Episode 320: Digital Sales Enablement and AI Integration

Intro

0:00:18 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman, and me, Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. This episode of the Making Sales Social podcast is brought to you by Social Sales Link, the company that helps you start more trust-based conversations without being salesy through the power of LinkedIn and AI. Start your journey for free by joining our resource library. Welcome to the show.

0:00:00 – (Brynne Tillman): I’m really excited about my guests today. Graham Hawkins is here all the way from Melbourne, Australia to talk about digital sales, enablement AI, and things that are coming down the pipe.

0:00:16 – (Bob Woods): Welcome to the Making Sales Social podcast featuring the top voices in sales, marketing, and business. Join Brynne Tillman and me – Bob Woods, as we each bring you the best tips and strategies our guests are teaching their clients so you can leverage them for your own virtual and social selling. This episode of the Making Sales Social podcast is brought to you by Social Sales Link, the company that helps you start more trust-based conversations without being salesy through the power of LinkedIn and AI.

0:00:55 – (Bob Woods): Start your journey for free by joining our resource [email protected]. library welcome to the show.

0:01:07 – (Brynne Tillman): Welcome back to making sales social. I’m really excited about my guest today. He is a top voice on LinkedIn and the founder of Sales Tribe. Graham Hawkins is here all the way from Melbourne, Australia to talk about digital sales, enablement AI, and things that are coming down the pike. And I’m really excited. Welcome to the show.

0:01:36 – (Graham Hawkins): Thank you, Brynne. Thanks for having me. I’ve been watching and looking at your journey for a long time and am very excited to be here.

0:01:43 – (Brynne Tillman): I am very excited to have you here. This is going to be so much fun. Before we dive into your expertise and talk about a little secret that you have coming down the pike, which I’m very excited to talk about, we always ask the first question, “What does making sales social mean to you”?

0:02:03 – (Graham Hawkins): Yeah, listen, I began my journey on social in a serious way, Brynne, back in about 2017 when I wrote and released this book, “The Future of the Sales Profession”. And it was interesting for me because I had no real idea about the power of LinkedIn. But I had all of this content from the book. I had some insights and some thought leadership that I wanted to share. Back then, I began just writing long-form articles, and I started to post some of those articles on LinkedIn. I got the usual kind of response, which was not much, but I kept at it, and I kept writing these articles and kept pursuing the opportunity to build the network around the content that I was putting out on LinkedIn. So, that began my journey on the platform. And, look, I know it sounds a little bit over the top, perhaps, but LinkedIn and the whole social thing has, it’s changed my life, not just my career. It really has broadened my horizons.

0:03:04 – (Graham Hawkins): It’s allowed me to build a business, which we do today, which is a global business, and we do it all via social and LinkedIn. So, yeah, it’s been a huge benefit to me personally to get on that journey. And although when I first began, I didn’t really know what I was doing, I was doing a lot.

0:03:23 – (Brynne Tillman): It was all like new. We had to make it up as we went along.

0:03:28 – (Graham Hawkins): Yeah. And I know you did the same thing, right? At about the same time.

0:03:34 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. So it’s amazing. So, I definitely want to dive into the digital sales enablement, but I want to just share where I started and then it will easily bridge into what you’re doing today. So when I started teaching LinkedIn, sort of tangential to my sales training, and I got a local reputation for teaching LinkedIn. And “Aramark”, which was a big company in Philadelphia, went through the challenger sale.

0:04:13 – (Brynne Tillman): And then they went out to the market and said, we asked Brent Adamson and his partner, Matt Dixon, what do we do now? And they said, go get some LinkedIn training. So locally, I won’t tell the whole story. But they brought me in and they said, okay, here’s this book. I never heard of it. It’s eleven or twelve years ago now, maybe twelve years. Here’s this book. We just had this training. We need to be challengers in the marketplace and we need our content strategy to be challengers.

0:04:53 – (Brynne Tillman): We need our messaging strategy and we need our LinkedIn strategy. So can you go build this? And I said, sure, I’d love to. And then they told me how much. And I said, great. If I build it for that price, I get to keep it, right? And they said, yeah, sure. So that was the birth of my LinkedIn journey. Now, I say this only because Brent Adamson is my absolute, like, most amazing, doesn’t know he’s my mentor in the world and you are now working with him. So the bridges, tell me what you’re doing. My buddy Brent.

