Transcript
Intro:
Hi, everyone. I'm Ben Wright, successful entrepreneur, corporate leader and expert sales coach to some of the most talented people our amazing planet has to offer. You're listening to the Stronger Sales Teams podcast, where we bring together and simplify the complex world of B2B sales management to help the millions of sales managers worldwide build, motivate, and keep together highly effective sales teamsâŚteams who grow revenue and make their businesses actual profits.
Along the journey, we also provide great insights and actionable steps to managing your personal health. A happy and productive you is not only better for your teams, but everyone around you. So if you're an ambitious Sales Leader who wants to build the highest performing and engaged teams, Stronger Sales Teams is right where you need to be.
Ben Wright:
Welcome back to Stronger Sales Teams, the place where we provide real world and practical advice to help you develop super powered sales teams. Today, very special guest, Gabe Lullo, who I will say from the outset has the coolest podcast background that Iâve had of anyone weâve had on the show. For those who can see it or watching on YouTube, I think you get the message when you look at it. For those who are picture⌠American, Iâd say almost North American, but Gabeâs actually up the state, New York, but very much that nice rugged type of background behind him. Heâs got a big world map in a nice bit of wood with some dark and light tones on there. Australia is sitting in the bottom right hand corner there, perfectly placed. Heâs got the plants coming in from the side and it just looks like one of the most relaxing home offices you could ever work from. So hopefully that is a sign of how relaxed Gabe is once we get into it. But before I do pass over to you, Gabe, your expertise for those that are listening is very much in sales, marketing, recruiting and management. So itâs that all round ability which has translated into you becoming CEO of Alleyoop. But before that, you had your own business, which you went into, I think, straight after graduation, which you had to do everything, sales training, marketing. And it was very much a decade long experience for you, from what I understand. But really where your skills lay through that business was training sales and marketing professionals. And I think thatâs probably where we see youâve ended up today, where itâs as CEO of Alleyoop, as I mentioned before.
Ben Wright:
So at Alleyoop, youâve been working for many years around building and growing the company by focusing on your culture, your environment. We spoke quite a lot around sales before we actually got into our podcast today. And of course, customer success. So Gabe with the coolest podcast background ever, welcome to the Strongest Sales Teams podcast.
Gabe Lullo:
Thank you, Ben. You know, Iâm a huge fan of yours and I love your background, by the way. You know, I feel like I need to go surfing this weekend now because of it, but awesome to be here. Huge fan and excited to dig into it.
Ben Wright:
Excellent. Well, my now dormant surfboard is definitely sitting there because Iâm not getting out enough, but perhaps I need to when the rain stops here. Okay, so today we are talking about how we can integrate AI into sales without losing the personal connection. This is probably our fifth or 6th episode out of 80 or so where we focused around AI. So that kind of 5% mark. And I think AI deserves that because it is making such a significant impact on our lives as salespeople now. But I think more importantly, with a future lens, weâre really seeing that we need to grow, particularly as leaders, and understand whatâs coming with AI to be able to capitalise on it. So before we get into that, can you please tell us about Alleyoop, why itâs successful and what you do?
Gabe Lullo:
Yeah, I mean, you told a little bit my story. You know, I came out of college with a business degree and started a company in staffing and recruitment. So thatâs where I lived. I have vast background in recruitment and staffing from all different types of roles. The company Alleyoop was founded by two brothers. Iâm not a co-founder. It was started really as a sales training agency and it was running successfully doing that for five years. And actually where I met the founders at that point. So it was about a decade ago when I joined forces and we really saw the sales development rep, or SDR role start being created. We attracted new companies like Zoom Info, which now is a massive player. When we met them, we were their SDR agency. Other companies like Salesloft and Outreach, which we all know today, used us to start their SDR team. So my recruitment background and our founders training and sales function really came together and thatâs where we started our run on the sales development space.
So what Alleyoop does is weâre a sales development agency. Companies from large enterprises. We have an active campaign with Peloton right now all the way to two guys and an idea. We can serve all of them as long as thereâs an inbound or outbound motion in their sales cycle, we come in and we provide enabled SDRâs fully managed to drive top of funnel or new growth for sales teams.
Ben Wright:
Excellent. So when we talk about some of those names, Zoom Info in particular these are places that excel at getting their customers in front of new customers, and you guys were there training them when they were building their business. So I think in terms of street credibility, we were talking about how the podcast is a really important piece of my business where people go to learn about me and understand what I do in terms of street cred for yourselves and proof of concept I think thatâs pretty strong. So for those listening the next 20 minutes or so, Gabeâs going to be one to worth really tuning into his opinions around whatâs ahead with AI.
