AI's Role in Sales & Marketing

0:00I don't think robot plumbers are coming to take your business. Exactly. Yeah. But brother, I think that about most things. This is why I want 20 hours of AI. Think about how you asked the question and how I changed it. You said interfere, and I jumped in naturally and said enhance. You're thinking fucking Terminator 2. Yeah, exactly. And I'm thinking you're wasting money on your advertising that AI can make better. So you're going super macro fantasy land, and I'm going to, I want you to make more money in 2024. Gary, I want to start with one very simple question, but I think you're the best person in the world to answer this question.

0:35You are probably the highest authority in the world when it comes to branding. You've worked with the top brands in the world, Pepsi, TikTok. You know how these people operate. And right now, consumer spending, when you look at how much money consumers spend in their homes versus food and beverage, it's around the same. But we still don't have that Coca-Cola brand or that Nike brand in home services. What can you teach? These people in the room are the top people in home services. They got the money. They got the budget. They got the operational capability. What can you teach these folks about branding to take their companies from a few billion in revenue to that household brand that's generational and lasts for hundreds of years like Coca-Cola and Nike?

1:17First of all, it's so nice to be with all of you. I hope everybody's super well. Had a great summer. Hope you're enjoying this. Look, I think right off the bat, you can't do it the same way and nor should you. There's a very big difference between products like Coke and Nike and fast consumable items that you're buying 600 times a year, 300 times a year, 50 times a year, and have an average cost of$400 to$200 versus what everyone here does incredibly well. So I think in general, there's enormous amounts of difference in price point and how often you do it and what we're talking about. On the flip side, in every B2B, in every B2C of higher cost items or luxury, there's always opportunity for brand.

2:06To me, what's running through my mind is a little bit different. When I look at this industry from afar or at times when I'm up close to it in helping private equity firms analyze things or if I'm investing in firms that are investing at a high level in this category, I think the thing that this group in general might find interest in is the concept of, if you're actually a sales organization, understanding the concept of brand and content and marketing as the best sales engine. I think that there's a misconception between sales and marketing's relationship that I'm always fascinated about at the highest levels.

2:51Sales is so black and white effective and so measurable that it's much more comfortable for a lot of us in this room. Marketing is very, it's like love. You know, it's a different emotion. It's like fandom. I'm a very big, diehard New York Jets fan. I was there last night. I'm devastated right now, right? Because Aaron Rodgers is out for the year now, and I have been in a slumber all day. Like, I'm barely pulling this off. I hit up my speaking team and said, can I cancel today? This is real. This is real. How can that be possible? That's so silly. It's football. But it's very possible because I've watched every game since I was seven.

3:36All of them. It's 40 years. It's my religion. I have emotion towards it. And I genuinely, actually, no baloney, called last night and this morning and asked if I could not be here today. And that's not an indication to y 'all or you or everybody. That's how sad I was for something as silly as a football game. But that football for me has crossed over into a different place. That's called brand. To me, the thing that needs to be debated here is understanding if you were to build a brand in a B2B or B2C environment, how that allows people to make potentially irrational decisions because they're making emotional decisions.

4:19That's why brand is so interesting to me. Everybody, people would be fascinated why they're wearing the clothes or jewelry that they're wearing right now without fully realizing how much that's expressing the brand of who they are to the world, including facial hair, haircuts. Like when I look around this room, I pay attention to what people have decided to do. That do the beards, some of the beards that showed up here today. I see you too. You know, but it's interesting. That's a level of communication. That's telling people a little bit about yourself. We all do it different. I promise you, 47-year-old businessmen that had the level of success that I have today, 25 years ago, weren't wearing ball caps and sneakers.

5:06Things change. Expression changes. And so I think for everyone here, listen, I'm a salesman, right? Like that's what I've been doing my whole life. But I promise you, sales DNA, sales DNA executives, salespeople that disrespect marketing and branding are leaving money on the table. And that interests me. And that's exciting. That's awesome, man. And, you know, I want to cover a lot of big topics. And that was awesome. I want to talk a little bit about AI and what's coming and what's here. First, can you talk a little bit about the most fascinating use cases that you've seen for AI in sales and marketing?

