would be my differentiator. 00:09:06.392 --> 00:09:07.730 <v Speaker 4>But then I said I'm all in. 00:09:07.865 --> 00:09:09.250 <v Speaker 4>So if somebody says, victor, do you do teamwork? 00:09:09.250 --> 00:09:10.408 <v Speaker 4>No, I'm not doing that. 00:09:10.408 --> 00:09:11.432 <v Speaker 4>Do you talk about leadership? 00:09:11.432 --> 00:09:12.870 <v Speaker 4>No, that's not what I do. 00:09:12.870 --> 00:09:14.610 <v Speaker 4>I do sales influence. 00:09:14.610 --> 00:09:24.173 <v Speaker 4>And so that focus, that focus right there I kind of staked out a claim in the sales, in the sales world, and then I started just creating content on a cadence. 00:09:24.293 --> 00:09:28.649 <v Speaker 4>After that I think I was doing like three or five videos a week on different snippets. 00:09:28.649 --> 00:09:35.253 <v Speaker 4>And the best way I can describe this, brad, is that because I was putting content out right and people are like why are you giving away for free. 00:09:35.253 --> 00:09:36.188 <v Speaker 4>Why are you giving away for free? 00:09:36.188 --> 00:09:47.253 <v Speaker 4>They didn't understand content marketing yet, right, yeah, and the way I explain it to people is look, I got right now I think I have about maybe 1,700 videos on YouTube, right, 1,700 videos. 00:09:47.253 --> 00:09:49.793 <v Speaker 4>People say well, victor, if you give it away, why would they hire you? 00:09:49.793 --> 00:09:52.572 <v Speaker 4>Or why would they buy under your sales velocity academy? 00:09:52.572 --> 00:09:55.212 <v Speaker 4>I said it's like a box of puzzle box. 00:09:55.212 --> 00:09:57.150 <v Speaker 4>You ever do a 1,000 piece puzzle box? 00:09:57.150 --> 00:09:58.928 <v Speaker 4>He says think about it that way. 00:09:58.928 --> 00:10:04.033 <v Speaker 4>I said I'm putting out there in 1,000 pieces, but I give people the puzzle box without the picture. 00:10:04.033 --> 00:10:06.691 <v Speaker 4>In other words, they got to come me to put it all together. 00:10:06.691 --> 00:10:09.370 <v Speaker 4>Yeah, yeah, and that's how I view my marketing strategy. 00:10:09.691 --> 00:10:10.111 <v Speaker 2>I love it. 00:10:10.111 --> 00:10:10.553 <v Speaker 2>I love it. 00:10:10.553 --> 00:10:23.153 <v Speaker 2>I always think of the fact that if giving it away for free didn't work, then no musician would ever have anyone at their concerts, like it's all on the radio for free, dude, but they still want to come to the concert, type thing. 00:10:23.153 --> 00:10:29.293 <v Speaker 2>So let's flip it over then, because there's times in life when we don't succeed, when we have failures. 00:10:29.293 --> 00:10:32.393 <v Speaker 2>How do you learn to succeed from the failures? 00:10:33.505 --> 00:10:43.090 <v Speaker 4>Oh God, it's one of those things that you have to have something and I know it's going to sound so cliche, but you really have to have something that pulls you into the future, something you really want. 00:10:43.090 --> 00:10:48.034 <v Speaker 4>Badly enough, I can't tell you that I could see myself as a speaker. 00:10:48.034 --> 00:10:50.471 <v Speaker 4>I saw the image of myself as a speaker. 00:10:50.471 --> 00:10:52.826 <v Speaker 4>I saw you know what I mean it was. 00:10:52.826 --> 00:11:01.153 <v Speaker 4>The vision was so compelling that it's like for me, it was the moment when I saw Zig Zigling I think this was like circa 93, and I go, that's it. 00:11:01.153 --> 00:11:11.927 <v Speaker 4>But I wasn't brave enough to pull the trigger at that time, and so I knew what I wanted, and so you know that phrase like don't take your eyes off to go, because all you'll see is obstacles, something to that nature. 00:11:12.450 --> 00:11:18.815 <v Speaker 4>That nature and I said I got to be a speaker and so I think of going after something like a Rubik's Cube. 00:11:18.815 --> 00:11:20.070 <v Speaker 4>I just got to figure it out. 00:11:20.070 --> 00:11:21.830 <v Speaker 4>There's always a way to figure it out, right? 00:11:21.830 --> 00:11:22.832 <v Speaker 4>Well, I tried this. 00:11:22.832 --> 00:11:23.335 <v Speaker 4>That didn't work. 00:11:23.335 --> 00:11:28.273 <v Speaker 4>I know that it works because I've seen other people do it, so I'm very attuned to social proof. 00:11:28.273 --> 00:11:32.971 <v Speaker 4>If Brad Sugar's is doing something and it's working, so that tells me it works. 00:11:32.971 --> 00:11:35.894 <v Speaker 4>I just got to figure out the formula that works for me. 00:11:35.894 --> 00:11:38.614 <v Speaker 4>So I think that's what gets me over the hump of failure. 00:11:38.614 --> 00:11:43.328 <v Speaker 4>And, by the way, it's almost like that burn the ship thing also, right, you don't want to go back. 00:11:43.328 --> 00:11:45.070 <v Speaker 4>I don't want to do that. 00:11:45.070 --> 00:11:46.328 <v Speaker 4>So I got to figure this out. 00:11:48.206 --> 00:11:49.292 <v Speaker 2>It's an interesting challenge. 00:11:49.292 --> 00:11:56.335 <v Speaker 2>So if you think about the relationship that how do you describe the relationship between failure and success? 00:11:56.335 --> 00:11:57.469 <v Speaker 2>Then how do you teach that? 00:11:58.705 --> 00:12:06.707 <v Speaker 4>Yeah, it's a tough one, because I mean, the easy answer is we learn from our failures, that's how we become successful, right, that whole routine. 00:12:07.345 --> 00:12:14.774 <v Speaker 4>But there's something about failure that's crisis resilience, Like when you first encounter failure or rejection. 00:12:14.774 --> 00:12:16.751 <v Speaker 4>I think that's a more broader aspect of life. 00:12:16.751 --> 00:12:19.130 <v Speaker 4>You take it personal, right. 00:12:19.130 --> 00:12:24.972 <v Speaker 4>And then someone along the road, I don't know if your skin just tempers, but you learn to kind of not take it personal. 