2076 – Enhancing Sales Strategy with AI Technology with Sailes’ Nick Smith

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1:05With us right now, it is Nick Smith. Nick, you are the CEO and founder of Sales. Sales is on the web at sailes.com. Nick, great to have you. Thanks so much, Josh. Glad to be here. Yeah. Well, give us an overview of what Sales is. Sales was the first company to develop autonomous prospecting for account executives. So for enterprises, our sale bots are truly autonomous to do every step of prospecting hands-free. They find companies, they enrich data and find decision makers. Of course, they generate content and send emails outbound, but they go a lot further. They read, react, propose meetings, follow up, and even qualify leads, all completely hands-free and unique to the personality of the AE they represent.

1:57If you're the recipient of that, how do you feel? If I'm the recipient of an email from a sale bot, I have a better experience because what I say goes. I'm directing it. I'm not just getting repetitive emails. If I say I'm not interested, the sale bot actually consumes data. It reads emails. So it knows and removes me. If I say, oh, you need to be in touch with Michael who handles XYZ, the sale bot's going to thank me and find Michael. And if I say, please meet with me next Wednesday, the sale bot's going to qualify that and deliver it to a human. So Nick, I think I see, like when I look at what sales is, I think most of us probably look at this as just kind of an inevitability when it comes to lead generation.

2:44like obviously this needs to happen because we have the technology. So I'm just curious about like how this is going to impact the future of prospecting if sales and an infinite number of knockoffs are now going to be engaging in this sort of behavior. Yeah, Josh, it's a very smart question and something we spend a lot of time thinking about. You know, to answer it, I would just say we think about the best of prospecting and the worst of prospecting. The worst of prospecting, first of all, doesn't work anymore. It's mass outreach from agents that everyone on the team is sharing. It's high volume, repetitive emails.

3:28It's dirty data. And it's not genuine. That's the worst of prospecting. The best part of prospecting is finding someone that you have a solution for. And you're able to do that because you're a human that's an expert that spent a lot of time in your field. That's why sale bots are unique to people. They represent you. And so from a practical standpoint, we're going against the grain. Less emails means more success. It means more targeted approaches. And it means you're really being solution driven and mindful. Now, the benefit to our customers is they don't have to use their hands. They're not writing emails.

4:05They're not sending them. And they're not following up manually. but the benefit to our customers is not mass outreach because it doesn't work anymore. Does that answer the question? Yeah. And so, and I appreciate the nuance. Can you maybe further define what, I mean, cause it, again, it sounds like higher touch is the goal here. Again, it's being automated. So, and listen, I'll just start with my bias here, right? Because I would feel like, again, I would feel manipulated if it were presented as a human. Whereas I feel like if, and again, part of my concern here, and so I appreciate our conversation, so I think you can address these other concerns that other people have.

4:52I just look at my own behavior on LinkedIn DMs, for example. I look at my own behavior as an executive or as a leader with email accounts. And I just have to be so protective of my time that, you know, just up goes more and more and more walls and guardrails to protect my attention. So if I'm doing that, you know, the feedback I've gotten is that there are a lot more of doing it. So pardon my question. And maybe unfair question to ask you. So forgive me. But to me, it feels like, you know, it's like we're still trying to squeeze, you know, blood from a turnip. No, what's the expression? Something like that.

5:38Blood from a rock or something like that. It's like we're squeezing so hard and there's just not much left there is kind of my biased, you know, question. I don't think you're off base at all. And believe it or not, I'm right there with you. Let me say it this way first. Help is on the way because most of these companies I think you're referring to aren't making it in your inbox. And I know we all spend 90 seconds, hopefully not longer, deleting irrelevant emails every day. And the thought is, if everyone has one of these agents, you know, Cheryl or Jessica, whoever the agent is, aren't we all going to be bombarded?

6:15And that's why I say help is on the way, because those folks aren't even making it into the inbox. We know that the difference is being unique to the human. And so to draw contrast for you here, A sale bot is not a seed on a platform. It's not something you sign up, subscribe to that just automates tasks. Automating tasks is table stakes in 2024. The sale bot doesn't exist until the account executive onboards, and it's unique to their personality, their approach, their market, their persona, everything that's unique about them, the sale bot does on their behalf in a bespoke, small batch way. You raise an important point because you said, well, hey, isn't it automation?

6:56So isn't it still about volume at some level? And the answer to that is no. It used to be, and it still is for some, but it's about that AE being everywhere uniquely, simultaneously, and intelligently. And so to say it another way, it's not about doing 200 things. It's about being in two places at once, dynamically and uniquely. And so maybe just to bring it home real quick. Sorry, Josh. If all of these others are saying volume is the key, volume, volume, we all know because we've done this a long time, it's not the answer. They're going to be quarantined in the spam folder. The email service providers have a responsibility to their customers to not let that through.