5:46For sales and marketing, we'll get into a minute. But I think, first of all, the thing with AI that's so interesting, and when I look around this room, there's some youngsters, but there's some people that have put some years into their career. And I'd like to make this statement first. please don't do with AI what you did with social media and what you did with the internet and what you did with the smartphone. For some of the youngsters in here, there's a lot of people in here who said they would never give up their Blackberry for the iPhone because they needed the buttons on the Blackberry.

6:17But they did. Or even getting a cell phone in the first place because their beeper and pager was more than enough and if someone wants to get a hold of me, they can page me and I'll call them when I want to. Or not having a website or not doing email or not setting up a Facebook. So first and foremost, let's not demonize another new technology because you read some headline that it was gonna take your job. Like let our grandkids worry about the robots killing them for us. We need to figure out how to navigate this next generation or two. So first of all, AI is enormous. What is it gonna do? for a lot of salespeople here, it's going to take care of a lot of the mundane work that they pay people to do or they do themselves, and it's going to make it a lot easier.

7:05For a lot of us, when we used to have to look up information, we literally had to get up physically, find the yellow pages wherever we put it, grab it, open it, get to the page and find it. Then Google came out and Yahoo came out and search engines came out, and that became a 13 second task instead of a four minute and 19 second task. And for a lot of us times a thousand times in a year, that adds up to time and efficiency. AI for a lot of salespeople here is gonna automate emails, is gonna create lists, is gonna do the CRM work. There's a ton of stuff that AI is going to do. And so I think for everyone here, again, actually here's a good question.

7:50How many people here are retiring in the next 10 years, real quick, before you raise your hands, and please do if you are, hold on, hold on. And I don't mean you're gonna crush it and buy a yacht. I mean you're old and you're finished.

8:07Raise your hands real quick. Next 10 years retiring. Two, respect, three. Good, three people. Let's even say seven. For the rest of us, in 10 years, as we are still working, AI will be profound. If you decide to be an ostrich and put your head in the sand and not worry about it, instead of spending 20 hours of your own research time on the internet, instead of headline reading a couple things and saying it's good, bad, or indifferent, to not allocate at this level who's in this room. If you're in this room, you've done things. It is what it is. for you not to spend 20 hours, an hour here, maybe on a vacation day during the holidays, five hours, to not spend 20 hours to actually understand what's going on in AI would be grossly negligent professionally.

9:01And I highly encourage you to pour a beer or a glass of wine or a cocktail or do it this holiday season. Find the 20 hours before 2024 starts to actually know what you're talking about. Because I think we can all agree with technology, much like a lot of things in life, We become headline readers and we make our decisions based on a couple headlines without actually knowing what we're talking about. And for everybody here, AI will be incredibly impactful for the rest of your lives. That's awesome. And I just have two more questions. Please. The second last question that I have, and I want people to start asking questions afterwards, so don't be shy.

9:39So AI, I run a tech company. And one of the most fascinating things that I've seen is that AI has actually made engineers 10x faster, right? Of course. And you've probably seen it where like, you know, the iPhone, you know, it came out and, you know, it was like three years before we had the cameras in the app store. Right. And now GPT 3.5 comes out and then three months later we have GPT 4. Well, because that was hardware. Right. Which is different than software. And you know this. I've seen people who aren't engineers present me full apps because they've used AI to build the entire app without knowing how to code.

10:16Yep. I mean, please, please, if you remember anything, we're going to hang here. You got a concert tonight. You're going to live your life this week. You know, some of your football seasons are still alive, so you're going to enjoy Sunday. Like, you're going to live your lives. If you remember anything, anything from this talk, and we're going to do Q &A, please ask your specific questions. I'm here for it. I'm glad I came out. But if you remember anything, 20 hours of real homework on AI, it will really be impactful. Of course. Go ahead. So what I was going to ask, it's basically not only happening, but it's happening at a faster rate than other technology shifts that we've seen in history.

