AI can do the research, but it can’t build the relationship

0:07Welcome back to the Mastering Sales and Negotiations podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Massey, and this week on the podcast, we had the pleasure of being joined by entrepreneur and sales leader, Mike Pritchett. In our chat, we discussed where AI ends and where humans must begin in order to balance automation and authenticity in the sales world. Today, I am joined by Robin Hoyle to discuss the key takeaways from our conversation with Mike. And what makes Robin such an expert, you might ask? Well, he is very well known in the L &D industry, addresses leaders all over the world at conferences and summits, and is the author of two books around learning culture.

0:45He's also walked in sales director's shoes himself, so suffice to say, he knows his stuff.

0:57Mike was great in that podcast, and I thought he had some great things to say. There were some brilliant stories.

1:03Robin Hoyle:Absolutely. I love the Qantas story. I thought that was really, really on point. It really was. And that idea of the human skills and how they're still so important couldn't have shone through any more, could it? No, and that absolutely chimes with what we've been saying about AI for a little while now, which is wherever you are, we know if you go back over this podcast series, you see it almost as a kind of theme, which is, And there's two parts to it. The first is the human skills are really important, actually having a conversation with somebody, whatever medium you use to do that. And then there's that piece about how buyers and decision makers and key influencers within business-to-business sales are spending less and less time with salespeople.

1:47So the conversations not only are massively important, but you've got to get it right because you might not get the other opportunities that you would have to go further with the discovery or to really speak to a large number of people unless you make a great first impression by really coming across as being on the side of the person who you are trying to sell to, recognising that it's about their problems, their issues, their challenges, their requirements, what they want and how you can best satisfy that. So that conversation, I think, becomes even more important because the amount of time you get face to face with people, again, whatever the medium you're using, is inevitably going to go down in a world where technology is dominating the interaction between organizations and people.

2:37And the less time that you have with people, the less time you're able to practice in the room with them, the more time you're going to have to do these. You're going to have to make sure that these skills are something that you practice with people in your own organization and on your own. Absolutely. And that idea of being able to not only have those conversations, whether those are simulations or practice runs or whatever it is, dress rehearsals, if you will, but also that ability then to dissect what happened. You know, what behaviours did I use?

3:07Robin Hoyle:What worked? What didn't work? What will work in future? What can I get better at? So that reflection, that ability to continually develop. and you know he used a phrase that we've we've all heard heard before but nonetheless stands saying again you know have you really got x number of years experience or x number one year experience which is now several years old because you keep repeating the same stuff over and over again that's the difference that i think we can bring to human skills is to have sales people who are not only aware of what they're doing but reflect on what's happened and aim to get better next time and that that curiosity reflection desire to improve priceless and going to be essential for a salesperson absolutely it is i liked that we talked about that brains trust as well that he had with the client i mean what a great but that couldn't be better could it that's that's your pinnacle absolutely and that's that's absolutely one of the things that i kind of thought yeah that's a flipping good idea you know can you imagine having the the the people who are the key users of your product in a room having a conversation about how your product could should develop in order to meet their explicit needs in the future that i think is absolutely a great idea and if you think about he didn't use these words but if you think about what that conversation was that was essentially a massive spin conversation with a bunch of people to say so where are we now what's the situation what are the challenges that you've got what's the implications the consequences of those challenges what would good look like how would that add value to your organization great how about i go away and work on this for you and everybody goes terrific well we'll be your test bed we'll be your pilot organization for that and that i think was was a really powerful use of the power of customer intimacy and you don't get that customer intimacy intimacy at the end of a bot or the end of an AI.

5:11Robin Hoyle:We don't even get it on the end of a video call. No, no, not often. Not often. But that idea of being a real partner to those businesses and them thinking that they're almost part of your organization, you are their development and R &D team, whatever it is, I think that's great. And that's nirvana in terms of where you want to get to in those relationships. But you're not going to do that and build that just from sending out a few wrote emails that your AI has generated for you. And I think Mike, although he's absolutely the cutting edge of AI, absolutely the front end of it, that is still the focus of his activity, which is how do we make better qualified leads through to salespeople using the power that AI potentially offers and can offer in order that the conversations that they have are significantly better because everybody's time is short.

6:07Great points there, Robin. Thanks very much.

6:09Robin Hoyle:Not at all. Cheers.