This is the second in a series of interviews I am conducting with subject matter experts and practitioners in the sales profession. I am examining where we are today with AI in sales and where we are going.
This interview is with Paul McGhee. Paul is the Director of Field Enablement at Groove, a leading sales engagement platform. Paul has a great perspective on all things sales as he’s had many roles associated with the function, including running sales enablement, carrying a bag, managing sales teams, running his own sales consultancy, and starting his own sales enablement SaaS company.
Here’s a summary of our conversation and below this summary is the full transcript of our interview.
1. The Sales Conversation is where the action is
Applying AI to analyzing sales conversations is the highest ROI opportunity for companies, Paul says. “To me the sales conversation is ‘where the action is.’ There’s nothing that can move the needle more on winning more deals (and faster)…The sales conversation is usually the low hanging fruit because everyone is telling a different story. There’s no consistency and the field often doesn’t have the context that you can give them to really tell a compelling story, to ask the right questions and, really add the value.”
2. Key account management is another great area for AI
A second opportunity for AI is in key account management (and upselling.) Paul gives an example from his experience where “I was able to sit down with a customer and show them “here’s all the usage. Here’s how many users, here’s your integrations, here’s where you’re getting value, here’s the use cases, here’s the productivity savings. Here’s your revenue increments. You’re getting lots of value but let me show you what a top 5% customer looks like.”
3. Forecast management needs to be overhauled
A third area ripe for AI is forecast management. “In my experience a lot of sales managers are keeping deals in their heads and they spend a lot of time discussing what they think is going to close and why. I think you can get AI to figure out what the likely outcomes are based on all risk factors and the market you’re selling into etc. and free up time for managers to coach the reps on how to add more value in their territory for better outcomes.”
4. Companies want “one throat to choke!”
Paul agrees that some companies have too many sales tools. He believes we are going to see a wave of consolidation in the sales tech space. “I think we’re going to see a race to see who can get the broadest, easiest to use most popular platform first. Some software firms in the sales tech space are going to grow by building and some buying, or some mix of both.”
5. Three reasons sales tool usage is so low
According to Paul, it’s hard to build software that is great for salespeople and also sells to their bosses, and it takes “a lot of energy and resources to carry out effective ongoing training and enablement of software, and many companies don’t make the investment”. Paul has been the founder of a sales tool company and held roles in sales enablement for many years.
Interview Transcript
Nigel: Where do you see AI impacting the sales profession the most in the next two to three years?
Paul: I think generally AI is going to be applied first where there’s a lot of sales-related data…where you have lots of prospects or lots of accounts, or you do lots of deals.
Ai is already being applied to sales conversations. I think that’s a really good use of AI. AI can watch the video of a sales call and look at the prospect’s body language, look at their head and what they’re looking at on the screen. The AI can figure out if you’re paying attention, if you’re surprised, what emotions you have, if you’re bored or if you’re engaged and can help coach the salesperson with that information or help a sales manager coach the salesperson. Ai can also tease things out of the conversation like which competitors are being asked about, how well the rep is delivering the message and follow-up steps.
To me the sales conversation is “where the action is”. There’s nothing that can move the needle more on winning more deals (and faster). In one of the company’s where I worked, we had roughly 500 reps having 300 conversations per year, with an average length of 30 minutes–that’s four and a half million minutes of sales conversations. So that’s a lot of data you can analyze with AI!
Paul: Another great area for the application of AI in my view is key account management. In one of my past sales roles, I had a thousand users at each of the 10 major accounts I managed and each of those users was probably taking a thousand actions in our platform a year. There were a hundred million actions in my territory every year. Again, that’s a lot of data you could analyze—ideal for AI.
Based on this kind of data I was able to sit down with a customer and show them “here’s all the usage. Here’s how many users, here’s your integrations, here’s where you’re getting value, here’s the use cases, here’s the productivity savings. Like, ah, here’s your revenue increments. You’re getting lots of value but let me show you what a top 5% customer looks like.”
A third area is forecast management. Because forecast management is so inefficient. In my experience a lot of sales managers are keeping deals in their heads and they spend a lot of time discussing what they think is going to close and why. I think you can get AI to figure out what the likely outcomes are based on all risk factors and the market you’re selling into etc. and free up time for managers to coach the reps on how to add more value in their territory for better outcomes vs. just clarifying the steps-to-close for late-stage deals
Nigel: I’m starting to hear, talk about “sales tech stack bloat”. Do you agree with that? Do you think there are too many tools?
Paul: Yes, I think there is “sales tech stack bloat” in many companies. I hear it too. When I was interviewing for my current role, one of the questions they asked me was, “what technology do you need to be successful?” Apparently, a lot of people were saying “I have to have this tool and that tool to be successful in this role”.
I think this ‘innovation / consolidation cycle is not a new pattern. It’s happened before in technology where you have a wave of innovation that creates dozens of point apps. Then later on these point apps get rolled up into suites so companies have one throat to choke.
I think we’re going to see a race to see who can get the broadest, easiest to use most popular platform first. Some software firms in the sales tech space are going to grow by building and some buying, or some mix of both. And some will stake off sales tech niches that they can own. Amdocs is $4B+ selling CRM just into the Telco space, Veeva is $2B selling CRM just into the Pharma / Biotech space etc. so niche strategies can have large TAMs.
Nigel: You’re the enablement space, why do you think sales tool usage is really low?
Paul: I have three thoughts.
My first thought is that when you build a new software company (which I’ve done), you have to make a really important decision right away. You have to decide “am I building this for the user or the person that’s going to be the purchaser? Am I going to spend a lot time and money thinking about how users are going to use this? Or do I need to make sure I can raise money? In which case, you focus on reports and dashboards and usability can suffer.
My second thought is that it’s really hard to make something simple to use. It takes a lot of time and money to make something that users find easy to use and helps them with their job. It’s easy to default to a hub-and-spoke and let the user hunt and peck for their next screen vs. a just-in-time workflow that presents just the information you need when you need it. To get there, you must have a very specific focus (which can make leadership nervous because they fear that market might not be big enough) and then you really need to understand exactly what that user needs and when.
Thirdly it takes a lot of energy and resources to carry out effective ongoing training and enablement of software, and many companies don’t make the investment.
Nigel: If you were running a sales team right now, what would be the two things you would, do to hit your number this year?
Paul: For me, the sales conversation is the biggest bang for the buck. Whether you do it with AI or without AI, I would start there. The sales conversation is usually the low hanging fruit because everyone is telling a different story. There’s no consistency and the field often doesn’t have the context that you can give them to really tell a compelling story, to ask the right questions and, really add the value. So I think that’s the big one.
After that I would look at key account management, as I discussed before.