0:01
Welcome to the Sales Lead Dog podcast hosted by CRM technology and sales process expert Christopher Smith.
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Talking with sales leaders that have separated themselves from the rest of the pack.
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Listen to find out how the best of the best achieved success with their team and CRM technology.
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And remember, unless you were the lead dog, the view never changes.
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Welcome to a special episode of Sales Lead Dog.
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Joining me today is Drew Regan.
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Drew is the principal business program manager at Microsoft.
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Drew, welcome to Sales Lead Dog.
0:38
Man, good to be here, Chris.
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I’ve enjoyed our conversations conversation.
0:42
I think this is going to be a conversation really helpful to our listeners to really understand this wave of AI that’s coming that they need to prepare for and understand deeply.
0:54
Yeah, it’s, it’s a pretty exciting time for everybody.
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I think it’s going to be truly transformational.
1:01
And I’m, I’m just really excited to be a part of it right now and, and in the right place to, to, to help, you know, support our customers throughout the world in this transformation.
1:14
So really excited.
1:15
It’s crazy.
1:16
I’ve never just from I’ve been doing CRM for almost 20 years now.
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And prior to that, it was ERP.
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I’ve never seen anything like this.
1:25
And it truly is exciting to be a part of this, the beginning of all of this.
1:31
You know, it’s, it’s, I kind of wish I was younger so I could be around for to see where this is going in 10 or 15 years, you know?
1:38
Yeah, yeah, it, it definitely just the start of it all.
1:42
So it’ll be interesting to see how things change in a year because it’s moving that fast or two years or five years if if one can imagine and think that far out.
1:50
Yeah.
1:51
So if you don’t know who Drew is, Drew spent 14 years at Salesforce.
1:56
He was a regional vice president of high tech enterprise for Salesforce.
2:00
Now he’s been at Microsoft for about four months or so.
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What’s behind this, this transition for you and your career to shift from Salesforce to Microsoft?
2:13
Yeah, it’s a good, it’s a good question.
2:18
I’ll jump right into it.
2:20
What really helped me make the decision to make the change was really driven around this next, what we talked about this next wave of innovation in AI, in the technology that supports those consumers of AI, You know, from the individual users to, you know, broad enterprise customers, global enterprise customers.
2:47
And really like the, the fundamental shift in in how people think about their day-to-day work and how AI can augment that, you know, create a bunch of time savings, Dr.
3:01
productivity gains.
3:02
You know, I try to, I try to demystify this thing called AI and I try to equate it to, you know, can can this produce some sort of tangible time savings in your everyday workload?
3:17
So to answer your question, Microsoft, it jumped out to me that Microsoft truly has the best global enterprise platform at scale across the entire tech tech landscape.
3:35
And what I mean by that is Microsoft has significant relationships with our customers and those customers use our tech, you know, our tech stack broadly.
3:47
And if you think about it from just an applications perspective, most customers use Azure, they use Outlook, they use Teams, they use PowerPoint, Word, Excel, they use, you know, SharePoint, they use Dynamics.
4:02
Well, all of that data lives on those applications which reside on the Microsoft platform.
4:08
And if data is the fuel for AI productivity, we need to consolidate that data, bring that data together on a platform so we can drive productivity gains for the business as opposed to patching together silos of data is what I talk to customers about a lot is reducing the number of silos, consolidation of data onto a platform so we can simplify the tech landscape, surface data to fuel agentic scenarios, however you want to call that to produce ultimately time savings, productivity gains, efficiency, etcetera, in their day-to-day work.
4:48
And Microsoft is the only provider in the world that truly has that end to end enterprise AI platform.
4:57
So really excited to be a part of this.
5:00
And I feel like I, you know, I landed in the right spot and excited to be here.
5:04
Oh yeah, no, it’s incredible.
5:05
And that I think you summed that up really well.
5:07
When I’m talking to people about CRM, I really try to help them understand that you have to broaden your view beyond the application itself to, you know, there’s always for decades we’ve been talking about single source of truth and 360° view of the customer, all of this and that’s CRM that that’s not really true.
5:31
The past couple of decades, we’ve always been able to get sections of that that promise, you know, or, or portions of it, but never true 360° view because it’s really, really hard to do when you have all these data silos across the enterprise.