So AI, itâs still a buzzword in my opinion. Thereâs a lot of talk about it. I donât think itâs always impacting to the level that people talk about that it could be. Certainly inconsistent in terms of its application across industries, but weâve had a number of people talk about AI. But to you personally, what does AI mean from an opportunity lens when it comes to sales leaders?
Gabe Lullo:
Yeah, itâs interesting. I think it was exactly this time last year where AI really got a lot of traction when it became a buzzword, I think especially in the sales development space. And a lot of people were forecasting, hey, by this time next year thereâll be no more SDRâs. AI is going to replace all sales. I heard that same scenario about 10, 12 years ago when marketing automation was invented, right? Pardod and Marketo came out and they said oh wow, sequencing and email automation is going to replace the sales rep. And everyone fired all their SDRâs, invested in market automation, and then two years later hired all their SDRâs back. But itâs interesting, the market automation piece of that is very much involved in our day to day, every day as well as every SDRâs day to day. And it is a piece of the outbound tool set. Now Iâm not saying AI isnât more advanced than that, very much is, but we are seeing now around this time where itâs kind of creating its own lanes at this point. Like you mentioned, I donât think itâs going to completely replace the SDR function in the next six months. I donât have a magic eight ball. I do think I have a lot of companies coming to us and weâre working with in the lab right now that are putting together some amazing stuff and itâs amazing to see. And I do feel that thereâs going to be a huge advancement there. We have a lot of clients that are using our services to build their AI businesses. So itâs not fully replaced things yet, but it is definitely augmented and has created some amazing co-pilots or benefits to the SDRâs arsenal today that weâre using, and weâre seeing a lot of great results with it.
Ben Wright:
I like that phrase, co-piloting to SDRâs. I think if I was to sum up AI, that is exactly the same terminology I would use. So from an opportunity point of view, in terms of co-piloting with sales development representatives, outbound sales-focused people, or even with your other account execs, where do you see the opportunities lying for that co-piloting opportunity now?
Gabe Lullo:
I think the biggest immediate application in the co-pilot function is that of research. Account executives can go into a call and spend a lot less time researching what you need to know to be prepared to articulate that message on point and hyper personalised in demos. From an appointment setting standpoint, same thing. It allows SDRâs to know more about who theyâre talking to and why theyâre talking to it. It allows companies to really hone in on that ICP and that Persona of who theyâre targeting and see if a product market fit makes sense by not having to spend so much time figuring that out because theyâre researching it using AI. So AI is definitely allowing our teams to know a lot more before we go into a human to human conversation fully prepared.
Ben Wright:
Yeah, super impactful. Herb Cohen, I donât know if youâve ever read any of his books around negotiation. He talks around one of the three pillars of being able to effectively control a negotiation, if you like, is knowledge. And I think what youâre tapping into there is that knowledge is power. And the more we can learn about our prospects or our customers, the more we can tailor a solution that is going to provide better outcomes for them. And features and benefits are great, but weâre here in a world to be creating outcomes. If you canât do that in the modern world, youâre out, in my opinion. So that knowledge piece, by using AI to shorten the amount of time you need to invest, which allows you to get to more prospects with more knowledge. Love it. Amazing. Best type of tools youâre seeing being used to help you shorten that knowledge curve of a client?
Gabe Lullo:
Yeah, and thereâs a bunch. I mean, Regie.AI right now is a great building platform of building playbooks that allows AI to actually automate and research the Persona and write messaging across the entire playbook for sales development reps. Weâre using right now AI in the form of dialling technology. So theyâre actually knowing who to call, when to call, what time zones to call them in. Whatâs the pattern of when they typically pick up the phone? Do they pick up the phone? So weâre actually using AI not in just the research piece of it, but in the predictive analytics of when the best time to connect with that. It is a form of research, for sure, but a more applied way of knowing who to talk to and when to talk to them or using that technology. Weâre using a company called Aurum right now, which is an AI smart dialler, a predictive analytics dialer that allows you to really attack a lot of prospects. So volume is there, but youâre not sacrificing quality in the same time.
Ben Wright:
Yeah. Awesome. Fantastic. Two nice tools, Regie and Aurum, I think you mentioned. Okay, letâs look at the flip side. I think itâs important to have a look at both sides of whatâs happening with AI. Sales leaders. What are the drawbacks for them around AI at the moment? What do you think they need to be careful of?
