Episode 224: Sales, Sales Enablement, and AI: From the Sales 3.0 Conference

Bob Woods  00:00

B2B sales and marketing meet you in the right place. A big welcome to you to Making Sales Social Live, coming to you from the Social Sales Link, Virtual Studios. I’m Bob Woods, the LinkedIn Sherpa, and I’m joined as always by fellow social selling training consultants and professionals, also known as the LinkedIn whisperer. Brynne Tillman, how’re you doing?

Brynne Tillman  00:23

I’m good, Bob, how are you? I’m coming to you from San Francisco.

Bob Woods  00:28

Yeah, I know. So that’s why I was gonna say the phrase, Social Sales Link virtual studios is especially accurate because Brynne is on the road. As you just heard, she’s living in San Fran today, where she’s in the middle of a trip. That has been quite an adventure. And it’s only going to get better. 

Intro  00:51

Welcome to Making Sales Social Live, as we share LinkedIn and Social Selling Training Strategies and Tips that will have an immediate impact on your business. Join Brynne Tillman, and me, Bob Woods, every week, Making Sales Social Live! This is the recorded version of our weekly Making Sales Social Live Show.

Bob Woods  01:14

So Brynne, I guess, why don’t you start off with telling us about step number one on this kind of whistle stop tour out west?

Brynne Tillman  01:24

Oh, my gosh. So I had so much fun. I was the closing keynote for the sales 3.0 C R. O conference. 23. And I had so much fun. Some of it was meeting some of my favorite people in person. So as good as the conference was, the people were even better. And I have story after story. Shout out to Roderick Jefferson, who killed it on stage about sales enablement. And, I have not been hugged and picked up off my feet in years. Thanks for that bear hug.

And I met people like Eli Cohen and Tiffany Bova, and some of my biggest, fangirling people in person. Eli Cohen even included me with his tribe in an amazing dinner. And I got to really meet Joseph Pitino, who was an actor who helps people with presentation skills. Like it was such an amazing experience. And I got to learn about new tools that are coming out for sales and new things and how sales enablement is using AI, and how Chief Revenue officers are talking about AI because that was really the theme. And in so much to take back. And Bob, you and I are going to do a big debrief next week.

Bob Woods  02:50

Yeah, I yeah, I mean, just hearing about AI, which I knew is gonna be brought up there. But I’m just insanely jealous that I was not there. I’m very, very, very happy that you were there. So a lot of I know you’ve got a lot of takeaways from there before we get into that. I just want people to know that if they follow you on LinkedIn, and they go to your profile, and under all activity in posts, you have actually posted several takeaways already. 

So if y’all want to go there, and read those and listen to those, that’s a great start. And if you aren’t following Brynne on LinkedIn, and you know me as well, you should probably click that and click that follow and subscribe button like they always say, but no, seriously, you should do that, because she’s got some fantastic stuff there. So Brynne, If there’s like probably one huge takeaway that you have, what would that be?

Brynne Tillman  03:53

What a great question. I have my list of many takeaways. But I think, if you like overarching and it’s not going to be much of a surprise to you. But the overarching takeaway hands down, is that sales needs to embrace AI. Sales is not embracing AI sales and marketing and actually was at the CRO level. So I say sales, but it was really at the chief revenue officer level, which is marketing, business development, sales, right that revenue, develop revenue, responsible departments, Right? Everyone needs to be using AI and not just for content. But you know, AI as it grows, it’s about really competitive getting a competitive advantage across the board. 

So I’ll throw in a couple of things because we really only talk about content because we’re social selling, but a few things. So a few, like high level things, is simply If let’s say you’re in a growing company, and your onboarding has sort of been, like kind of random, and that there’s no process. In one case, the guy the speaker was talking about, just went into Chat GPT and said, create an onboarding program. For my team, this is the level experience of the salespeople. These are the software platforms that we have available to us. Like it’s this list, the prompt was probably five paragraphs, and there was a customer onboarding program, Right? 