5:46
And so how do I truly capture that information?
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I mean, it takes a lot of work to move that data around to get it and create it to where it’s truly useful and actionable for your sales team to help drive revenue, to drive action, to move things forward.
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It’s incredibly hard to do.
6:04
AI has completely shifted that that whole approach.
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Absolutely.
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Think of it as a, a, a true platform approach, leveraging the power of your applications that live on that platform.
6:24
So when I talk to customers every day around the world, it’s about just consolidating those, breaking down those data silos, consolidation of data, bringing it all together, but not just for your sales people.
6:38
I mean, your sales people work hand in hand with your customer service people, with your field service people with all the customer facing, you know, entities around your business.
6:49
They all need to consume, consume data.
6:52
And the, the best, you know, the way Microsoft thinks about it is we’re driving differentiated experiences for all the consumers of that data through a whole new way of working through talking to agents, talking, you know, having an interaction with, with an agent to help them streamline their business process, right.
7:19
And it’s in, for the first time in in my career, it’s actually a two way, it’s a two way conversation.
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So it’s a conversation of value for those consumers of data.
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What I mean by that is they, they instead of hunting and pecking in kind of a legacy CRM system where they’re searching for data, now agents are actually delivering that data to the user.
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Sales service field service where they live, where they need to be on whatever device they need to have their laptop, their cell phone, whatever it may be.
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The agent is service service serving that.
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And the consumer is having a two way interaction and Copilot is now telling them, have you considered this?
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Have you considered doing it this way?
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Like that’s that’s legacy CRM to modern intelligent CRM where the system is actually adding value to your day-to-day life by providing guidance and recommendations contextually based on the data that lives on that platform?
8:24
Yeah.
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Does that make sense?
8:26
Hey, we’re taking a quick break to thank you for listening to and supporting the Sales Lead Dog podcast.
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I want to take a moment and tell you about my book.
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CRM shouldn’t Suck.
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If your CRM feels more like a black hole for data than something that actually helps your team sell, you’re not alone.
8:46
The book breaks down why CRMS fail for so many businesses and what you can do about it.
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No fluff, just real strategies that work.
8:57
So go to crmshouldntsuck.com to order your free copy right now.
9:04
That’s right, we’re giving it away.
9:06
And while you’re there, take two minutes to check out the CRM Impact Score.
9:12
It’s a quick diagnostic that shows you how your CRM is really performing, where it’s helping you, and where it’s hurting you.
9:22
You’ll get a personalized report with clear, actionable next steps.
9:26
You can start right away to maximize your CRM investment.
9:31
We’ve also got blogs, videos, and a bunch of other resources to help you finally get the results you were promised when you bought your Sierra.
9:40
And if you’re watching on YouTube, hit that like button and make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any future episodes of Sales Lead Dog.
9:49
OK, let’s get back to this episode of the Sales Lead Dog podcast.
9:54
Oh, totally.
9:55
It to put this, I’m going to kind of ship this a little bit in the way I’m, I’m hoping people can understand in terms of their, their normal day.
10:04
What we’re talking about when we’re talking about agents is that, so when I’m on a selling call, you know, when my day’s full, I’m, I’m going from appointment to appointment to appointment.
10:15
The traditional, the way it’s been for 20 years is at the end of my day, I have to spend 2 hours trying to get all that information into CRM and got like, what did we talk about at 8:00 AM this morning?
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I’m so tired.
10:27
I’m going to try to cobble it together the best I can.
10:30
Those are two hours I’m not spending with my family.
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It’s not 2 hours I’m using to decompress, maybe go to the gym, whatever to prepare for the next day.
10:40
It makes for long days and what ends up happening, The reality is you’re dating.
10:47
Your CRM is weak, it’s incomplete, it’s got gaps, it’s got holes.
10:52
And you know, that’s why I wrote this book CRM shouldn’t suck is because the data in CRM is weak because if you’re relying on the human to do it.
11:01
And there’s just so much that we can do with agents, the agents capturing all that information from that called Scott, the transcription from our teams call.
11:12
It’s formatting that into the structure that you want.
11:16
And it’s capturing the information and pushing that data into CRM and generating the follow up e-mail in a great format to the the participants of the meeting.
