Dashboard: Bringing AI into the Sales Process

[Music] Welcome to another 21 Hats dashboard. I'm Lauren Feldman. I'm here with Lance Tyson, who is CEO of the Tyson Group. Lance works with the leaders of small and midsize businesses to help them with their sales efforts. Welcome back, Lance. I appreciate you having me on, Lauren. My pleasure. It's been a while, but I always a pleasure to talk to you. Uh it's been a year and a half. It surprised me to to realize. Um, and uh, that's why I've been really looking forward to this conversation. I know sales is always important, but there's so much going on right now. Um, I just have a feeling there's probably a lot that's happened in the last year and a half since we last spoke and I'd love to catch up a little bit at this, you know, really interesting time. Um, you know, with the tariffs, with the uncertainty, there's so much going on. What are you seeing out there? Yeah, you know, it's kind of interesting. So, so our business, if you look at our our portfolio of clients, we, you know, we work from sports and entertainment to manufacturing, right? And um it's it's interesting because it it it's there's a lot of start starts and stops, right? It's almost like you're like a hockey player um starting and stopping. and and the the what I'm seeing is the stress on business leaders, especially around chief revenue officers and and and and any small business leader that's involved in the sales process. They're putting a lot more time into the sales process. In particularly, if it's a complex sales process, they're they're having to spend a lot of time drawing up game plans because um are we in a recession? Are we not in a recession? It depends what headline you watch. It depends what news outlet you watch. And and then different parts of the country actually seem to be dealing with it in all kinds of different ways. For some reason, the Midwest seems like it's it's it's in the Southwest feel anytime we're doing business there, it feels strong. You get to the east coast though, it it it's it feels sluggish, right? and and my my data points are really how much how much time people are investing in the sales process and and the other thing we just I I just did a workshop on this recently and and wrote some paper on it is we're seeing the sales process very fragmented right now right so and that fragmentation means there's there's certain conversations that happen and then there's a stop and then there's more it's more fragmented and then the stress that puts on a sales team is they got to really pay attention to the cruxes of the sales process or the buying process. Right? So, that's kind of what we're seeing a lot of and and um sales sales cycle times are are are extended in in some industries 15 to 20% longer than they normally would be. You know, I I talked to business owners all over the country. I I I hear what you're saying about the Midwest and the Southwest. that that kind of tracks with with with what I'm hearing. But I've heard from people all over who just cite the clients they were counting on are holding back right now. They're they're reluctant to move forward. They're they're waiting to see what's going to happen. Um do you have advice for someone in that situation? Yeah. Well, the you know the the exact quote that I hear um or to summarize the quote is we have the budget, but we're just going to hold hold. There you go. That's that seems to be the the consensus with the whole thing. I I think my advice my advice would be if I was getting really tactical um I would tell tell one of your clients that um don't get caught up in this fragmentation where you're accepting answers where they're emailing that or texting that like we're I I we're advising our sales team when we hear stuff like that. Hey, I'm not sure I really understand. Would you hop on a call with me for a few minutes? So you kind of debate it out, get them to defend, define, and explain or start the negotiation process because it's real easy to put folks off with the technology that's in place. So that's some of my my my tactical advice. My my strategic advice would be when you're looking at how you sell or how you do business or how you negotiate, make sure you're doing that as live as possible, right? You're actually planning those those those pieces out. um and you're planning for an additional 15, like don't be estimating your pipeline for a um what it typically is, maybe you're adding 15 to 20% length onto it a little bit. And the my other piece of advice would be, especially with these tariffs and in the different industries, you should be expecting to go into most of your deals, what's the lowest number you're going to take and expect people are going to ask you for a much better deal than they normally would. So, it's going to get the bargaining play. We're spending a lot of time. We do negotiation training or coaching just in that bargaining step of the negotiation process. The other side of that, I'm sure you're seeing uh especially from businesses that are directly affected by uh the tariffs is the need to raise prices. What are you telling clients about how to