10:54It's happening really fast. How do you coach your employees in your companies to take those 20 hours to be on top of that change? Nobody here can coach shit if they don't know anything about it. This is why I need your 20 hours. I can't answer the coach thing. You don't even know what we're talking about. It's like anything. It's like when I laugh when like 25 year olds try to tell you about life. Why don't you live it and then I'll listen. You know, like, so I think to coach on, you know, again, for the majority of people here in the context that we're talking, in the professions that you're in, all that we're talking about with AI is saving time.

11:37But at a level that is profound. If you just think about back to who I'm really talking in this room to, the last 20 years of technology, if you think about what email has done for letter writing and faxing, if you think what, you know, what all the, you know, all like search has done for information instead of the encyclopedia, the library or the yellow pages. If you think about the elimination of friction that websites have done from time going to the store and buying stuff. All we're talking about is time. Even if you think about farming. 150 years ago, 80 % of us worked on a farm. And then technology came along and made a tractor.

12:17And that saved time so we could go do other stuff. We're demonizing AI in the headline reading. All it's going to do is make everything faster, more efficient, to allow us to have more capacity to be creative, spend time with our families, make more hand-to-hand combat stuff. Like, it's going to free you up. and so yeah I think if before I worry about them coaching their employees I need them to understand it yeah so spend your time learning about AI guys just go on chat GPT and start asking questions like how do you feel today and you'll get far with that so just do that there's there's a you know it's funny the way you said that I want everybody to hear this like it really is that simple if anybody's been through a journey of getting into better physical health like if you've never worked out and you haven't eaten well, that first workout is a disaster.

13:08I did it at 38. Like you can't do shit. My eight pushups were a disaster. The treadmill was a disaster. Like when I think back to that workout 10 years ago, I'm like, my God. But I had to start there to be able to do things I'm doing today. If you've never ever interacted with an AI bot, your first queries, the first time you use it, it's gonna be a little clunky. It's like riding a bike. You needed training wheels. The first time you tried to swim, you almost died. You know, like, it's just like your first kiss was not phenomenal. I promise you, you know, and so same here. You've got a really, really, really just start and you can't be scared of it.

13:44What's going to happen? Who's going to make fun of you? Like do it in the privacy of your own home, but figure it, start figuring it out. That's awesome. Last question for me. And then I want people to start asking questions. will AI replace us or make us bionic? What uses are you seeing there? Look, the dinosaurs used to rule shit. I never say never to anything. Do I believe anybody here in their lifetime will face a world where robots replace us? No, I do not. Do I think anyone here who has children or grandchildren that they will face that? I do not. We're too far along no matter how fast it's moving.

14:22but I don't know when I'm chilling in heaven in 900 years I'm going to be happy that I didn't answer you definitively no because you know what I mean like there's yes there may be a time but like we're just so far away from that kind of sci-fi reality at the same token I think we can all agree a lot I'm going to say this nice and slow a lot has changed in the last 25 years technology wise socially too and lots of things but my gosh like I am 47 years old I don't think of I think of myself and at halftime I got another 47 to go I lived my entire childhood through high school without ever being on a computer besides school when they made me right like I did not have the internet my entire childhood so this is all moving there's a lot going on so I think the next this is why I did the 10 years raise your hand.

15:21I really desperately, when I look at a room like this, this is where I have a lot of passion when I come and speak, like what am I trying to accomplish? I'm trying to provide value. When I look around this room and I think about all the winning that is going on, this is a successful group. And I say to myself, if they don't pay attention and understand how important and profound this technology is, that's going to leave opportunity on the table for them. And it's seems like a very big missed opportunity. It's not gonna put you out of business, you're not gonna, but like, it's kind of like when I consult on businesses, I'll push them on social media or this, or whatever the best tips are of the day, and if I push a little too hard, or if they're like super not into what I'm saying, they're like, Gary, I get it, you want me to do all this stuff, but I'm doing 16 million dollars a year in my company, and I'm like, John, what's wrong with 32?

16:18and that's what the convo we're having here right now. It's not like life or death, but let there be no confusion. It's happening right now and in two years and four and six in my world that I'm very passionate about, which is communication, five years. How many people here follow me a little bit or somewhat? Thank you. And how many people here have followed me for more than four years? So for the people that just raised their hands, you all know four or five years ago, I'm yelling, screaming TikTok, and nobody's listening. Everybody was chilling in Instagram, if at all. And then TikTok happens, and a lot of people regret not going hard when I yelled about it four or five years ago, not because they're out of business, but because they left a lot of money, opportunity, maybe a change of career or building something around it.