11:25
So within minutes of that meeting being done, the agents pushing all that out, making me look like a rock star to my customer.
11:32
And I’m moving on to my next appointment at the end of the my day.
11:36
I’ve got those two hours I used to spend trying to get straight in CR, excuse me getting stuff into CRM.
11:41
It’s it’s I I’ve got I’ve got that time with my family, you know, whatever it is I want to do.
11:48
That’s what we’re talking about with agents.
11:50
Yeah, I had AI had an enterprise large customer tell me once.
11:55
This is wild to me.
11:58
They’re reps.
12:00
Well, first of all, the, the, the old phrase is Sunday is the most productive day for a seller because that’s when they update all their activity notes in CRM.
12:10
But I had a customer tell me that some of the almost all of their reps block off 2 to 3 hours every Friday afternoon so they can log their CRM notes, which is of no value to them, but it’s, it’s part of the process so they have to do it.
12:27
They log all their CRM notes Friday afternoon, so Monday morning when their management runs a report on activity, they show as a top performer.
12:38
So therefore, they’re, they’re starting the week in a good light.
12:44
And, and let’s face it, legacy CRM applications, they’re, they’re designed to identify, run reports and identify the low performers, identify the high performers.
12:56
Hopefully the good managers will leverage the qualities of the high performers to try to coach the low performers into the, you know, a, a better state.
13:06
But they spend hours logging all of that activity in CRM as opposed to doing it on the fly.
13:14
And, and used a great example.
13:15
It’s so funny.
13:16
My, my new world here at Microsoft, I get on customer calls.
13:21
I’m on calls 8 hours a day and I did the same thing as you, Chris.
13:26
I’d be logging activities in CRM from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM or 8:00 PM depending on you know what I needed to catch up, follow up emails, etcetera.
13:36
Now my meetings run from 10:00 to 10:25 because the meeting is recorded or transcribed in Teams.
13:47
That transcription then immediately goes over to Outlook where an agent queues up an follow up e-mail automatically and suggests next steps based on the transcription of that meeting.
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I review that e-mail to say thank you.
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We talked about all these things and we agreed to talk at next Thursday at 3:00.
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I review it, tweak it, send.
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It queues up a meeting invite for next Thursday at 3:00.
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I review it, tweak it, send the transcription from Teams that was carried over to Outlook, then goes into CRM as a logged call with all my meeting notes, all my next steps, and it’s done automatically.
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And I do that between 10:25 and 10:30.
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So I’m done with my follow up.
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I’ve got my next step scheduled.
14:38
I I’ve logged my CRM notes and then I immediately jump into my 10:30 call, which takes me to 1055 and I take 5 minutes and I’m ready for my 11:00 call.
14:49
That’s demystify AIAI is really about time savings, productivity gains.
14:55
That’s massive productivity gains.
14:57
So if you think about the two to three hours that you were spent logging activity notes in CRM, that is of no value to me.
15:04
It’s just I’m doing it because it’s my, my, my role, it’s my responsibility.
15:09
You’re removing that from your, your week.
15:13
And when I talk to customers about is think about how much more time the people that you put in place that you hired to be in front of customers, Think about how much more time that gives them on a weekly basis to be in front of customers, not administrating legacy CRM.
15:29
Everything’s being automated.
15:30
And, and the only way that’s possible is all those applications live on platform and you’re removing integrations, you’re removing data silos, you’re removing complexity in your tech stack so you can provide a differentiated experience for your users.
15:46
That’s key, that complexity in your tech stack.
15:50
You know, Full disclosure, my company, Impeller CRM, we implement Dynamics CRM, Dynamics 365, and we implement Salesforce.
15:59
And from my perspective, which is the same perspective of the IT departments of companies across the, you know, around the world, there’s a huge difference when it comes to Microsoft because they control everything.
16:13
It truly is an ecosystem.
16:15
It just works.
16:17
It’s easy there.
16:19
There’s, they’ve stripped the complexity out of it.
16:22
You know, compared to when I was doing this 10 years ago, 20 years ago, God, it was so hard to set this stuff up and administer.
16:29
It was painful.
16:30
But now Microsoft has stripped that all the way to literally to integrate Teams, to integrate SharePoint.