Then there was a sales improvement program, we have a rep, who’s not doing well. So there were five questions in the prompt and what I loved and we have one prompt like this, but we need to do more like this, where you’d have the prompt come up. And this was actually not even a speaker, this was someone I was talking to at a booth. So it seemed like there was just something everywhere, right. And we were talking about this prompt where he has asked a question. So what does the rep think are the biggest challenges for them? What does the sales manager think are the biggest challenges for that? What does the rep feel like they need to improve? 

What does the sales manager feel like they need to improve? What tools do they need? Where you know, what challenges I can’t even think of? There were tons of questions. Sure. And then, and then the prompt at the end takes all of those answers. It shows you the disconnect, or the connection between what the rep thinks in the manger things and gives advice. Like it was amazing, Right? So you have a fledgling sales rep. And, you know, there’s some active listening and input, Right? At the end of the day, this saves us so many hours and maybe even having to lay people off because they weren’t hitting their number. They ask questions like, what KPIs Do you or do you think work toward your goal and what KPIs work against your goal? 

Bob Woods  07:17

Wow.

Brynne Tillman  07:18

Really, really, really, really cool stuff. And then it gives you a report on the best way to move forward with that wrap. 

Bob Woods  07:26

That’s amazing. 

Brynne Tillman  07:27

Yeah, and this is still in I think, I think it was Chat GPT was just prompts we didn’t think it might be in Bard or whatever. Like they all kind of work the same way. The bottom line, this is really beyond using Chat GPT to get content for sales. I mean, this is a coaching. A call takes a transcript with a prompt and it will give you ideas on how to coach for a call, you know a call that a rep had with a prospect. So really cool stuff.

Bob Woods  08:03

That’s just amazing. And it’s funny because I just did a podcast episode for the making sales social side where we talked more about AI and you know, and just how it’s being just sorely underutilized by sales departments and and that sea level CRO type of thing and just a couple of things that my guests brought up that was just amazing and you know, this is something that people should not be afraid of. 

We should be embracing AI and it’s so encouraging that at the sales three Dotto conference in Vegas that they’re talking about all this and that’s probably what makes three Dotto sales three Dotto because I remember when it was sales to Dotto and everything is now beyond that. I mean, compared to what we were talking about it for sales to Dotto and those subjects, what we’re talking about now, it should be like maybe sales, five dot O or something like that, I think.

Brynne Tillman  09:06

I don’t know, but they definitely had a lot or a lot of the right people in the room for sure. The other side of this, which I thought was interesting, was making it so they did a lot of sales enablement, right. CRO and so tons of sales enablement, where again, a shout out to Raj Roderick Jefferson who killed it. And they also had a speaker from the enablement group. That was really good. And they talk about really not just humanizing sales, but empowering salespeople. 

So I’m mixing all these up because I don’t have my notes in front of me but one of the sneakers and it’s just I mean, I even called my husband to tell him about this video, who he didn’t care, but I was so like. So here’s the video and it’s Talking about enabling well, I’ll tee it up. It was talking about enabling people to go beyond their job description, essentially, letting them make real decisions in real time without having to get permission, right? It’s really true.

Bob Woods 10:21

Okay, right.

Brynne Tillman  10:23

So there are two business people going up an escalator in a mall, and the escalator breaks. And they both look around, and there’s no one around and they start screaming for help. We’re stuck on an escalator. We’re stuck. Looking around to help Alright, they talk to each other. “What do we do?” “I don’t know. Maybe we have to wait.” Someone screams we’ll have the help coming. “Okay, great. Now they do nothing.” And then the help comes. 

The fixer guy comes to the elevator one level below, and he gets on and starts going up. And the escalator breaks. So he’s now stuck. And so then it ends, right. But the visual of this, about how we limit the innovation in our teams, the way that we, you know, we give them a job description, and I’m gonna I know I’m going on and on, but I’m gonna you actually use social sales link as an example, Kath Capati is our boss. Like, she runs the behind the scenes company, but I hired her at a BDR because I liked her and she was smart. 