17:07There was just a land grab of opportunity. That's how I feel about this AI thing. A lot of people here can have dramatically more efficient sales organizations, You could drive down your cost by 50 % and 4X your revenue. Why wouldn't you? You could keep doing it the way you're doing. Look, I have to go home now. I could take a train. I mean, I could, right? Or a horse that used to. I'd prefer to take a plane. And so that's what I think is happening here. This is about understanding how profound these technology movements are and understanding like the only thing holding you back is a subjective opinion or ideology that you're holding.

17:52And I think that's bad business strategy. That's awesome. Give a hand for Gary, man. That was fucking good.

18:02Let's start taking questions from the crowd. If you have questions, just like come up to the mic and ask your question so that everybody else can hear. So yeah. Yes, do it. Honestly, this is it. I'm going to leave soon. So like, I know people get timid and shy. Like, here's the mic. Get in this. Hi. So I do TikTok for the trades. And I know you talk a lot about AI, but TikTok was your thing, like you just said. And I think that what happens as a marketing company, I do organic social media. And that's a lot harder to say. We got this lead directly from here every single time. But it's so important when it comes to overall branding.

18:41And so I'm just curious of like how that. How to justify it. Yeah, how to have that conversation. I think when I look around a room like this, nine out of 10 people, if you're doing just organic social. So just to ground this conversation, you're posting on social content to build awareness for your business. You're brand building. It's not as sales oriented. It's not performance oriented. Look, the reality is nine out of 10 people are going to struggle with that. because people want to measure what they're spending money on. And most people don't think about business the way they think about real life.

19:18In real life, they may spend money on things that aren't ROI positive that make them happy or they know that that's good, but they can't see the direct results immediately. Working out, you may pour a lot of dollars into that. You're not gonna see muscles the next day or lose 15, but you know it's right. In business, there's a lot of people that struggle with knowing building brand is right and when something new like social media they might buy billboards that know it's right even though they don't get directly because that's been around for a while and they can accept that but making TikToks they don't understand that yet.

19:51I'm empathetic to that. There's two ways Jen. One, just spend all your time finding the one out of ten instead of trying to convince the nine out of ten. Number two, you may want to look at yourself and say hey, I'm tired of justifying this. maybe I want to bring in media capabilities and with media and creative, when you're spending money on the ads, not just the organic you can then start showing them you got 113 leads from your TikTok this month because you're running ads which gives you a much better chance than just relying on the organic reach that's the two ways I think about your world Love it, thank you so much You're welcome What's your name, my man?

20:36Oh, thank you Thanks, brother. What's your name? Hey, I'm Jeremiah. Nice to meet you. Hey, so you know and everything you know, and I would just say, if you were down here asking yourself a question, what question would that be? It's always a tough question because the reality is, again, when I look around the room here, almost everybody on their professional journey is potentially in a different place. Some people want to grow their business, this 5X for this flip. Other people want to maximize margin for the next couple of years because they want to take cash on the table. So the question I would ask is wherever I was in the life cycle, right, of my career.

21:19You know, to me, the thing I would ask me probably based on where I'm at or what is the most universal thing that I think could bring value here is which platforms and what tactics today have the potential to reach the most audience to do business. The answer to that is, I believe that as we sit here today, the two platforms that can lead to the most business are Facebook and LinkedIn for this audience. I think Facebook is incredibly powerful still, and especially for the demo that is buying a lot of things that we're talking about here. If you're perfect or really good at ads and pictures and videos on Facebook, more than Instagram and know how to run ads, I think that will lead to the most sales.

22:10LinkedIn, I think most people here are wildly misunderstanding. We still think of it as like a recruiting tool or where you do your resume, but the way the LinkedIn feed is working is working like Facebook. And you can target people who are CFOs of Fortune 500 companies, and I can give you the preview, those are high net worth individuals. They get paid a lot of money to do what they do. You could also make references to being in corporate. So you could make your content very targeted to your media spend in LinkedIn. So that would be the question and the answer. Appreciate it. Appreciate it, brother.