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We just turn switches, we flip switches.
16:38
We’re done.
16:38
We’re moving on to something that’s going to add value and, and for our customers.
16:43
That’s what we’re talking about is you got to strip away that complexity understanding as a sales leader, you need to understand the tech stack and the decisions you’re making around your, the tech stack for sales and marketing.
16:58
You truly want that single platform so that AI now can come in and connect all this stuff and truly eliminate those barriers because it truly is all about your data.
17:09
Data is the foundation that you’re building all of this on top of.
17:13
And if it make if you’re making it hard to get to that data, you’re going to struggle in this is this tidal wave that’s coming.
17:22
You’re going to be struggling to get to the surface to breathe, you’re going to be sucked under and you know, good luck.
17:29
They’re, they’re native applications that live within platform.
17:36
So one of the biggest challenges I have in in, in working with customers is IT organizations love this.
17:46
They get this.
17:47
They want to reduce the complexity of their tech stack.
17:51
They want to limit tech sprawl.
17:53
They want to consolidate because they’ve been charged by their leadership and even at a board level to consolidate so we can leverage the power of data to produce automation with AI.
18:07
OK.
18:08
The challenge that I face is that business stakeholders don’t always get engaged in these types of conversation because it’s perceived as it’s, it’s a tech, it’s an IT type conversation.
18:21
It’s not, it’s, it’s a conversation that ultimately drives big gains, big wins for your selling organization, for your service organization in the just very Simply put in the area of time savings.
18:35
So the business user should or the IT stakeholder that wants to reduce tech stack should always have a business stakeholder that has equal value in this change to Microsoft in this, this application consolidation because it is not an just an IT conversation, it’s a business process.
18:56
It’s a business experience conversation.
18:59
So we need more business leaders, more sales leaders to actually understand the power of data and driving differentiated experiences for your users because it’s meaningful.
19:10
And if again, back to time savings, if, if Chris isn’t spending, you know, four or five hours on Friday afternoon logging CRM notes, that means Chris can spend more time with customers.
19:21
That’s right.
19:22
That’s what, that’s all.
19:23
That’s literally what it, it’s a numbers thing, right?
19:27
If I’m freeing up 4 hours a week, I’m giving my sales team extra weeks to go sell throughout the year.
19:36
You know, it, it’s, it’s incredible what you’re going to be able to do with that.
19:40
When you really just sit down and do simple math, it it, it, it has immediate revenue applications or implications.
19:50
So if your seller has five more customer calls per week and maybe they’re only winning at 20%.
20:00
So one out of those fives turns into a converted deal.
20:03
That’s revenue implications as you didn’t have before because that seller was spending its his time working in CRM now.
20:11
Now even one out of five they’re they’re closing one more deal a week.
20:16
That’s a meaningful revenue improvement.
20:19
So that’s why business stakeholders have to take part as a partnership with IT.
20:24
Don’t you know, partner with IT?
20:26
It’s a benefit to IT, it’s a benefit to the business.
20:30
It it’s just it’s a new way of working and your users will expect this type of experience.
20:38
Another thing we talk about is, you know, the people today, you know the younger generations coming through college and grad school, they use ChatGPT.
20:51
They expect that type of experience in their personal life so they can be more productive, so they can accomplish their tasks, so they can write their papers, so they can, so they can accomplish what it is what they need to be successful.
21:07
They’ve grown to expect that type of agent experience in their personal life.
21:14
They will expect that same experience, their copilot personals, personal assistant experience in their professional life.
21:23
And now how it is.
21:25
Yeah, the this is going to be the new reality that hey, if I’m going to a place that’s got this all figured out, has this leveraged, and then I’m thinking like, hey, maybe it’s time for me to move on to my next step in my career ladder.
21:40
That’s going to be a key part that I’m evaluating when I’m looking at opportunities because there’s no way I would go back to the old days where I’m spending four hours a week typing in my activity notes.
21:51
Screw that, wouldn’t it?
21:53
Like if you’re looking for a do that you know they’re going to, if you’re looking for a job that’s going to be just table stakes, like you better have this figured out.
21:59
I’m sorry, I’m not going to join your organization.