00:12:24.972 --> 00:12:33.691 <v Speaker 4>You almost depersonalize rejection or failure Because you just didn't figure out a way to solve it yet, With the word yet being key here. 00:12:33.691 --> 00:12:35.989 <v Speaker 4>Right, I just got to figure this out, I've just figured out yet. 00:12:35.989 --> 00:12:49.426 <v Speaker 4>And so I'm sure if I were to turn this interview around and I've asked you about your successes and your rejections early on, you'll give me a litany of times it didn't go your way, but then after a while it's almost like because you've been there and you've done that, you go. 00:12:49.426 --> 00:12:55.328 <v Speaker 4>Yeah, I know how this works and I think as you get older, it really becomes like water off a duck's back. 00:12:55.328 --> 00:12:57.708 <v Speaker 4>It doesn't hurt you as much, it doesn't impact you as much. 00:12:58.029 --> 00:13:00.109 <v Speaker 2>Yeah, You're on the Big Success podcast. 00:13:00.109 --> 00:13:00.831 <v Speaker 2>We're going to take a break. 00:13:00.831 --> 00:13:01.695 <v Speaker 2>We will be back. 00:13:01.695 --> 00:13:08.109 <v Speaker 2>Victor will teach us all about sales, including the guy who wrote the first book on AI in sales way back when. 00:13:08.686 --> 00:13:10.393 <v Speaker 3>In 30 minutes a day for 30 days. 00:13:10.393 --> 00:13:20.210 <v Speaker 3>30x business will take you through the exact hard won business principles that Brad Sugars has personally developed over the past 30 years as an entrepreneur, investor and business advisor. 00:13:20.210 --> 00:13:25.731 <v Speaker 3>Join Brad and his team and 100 other entrepreneurs who want to start building a successful business today. 00:13:26.455 --> 00:13:26.956 <v Speaker 2>And we're back. 00:13:26.956 --> 00:13:32.134 <v Speaker 2>Big Success podcast Victor and Tonya Now we'll get to that whole AI thing in just a moment. 00:13:32.134 --> 00:13:36.467 <v Speaker 2>But sales influence how do we succeed at having influence in sales? 00:13:37.792 --> 00:13:43.227 <v Speaker 4>So what's happened in the market is when I decided to do sales influence again. 00:13:43.227 --> 00:13:47.559 <v Speaker 4>I give Robert Cialdini the trigger point for me getting going in that direction. 00:13:47.559 --> 00:13:51.359 <v Speaker 4>I started studying that people are now more informed than ever, even more. 00:13:51.359 --> 00:14:03.076 <v Speaker 4>Today, In 2011, there's a book called the Challenger Sale that came out by the group called the CEB, which is now part of Gartner, and they said that the buyer is 57% into the buying process, and I remember that was interesting. 00:14:03.076 --> 00:14:07.255 <v Speaker 4>57% of the buying process, which means they're more than halfway to making a buying decision. 00:14:07.255 --> 00:14:15.414 <v Speaker 4>I would argue that today that number is probably 70%, 80% and when we get on the subject of AI, that's probably going to get to 80%, 90%, maybe 100%, and they'll just make decisions. 00:14:15.414 --> 00:14:17.936 <v Speaker 4>So I realized that buyers are smarter than I. 00:14:17.936 --> 00:14:19.974 <v Speaker 4>You know this, Brett, I'm preaching to acquire. 00:14:19.974 --> 00:14:20.897 <v Speaker 4>Buyers are smarter now. 00:14:20.897 --> 00:14:23.719 <v Speaker 4>You can't really sell them because they have the information. 00:14:23.719 --> 00:14:24.951 <v Speaker 4>So fast forward. 00:14:25.011 --> 00:14:28.640 <v Speaker 4>If I want to divide the world of selling, I would be pre-internet and post-internet. 00:14:28.640 --> 00:14:30.543 <v Speaker 4>Pre-internet, you can sell to them. 00:14:30.543 --> 00:14:32.313 <v Speaker 4>That's when you can value proposition. 00:14:32.313 --> 00:14:33.577 <v Speaker 4>We'll spend time blah, blah, blah. 00:14:33.577 --> 00:14:42.014 <v Speaker 4>Now, because they have the information, we have to figure out how they buy and then align our sales process with how they buy, and that's where that came from. 00:14:42.014 --> 00:14:51.181 <v Speaker 4>If I understand how you make buying decisions or what holds you back from making a buying decision, and I can figure that out, then I can sell to you more effectively without pressuring you. 00:14:51.181 --> 00:14:54.017 <v Speaker 4>So I use the word pressure for pushing and selling. 00:14:54.017 --> 00:14:58.701 <v Speaker 4>Nudging is guiding you to a decision that I know you're going to make if I present things in the right way. 00:14:59.250 --> 00:15:03.616 <v Speaker 2>Yeah, I love that nudging, the nudging, so that brings us to sales strategy. 00:15:03.616 --> 00:15:06.336 <v Speaker 2>Then how do we succeed at creating the right sales strategy? 00:15:07.769 --> 00:15:10.599 <v Speaker 4>That's a big question because that's either a B2C or B2B question, right? 00:15:10.599 --> 00:15:15.780 <v Speaker 4>And today it gets a little more complicated because, again, you can create a sales strategy. 00:15:15.780 --> 00:15:17.394 <v Speaker 4>In fact, let me back up. 00:15:17.394 --> 00:15:18.874 <v Speaker 4>This is really interesting. 00:15:18.874 --> 00:15:35.341 <v Speaker 4>I was doing some research for a presentation, again on AI, and I found something really fascinating In 2018, so let's go back, pre-pandemic 2018, brad, the average sales person was spending about 35% of their time in actual sales activity 35%, right. 00:15:36.509 --> 00:15:39.889 <v Speaker 4>Fast forward to this year, that number has gone down to 33%. 00:15:39.889 --> 00:15:41.255 <v Speaker 4>Well, how can that be? 00:15:41.255 --> 00:15:45.139 <v Speaker 4>How can they spend less time on sales process when they're getting more sales enablement tools? 00:15:45.139 --> 00:15:47.450 <v Speaker 4>Companies are investing in all these tools. 00:15:47.450 --> 00:15:51.259 <v Speaker 4>Every sales person has a tech stack of 7 to 11 different product stacks, right. 00:15:51.259 --> 00:15:52.955 <v Speaker 4>So that was interesting. 00:15:53.570 --> 00:15:57.894 <v Speaker 4>What's happening is we're giving sales people more tools, but I think we're focusing on the wrong side of the equation. 00:15:57.894 --> 00:16:05.399 <v Speaker 4>What we want to do is go to the other side of the buying plate Again, the buying side, because what we have to do is make it easier for customers to buy. 00:16:05.399 --> 00:16:13.057 <v Speaker 4>And so when people say what's a sales strategy, we have to understand that sales marketing and one could argue, customer service have to merge. 00:16:13.057 --> 00:16:17.874 <v Speaker 4>We can't treat them as silos anymore, and for the first time I can't believe. 