0:05:38 – (Graham Hawkins): Yeah, look, Brent and I like you. I was watching Brent from afar once Matt and Brent published the Challenger sale. Yeah, I fell in love with the book. I then fell in love with the challenger customer, and that really changed the direction of my career in sales, too. So, yeah, I’ve always been a fan. And only a couple of years ago, Brynne, and I got connected on LinkedIn as you do, and we started to talk about how everything was evolving and what was coming next.

0:06:08 – (Graham Hawkins): And then AI came along. And so right now, Brent and I are working together on an AI-guided selling platform that we’re going to bring to market together later this year. And so, yeah, I’m honored and privileged and excited to be working with Brent because he’s such a. A wealth of knowledge and insight and just a real person as well. So, yeah, I’m thrilled to be in a business with him now and watch this space.

0:06:35 – (Brynne Tillman): So tell me a little bit about the challenge this guided platform solves.

0:06:41 – (Graham Hawkins): Yeah, well, look, it’s a number of challenges, right? This won’t be any surprise to you or any surprise to some of the world’s great sales leaders who are listening to your podcast. But when I go around, as I have done now for the last eight years in my capacity as the CEO and founder of SAS Tribe, I’m helping businesses with digital sales enablement, consulting, advisory, and training. And I keep stumbling across the same real, really big challenges.

0:07:09 – (Graham Hawkins): And there’s about three of them, really. The main one is in this day and age, when B2B buyers are blocking, as in blocking traditional forms of outreach. The big challenge that most salespeople have is how to start a conversation with an educated buyer who no longer wants to meet them in person. Right. So how do I just get attention, get a seat at the table? That’s the big challenge number one.

0:07:35 – (Graham Hawkins): The second big challenge that CROs and sales leaders tell me about is that their salespeople are often guessing their way through deals. They’re not quite sure about what they should do next. And so, you know, having that constant coach or guide or mentor that can help you is a big challenge now, because, frankly, CROs are so time-poor. Then there’s the third one, which is no surprise to either of us. But most salespeople are spending too much time chasing the wrong types of customers.

0:08:09 – (Graham Hawkins): So sales qualify. Right?

0:08:14 – (Brynne Tillman): They get someone that picks up the phone and they think they have a lead.

0:08:17 – (Graham Hawkins): Happy ears. We put the happy ears on.

0:08:19 – (Brynne Tillman): Happy ears. I love that.

0:08:22 – (Graham Hawkins): Yeah, we put the happy ears on. We want to think that everything’s an opportunity, but invariably we waste so much company time and resources talking to the wrong fit customers. And I’ve done it myself. We all do it. So, yeah, sales qualifying. The thing that really hit home to me was when I read Matt Vixen’s next book, The Job Effect. And he said, that book, as you know, he said, 40% to 60% of deals end in no decision.

0:08:53 – (Graham Hawkins): So we have to be really clever about how we qualify, which accounts are worthy of our time, our investment.

0:09:02 – (Brynne Tillman): I love that.

0:09:04 – (Graham Hawkins): Yeah. So we’re trying with the. With the business that Brent and I are building now, this AI-guided selling platform, which is, by the way, called queues. And just so you know, that’s Q double Os. It’s a play on words. It’s cues and prompts. It’s nudges in the flow of work.

0:09:23 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, I love that. So will that be integrated into the CRM or how it is? Oh, how exciting.

0:09:35 – (Graham Hawkins): Yeah, we’re busy trying to make all of this work. Now, technically, we’ve got a wonderful technical co-founder guy named Darren Watts, who is based here in Sydney. And so he’s busy building the platform with some really smart technical people behind the scenes. And we want to have it integrated into the CRM so that it can start to become predictive machine learning. We’ve got a large language model now that’s proprietary and ring-fence, so you can, initially, you could start a call with Brent Adamson if you want. So I often say to people, imagine having Brent sit beside each one of your sellers all day, every day.

0:10:14 – (Brynne Tillman): Amazing. That’s very cool. Yeah, I mean, I’m very excited about that. And if you have an affiliate program, make sure you tap me on the shoulder.

0:10:25 – (Graham Hawkins): We will be, for sure.