And so I said, “Alright, I’m gonna give her a Sales Navigator license.” And she could do some outreach, warm outreach, and whatever. And about three months in, we’re talking about a challenge. And she’s like, “Oh, I used to handle that at my old company, I ran a team of 17 people that didn’t make it whatever,” Right? I’m like, “Oh, what else have you done? Well, I’ve done this and this and this, and this and this.” And she was so overqualified for this BDR role. But I never asked. And fortunately, at the right time she shared, but we have to start asking, we have to start asking our team, What are you good at? What do you love? What would you like to do? Where would you like to be? Because if we don’t find out what they’re capable of, and we just kind of put them on this step on this escalator, we’re never gonna get them to walk up. Right. So I thought that was fun.

Bob Woods  12:50

Yeah, very much. So very much and like I said before, there’s so much that we could fill hours in a podcast about that we just don’t have time today. But go to Brynne’s LinkedIn, go to her feed, she has several very, very good takeaways there that go beyond that, that go beyond what we’re talking about here today. So if you want even more of those insights, go ahead and go to her feeds. And speaking of insights, Brynne, something has happened with you lately having to do with LinkedIn, that is going to make your insights much, much, much wider. And we are all so psyched and excited about it. Why don’t you tell us a little bit more about that?

Brynne Tillman  13:41

Yeah, well, I’m gonna tell you about what’s coming. And we can talk more about what happened afterwards. But I’m now here in San Francisco, getting ready to head over to the LinkedIn offices. I was recently named one of the LinkedIn Sales insiders, which is like a career highlight for me. And now I get to do all kinds of fun things with them. I’m going to lunch with them today. There’s an evening program tomorrow. And then on Wednesday, we’re filming a movie, whatever that is, so I’ll keep you informed.

Bob Woods  14:21

That’s amazing. That’s just amazing. So so so just so just so people who don’t know what a LinkedIn insider is, why don’t you fill us in on that really quick and what that entails?

Brynne Tillman  14:34

Yeah, it’s run by the Sales Solutions team, which is Sales Navigator. And they identified this year, they identified 16 people last year, it was 21. So there’s a total of 37 of us right now, where I will tell you more as I learned, but it’s about us sharing how we sell so that we can help other people really succeed. So, they’ll push out content, there’s strategic content that will be developed to help the sales world inside of LinkedIn. I’m hoping they’re “Oh, I’m on a panel. I forgot about that.” So that’ll be fun a panel, the future of sales is women and AI or something like that. Now, that’ll be fun. So, next week, maybe we’ll talk about that. 

Bob Woods  15:27

Yeah, that would be great. Yeah, I mean, just, I think takeaways from that alone would be very valuable to discuss in an hour making sales social live next week. So yeah, wow. Lots of stuff happening. It’s, it’s just amazing. You are on a whirlwind tour right now. It seems like.

Brynne Tillman  15:53

Yeah, I’m having fun. But I’m also looking forward to getting back to our coaching of our clients, because I’m going to miss them this week. But you and Stan are going to do amazing for our holding up the fort. And I appreciate you so much. And our members are lucky to have you but I love to travel. But I really also love the day to day. 

Bob Woods  16:17

Yeah, absolutely. So we’re definitely not more in this next week. So, stay tuned for that. But in the meantime, thanks again for joining us here on Making Sales Social Live. If you’re with us live right now on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, or x, formerly known as Twitter right now we do this every week, including this week, we weren’t sure if we were gonna get on this week, but we actually decided to go ahead and do it. And I’m so glad that we did because there’s a lot of good information in this podcast or in this live which is going to be the podcast episode. 

If you’re listening to us on our podcast right now and you haven’t subscribed already, go ahead and do so that way you’ll be alerted when new episodes drop in you’ll see a lot of our all of our older episodes to more info on our podcast is available at socialsaleslink.com/podcast. As I said during the show, we do this and we do our Making sales social interview series. So both of those will be in the previous and of course the future ones already. So when you are out and about Be sure to make your sales 

Brynne Tillman  17:21

Social.

Bob Woods  17:22

Bye, guys, everyone bye bye. 

Outro  17:25

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