00:16:17.874 --> 00:16:21.433 <v Speaker 4>What I'm saying is because I used to ridicule marketing, I used to make fun of them. 00:16:21.433 --> 00:16:23.897 <v Speaker 4>Right, because I have remember that John want to make it a line. 00:16:23.897 --> 00:16:25.541 <v Speaker 4>50% of my marketing works. 00:16:25.541 --> 00:16:26.570 <v Speaker 4>I just don't know what is 50%? 00:16:26.570 --> 00:16:27.614 <v Speaker 4>That whole thing, right? 00:16:27.614 --> 00:16:40.677 <v Speaker 4>And so now marketing is the driver of sales, of qualified leads, and so we need to shift more money over to the marketing side, because they're the ones that are conditioning the buyer along the buyer journey. 00:16:41.458 --> 00:16:43.535 <v Speaker 2>Yeah, I'm in 100% agreement with that. 00:16:43.535 --> 00:16:50.403 <v Speaker 2>I sit down and I look at how can we sell the person without a salesperson is almost the question. 00:16:50.403 --> 00:16:58.703 <v Speaker 2>And the salesperson is really that last point of contact to just say, yeah, we're a great company, we're in a relationship with us. 00:16:58.703 --> 00:17:00.998 <v Speaker 2>So that brings us to then. 00:17:01.913 --> 00:17:03.077 <v Speaker 4>Can I add something to that, brad? 00:17:03.077 --> 00:17:05.596 <v Speaker 4>I don't mean to interrupt, but you said something interesting. 00:17:05.596 --> 00:17:05.977 <v Speaker 4>It triggered me. 00:17:05.977 --> 00:17:07.460 <v Speaker 4>It is that last mile. 00:17:07.460 --> 00:17:10.115 <v Speaker 4>Yeah, that's where the salesperson comes into play. 00:17:10.115 --> 00:17:21.060 <v Speaker 4>It's that last mile to get them over the hump, and so there's different books out there about sense making, helping them curate the information, guiding them towards that final decision, being a Sherpa in sales. 00:17:21.060 --> 00:17:24.596 <v Speaker 4>And it is that last mile where you won't get rid of the salesperson. 00:17:24.837 --> 00:17:29.960 <v Speaker 2>Yeah, home percent and reducing bioresistances on that last mile. 00:17:29.960 --> 00:17:30.932 <v Speaker 2>How do we do that? 00:17:32.210 --> 00:17:33.153 <v Speaker 4>Well, several ways you could do it. 00:17:33.153 --> 00:17:35.568 <v Speaker 4>There's a wonderful book out there. 00:17:35.568 --> 00:17:36.875 <v Speaker 4>As you can tell, I love reading stuff. 00:17:36.875 --> 00:17:41.441 <v Speaker 4>There was a book called the Jolt Effect, J-O-L-T Effect, written by Dixon and McKenna. 00:17:41.441 --> 00:17:44.356 <v Speaker 4>What they did is they took pre-pandemic. 00:17:44.356 --> 00:17:57.309 <v Speaker 4>By the way, here's an interesting question what percentage and I'm not trying to trick you, Brad what percentage of information you know, let's say pre-pandemic, of conversations with clients, salesperson clients, actually made it into the CRM? 00:17:57.309 --> 00:17:58.334 <v Speaker 4>What would you guess, Brad? 00:17:59.609 --> 00:18:01.135 <v Speaker 2>I'm guessing almost none. 00:18:02.089 --> 00:18:02.692 <v Speaker 4>You're close to. 00:18:02.692 --> 00:18:03.694 <v Speaker 4>You're close to be right. 00:18:03.694 --> 00:18:05.419 <v Speaker 4>5%, right, yeah. 00:18:05.419 --> 00:18:07.275 <v Speaker 4>So a lot of that information was lost. 00:18:07.275 --> 00:18:09.916 <v Speaker 4>Fast forward, we have the pandemic everybody goes online. 00:18:09.916 --> 00:18:15.541 <v Speaker 4>So what happens is everybody goes online, like you know, on Zoom, google, meet Teams, whatever it may be. 00:18:15.541 --> 00:18:17.715 <v Speaker 4>Now there's a lot of conversations recorded. 00:18:17.715 --> 00:18:26.428 <v Speaker 4>So a company called Tether took 2.5 million calls that were recorded, random, through AI, so to speak. 00:18:26.528 --> 00:18:32.451 <v Speaker 4>Right, analyze them and they came up with different reasons why people buy and why some people are top performers. 00:18:32.451 --> 00:18:39.461 <v Speaker 4>One of the biggest ones big takeaways from the book was you have to learn how to de-risk the buy. 00:18:39.461 --> 00:18:46.164 <v Speaker 4>So whatever you can do to reduce the risk, or at least the perception of risk, was one way to push the sale over. 00:18:46.164 --> 00:19:03.067 <v Speaker 4>The second one that I thought was really interesting as far as what they found is that salespeople who moved into what they call advocacy mode recommend actually sold more and higher customer satisfaction, which goes against us sometimes, what we think. 00:19:03.067 --> 00:19:04.471 <v Speaker 4>Well, we don't want to pressure people. 00:19:04.471 --> 00:19:10.768 <v Speaker 4>No, but you're the domain expert, you're the subject matter expert, you're the person that's supposed to guide them making a buying decision. 00:19:10.768 --> 00:19:13.904 <v Speaker 4>Tell them, give them options and indication. 00:19:13.904 --> 00:19:15.601 <v Speaker 4>Here are three options, and if it were mine to do. 00:19:15.601 --> 00:19:19.127 <v Speaker 4>Based on what you've told me, I would go ahead and do this one Boom. 00:19:19.127 --> 00:19:19.869 <v Speaker 4>Thank you very much. 00:19:19.869 --> 00:19:21.653 <v Speaker 4>That's what they found in that book. 00:19:21.980 --> 00:19:22.763 <v Speaker 2>Yeah, I love it. 00:19:22.763 --> 00:19:24.526 <v Speaker 2>I compare that to a doctor. 00:19:24.526 --> 00:19:28.691 <v Speaker 2>A doctor doesn't say to you hey, I think you should take this prescription. 00:19:28.691 --> 00:19:30.266 <v Speaker 2>Would you like to buy that or not? 00:19:30.266 --> 00:19:32.026 <v Speaker 2>No, this is the prescription. 00:19:32.026 --> 00:19:34.900 <v Speaker 2>Take this, you'll get better, everything will be fine. 00:19:34.900 --> 00:19:41.673 <v Speaker 2>So let's dive in then to actually, before we get in the AI velocity, it's the big word. 00:19:41.673 --> 00:19:45.388 <v Speaker 2>It's the big thing behind you there, talk to me about velocity and why that's important. 00:19:46.434 --> 00:19:47.339 <v Speaker 4>I came across this equation. 00:19:47.339 --> 00:19:49.146 <v Speaker 4>I like to say I invented the equation but I didn't. 00:19:49.146 --> 00:19:54.368 <v Speaker 4>I came across the sales velocity equation A few years back and I'm like I love this because it simplifies everything. 