22:03
Technology should be a consideration because the technology influences your productivity and, and your ultimately your success at that organization.
22:14
That’s right.
22:14
It’s, it plays a major part.
22:16
A wallet.
22:17
You know, if you’ve got crap technology, it’s impacting my wallet.
22:21
I mean, I’m, I’m talking to a prospect right now where the, the their IT team told me, look, our sales team like we’re the people that are coming into our organization are expecting a certain level of technology.
22:35
We don’t have it.
22:36
It’s a real issue for us.
22:37
We need to address this issue.
22:39
This is happening today.
22:41
It’s only going to get more impactful with the impact of AI.
22:46
And one thing that I’ve been, you know, when we sell CRM and, and I talked about this in my book, CRM when it’s done correctly should be the central hub of your business, connecting anything customer related.
23:00
And it should be surfaced within your CRM.
23:03
And when that happens, CRM is not technology anymore.
23:06
It’s a business strategy that you can leverage to drive growth.
23:11
It’s truly what we’re talking about in AI really makes that true In, in, in real now.
23:20
Yeah, it’s a business.
23:22
It’s amazing.
23:23
It’s not tech anymore.
23:24
And that’s why sales leaders need to get involved with this.
23:28
100% why sales leaders need to be involved.
23:31
I’ve had customers tell me, oh, AI, we’re not innovators.
23:36
We’re kind of old school.
23:37
Our users are old school.
23:39
They won’t understand agents, they won’t understand.
23:42
OK, so demystify that.
23:44
Flip that to what kind of experience is, is the Nirvana of experiences for all of your users.
23:52
Then you kind of remove the whole AI and prompt and LLM language, you know, you, you remove the, you take that out of the conversation and you talk about the experience that you can deliver wherever that user may live.
24:04
And we’re not talking about just sales people.
24:06
Sales people, yeah, they, they can talk to a phone and take meeting notes and all that great stuff.
24:10
But think about field service users.
24:13
Think about people who are out in the field, you know, working on heavy machinery in 100° heat.
24:19
They’re not going to open a laptop at the end to close that case.
24:24
They’re going to talk to an agent on their cell phone.
24:27
We’re doing this now, actually talk to an agent on their cell phone.
24:31
That agent is going to take the dialogue, make it more eloquent, move it into CRM as a case, wrap up for the service Rep, the dispatcher to to access.
24:43
And now all of a sudden, since all that data lives on platform, that just becomes more valuable.
24:47
Data about that piece of machinery getting fixed within an hour and meeting that response time.
24:53
That data then flows to the salesperson and that salesperson knows that they’re going into a customer that’s overly pleased with the service that they’re experiencing, which again, drives trust and credibility with that organization so they can drive more revenue and expand their partnership with that organization.
25:09
Yeah, it’s, it’s powerful.
25:11
It’s nuts and bolts kind of things that we’re talking about.
25:14
I think people get scared with AI thinking it’s something super futuristic.
25:18
And it is, there is that element to it, but the way it’s being applied, the reality of it, it’s very nuts and bolts.
25:26
It’s it’s, it’s small little things that are having huge impacts.
25:32
Yeah, because once you start connecting all these agents together, so they’re truly working together, it’s it’s absolutely transformative.
25:41
And again, that gets scary for a lot of folks who are not self-proclaimed innovators.
25:48
So turn demystify that, turn that into a conversation around.
25:52
All right, well, tell me about your business.
25:53
What do your people do?
25:54
You know, how do you make money?
25:56
That’s a great that’s a great way to put it.
25:58
How do you make money for your business?
26:01
Tell me about what your users do on a daily basis.
26:04
And it leads to a conversation of well, wouldn’t this be great if we could do this, if we could provide this kind of automation or if we had copilot as your personal assistant and we had agents just automating monotonous tasks that humans don’t need to do.
26:22
And that’s tremendous time savings.
26:24
So it gets to like task management, it gets to more time during the week, it gets that’s the conversation we need to be having.
26:33
I had a one of my favorites recently.
26:36
I think I shared this with you is a major global kind of consulting firm said to me.
26:44
We buy commodities, we build differentiated experiences for our users, for our customers, for our stakeholders, for our partners, for our dealers, for our sales people.
26:58
We build differentiated experiences.
