Mastering Sales in the Era of AI from Victor Antonio

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<v Speaker 1>The search engine results page is dead.

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<v Speaker 1>Brad Sugar is going to create a Bradai.

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<v Speaker 2>Victor Antonio is my guest here today.

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<v Speaker 2>He's a super salesman, built the whole sales thing.

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<v Speaker 2>Then he went into training and teaching sales.

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<v Speaker 1>Sales, marketing and, one could argue, customer service have to merge.

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<v Speaker 2>Wrote one of the first ever books on AI in sales.

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<v Speaker 1>I can't train somebody on 100,000 SKUs, but I can train my AI to know every product, every specification, and how could you compete against that?

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<v Speaker 2>Let's welcome Victor Antonio to the Big Success Podcast.

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<v Speaker 2>How do you define success?

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<v Speaker 2>What is success in Victor's mind?

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<v Speaker 1>To me it's quality of life and that is the ability to have options to do what you want to do.

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<v Speaker 2>What's Victor Antonio's methodology that says this is how success happens.

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<v Speaker 1>I believe you have to have a banner.

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<v Speaker 1>I'm very specific in a niche right, so I picked the niche sales training.

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<v Speaker 1>It was too broad.

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<v Speaker 1>And then I read a book by Dr Robert Cialdini 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?

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<v Speaker 1>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.

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<v Speaker 1>But then I said I'm all in.

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<v Speaker 1>So if somebody says, victor, do you do teamwork?

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<v Speaker 1>No, I'm not doing that.

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<v Speaker 1>Do you talk about leadership?

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<v Speaker 1>No, that's not what I do.

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<v Speaker 1>I do sales influence.

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<v Speaker 1>That focus right there.

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<v Speaker 1>I kind of staked out a claim in the sales world and then I started just creating content on a cadence.

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<v Speaker 1>After that I think I was doing like three or five videos a week on different snippets.

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<v Speaker 1>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?

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<v Speaker 1>Why are you giving away for free?

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<v Speaker 1>They didn't understand content marketing yet the way I explain it to people.

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<v Speaker 1>Look, I got right now I think I have about maybe 1,700 videos on YouTube, right?

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<v Speaker 1>People say, well, victor, if you give it away, why would they hire you?

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<v Speaker 1>Or why would they buy into your Sales Velocity Academy?

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<v Speaker 1>I said it's like a box of a puzzle box.

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<v Speaker 1>You ever do a thousand piece puzzle box.

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<v Speaker 1>I'm putting out there in a thousand pieces, but I give people the puzzle box without the picture.

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<v Speaker 1>In other words, they got to come meet to put it all together.

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<v Speaker 1>No-transcript.

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<v Speaker 1>I started studying that people are now more informed than ever, even more.

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<v Speaker 1>Today, in 2011, there's a book called the Challenger Sale that came out by the group called 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 57% of the buying process, which means they're more than halfway to making a buying decision.

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<v Speaker 1>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.

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<v Speaker 1>So I realized that buyers are smarter than I.

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<v Speaker 1>You can't really sell them because they have the information so fast forward.

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<v Speaker 1>If I were to divide the world of selling, it'd be pre-internet and post-internet.

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<v Speaker 1>Pre-internet you can sell to them.

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<v Speaker 1>That's when you get value proposition.

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<v Speaker 1>Want to spend time, blah, blah, blah.

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<v Speaker 1>Now, because they have the information, we have to figure out how they buy and then align our sales process with how they buy.

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<v Speaker 1>And that's where that came from.

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<v Speaker 1>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.

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<v Speaker 1>So I use the word pressure for pushing and selling.

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<v Speaker 1>Nudging is guiding you to a decision that I know you're going to make if I present things in the right way.

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<v Speaker 2>How do we succeed at creating the right sales strategy?

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<v Speaker 1>That's a big question, because that's either a B2C or B2B question, right?

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<v Speaker 1>And today it gets a little more complicated because, again, you can create a sales strategy.

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<v Speaker 1>In fact, let me back up.

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<v Speaker 1>This is really interesting.

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<v Speaker 1>I was doing some research for a presentation, again on AI, and I found something really fascinating.

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<v Speaker 1>In 2018, the average salesperson was spending about 35% of their time in actual sales activity.

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<v Speaker 1>Fast forward to this year, that number has gone down to 33%.

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<v Speaker 1>Well, how can that be?

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<v Speaker 1>How can they spend less time on sales process when they're getting more sales enablement tools?

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<v Speaker 1>Companies are investing in all these tools.

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<v Speaker 1>Every salesperson has a tech stack of seven to 11 different product stacks, right?

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<v Speaker 1>So that was interesting.