22:44Thank you. Connor, it's good to see you. Nice to see you. So we're in the plumbing industry. Yes. And our biggest thing is face-to-face sales. Yes. So getting in someone's house, getting dirty, getting sweaty. Door knocking? Yeah. Well, no. Okay. Not quite. So if they reach out to us, we go to the property and then we develop a relationship. Where do you see AI interfering with that? Nowhere. Nowhere. I see AI enhancing that by being able to look at... Connor, how do you spend your money now to get the lead? Direct mail, outdoor, Facebook, Google, what? How do you spend money? Facebook, Google, Yelp.

23:24Great. You are wasting an ungodly amount of money in those categories. of 80 cents of the dollar and 20 cents of the dollar is making all of it work for you. AI scripts are going to be able to analyze that and understand which 20 cents are working and making you spend a dollar on that instead of 20 cents. Would you say that plumbing is an untouchable industry in regards to AI? Because you have to evaluate the problem and physically... Yeah, I don't think AI robot... I don't think robot plumbers are coming to take your business. Exactly, yeah. But brother, I think that about most things. Yeah. This is why I want 20 hours of AI.

24:06Even the question to me is like, not silly, but like, because think about how you asked the question and how I changed it. Yeah. You said interfere, and I jumped in naturally and said enhance. You're thinking fucking Terminator 2. Yeah, exactly. And I'm thinking you're wasting money on your advertising that AI can make better. Got it. Right? So you're going super macro fantasy land. And I'm going to, I want you to make more money in 2024. Right. Appreciate that. I appreciate it. Thank you. You got it. And I just want to add to that question. As somebody who works on AI for plumbing, HVAC industries, that is actually one of the last things that AI can actually replace fundamentally.

24:50because as smart as it is, it's only trained on the internet's data. It literally cannot do this, what I'm doing, which is gripping an object with my hand. So if you have to do that. But I'll jump in and say, AI can also not replace Formula One teams in changing the tire. It also isn't here yet serving us at restaurants. Like people use AI and they expand the definition into robots, right? We're talking about scripts that are analyzing the internet and things of that nature. We're not talking about the, by the way, back to me being in heaven in 900 years, robot plumbers are coming. If anyone doesn't think that's true, they just don't know how the world works.

25:35It just might be 212 years from now. My gut's telling me that most of you don't give a crap about it. Griffin's not sweating if he knows it's 212 years from now. You know what I mean? but like the world evolves like think about when the gun was invented if you're the best swordsman in the world you're like god damn it right like you know if you own the most horses on earth at one point not that long ago and it's our core transportation and then the car is invented just to remind everybody a hundred years ago like you got caught so Connor's lucky that the robot plumbers are not coming because it's 2024 but connor griffith the fifth who's a nepo trust fund baby might get caught that's how it works

26:35okay gary i'm sure you know that there's been a lot of consolidation in our industry right so So, you know, nine, ten figure businesses are happening all the time. Yes. Most the top 100 markets are saturated. Lead cost is going through the roof. Yep. So how does an independent, you know, use some guerrilla marketing tactics to get through that? It's a great question. Okay. This is why I'm so passionate about what I do for a living. somebody asked me a long time ago to really crystallize what I do for a living and I finally got to the answer as a matter of fact it's probably going to be the title of the book I'm working on right now what I do for a living which is the answer to your question is if you're an independent and lead costs are going up with the things that we know about you have to be the best at day trading attention so the thing that leads to a lead is having someone's attention to even know what you do to then call you to plum or whatever else So back to my point a little while ago about TikTok, four years ago, the answer would have been TikTok.

27:45It still might be for a lot of people if they're very extroverted and good at making videos. You've got to find a place where humans have attention, where nobody else is doing it at a good enough cost for you to be able to get what you need out of it. So for example, back to the question I asked Connor, for some independents, that might be door-to-door knocking. It might be long tail Google AdWords. It might be starting a podcast to build brand awareness so that you can leverage it. So there are always things and tactics to be done in contemporary communication. I do believe podcast is still a huge white space to educate people in this sector.