00:19:54.368 --> 00:19:57.145 <v Speaker 4>So there's only four levers to grow your sales. 00:19:57.145 --> 00:20:00.039 <v Speaker 4>That's it, four levers, if you really think about it. 00:20:00.039 --> 00:20:04.352 <v Speaker 4>The first component if you think of a fraction, think of the numerator and denominator. 00:20:04.352 --> 00:20:11.190 <v Speaker 4>In the numerator you have numbers of deals in the pipeline multiplied by your conversion rate, multiplied by your average deal size. 00:20:11.190 --> 00:20:14.303 <v Speaker 4>Then divided by, in the denominator, your sales cycle. 00:20:15.079 --> 00:20:24.692 <v Speaker 4>If I can increase the number of deals in the pipeline, increase my conversion, increase my average deal size and reduce my sales velocity, my sales cycle, I can increase velocity. 00:20:24.692 --> 00:20:26.366 <v Speaker 4>It's the interesting thing. 00:20:26.366 --> 00:20:29.048 <v Speaker 4>So those are four things everybody can focus on as a team. 00:20:29.048 --> 00:20:36.769 <v Speaker 4>Did you know that if I can increase the number of folks in my pipeline let's say I have a hundred, now again, just 10%, now I have 110. 00:20:36.769 --> 00:20:41.169 <v Speaker 4>My close rate I improve that from, let's say, 40% to.44%. 00:20:41.169 --> 00:20:46.445 <v Speaker 4>Average deal size 10% and reduce my sales cycle by 10%. 00:20:46.445 --> 00:20:49.571 <v Speaker 4>I'll increase my velocity by 47%. 00:20:49.571 --> 00:20:50.473 <v Speaker 4>That's almost 50%. 00:20:51.923 --> 00:20:55.768 <v Speaker 2>So no one seems to measure that, though no one measures their sales cycle. 00:20:55.768 --> 00:20:59.743 <v Speaker 2>I go and ask companies all the time how many days for a deal, how many hours for a deal? 00:20:59.743 --> 00:21:01.523 <v Speaker 2>No one seems to measure it. 00:21:01.523 --> 00:21:03.747 <v Speaker 2>How do you get them doing that, buddy? 00:21:03.747 --> 00:21:05.125 <v Speaker 2>How do you make that happen? 00:21:05.880 --> 00:21:12.250 <v Speaker 4>By the way, that's almost like a religious or a political discussion with some companies, because it depends on where you start measuring, right. 00:21:12.250 --> 00:21:35.728 <v Speaker 4>So, in other words, is it first contact when they first sent you something on the website, right, requesting more information, or because that's not, you had some that's a market qualified lead, or is it until a salesperson like an SDR or BDR, talks to them and then now that becomes a sales qualified lead, and or is it when the AE, who's been handed off this new lead, actually sets the first meeting? 00:21:35.728 --> 00:21:52.010 <v Speaker 4>That's where everything gets a little fuzzy with people and I think, by the way, if you want to measure sales cycle to your benefit, obviously you're going to pick the shorter timeframe, but I think we should start from the time the person came in in the funnel, which is the actual website, all the way to the first order contract sign. 00:21:53.742 --> 00:21:55.106 <v Speaker 2>Yeah, yeah, you can measure all of them. 00:21:55.106 --> 00:21:57.105 <v Speaker 2>It doesn't matter which one you measure. 00:21:57.105 --> 00:22:01.010 <v Speaker 2>I would say measure all of them because it's going to help either way. 00:22:01.010 --> 00:22:02.987 <v Speaker 2>So, ai, let's go back. 00:22:02.987 --> 00:22:05.467 <v Speaker 2>Hang on, how many years ago was it when you wrote that book? 00:22:07.259 --> 00:22:09.851 <v Speaker 4>I wrote it in 2017 and then published it in 2018. 00:22:10.200 --> 00:22:13.209 <v Speaker 2>Yeah, six years ago you wrote a book on AI and sales. 00:22:13.209 --> 00:22:22.287 <v Speaker 2>Today you know like almost every speaker's bureau is going can you speak on AI, donnie took six years for your book to hit the mark, buddy. 00:22:22.287 --> 00:22:27.930 <v Speaker 2>So let's talk about AI and its impact on sales. 00:22:29.060 --> 00:22:30.005 <v Speaker 4>Yeah, what happened? 00:22:30.005 --> 00:22:30.988 <v Speaker 4>Well, I'll go back. 00:22:30.988 --> 00:22:33.167 <v Speaker 4>I was an intern working for Honeywell. 00:22:33.167 --> 00:22:35.909 <v Speaker 4>Honeywell, I worked for their undersea systems division. 00:22:35.909 --> 00:22:39.346 <v Speaker 4>If you saw the movie the Hunt for Red October, russian sub, us sub. 00:22:39.346 --> 00:22:43.125 <v Speaker 4>The torpedo on that US sub was a Mach 46. 00:22:43.125 --> 00:22:50.567 <v Speaker 4>I worked on the Mach 50 torpedo as an intern and that one had the first level of rule based expert systems slash premature AI. 00:22:50.567 --> 00:22:54.990 <v Speaker 4>That was my first introduction to AI and this was like circa 85. 00:22:56.000 --> 00:23:04.743 <v Speaker 4>And so then we went through this nuclear winter where nobody talked about, you know, rule based AI, because it was too hard to actually program everything in there, every single rule for every different scenario. 00:23:04.743 --> 00:23:05.926 <v Speaker 4>It was too expensive. 00:23:05.926 --> 00:23:10.645 <v Speaker 4>Storage wasn't there, processing speeds weren't there, fast forward I pretty much forgot about it. 00:23:10.645 --> 00:23:11.964 <v Speaker 4>I got to be honest, forgot about it. 00:23:11.964 --> 00:23:28.906 <v Speaker 4>And then, in 2016, this is why the book was in 2017, in 2016, I go to Korea, to Seoul, and I'm speaking for SIGNA, the healthcare company, and after that I remember the gentleman's name is Ben, the VP of the region says hey, victor, would you like to see our call center and what we're doing down there? 00:23:28.906 --> 00:23:32.367 <v Speaker 4>Long story short, takes me down there, 2016. 00:23:33.701 --> 00:23:34.784 <v Speaker 4>And I asked him this question. 00:23:34.784 --> 00:23:43.913 <v Speaker 4>I said how do you know, if somebody calls, if each person feels 100 calls let's say Brad feels 100 calls he closes 20 of those deals right, those policies. 00:23:43.913 --> 00:23:45.405 <v Speaker 4>I said what does he do with the other 80? 