27:01
So what what that what I took from that is CRM is necessary.
27:08
CRM is a database that is a consumer of data, right?
27:12
But the experience that you drive is what’s most important for across all of your roles.
27:18
And that that experience should be tailored and custom and very specific to that type of role.
27:25
From the field guy who’s fixing a tractor to the salesperson who’s going door to door visiting clients.
27:32
That that experience is driven by AI.
27:36
The experience is driven by a two way dialogue that’s automated and simple and streamlined.
27:44
That’s the new expectation.
27:46
Oh yeah.
27:47
I mean, I’ll share, I’ll expand on your, your field service story.
27:51
We have a client right now that we’re working with to, to re engineer their processes.
27:57
They’ve got texts that are out performing these actions.
28:00
They’re not overly computer savvy.
28:02
And they also they’ve they’re judged on, they’re expected to fill their day knocking down work orders.
28:09
They don’t have 10 minute gaps from one job to the next to go into an application and close things out.
28:16
And as a result of that they have two full time people.
28:19
All they do is monitor the work orders, fix things, you know, all this stuff that fix the gaps, the holes, the variances so they think they can close and move on to be built.
28:32
It’s 22 salaries to do stuff that what you just talked about the agents can do.
28:38
Yeah.
28:39
And that’s what we’re working towards with them is that, hey, we’re going to replace this.
28:42
Now you’ve got two people that, no, you don’t have to fire them.
28:45
You can put them into something.
28:46
Now they’ve freed up to actually add value to the organization, you know, things that they would help move the organization forward.
28:54
Yeah, you, you hit the nail on the head there.
28:58
It ultimately, you know, sometimes it’ll turn to kind of a dark side of, well, agents can replace employees.
29:05
That’s not, that’s not what we’re saying.
29:08
We’re saying we can drive productivity in the business.
29:10
So employees can do more things within the business, can take on other roles.
29:17
It can drive capacity in an organization where they’re needed, where they have a specialized skill set, where where we can help them advance their career because they naturally fit within this part of the organization and they’re really good at it and they should be in that role.
29:33
And that’s value add across the entire business and across the entire business.
29:39
We’re just going to drive some automation and productivity gains so everybody can be more successful at what they do.
29:44
Ultimately, the customer’s successful at what they do.
29:48
They have better customer relationships.
29:49
They have closer ties to their employees, closer ties to their dealers, their partners.
29:55
It extends through their whole ecosystem.
30:00
Yeah.
30:01
So if I’m a sales leader, I’m listening to this, like, what are some of the things I should start doing now?
30:07
Drew to, to really start engaging with AI demystifying this within my own organization.
30:16
Well, I always like the concept of business and IT working together because it’s, it’s the decision making process is often siloed within an organization.
30:27
And that shouldn’t be the way business and IT should work together to identify areas of opportunity for the business.
30:36
If you’re a salesperson or a sales leader, work with your IT counterparts to say, hey, these are what these are the things that my users have come to expect in their personal life.
30:49
I’d like to deliver those kinds of experiences within the business life so I can drive productivity and work with your, your counterpart to explore ideas and, and maybe some of the challenges and overcome some of those obstacles and roadblocks.
31:05
But, you know, work with your IT business and IT should work together as, as mutually beneficial stakeholders within the organization so they can deliver a better outcome for their business.
31:18
So get close with that.
31:19
And, and you know what the other thing is go play with AI.
31:24
We all have apps on our phone.
31:26
I have, you know, copilot, of course, but go play with GPT, go play with Gemini, go play with Claude Anthropic, whatever it is, go play with the various tools.
31:38
And you know, I make a habit every morning and even my entire team and leadership game.
31:44
We get on copilot every morning and try to stretch copilot, try to, you know, ask copilot different types of questions to see if you can stump copilot to see if you can identify something new or or ask about the industry to help us be more informed about this upcoming customer conversation.
32:03
I use copilot because I’m trying to learn Spanish.
32:06
So sometimes I’ll put copilot in my ear and I’ll I’ll just talk to copilot in Spanish just to just to as a personal thing.
32:15
So play with the tools.
32:16
So to your question, business leader, go play with the tools.
32:21
Go understand the type of experience that it can drive.