0:10:27 – (Brynne Tillman): So you have a reputation amongst the social sellers as being a matchmaker of salespeople and sales positions. And when people think about, I guess, career transitions for sales, it’s synonymous with sales tribe and graham. So talk to me a little bit about how you fell into that. Cause, it’s hard, this. I think it’s one of the hardest things to do, is find the right sales fit for a company, and you do it really well. So share some of your magic.

0:11:08 – (Graham Hawkins): Well, listen, you’re right. We did fall into that, because originally, when I launched the sales tribe in March 2017, the idea of the tribe was to create a community, right? So I was. My vision with the business was to help salespeople upskill for this new buyer-led era that we’re now in. And so I built this community platform, and we had a whole bunch of people from around the world sign up and join the platform.

0:11:34 – (Graham Hawkins): And then it became obvious that one of the things that’s top of mind with sellers, of course, is their career progression and new opportunities. And so we started to. Just for free, we started basically connecting people with some of our business clients and me. Then we realized we had this kind of two-sided marketplace happening to some extent. But, Brynne, the follow-up to that story is, although we did that for a few years, then we set up a separate kind of recruitment practice, traditional recruitment.

0:12:04 – (Graham Hawkins): We’ve since gone away from that model, and we’re now focused more exclusively on doing sales enablement. Digital-first data led to selling with businesses and not as much connecting people.

0:12:18 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, so I didn’t realize. So let’s talk about that. Let’s switch gears and talk about that. First of all, how did you make that transition and why?

0:12:31 – (Graham Hawkins): It’s an interesting one. Because, when we first started the business eight years ago, we were very focused on small and medium enterprises. So that was our ideal customer, going and helping scale-ups and startups get to that next level, and how to grow a SaaS company, that sort of thing. But what happened was quite by accident, is we all of a sudden started to get inquiries from enterprises, big multinational corporates.

0:12:58 – (Graham Hawkins): And so we won Lloyd’s Bank in London, and then we were dealing with S and P Global in New York. And so we went from operating with small companies to all of a sudden we’re now working with some very, very large multinationals. So that made us think about the direction of the business. And when you’re dealing with, in some cases, 1502 thousand salespeople organizations, that’s a totally different business model. So we did pivot somewhat towards the enterprise, and now we’re working not exclusively, but more at the enterprise level than we are with the smaller companies.

0:13:36 – (Brynne Tillman): Wonderful. So what is the challenge that they’re facing that this strategy fixes?

0:13:45 – (Graham Hawkins): Well, the sales tribe strategy is almost exclusively the social stuff that you talk about, right? It’s that same, you know, I keep saying field sales were fine when the buyer resided out in the field. And in the old days, I would get in the car and I would go out and meet the buyer. Of course, I know now the buyer resides online. All of those initial touch points are happening in the dark and they’re happening online.

0:14:12 – (Graham Hawkins): So what I’m saying to our clients is your salespeople have to show up online and create an incredible first impression at that very first touch point, all the stuff that you do bring. Right? So we’re out there helping businesses understand, getting visibility, creating that attention that you need, and then showing up online in a way that creates the right first impression. Once you do that, as you know, then at least you have a chance to initiate a conversation, which is what we all live on.

0:14:46 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, it really is starting those trust-based conversations without being salesy, so.

0:14:51 – (Graham Hawkins): Correct?

0:14:52 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, absolutely. So you talk a little bit about data-led selling. That’s something I actually don’t do a lot of, and I’m more of a strategy around, you know, but I don’t use a lot of data. So I’d love to learn from you, but share a little bit about how your digital is data-led.

0:15:17 – (Graham Hawkins): Well, yeah, look, it’s. I mean, when you look at what’s happening in the world, I think someone said the other day, the amount of data that’s been created in the last two years is more than the rest of the whole of history. Right? So, yeah, we’ve got this explosion of data that’s being created from all sorts of sources. And, you know, whenever we as consumers or business-to-business buyers start the process of looking for suppliers and we start hitting websites, we start doing the research, et cetera, to buy something, we’re effectively leaving little footprints in the snow.

0:15:54 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, that’s right.

0:15:56 – (Graham Hawkins): Everything we do is traceable now. And so when I talk about data-led selling, I’m talking about that idea that your buyer is doing things. You need to be able to collect and synthesize all of that data and then make informed decisions about what you should do next. So, yeah, this idea of buyer intent. Buyer sentiment. I hate saying this, Brynne, but it’s true. I’ve wasted so much of my career working with low-intent or no-intent buyers, and I’ve tried to convert no-intent buyers, passive buyers, into active buyers, and that’s just a waste of time now. So I think we can use it.