00:23:45.405 --> 00:23:49.744 <v Speaker 4>How does he determine who to call, who's worth calling or who's worth a follow up maybe two, three months or not at all? 00:23:49.744 --> 00:23:52.205 <v Speaker 4>And he says we use AI. 00:23:52.205 --> 00:23:53.128 <v Speaker 4>I said what? 00:23:53.128 --> 00:23:56.126 <v Speaker 4>Yeah, because I've heard the two letters in a long time. 00:23:56.126 --> 00:24:10.045 <v Speaker 4>What they were using was natural language processing, in other words, they were recording all the voices, actually transcribing them and whether they could look at speed, intonation, keywords, key clouds, when the competitor was mentioned or when price was brought up. 00:24:10.045 --> 00:24:14.289 <v Speaker 4>And I think they increased when they started implementing that tool 2016. 00:24:14.289 --> 00:24:21.352 <v Speaker 4>They saw an increase I think it was 37% in their close rates, and I was like what. 00:24:21.806 --> 00:24:37.029 <v Speaker 4>And then that triggered me to go let me go look at this again, and that's when I really got into it, went down to Rabbit Hall and found all these different companies that were doing different things, like Salesforce with Einstein, the Watson, which is IBM, and now you're starting to really see it kind of come to fruition. 00:24:37.310 --> 00:24:44.053 <v Speaker 2>Yeah, so how do you see we're gonna change sales in the coming years, two years, five years, using AI? 00:24:45.505 --> 00:24:53.709 <v Speaker 4>So the two big things I talk about in my predictions is first one and I know I'm right, I know I'm right, people are gonna argue with me the search engine results pages. 00:24:53.709 --> 00:24:55.375 <v Speaker 4>Dead like dead. 00:24:55.375 --> 00:24:57.932 <v Speaker 4>It's a, as they say to engineers. 00:24:57.932 --> 00:25:01.127 <v Speaker 4>It's on an asymptotic curve approaching zero but never getting there. 00:25:01.127 --> 00:25:04.510 <v Speaker 4>In other words, how we do searches, we're not gonna see those pages anymore. 00:25:04.510 --> 00:25:18.713 <v Speaker 4>What's gonna happen is Brad Sugar is gonna create a Bradai that's his digital twin and Brad's gonna say, okay, look, I'm looking for a camera, I'm wanting in this price range, da-da-da-da-da, these specifications find me the best three. 00:25:18.713 --> 00:25:20.309 <v Speaker 4>And then suggest the best one. 00:25:20.309 --> 00:25:25.590 <v Speaker 4>And then, if you're bold enough and you trust your digital twin, brad, you're gonna say and buy it while you're at it. 00:25:25.590 --> 00:25:27.150 <v Speaker 4>You know that's what's gonna happen. 00:25:27.150 --> 00:25:29.814 <v Speaker 4>So no more going in there and doing Google searches. 00:25:29.814 --> 00:25:30.888 <v Speaker 4>That's one big change. 00:25:30.888 --> 00:25:35.188 <v Speaker 4>And then the other one is is the cloning that's gonna happen? 00:25:35.228 --> 00:25:41.869 <v Speaker 4>Because if I were to get, if I would, if you were to hire a person with a bachelor's degree, well, okay, that means they went to four years of college. 00:25:41.869 --> 00:25:47.945 <v Speaker 4>If I need somebody with a master's degree at two more years, if it's doctor, he's probably at three to four on top of that right Now. 00:25:47.945 --> 00:25:49.111 <v Speaker 4>I don't need to do that. 00:25:49.111 --> 00:25:55.686 <v Speaker 4>I can program within code a graduate, right, you know so I. 00:25:55.686 --> 00:25:59.553 <v Speaker 4>And then I can what Load this graduate with all the content. 00:25:59.553 --> 00:26:01.993 <v Speaker 4>I could train it with machine learning. 00:26:01.993 --> 00:26:04.554 <v Speaker 4>I can use test set data, train it on all my products. 00:26:04.554 --> 00:26:07.049 <v Speaker 4>So if I'm a company like Wayfarer, I think Wayfarer is an interesting study. 00:26:07.049 --> 00:26:10.513 <v Speaker 4>Wayfarer has I don't know 100,000 SKUs, right? 00:26:11.445 --> 00:26:13.626 <v Speaker 2>Yeah, all the furniture business and that sort of thing. 00:26:13.626 --> 00:26:16.670 <v Speaker 2>For anyone that doesn't know that, yeah, Okay, so thank you. 00:26:17.125 --> 00:26:20.414 <v Speaker 4>And so I can train somebody on 100,000 SKUs. 00:26:20.414 --> 00:26:27.815 <v Speaker 4>But I can train my AI to know every product, every specification, and how could you compete against that? 00:26:27.815 --> 00:26:32.574 <v Speaker 4>Now, imagine you're a company you have only, let's say, 100 SKUs doesn't matter, you can train them. 00:26:32.574 --> 00:26:34.612 <v Speaker 4>And every time I have a new product, guess what? 00:26:34.612 --> 00:26:36.391 <v Speaker 4>I just train the machine on the new product. 00:26:36.391 --> 00:26:44.974 <v Speaker 4>So I then take that chunk of code and I copy it again and I duplicate it again and I create as many virtual employees as I want and guess what? 00:26:44.974 --> 00:26:46.608 <v Speaker 4>Almost near perfect recall. 00:26:46.608 --> 00:26:48.555 <v Speaker 4>Yeah, that's how it's changing. 00:26:48.555 --> 00:26:50.210 <v Speaker 4>So I don't the call centers. 00:26:50.210 --> 00:26:54.013 <v Speaker 4>I think you're gonna see this massive devastation in the call centers. 00:26:54.013 --> 00:27:03.131 <v Speaker 4>We're gonna see call centers almost like the dial phone or those phone booths that's what I'm gonna say Used to what, used to put people in a bullpen with the phone. 00:27:03.131 --> 00:27:05.147 <v Speaker 4>Yeah, call centers, why would you do that? 00:27:05.147 --> 00:27:06.710 <v Speaker 4>Yeah, that's what's gonna change. 00:27:06.710 --> 00:27:13.847 <v Speaker 4>So I think companies, countries that have depended on call center business, I think that stuff is gonna be impacted over the next three to five years. 00:27:13.847 --> 00:27:14.711 <v Speaker 4>Great. 00:27:15.051 --> 00:27:15.413 <v Speaker 2>Got to be. 00:27:15.413 --> 00:27:17.029 <v Speaker 2>You're on the Big Success Podcast. 00:27:17.029 --> 00:27:17.827 <v Speaker 2>I'm Brad Sugar. 00:27:17.827 --> 00:27:23.692 <v Speaker 2>We'll be back and we're gonna talk about scaling up your sales, how we scale it, how we go from good to great. 00:27:24.744 --> 00:27:35.355 <v Speaker 5>Victor earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and an MBA and built a 20 year career as a top sales executive and became CEO of a multi-million dollar high tech company. 00:27:35.355 --> 00:27:39.132 <v Speaker 5>To learn more about Victor Antonio, please visit VictorAntoniocom. 