32:24
Work with your IT counterpart to try to drive that team, same type of experience and get out of the mindset that of legacy CRM.
32:33
This is just the way it is.
32:36
It’s no longer the way it is.
32:38
There’s a major shift going on.
32:40
And if you’re not taking advantage of this technology, your competitors will.
32:45
They’ll move faster than you.
32:48
You’re, if you’re a salesperson and you’re not using Copilot to be better prepared for a meeting, your competitor that’s selling against you probably is and you’re going to get outpaced.
33:03
I thought about it the other day.
33:05
You know, you and I have been around doing sales for a long time.
33:09
Think about the account planning process.
33:11
Think about big bet planning, man.
33:16
You know, only a couple years ago, I remember that process of all right, I’m going to go on the Internet to find this is a publicly traded company.
33:26
So I’m going to go to their earnings report.
33:28
I’m not going to find their 10K.
33:31
I’m gonna find out their corporate objectives.
33:33
I’m gonna go search this, find their corporate objectives within the 10K.
33:37
I’m gonna go find their board level leaders.
33:40
I’m gonna find their executive leader team.
33:42
I’m gonna swivel chair over to LinkedIn and I’m gonna start connecting some dots to see who at my organization knows this organization that.
33:52
And then I’m going to pull it all together into like a a PowerPoint so I can present my point of view on how Microsoft and this customer are going to do Better Together.
34:07
Think about how long, Chris, how long did that process take you?
34:10
Hours, days, if not a week, you know, I would block off time in my calendar to do QBR presentations in hours each day to put together my PowerPoint.
34:24
How crazy is that?
34:26
Now I can get all of that information right within Copilot and then I can have Copilot scour the Internet to find all that information for me instantaneously.
34:37
I can have all that information automatically updated in org charts and everything in my CRM.
34:43
And then I can have Copilot, hey, you know what?
34:45
Turn this into a PowerPoint presentation for a QBR and it elegantly brings it over for you.
34:52
And the one I think that truly excites me as a consultant implementing CRM for companies around the world, it’s something really basic when, when we start, we engage with when we’re working with the sales team early on in, in the engagement, we want to understand what is your process around leave qualification?
35:13
And you know what, how everything we want to know everything about how you guys qualify leads.
35:18
And more often than not, it’s the Wild West.
35:20
It’s truly left up to the sales Rep to determine how they’re going to qualify leads.
35:25
And so that really impacts your pipeline because now how do I trust what’s in my pipeline?
35:30
Because if I have someone who’s just say I’m qualifying everything because I want to show that, hey, I’ve got a great pipeline and blah, blah, blah, and you have other people that, hey, I’m not going to qualify until I know it’s going to close one.
35:41
So I’ve got a super high close rate.
35:46
How, how are you going to develop trustful, trustful decision making, you know, and, and data analytics And when you’ve got the Wild West, what we’re talking about, what Microsoft has in place right now with dynamics is the lead qualification agent.
36:00
It can go out and scour theater, It can scour LinkedIn.
36:02
It can pull all this information together now on behalf of your sales.
36:07
Sales team doesn’t have to do that.
36:09
That’s all.
36:10
And it’s going to feed that to you to say these are the leads you should be focused on.
36:15
Based upon what we’re seeing in the data.
36:18
Again, it’s coming back to data.
36:20
We’ve got to have the data in our CRM and, or, and, or an agent that goes out can access all these other data sources to pull that in on behalf of the sales Rep.
36:30
So now I’m focusing on the deals that truly can close the qualification agent can can actually do this for me, facilitate this.
36:40
And if you could set it up to where they’re qualifying on behalf you feed them right into your pipeline.
36:44
Hey, this is a hot league.
36:45
Get jump on it.
36:48
I mean, I don’t have mentioned my time on this stuff.
36:50
You know, not to mention it can it can look at CRM.
36:53
They can uncover sentiment, they can uncover since all the data lives on platform it it can actually uncover usage of the current that this customer has 95% of their users using this application on a regular basis.
37:09
So they have a a high level of of positive sentiment.
37:12
So therefore, the, the the lead score goes up, the the likelihood to close all of that pre qualification should be done automatically.
37:26
I should be spending my time on that stuff.