Gabe Lullo:
Well, I mean, thereâs gonna be a lot of regulations. I know every countryâs gonna be a little different. You know, theyâre in the US here. Thereâs a lot of issues that theyâre gonna come across depending on what youâre selling and who youâre calling and what youâre talking to them about. So if you donât figure that out, you could get a newer world of heat. I think thereâs gonna be a lot of regulations coming out with do not call lists and what is a legitimate phone call versus not. So that is, of course, a huge red flag that AI companies I know are trying to figure out how to deal with.
And then on the human approach, I mean, the big thing that we have not seen yet, no matter how good it has shown to us recently, is that empathy. Right. You know, a lot of people I know about me, if I. If Iâm calling my credit card company, Iâm hitting zero, zero, until I talk to somebody. Not everyoneâs like that, but, you know, and I see AI doing a huge impact in customer service or tier one support. But if youâre getting into those bigger deals and thereâs more detailed and more layered sales processes, AI has an issue there right now, and thatâs what we specialise in. So thatâs why we donât use it fully, and thatâs why we use it as a co-pilot, to your point.
Ben Wright:
Yeah. Excellent. Well, letâs zero in on that personalisation piece because I think that for me is what I see as the biggest challenge around AI, because the best salespeople I have worked with in medium to high value transactions, Iâll certainly say that the high volume, low value, a little bit different. But in the medium to high value transactions, the best salespeople are excellent at building relationships.
So how are you seeing sales leaders effectively navigate around the personalisation issues that can come with using AI?
Gabe Lullo:
Yeah, I mean, right now you and I had a great conversation. Youâve done some research on me before we even got on this call. Iâve done research on you, listened to podcasts. You know, I didnât come into this call with you right now not knowing anything about you. You didnât know anything about me. Of course, we did our own research. Thatâs the type of thing that you have to do when it comes to selling to anyone that youâre going to be having a conversation with, no different than us having a conversation today.
So AI again, is a great tool to hyper specialise the research so you can go ahead and know exactly who these people are youâre talking to and why youâre talking to them and what their pain points are. But at the other side of the coin is that, you know, you have to know how to deal with people, you have to know why people buy, you have to know whatâs going on in the market. To your point, knowledge is power and applying that knowledge is the real power and you have to personalise that.
I had a conversation the other day with somebody who was a call and never met the person. And they reached out to me and this person was great on the phone and they said, hey, I noticed you live in Buffalo. And they brought it up and we knew the same people and this person was calling across the world. So those small world situations, no matter how smart AI is, theyâre not going to know those nuances there, and thatâs important.
Ben Wright:
Okay, so when weâre using AI, so what Iâm hearing is that we need to make sure that weâre using AI to assist our process. But we are still nowhere near that point where we can say AI will take over our sales process.
Gabe Lullo:
I donât think itâs there yet. Itâs not about is it smart enough to do it, itâs about are people going to trust it. I think the biggest problem right now with AI fully is that the trust factor isnât there. And for some reason people just trust talking to another human. And if they are not talking to one, you have to let them know ahead of time that itâs AI. I have to deal with some of these companies that theyâre trying to do it and not tell you. And then once you find out it is, then all trust is lost. So you have to let them know upfront, hey, this is an AI call or say some sort of disclaimer. And I feel like right now people are just not ready to accept it fully from a trusting situation, even when it does get there.
Ben Wright:
Yeah. Itâs that whole concept of people do something, even on a small scale that you find deceitful, then itâs very, very hard to build that emotional bank back up.
Gabe Lullo:
Totally. Smoke and mirrors, right? Itâs the same thing. So I know some companies are trying to do it that way. I donât think theyâll have success. The ones that are upfront about it. I think, you know, people are more intrigued to find out, hey, let me have this conversation because I just want to hear how it sounds and see how good it is. But when it comes down to pen on paper and, you know, engaging with a long term contract and these large B2B contracts, to me, I just donât think itâs as trustworthy as it needs to be. Itâs almost a version of, you know, product led growth. Right. Itâs, you know, more of those transactional type products versus a bigger, larger ACV or annual contract value.
Ben Wright:
Yeah, I agreed. Absolutely. Well, we talked about, we briefly spoke about whether or not AI is ready to take over that SDR role. I had someone on the podcast, Eric van Eekelen, credible mind, he has so much experience in AI. In fact, he has a Masterâs in AI. So there you go. And I think when he started his masterâs in AI, it certainly wasnât anywhere near the scope of what it is now. So heâs come along that journey with it.
His big, hairy, audacious claim was that AI will be ready to take over the roles of phone-based selling within twelve months. So that was about six weeks ago. So weâre well into that year. Eleven months to go. Whatâs your views on AI taking over the SDR role in twelve monthsâ time for phone-based selling?