00:27:39.785 --> 00:27:42.354 <v Speaker 2>So, victor, talk to me about scaling up. 00:27:42.354 --> 00:27:45.529 <v Speaker 2>You've coached a lot of businesses, trained a lot of companies over the years. 00:27:45.529 --> 00:27:49.811 <v Speaker 2>There's some that go for good and some that go for amazing. 00:27:49.811 --> 00:27:51.390 <v Speaker 2>What's the difference between the two? 00:27:52.565 --> 00:27:53.910 <v Speaker 4>Go for good, go for amazing. 00:27:53.910 --> 00:27:55.694 <v Speaker 4>I'm a realist man. 00:27:55.694 --> 00:27:59.772 <v Speaker 4>That's where I kind of live in that world where let's do this slowly, let's see how this works out. 00:27:59.772 --> 00:28:07.390 <v Speaker 4>I'll give you an example of how I did it, because it's always, you know, I like to tell people this because some people think I just decided to be a sales trainer. 00:28:07.390 --> 00:28:26.114 <v Speaker 4>I went through the pains of living it and so I was vice president of sales of Latin America, a telecom company out of Minnesota, and they gave me the region, all of Latin America, including Mexico and the Caribbean islands, and that region, all the region, was only generating like $14 million at the time. 00:28:26.114 --> 00:28:33.010 <v Speaker 4>And I remember my boss said Victor, I'm gonna make you the first like regional VP, as a $3 billion company says whatever you do, don't screw it up that type of thing. 00:28:33.010 --> 00:28:35.010 <v Speaker 4>That's a good motivational speech, right? 00:28:35.010 --> 00:28:39.351 <v Speaker 4>Yeah, I remember I went down there and I'll fast forward to the end. 00:28:39.351 --> 00:28:46.470 <v Speaker 4>Within two and a half years we went from $14 to $98 million in annual revenue not bad for two and a half years. 00:28:46.470 --> 00:28:48.128 <v Speaker 4>And he was like well, how'd you do that? 00:28:48.128 --> 00:28:51.648 <v Speaker 4>And so what I did was one of the first things I did. 00:28:51.689 --> 00:28:54.592 <v Speaker 4>Is I again, I like to be very focused and very organized. 00:28:54.592 --> 00:28:56.251 <v Speaker 4>I think it's the engineering side of me that comes. 00:28:56.251 --> 00:29:00.113 <v Speaker 4>I like to be very organized and so what I did is I created five regions. 00:29:00.113 --> 00:29:17.489 <v Speaker 4>Within those five regions, I structured it, and what I did is I created like like almost like a matrix, if you could imagine regions on one side, on the vertical axis and across the top I had the different market segments and then I went region by segment and said where can we win, where can we not win? 00:29:17.489 --> 00:29:20.590 <v Speaker 4>And where I thought we could win, we would populate it with salespeople. 00:29:20.590 --> 00:29:26.192 <v Speaker 4>And that focused approach allowed me to grow and scale the business easily. 00:29:26.192 --> 00:29:31.372 <v Speaker 4>But it was very focused and I had to let go of some business and focus in on where I knew we could win. 00:29:31.372 --> 00:29:34.614 <v Speaker 4>That's a very general approach right there. 00:29:35.345 --> 00:29:55.291 <v Speaker 2>So when you think about just even goal setting or even mindset wise because you teach a lot about staying positive and stuff like that how does someone actually allow themselves to think that big, like you said okay, it's 14, I'm not gonna think of 16, I'm gonna go for a hundred type thing? 00:29:55.291 --> 00:29:57.592 <v Speaker 2>How did we get to that thinking? 00:29:58.665 --> 00:29:58.885 <v Speaker 4>All right. 00:29:58.885 --> 00:30:00.893 <v Speaker 4>So let me go total nerd on you again. 00:30:00.893 --> 00:30:03.769 <v Speaker 4>Right, the earth has a curvature. 00:30:03.769 --> 00:30:09.250 <v Speaker 4>If I put one tenant on the end, the one side of the earth, and an antenna tower on the other side, they can't see each other. 00:30:09.250 --> 00:30:11.392 <v Speaker 4>There is what they call no line of sight. 00:30:11.392 --> 00:30:17.852 <v Speaker 4>So what you do is you put antennas between, let's say, each point until they can start seeing each other, right. 00:30:18.464 --> 00:30:23.113 <v Speaker 4>And so, in other words, I set smaller goals, and so the goal wasn't to try to get to 98,. 00:30:23.113 --> 00:30:27.231 <v Speaker 4>The goal was I gotta be honest, brad it was not to have anything less than 14,. 00:30:27.231 --> 00:30:29.210 <v Speaker 4>Right, I said let's not do less than 14,. 00:30:29.210 --> 00:30:30.867 <v Speaker 4>That was the mantra Don't go backwards. 00:30:30.867 --> 00:30:41.152 <v Speaker 4>Yeah, that was the mantra, and I think that first year we got it to like it was like 23, right, but we had some momentum going, and now they gave me more money to play with, right. 00:30:41.152 --> 00:30:43.673 <v Speaker 4>And so I think it was smaller goals. 00:30:43.673 --> 00:30:46.373 <v Speaker 4>And again, it was also by prioritization, right. 00:30:46.373 --> 00:30:48.029 <v Speaker 4>So I prioritize the regions. 00:30:48.029 --> 00:30:48.972 <v Speaker 4>Where can we win? 00:30:48.972 --> 00:30:50.009 <v Speaker 4>Where can we not lose? 00:30:50.009 --> 00:30:52.592 <v Speaker 4>Right, I look for high leverage activities. 00:30:52.592 --> 00:30:56.111 <v Speaker 4>If we do certain things, for example, I know that we're gonna win. 00:30:56.111 --> 00:31:04.111 <v Speaker 4>For example, we started doing more trade shows in the region participating because we saw that as a high leverage activity, great marketing, great visibility. 00:31:04.111 --> 00:31:10.030 <v Speaker 4>So we kind of figured out where we could spend our money and where we couldn't spend our money and we just had to make sure you got it. 00:31:10.505 --> 00:31:10.685 <v Speaker 2>Yeah. 00:31:10.685 --> 00:31:13.535 <v Speaker 2>So let me give you an example of two different people. 00:31:13.535 --> 00:31:14.890 <v Speaker 2>You got two salespeople right. 00:31:14.890 --> 00:31:18.032 <v Speaker 2>Same product, same company, same thing. 00:31:18.032 --> 00:31:23.471 <v Speaker 2>One of them is doing mediocre, one of them's doing amazing. 00:31:23.471 --> 00:31:24.807 <v Speaker 2>How do you? 00:31:24.807 --> 00:31:27.811 <v Speaker 2>What's the difference between this person and this person? 