0:16:40 – (Graham Hawkins): We can use all sorts of different sources of information and data to make better-informed decisions about where we spend our time.

0:16:48 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, I guess they do a little of that. I just never thought of it as data-led. I. When I think of data, I think of numbers. Right? So that’s interesting. But it’s all data. You’re right. It’s all insights. Are you an active user of Sales Navigator?

0:17:05 – (Graham Hawkins): Sure am. I have this belief, and I’m sure you do, Brynne, as well, that if you’re in sales in 2024 and you don’t have a sales navigator, I seriously don’t know how you can compete.

0:17:17 – (Brynne Tillman): So I agree completely. What do you think of account IQ?

0:17:22 – (Graham Hawkins): I love it. I love it. I’m sure you’re the same. I get excited. I geek out on this stuff, but I can see where it’s going to, like account IQ, you know, LinkedIn, anywhere. It’s like now all of a sudden, I don’t need to go and download the annual report and read the annual report. It’s all surfaced to me right there in the IQ. I love it.

0:17:46 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah, me, too. I think it’s a game changer, and I can’t wait until it’s on mid-size companies as it’s rolling out. But I think it’s absolutely brilliant. So I love that. So this has been absolutely fabulous. My second to last question is, what question should I have asked you? I didn’t.

0:18:11 – (Graham Hawkins): I think we’ve covered most of them, but, yeah. The thing that’s top of mind that we touched on earlier is these new platform queues that we’re bringing to market. And, yeah, with Brent Adamson’s help and all of his IP and knowledge and research, we’re going to have a platform. I think that’s going to be pretty useful for a lot of sales teams. Sales teams that are grappling with qualifying, that are grappling with, you know, the buying center being bigger. Now, how do we get across all of these differences?

0:18:41 – (Brynne Tillman): 6.8?

0:18:43 – (Graham Hawkins): Yeah, well, 6.8 to 11.6 or 11.2 or something.

0:18:47 – (Brynne Tillman): Now has it really? I’m still stuck in this. It went from 5.7 in the challenger sales to 6.8 in the Challenger customers. And now there are eleven buyers.

0:18:59 – (Graham Hawkins): Yeah. Yeah.

0:19:00 – (Brynne Tillman): Wow.

0:19:02 – (Graham Hawkins): When you think about that and unpack that as we do with our LinkedIn training. Right. And you do as well, it’s like, well if it is true, let’s be conservative, let’s say there are seven or eight people involved in the purchase decision-making process, how do I make sure I’m visible to all of those people? How do I get my message to all of those people? Now that’s, it’s a real challenge.

0:19:23 – (Brynne Tillman): Yeah. I mean, that’s an area that we really focus on. How do you socially surround an organization? So, yeah, it’s really, it’s great. Well, so thank you. My last question is, how can people get in touch with you?

0:19:38 – (Graham Hawkins): LinkedIn.

0:19:39 – (Brynne Tillman): Really?

0:19:40 – (Graham Hawkins): Yeah, that’s me, that’s my number one place, LinkedIn. But, yeah, grahamalestribe.com, that’s pretty straightforward as well, if you want to email me. But, yeah, look, I’m on LinkedIn like you are, and pushing my message out as, as intelligently as possible. I don’t, I don’t buy into the whole spray and pray thing. Of course.

0:19:58 – (Brynne Tillman): Right, yeah.

0:20:00 – (Graham Hawkins): Right message, right buyer, right stage of the buyer journey on the right platform via the right channel. All of that makes sense, doesn’t it?

0:20:07 – (Brynne Tillman): Oh, that makes wonderful sense. And I’m very excited to see your AI brilliance and excited to help you tell the world.

0:20:18 – (Graham Hawkins): Well, I appreciate it, and we will be coming back to you as an affiliate partner at some point.

0:20:22 – (Brynne Tillman): I love it. Oh, gosh. Hands down. Absolutely thrilled. Well, thank you so much, Graham, for being here and for everyone else listening when you are out and about. Don’t forget to make your sales social.

0:20:40 – (Graham Hawkins):  100% thanks, Brynne. Nice to chat.

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Outro:

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