37:28
That’s not any value.
37:30
No, I’m a clerk with if that’s what we’re doing now, I’m kind of at a clerk level instead of a high level seller.
37:37
Yeah, yeah.
37:38
And then the right level of leads are coming to you.
37:42
The lower level of leads may be automated and, and, and maybe being handled by an agent, just without any kind of human supervision.
37:51
And, you know, maybe they need further qualification.
37:54
The customer needs to answer the right types of questions in the right way before it gets to a salesperson to work, work an opportunity.
38:02
That’s the level.
38:03
Just just, I mean, is it is it’s stuff that I’m seeing now.
38:07
It’s truly blowing my mind, you know, like, so if hey, if I’m doing really, you know, if I’m quoting, I can have agents that are watching my e-mail.
38:15
This customer goes in and hey, can I get a quote on XYZ?
38:19
You can have an agent that’s going to interface with your CPQ tool, follow all the rules of the CPQ tool, generate that quote and in in seconds that customers getting that e-mail back with here’s your quote.
38:33
OK, can we change the configuration of this to be this and add two more of those in response to the e-mail agents handling the whole thing.
38:44
So now me as a seller, I can focus on the high level deals where I truly need to be engaged on, not the ones that are really straightforward, you know.
38:52
So think about that, that, hey, if I’m able to shift 40% of the workload off of my sellers into an agent to where they’re doing a better job on the important deals that you know, what’s second impact on your close rate?
39:08
Yeah, what kind of impact that’s is that going to have?
39:10
They’re they’re spending less time on the distractions on the administration.
39:16
They’re spending all of their time on the highly strategic critical must wins the the the deals that just you have to beat your competitor.
39:29
You have to show up well prepared and now you can walk into every single meeting knowing everything about their organization in a matter of like minute a minute.
39:41
You have all of that.
39:43
And since, you know, the other great thing I was going to say is I, I spend all my day on these calls and sometimes the calls start to blur together when I next week it Thursday at 3:00 when I’m talking to Chris again, I hit a button in teams that says prep me for this meeting.
39:59
I can’t remember what I talked to Chris about last week.
40:01
And it gives me an instant prep.
40:04
And it’s just, it’s just pulling that data from the platform, from teams, from Outlook, from CRM, whatever, wherever it lives, it is immediately surfacing it.
40:14
So I look informed and well prepared when I go talk to Chris about this very important opportunity that must close in quarter.
40:21
Yeah, I mean that’s and that’s there today, you know that that’s the part that.
40:25
But again, you have to connect it all together.
40:27
You have to use it.
40:28
You know, it’s begins in him to record these meetings in Teams.
40:31
I’m getting my transcript, I’ve got the agents feeding that into CRM, you know, so that now I’ve got good structured data in CRM and my sales team didn’t have to spend time doing it.
40:40
That’s what we’re talking about.
40:43
Yeah.
40:43
I mean, so full circle back to the beginning of our conversation.
40:49
I, I, I made a choice in my career to partner with an organization that truly harnesses the power of data across platform because this is the way the world will work.
41:08
And we don’t need silos.
41:10
We don’t need integrations.
41:12
We bring data on platform so we can drive these types of experiences and shift this mindset from hunting and pecking in CRM to having an experience with Copilot, with a, with an agent, a dialogue to make me more productive at what I do on a daily basis and therefore make me more successful, make the company more successful, make all the partners that I work with across the entire organization more successful.
41:42
It all stems from where does that data reside?
41:46
Because that’s how we’re informed.
41:48
And, and you know, we have to have back to IT and business, the business stakeholder needs to be involved in these decisions because it’s so critical to your organization.
42:00
Absolutely.
42:00
Well, we’re going to close out with that.
42:02
I can’t, couldn’t have said it any better.
42:03
You summed it up perfectly, Drew.
42:05
Hey, I really appreciate your time.
42:07
I know how busy you are to come on sales Lead dog here and, and and share all this really key insight with sales leaders around the world.
42:16
Drew, again, thank you so much and welcome to the Sales Lead Dog pack.
42:22
Good to be here.
42:22
Great to chat with you, Chris.
42:26
As we end this discussion on Sales Lead Dog.
42:29
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42:34
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42:47
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