00:31:27.811 --> 00:31:30.946 <v Speaker 2>Because it's not the product, it's not the service, it's not the thing. 00:31:30.946 --> 00:31:32.171 <v Speaker 2>There's something different about them. 00:31:33.204 --> 00:31:33.989 <v Speaker 4>It's drive man. 00:31:33.989 --> 00:31:35.188 <v Speaker 4>I've concluded. 00:31:35.188 --> 00:31:36.854 <v Speaker 4>It is drive, pure drive. 00:31:36.854 --> 00:31:41.512 <v Speaker 4>There are certain salespeople who make enough money to get complacent, lose their drive right. 00:31:41.512 --> 00:31:47.813 <v Speaker 4>There's some people who just have a reason, and whatever that reason is, it's driving them to be successful. 00:31:47.813 --> 00:31:50.132 <v Speaker 4>And with that drive comes a certain. 00:31:50.132 --> 00:31:55.535 <v Speaker 4>If you were to imagine somebody going to battle with that drive, their shield is pure resilience. 00:31:55.535 --> 00:31:57.613 <v Speaker 4>No matter what's done their way, they're focused. 00:31:57.613 --> 00:31:59.772 <v Speaker 4>I said I gotta hit that number, I gotta hit that number. 00:31:59.772 --> 00:32:01.351 <v Speaker 4>And some people are just driven that by it. 00:32:02.708 --> 00:32:06.220 <v Speaker 4>And so my boss used to tell me it's Victor, I need you to go into debt. 00:32:06.220 --> 00:32:08.810 <v Speaker 4>I said what he said yeah, I need you to go to bed. 00:32:08.810 --> 00:32:09.271 <v Speaker 4>I go. 00:32:09.271 --> 00:32:09.633 <v Speaker 4>What do you mean? 00:32:09.633 --> 00:32:12.008 <v Speaker 4>He said buy a boat, buy something that's expensive, I go. 00:32:12.008 --> 00:32:12.490 <v Speaker 4>Why he goes? 00:32:12.490 --> 00:32:14.075 <v Speaker 4>He goes because I need you to stay hungry. 00:32:14.075 --> 00:32:32.372 <v Speaker 4>That that was his mindset and so and he joked about that, but I know what he meant and I think it's drive, it's finding purpose, and I know people use that word purpose it's such a soft word, right but by purpose I mean this, and this is where you have to kind of sit the room by yourself in the dark to figure this out, because nobody else can figure this out for you. 00:32:33.316 --> 00:32:35.467 <v Speaker 4>I wanted to be for me, brad, it was. 00:32:35.467 --> 00:32:39.431 <v Speaker 4>I wanted to be debt-free Right, remember, kid from the hood? 00:32:39.431 --> 00:32:41.236 <v Speaker 4>Yeah, yeah, free. 00:32:41.236 --> 00:32:44.505 <v Speaker 4>I wanted to make sure that our kids went to the best schools. 00:32:44.505 --> 00:32:51.648 <v Speaker 4>I had a number in my head of how much money I had to have in the bank and because I came from poverty, I was very insecure. 00:32:51.648 --> 00:32:53.252 <v Speaker 4>So let's have a little more. 00:32:53.252 --> 00:33:05.684 <v Speaker 4>If you know what I mean, right there again, the fear of not having that is what drove me, and I think that's the difference between let's just say good and amazing that they have a drive. 00:33:05.684 --> 00:33:12.404 <v Speaker 4>There's something internal in them again that nobody else can define but themselves that says this is why I work this hard. 00:33:12.404 --> 00:33:17.314 <v Speaker 4>So when you sit there and you're trying to work on a proposal and you're tired, you're like no, no, got to get this done. 00:33:17.314 --> 00:33:18.744 <v Speaker 4>If I don't get this out, I lose this one. 00:33:18.744 --> 00:33:19.949 <v Speaker 4>You know I got to get this done. 00:33:19.949 --> 00:33:21.452 <v Speaker 4>You have people with that mindset. 00:33:21.452 --> 00:33:24.233 <v Speaker 4>I'm sure you've seen it, yeah yeah, I, you know. 00:33:24.253 --> 00:33:27.148 <v Speaker 2>Going back to you getting into debt thing, I remember one of my best sales guys. 00:33:27.148 --> 00:33:30.037 <v Speaker 2>Every time he came in and told me that his wife was pregnant again. 00:33:30.037 --> 00:33:38.913 <v Speaker 2>I think he had five kids in the end it was like, yes, I'm glad you know, every time because he had to increase his sales Just to keep up with the payments for kids going to school. 00:33:38.913 --> 00:33:41.449 <v Speaker 2>Let's go to the quick fire round. 00:33:41.449 --> 00:33:44.156 <v Speaker 2>I want just the short shop, straight to the point answers. 00:33:44.156 --> 00:33:47.476 <v Speaker 2>How do we succeed at personal development, personal growth? 00:33:49.125 --> 00:33:51.750 <v Speaker 4>The 1% rule 15 minutes every day got. 00:33:52.231 --> 00:33:55.278 <v Speaker 2>How do we succeed at setting goals or having goals? 00:33:56.486 --> 00:33:57.590 <v Speaker 4>Pick one or two, no more. 00:33:58.365 --> 00:34:00.913 <v Speaker 2>God, how do we succeed at health? 00:34:00.913 --> 00:34:00.953 <v Speaker 2>I? 00:34:03.287 --> 00:34:04.434 <v Speaker 4>Walk and eat better. 00:34:04.434 --> 00:34:06.045 <v Speaker 4>I, by the way, I've reduced. 00:34:06.045 --> 00:34:08.713 <v Speaker 4>I was listening a little lengthy on this one, but it'll be worth it. 00:34:08.713 --> 00:34:11.572 <v Speaker 4>I was listening to Andrew Huberman talk about alcohol, for example. 00:34:11.572 --> 00:34:21.570 <v Speaker 4>After listening to that three-hour podcast, let's just say I do maybe one beer a month now, if that so I've cut back on a lot of foods that Were unhealthy. 00:34:21.570 --> 00:34:28.652 <v Speaker 4>But my thing is, I walk every day for at least 45 minutes to an hour and that kind of clears the brain and I get the physical aspect of it also. 00:34:29.554 --> 00:34:29.835 <v Speaker 2>I love. 00:34:29.835 --> 00:34:31.338 <v Speaker 2>Having multiple dogs makes me look. 00:34:31.338 --> 00:34:33.393 <v Speaker 2>How do you succeed at relationships? 00:34:34.744 --> 00:34:36.672 <v Speaker 4>Patience, man, patience and understanding. 00:34:36.672 --> 00:34:41.463 <v Speaker 4>This will not clarify a little bit, you know, as when you're young, you we judge people. 00:34:41.463 --> 00:34:43.889 <v Speaker 4>You know there's something called the fundamental attribution error. 00:34:43.889 --> 00:34:48.114 <v Speaker 4>You just attribute something like you know, brad didn't call me, I such a jerk, right. 