7:38It's going to get harder. And what will remain is authentic AI, authentic, real approaches like the one we're using. Okay. So, yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, again, the counter to that might be, well, if that frees me up to do, I mean, obviously that AE. So I guess it's either then a business has fewer AEs or, you know, an AE is just simply going to be in more places at once. And again, if everyone's able to do that, sorry. And again, we're doing futurism right now. And I apologize, that's not fair to you. I'm asking you to defend maybe a larger trend that is not what you're here for. So I just want to acknowledge, Nick, forgive me.

8:19We're going to move on here, but I just want to clear the table, hopefully, so that at least we can get people to listen, lean forward and listen. Yeah, absolutely. And I would just say to that, Josh, where you start, I think you started to go with that. it's absolutely about the AE. It's about the person and their approach. So yes, giving them time back is one of the values, but I would just also say most AEs today are doing a lot of robot tasks and they should be doing human worthy activities. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll see. Okay. So all of that said, Nick, tell me a little bit more about how this platform works or Or, you know, particularly what I'm curious about, right, is how can we leverage platforms like sales so that we are using it with best practices, not, you know, again, what I think a lazy salesperson or a lazy marketer want to do.

9:23We want to help them avoid that because that's not going to be good for anybody. So what are best practices? Well, this brings me to what I think is an emerging trend as well, not too distant from the other point you're making. And that is using demand generation tools as a proxy for product market fit. What we've seen is a lot of companies don't have the product market fit they think they have. And they're trying to put a Band-Aid on that with more leads, more volume, more opportunities, more channels. That is not the best practice for a sale bot. Yes, a sale bot will generate world-class, sort of the gold standard and actionable revenue opportunities.

10:02But the other thing that it will generate is insights and learnings. And so the best practice is to start where you are today. What do you know about your market? What do you know about the small sample size or potentially large sample size you've already engaged with? And how do you channel that into a sale bot that's doing work on your behalf? That's a point one. But point two is you'll see opportunities from that, but you'll also realize what's working. And so the best practice, I think, for use of a sale bot is doubling down on what's working best. And the sale bot will actually do that on its own.

10:37So it's not just about this world of prospecting and exploring, hey, who's going to engage with me? It's about exploring what works and then exploiting it and doing less but more of the right type of activities. Yeah. So what would be some examples of how that tone sounds? What is the outreach? What are the qualifiers? How are we, and forgive me, artificially building a human connection? yeah so and i know artificially is a loaded term it's ai we're talking about so it is it's not it again it's it's an out and i get what you're saying right it's it's an extension of how i have pre-programmed it so i'm very very bullish on ai for lots of reasons and yeah sorry for my continued you know just bias on the whole thing but i'm loving this conversation thank you because you're challenging me.

11:37Well, Josh, I would just say that, again, when you ask about tone, you ask about the approach, that there's very, very little standardization here is what I would say. And so what we're not doing is taking Josh and trying to whittle him down to some agentic denominator of everyone's using this tool and this is how you do it. You are you for a reason and your approach, no one else can do. And so the sale bot knows that, knows you, learns from you and acts on your behalf. So the tone is unique to you. You know, for example, I think some things that come up here are, what's an example? Maybe something like email length or a word count or something like that.

12:18Okay. So if it was, you know, 2019 or something, we might have a best practices for how long your email should be. We have nothing to say about that. Josh's email, Josh's approach, where Josh starts in the org chart, who Josh wants to spend his time talking to is unique to Josh. In my opinion, the AI should be able to account for that and work actually on your behalf. And so these are not loaded terms, I say, or phrases when I say, the sale bot doesn't exist till you onboard. It actually doesn't. It truly is unique to you. And you may not want it to do something that your colleague would. If a group of 40 salespeople all selling the same product want to join, want to have sale bots.

13:05All 40 of those sale bots are unique, even if the product's the same. So you have some bias, but that has to run what you're seeing, right? Yeah, yeah. So are you, so, you know, in the outreach or the communication, would you acknowledge, hey, this isn't Josh, this is Josh's virtual Josh? or do you say, hey, this is Josh? Sent from my personal AI, sent from my sale bot, that sort of thing, absolutely. There's sale bots today that do that in their outreach and approach. Ultimately, that's the customer's decision. Yeah, okay. Well, okay. Sounds like you would say, this is my personal AI. Yeah, so tell me a bit about who you've worked with and kind of what you've seen in terms of maybe kind of a before and after?