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<v Speaker 1>What's happening is we're giving salespeople more tools, but I think we're focusing on the wrong side of the equation.

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<v Speaker 1>What we want to do is go to the other side of the buying play Again, the buying side, because what we have to do is make it easier for customers to buy.

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<v Speaker 1>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.

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<v Speaker 1>We can't treat them as silos anymore and for the first time, I can't believe I'm saying this because I used to ridicule marketing.

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<v Speaker 1>Remember that John want to make it a line 50% of my marketing works, I just don't know which 50%.

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<v Speaker 1>That whole thing right.

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<v Speaker 1>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.

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<v Speaker 1>It is that last mile, that's where the salesperson comes into play.

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<v Speaker 1>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.

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<v Speaker 1>And it is that last mile where you won't get rid of the salesperson.

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<v Speaker 2>How do you see we're going to change sales in the coming years, two years, five years, using AI?

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<v Speaker 1>So the two big things I talk about in my predictions is first one the search engine results page is dead.

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<v Speaker 1>It's on an asymptotic curve, approaching zero but never getting there.

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<v Speaker 1>In other words, how we do searches, we're not going to see those pages anymore.

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<v Speaker 1>What's going to happen is Brad Sugar is going to create a Bradai that's his digital twin and Brad's going to say, okay, look, I'm looking for a camera, I want it.

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<v Speaker 1>In this price range, these specifications find me the best three and then suggest the best one.

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<v Speaker 1>And then, if you're bold enough and you trust your digital twin, brad, you're going to say and buy it while you're at it.

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<v Speaker 1>That's what's going to happen.

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<v Speaker 1>So, no more going in there and doing Google searches.

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<v Speaker 1>That's one big change.

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<v Speaker 1>And then the other one is the cloning that's going to happen, because if you were to hire a person with a bachelor's degree, well, well, okay, that means they went to four years of college.

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<v Speaker 1>If I need somebody with a master's degree at two more years, if it's doctor, it's probably at three to four.

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<v Speaker 1>On top of that, right now I don't need to do that.

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<v Speaker 1>I can program within code a graduate, right, you know, so I.

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<v Speaker 1>And then I can what load this graduate with all the content.

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<v Speaker 1>I could train it with machine learning.

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<v Speaker 1>I can use test set data, train it on all my products.

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<v Speaker 1>So if I'm a company like Wayfair I think Wayfair is an interesting study Wayfair has, I don't know, a hundred thousand SKUs, right?

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<v Speaker 1>And so I can't train somebody on a hundred thousand SKUs, but I can train my AI to know every product, every specification, and how could you compete against that?

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<v Speaker 1>Now imagine you're a company you have only, let's say, a hundred SKUs.

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<v Speaker 1>Doesn't matter, you can train them.

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<v Speaker 1>And every time I have a new product, guess what?

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<v Speaker 1>I just train the machine on the new product.

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<v Speaker 1>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?

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<v Speaker 1>Almost near perfect recall.

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<v Speaker 1>That's how it's changing.

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<v Speaker 1>So I don't the call centers.

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<v Speaker 1>I think you're going to see this massive devastation in the call centers.

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<v Speaker 1>We're going to see call centers almost like the dial phone or those phone booths.

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<v Speaker 1>That's what I'm going to say.

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<v Speaker 1>You used to what you used to put people in a bullpen with a phone.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, call centers.

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<v Speaker 1>Why would you do that?

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<v Speaker 1>That's what's going to change.

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<v Speaker 1>So I think companies, countries that have depended on call center business, I think that stuff is going to be impacted over the next three to five years.

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<v Speaker 1>Greatly Got it.

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<v Speaker 2>And that's the Big Success Podcast for today.

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<v Speaker 2>Hopefully, you took a lot of notes, learned a whole bunch and, if you need to go re-listen to it, we dropped a lot of information right there today.

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<v Speaker 2>Big success is what it's all about.

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<v Speaker 2>And, by the way, if you haven't subscribed, hit that subscribe button.

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<v Speaker 2>So you're here with us every single week on the Big Success Podcast.

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<v Speaker 2>I'm Brad Sugars.

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<v Speaker 2>That's BS.

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<v Speaker 2>Big success is what we're shooting for.

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<v Speaker 2>Check the show notes for all the links.

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<v Speaker 2>Make sure you follow through, keep learning, keep coming back.

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<v Speaker 2>Oh, and, by the way, share this with any of your friends who you know are up for success.

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<v Speaker 2>I'll see you next week on the.

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<v Speaker 3>Big success podcast.

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<v Speaker 3>You've been listening to the big success podcast with the number one business coach in the world, Brad sugars.

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<v Speaker 3>To learn more about how to achieve business and personal success, as well as how to level up or listen to past episodes, visit wwwbradsugarscom.