00:34:48.114 --> 00:34:54.108 <v Speaker 4>And then Brad tells me you know, hey, victor, sorry, I was in the hospital for a week and you're like, oh, you feel like a dummy, right, because you're like I was so patient. 00:34:54.108 --> 00:35:02.782 <v Speaker 4>I've learned to hold back, I'm pulling that fundamental attribution error trigger and I've learned to be patient because maybe somebody does have a reason. 00:35:02.782 --> 00:35:12.414 <v Speaker 4>And so, in short, I would say this if somebody doesn't get back to you or do something for you, whatever they fail you, they fall short of your expectations, then be patient. 00:35:12.414 --> 00:35:13.577 <v Speaker 4>Everybody's going through something. 00:35:14.606 --> 00:35:15.027 <v Speaker 2>Yeah, I love it. 00:35:15.027 --> 00:35:19.485 <v Speaker 2>So how do you succeed then at enjoying life, vacations, having fun? 00:35:20.951 --> 00:35:22.577 <v Speaker 4>The I'm zen about things. 00:35:22.577 --> 00:35:22.998 <v Speaker 4>I don't. 00:35:22.998 --> 00:35:27.697 <v Speaker 4>There's this thing about I Try not to pay attention to what other people have, or do? 00:35:27.697 --> 00:35:30.047 <v Speaker 4>I mean this sincerely, I just don't. 00:35:30.047 --> 00:35:31.755 <v Speaker 4>And so you can tell me. 00:35:31.755 --> 00:35:33.784 <v Speaker 4>I got a ten million dollar house. 00:35:33.784 --> 00:35:36.211 <v Speaker 4>I went, you know whatever skiing in the aspen, whatever. 00:35:36.211 --> 00:35:37.436 <v Speaker 4>I'm like good for you. 00:35:37.436 --> 00:35:41.077 <v Speaker 4>Now can we just sit down and, you know, have a I don't know some cup of coffee? 00:35:41.077 --> 00:35:43.474 <v Speaker 4>I've learned not to look at other people's pocket. 00:35:43.474 --> 00:35:46.545 <v Speaker 4>I learned not to people look at their, their photo album either. 00:35:46.545 --> 00:35:53.304 <v Speaker 4>It's what I want to do, what makes me happy, and I think if you can put the blinders on and not look, I think that's probably social media right. 00:35:53.304 --> 00:35:58.710 <v Speaker 4>We're always looking at what other people are doing and what other people have, and then we feel like we're Somewhat of a failure because we're not doing that. 00:35:58.710 --> 00:35:59.795 <v Speaker 4>Well, maybe that's not for you. 00:35:59.795 --> 00:36:02.474 <v Speaker 4>Yeah, I've learned to be comfortable with. 00:36:02.474 --> 00:36:04.420 <v Speaker 4>What's for me is for me. 00:36:04.420 --> 00:36:05.445 <v Speaker 4>What is not is okay. 00:36:05.827 --> 00:36:07.313 <v Speaker 2>Yeah, buddy of mine said to me the other day. 00:36:07.313 --> 00:36:11.291 <v Speaker 2>Victory said you know, I've gotten rid of the word FOMO and now I have the word Jomo. 00:36:11.291 --> 00:36:12.755 <v Speaker 2>The joy of missing out. 00:36:12.755 --> 00:36:14.784 <v Speaker 2>Oh, thank God I didn't have to go and do that. 00:36:14.784 --> 00:36:15.527 <v Speaker 2>You know I. 00:36:15.527 --> 00:36:28.298 <v Speaker 2>I'm so stealing that man, I'm so stealing so Final question what is the best advice you ever got or the best quote you ever read on the subject of success? 00:36:29.326 --> 00:36:36.896 <v Speaker 4>Okay, I don't know who this quote is from because it's attributed to different people, but I will state it never aim for perfection, aim for success. 00:36:36.896 --> 00:36:43.405 <v Speaker 4>I'm the 80% guy, right, if it's 80% good launch, if the book is 80% done. 00:36:43.405 --> 00:36:50.355 <v Speaker 4>I know I probably not the perfect launch, and then we'll figure out the 20% later, which is why I'll never be NASA rocket scientist, right. 00:36:50.355 --> 00:36:57.597 <v Speaker 4>So, but I tell people that you know there was a phrase you probably know better than I do, but it because it's it. 00:36:57.597 --> 00:37:08.329 <v Speaker 4>It talks about your desk being the graveyard of all your great ideas, because they just stay on the desk and I've learned to launch things and you know I've launched things. 00:37:08.329 --> 00:37:12.804 <v Speaker 4>I'm sure you have also go that didn't work out Well, but again, rubik's you, how do you figure it out and make it better? 00:37:12.804 --> 00:37:14.668 <v Speaker 4>So never aim for perfection. 00:37:14.668 --> 00:37:15.592 <v Speaker 4>Aim for success. 00:37:15.592 --> 00:37:18.137 <v Speaker 4>Keeps you moving forward, keeps the momentum going. 00:37:19.945 --> 00:37:20.989 <v Speaker 2>The Victor Antonio. 00:37:20.989 --> 00:37:24.759 <v Speaker 2>Jump in the show notes, read it, watch it, learn it, do all the things. 00:37:24.759 --> 00:37:26.864 <v Speaker 2>Connect with Victor, keep studying his stuff. 00:37:26.864 --> 00:37:28.668 <v Speaker 2>This is a big success podcast. 00:37:28.668 --> 00:37:32.077 <v Speaker 2>I'm Brad sugar's will be back next week and focus more on your success. 00:37:32.077 --> 00:37:35.065 <v Speaker 2>And that's a big success podcast for today. 00:37:35.065 --> 00:37:41.679 <v Speaker 2>Hopefully you took a lot of notes and hopefully you're into bunch and hopefully you're gonna take action on it and refer people. 00:37:41.679 --> 00:37:44.876 <v Speaker 2>Remember, if you haven't subscribed, click that subscribe button now. 00:37:44.876 --> 00:37:47.625 <v Speaker 2>Be with us every week on the big success podcast. 00:37:47.625 --> 00:37:50.050 <v Speaker 2>B S Brad sugar's big success. 00:37:50.050 --> 00:37:51.213 <v Speaker 2>Take action. 00:37:51.213 --> 00:37:52.697 <v Speaker 2>Check the show notes for all the links. 00:37:52.697 --> 00:37:55.594 <v Speaker 2>I'll give you all the links for everything that you speak ahead. 00:37:55.594 --> 00:37:59.273 <v Speaker 2>Make sure you follow through and keep the learning going. 00:37:59.273 --> 00:38:00.918 <v Speaker 2>Remember you got to grow into your goals. 00:38:00.918 --> 00:38:03.815 <v Speaker 2>I'll speak to you next time on the big success podcast. 00:38:05.166 --> 00:38:10.806 <v Speaker 1>You've been listening to the big success podcast with the number one business coach in the world, brad sugars. 00:38:10.806 --> 00:38:20.768 <v Speaker 1>To learn more about how to achieve business and personal success, as well as how to level up or listen to past episodes, visit sugar's comm.