Gabe Lullo:
I think heâs right. I mean, I think itâs definitely advancing and I think there is huge strides right now and Iâve seen some things and weâre working with some companies right now where theyâre using our recorded calls to create amazing AI SDRâs. But I do think once the conversation gets a little bit more nuanced and a little bit more tactical, even though AI will be smart enough to probably articulate those. I think that phone SDR is going to really live in more of a qualification and determining if itâs, you know, a couple qualification calls and then parlays into a live call once qualified.
The way the SDR role is looking today though, but itâs not really designed for kids coming out of college and never made a cold call before. We donât hire actually anyone for our company thatâs not been an SDR for at least a year and a half before theyâre even interviewed. So that SDR role is becoming really more down the funnel of a more expert SDR, and thereâs room there too. But I believe if AI does come out to your point, that there still is room for those human conversations, but it will be a tool like market automation would be a tool to kind of vet out or pre qualify, or finding pickup rates or surveying people to get information for free, that people be willing to have those conversations and then turn them into more human conversations once it makes sense and not to waste time.
Ben Wright:
I really like that perspective, actually. And something I think we spoke about earlier. In fact, I canât even remember if it was on air or off air, but we spoke about marketing automation ten years ago, looking to potentially take over and how itâs now taken over a position or a percentage of the process, but not the whole process. But certainly if AI is doing some of that pre qualification work for you and bringing a prospect to a stage where personalisation becomes important, where nuances become important, then all of a sudden I think that seems to me as really plausible.
We can shorten that cycle when human interventions are needed, which means our cost stack comes down and the value weâre creating, obviously can be accretive from there. So really, really like that approach.
Okay, so, gabe, before we let you go today, itâs a question I love to ask sales leaders around the globe. If you were a sales leader right now in a business looking to turn that growth tap on this year, the challenges of the sales leaders I work with has gone from getting the best out of people to really growing the business through the generation of leads and future prospects.
If you were that sales leader now looking to really rapidly grow your business, where would you focus your attention when it comes to a lead generation activity?
Gabe Lullo:
Yeah, it would be a two pronged approach. You know, right now weâre dealing with companies. I actually have two companies right now. Theyâre direct competitors. Okay. And we are booking 20 meetings a month for one client and then booking 20 meetings a month for another client. So weâre doing the same actions to the same prospects and weâre getting the same results from an outbound perspective, however, client A, they have an 85% show up rate to those meetings, and client B has about a 15% show up rate to those meetings. And client A closing revenue and having backflips of success. Client B, again, not and again, direct competitors.
Thereâs no difference in product and thereâs no difference in prospecting and thereâs no difference in what weâre doing. But the big thing is the SDRs that weâre reaching out are using a lot of content. So thereâs a lot of content thatâs being created. Thereâs thought leaders involved in the company. Thereâs podcasts being posted, thereâs blogs being written. The AEâs are fully prepared and theyâre doing research and using AI tools and theyâre fully enabled from a marketing standpoint as well as a sales standpoint versus the other client. So, you know, we believe in obviously outbound and setting appointments. But even if you do that, it doesnât mean that itâs going to work. You have to enable those SDRâs, these rappers that are being prospecting right now, are having the best technology, having the best data, having the best tools. So anyone could hire someone who wants to cold call. Thatâs the easy part. Itâs challenging, not gonna lie, but thatâs just half the battle. The better you are at enabling them and rev ops and pumping them with a lot of content to support those conversations theyâre having, is whatâs going to differentiate winning versus not, in my opinion.
Ben Wright:
Wow, so what weâre actually talking about here is bringing the customer in to the inner sanctum of the business earlier. So that storytelling journey, that piece around really trying to help the customer along their educational journey, starting before you even meet versus waiting until you get that first show. Love it. And in fact, Gabe, itâs something I spend huge amounts of time on with my customers, is getting customers to choose you before you even meet them. And I think thatâs a really lovely way, a lovely way to end today.
Gabe, thank you very much. So, Gabe Lullo from Alleyoop, CEO of Alleyoop, where else can our listeners find you if theyâd like to get in touch?
Gabe Lullo:
LinkedIn. Iâm hyper responsive, hyperactive on LinkedIn myself. I post six times a week. My company, we post across all of our leaders over 20 times a week. So if you need to connect, need to chat, or want to get some input on what weâre saying. LinkedIn would be the best way to do it.
Ben Wright:
Excellent. Well, thank you very much for your time today, Gabe, very grateful. Iâm stoked that Australia is very prominent on that map behind you and hopefully we get to talk again. But for everyone listening now please keep living in a world of possibility and youâll be amazed by what you can achieve. Bye for now.
AI Can Exist in Our Sales Operations Without Losing Personalisation, with Gabe Lullo