communicate those uh necessary price increases? Well, some of the some of the advice that that that we give is is a and we've been doing this for a couple years. Um, with inflation as bad as it's been, you know, for maybe five or six years now, we've been we've been talking about price increases are, you know, are reflecting inflation and and we've continued to advise down that lane, maybe adjusting the words and things like that. I I think a lot of buyers do realize that there's a I think we've been in that economy, that inflationary economy that's going in the double digits, you know. So I I I think that's the advice I would continue to give. It's cost of doing business, right? I I would tell you, you know, Lauren, there's a significant I was telling our we had our summit, our company, Tyson Group summit this week in in Columbus and you know, 30 people come in, you know, our employees from all around the country and one of my board members was there and he goes, "Hey, Lance, what do you think? You know, what do you think with all these tariffs and and in terms of this sales training business?" I said, "We're kind of in a good business because, you know, people we're gonna have to work with people on dealing with the price objection a lot, right?" So, but but I would kind of stick to that stick to my guns on that inflationary track a little bit and I wouldn't apologize for the cost of doing business. I think you're just going to have to lean into that friction and I'm not trying to give a pump up speech to it either. So, do do you think people should be open about price increases that are driven by the tariffs or I think in some cases they should. I I I think in some you know based off the economy based off the current conditions but you know Lauren I I if you go back to you know we we're coming out of co 21 22 right we're in 25 right now I would say in some cases like it's we've heard nothing for the last four years and we're in a recession or we're getting to it and I don't think that's changed with with any of the politics that's going on now or the tariffs. I feel like we've never really got out of that zone in in in some industries. So, I would lean into it where where I could. I don't think there's a overarching strategy to it, but I but I think in some industries that's a very acceptable thing to do. Um and and if you are going to increase your prices, you're doing that early and often. You're communicating it early and often. You mentioned among your clients that you have manufacturers. You also have a lot of sportsoriented businesses. I'm guessing these issues certainly apply to your manufacturers. Does anything affect the sports business? Yeah. Yeah, it does. I mean, you you know, you're you're the cost of, you know, say you buy bought a buy a corporate hospitality suite and you're, you know, in Washington or Baltimore. I mean, the that you may own the lease to the suite, but but it's not free food. those, you know, the entertainment value has gone up even higher somewhere, you know, in some cases based off the food and and you know, could be 10 to 15% increases in pricing that you didn't budget for the year before. So, you're you're absolutely seeing it in that and then then the the cost of an average ticket's going up in most cases to double digits based off, you know, what I read in sports business journals. So, I so I think it's it's it's across the board. just really is across the board and manufacturing depending on one of our big clients is in the plastics business and you know you I think petroleum costs are coming down a little bit but steel and some of their with their machinery steel steel's up so they're they're dealing with it across the board also and then parts right so parts are getting more expensive because the inventories are being depleted sure the other thing I wanted to talk to you about is uh artificial intelligence um generative AI I chat GPT. We talked about this a little bit a year and a half ago, but that's like six lifetimes in AI time. Um, where do things stand for you? What uh what's on your radar with that? It's kind of interesting, right? So, we our COO the just for our company in particular, our COO did start to look at um and she's she's really good. she started to look at all the different technology we were using and we had um we'd go into the INC 5 her and I had gone to the her name is Mooney her and I went to the uh Inc 5000 um awards last year and every other workshop was what's your AI strategy? What's your AI strategy? It felt like I had a a string tied around my finger and I came out I goes we better come up with a better AI strategy. We do this all the time. And and then we were sitting in our board meeting and one of my one of my board members, his name is Barry. He um he's a Barry Sanders, not to be confused with Barry Sanders. He's um he's a partner at the Mcrist Group, which is Stanley Mcrist's company. Um General Stanley Mcrist they're in the consulting business. And he said they were doing some research and one of the big consulting firms in in some of the business he was involved with had come back with a proposal in record