14:01Yeah, great question. So when I look at, you know, this period of 2010 to 2020 was all about how many tools, point solutions, databases, platforms can we add on to our team to make prospecting or sales a little bit easier or softer? And it got so big, this construct around sales teams. But we work with large enterprises that have a lot of real, authentic career salespeople. And maybe they never subscribed to the SDR function to begin with. Or maybe they had some of those point solutions, but never had 12 or 18 or something like that. What we see is pairing sale bots with those AEs provides immediate value.

14:44There's value in automation and the time they get back. There's value in task savings and the sort of cost per task or low cost per task model we pioneered a couple of years ago. But the intelligence is the value they get beyond just closed deals. And so, of course, we've seen seven figure returns just from closed deals on a five figure investment. But what we've noticed most often is the learnings they get from the sale bot drive the business further. And so a quick story is, you know, if 10 sales reps onboard and use the AI, those sale bots are all unique to the 10. And that means they're all going to perform differently, right?

15:29But the learnings from what's working is what's really valuable to the customer and driving that future engagement. So there's been a lot of ROI from return and closed deals. There's a lot of ROI from automation, task savings, data savings. But the ROI that's harder to put a dollar amount on and I think is larger is the intelligence and what it learns. Yeah. So for sales, now sales has been around for over six and a half years. Is this where you started or has sales evolved? Well, I started the company after a long career in sales and sales leadership, but enterprise and selling to others. But yeah, you have a background in radio.

16:11Look at you. CBS, iHeart. Love it. Right. So the company was very much something that I thought of based on my own career. And we certainly launched pre this Gen AI boom and all of that. And the first AI model we had was one that we trained ourselves on organic sales data. But this was always where we planted our tree in autopilot or autonomous prospecting for sales. So it's just been an evolution. And certainly as the technology has gotten better, the company has, and our technology has as well. But this was the original vision. Yeah. I can't imagine, particularly in the last year and a half, I would imagine there's been quite a bit of evolution.

16:55Are you behind, you know, there's always kind of like that AI engine behind the scenes. Did you change how what sales is built upon? We did. So we didn't just change, we also evolved. So the patent and sale bot and the sale bot model are still the core, but surrounding it are dozens of proprietary AI models that have been trained based on our own data, not based on synthetic data. So what's really interesting is because the sale bots consume so much, the ability to produce those. So it's advanced. Great. So the website is sales.com, S-A-I-L-E-S.com. And so pricing, do you mind maybe talking about like pricing engagement, like who this is an appropriate platform for, who, you know, just in terms of like what engagement looks like, what investment generally looks like?

17:53Yeah, so what I would say is we work with a wide variety of businesses. We're certainly sector or industry agnostic. And I think everyone probably says that, but we truly are. In terms of pricing, it's really dependent on the number of sale bots. But there's a couple of pricing models and approaches we use. What I would say broadly, Josh, is that we align with the customer's goals. Some customers are very intelligence driven. Some are very revenue driven. Some are we need to multiply our team driven or task efficiency driven. So we align with their goals and the pricing model follows. But, you know, without going into specific pricing, that's probably the best way I can answer it.

18:34Yeah, but I think it's fair to say this is not, you know, some someone, some baby brand new entrepreneur might be looking for like a$49 a month solution. This ain't that. I would say that this is not that, but what this is, is much, much more cost effective than even four to six platforms surrounding your team. Yeah. Nick, next steps for our friend that's listening, like what, where do they go? Like if they want to see demos of this or they want to experience this a little bit more, like what do you typically recommend for their due diligence or kind of research phase, assuming that this might be the first introduction to your platform?

19:13Yeah, well, first of all, let me say if someone's listening and they're in the sales profession, I'd love to talk. Feel free to always reach out to me on LinkedIn, Nick Smith. And then if you want to learn more about sales or our sale bots, certainly go to the website, sailes.com and request a demo. Our sales team would love to talk about their own experiences using sale bots, since this is what we built the company on. And yeah, we'd love to have conversations with anyone that's interested and brings their business challenges. Yeah, again, sales.com. There is a button right there where you can request a demo.

19:49Nick Smith, thanks for enduring me, my friend. Gosh, I loved it. It's a great conversation. And again, I think it's just kind of an inevitability at this point. So this is another one of those situations where companies need to decide which of these AI tools they're going to use, how they're going to use them, what aligns with how they show up, but then also recognizing that the rest of the market is, there's going to be a lot of folks that are going to jump on all of these latest evolutions. So fascinating conversation, Nick Smith, founder of sales. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Josh.

20:30Take care.

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