time. And I won't name who it was, but but they they they said they were the worst salespeople, but the presentation was point on. And one of the things that they had done, one of the consulting firms is they kind of go into one system. Say it's like Microsoft or something. And and the way AI is pulling together all the IP inside of a company or all the thinking, right? It's really critical. Mooney came back and looked at ours and said, you know, we're on Google, we're on Microsoft, we're on Zoom, right? We're we have uh AI notetakers from Otter. Um we're on Slack, and we have nine different systems and we're not even leveraging AI like we should internally. So, that is one thing is is kind of making it all one system. Companies need to start looking at that. It's really important. They're Have you been able to do that? We launched the announcement on on um Wednesday and we are all in going to eliminate all the all the different services that we use right down to our CRM, right? And we're going to kind of go under one umbrella. I'm not going to endorse that company here, but um we're going to one system that collectively comes across everything from email all the way through because what happens is it captures, right? And then that becomes your internal brain, right? So imagine being able to produce a proposal in minutes based off everything you've done in the past, right? So you take the labor out of that. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to, but I'm okay if you want to name the company. Oh, it's it's Microsoft. We're going to go to Hopilot. Okay. If you didn't I I didn't want to and and Google had an option. There's a lot of options out there, but we were trying to go down to one system. And uh it it just kind of makes sense, right? And and see I I think with AI as a business owner, everybody has to I said this to you this in the pregame. It's not a secret. Okay? So like I I was on a call. I was in a big a big negotiation and we had we we do a diagnostic and I could tell the HR person was asking AI questions and taking the report of ours there's that we produced for him and putting it in AI and I I got him laughing. I said, "Hey, you're you're putting our report in AI and ask those questions." And he smiled. I go, "You know, I'm taking your questions and putting them in AI to answer. He goes, "That's really funny." I go, "Right." I go, "So, it's no secret, right? Like when at our meeting yesterday, one of my board members was sitting there and he was attending and he goes, you know, when you guys pitch something, they're they're going to your website and they could go to your website and say, "Hey, um, how would Tyson Group pitch us?" And it comes up with a proposal. And in some cases, you got to be watch. Are some of your pricing out there? Is your pricing out there? So, one of the things we did, we realized some stuff was out there and we didn't want it out there because we had we had a salesperson using a free version of Chat GBT. So, it wasn't it was it wasn't inclusive system and put it out in the thing and now now all of a sudden you get exposed. Now, we fixed it, right? We figured out how to fix it. But you got to be careful because and then and then the third thing with AI is since it's not a secret since the competitor may have it or the person you're selling to may have it, right? They're they're they can write an Academy Award-winning script. So can you, but can you give an Academy Award-winning performance? And the other thing we're starting to see is we're seeing an uptick in in kind of face-toface selling or or maybe not even face to face or something like on you and I are on like technology like a zoom or a teams or something like that because there's so much AI out there. It's actually pushing people to have conversations more because if not everybody's writing something perfect. The la the last thing though I will say because I'm I'm writing a new book and I had we we have a the number one sales researcher in the country that that works for Tyson group. His name is Dr. Adam Rap. He he he's at a high university and we were doing a re him and I were doing a podcast or a webinar and I put some things in some research into Claude. We were going back and forth from chat a paid version chat between Claude. We had 21 citations that were made up. O. So, you have to proofread. It does manufacture things because you got to be a really good you got to be really good at prompting, right? So, you got to be really good at asking the question. So, I didn't mean to to go on a tirade there, but No, no, no. Uh, that's a that's an important point. Um, I I I kind of love the sort of the arms race description you had of both sides of a negotiation using uh the same kinds of tools, if not the the same exact tool. Um, it I read an article the other day about a uh an AI system for answering restaurant phones. Um, just something to make it easier for the, you know, overworked staff of a restaurant to focus on the the customers in the house and not have to deal with a with a ringing phone. But every now and then they get calls from an AI service that wants to play make a reservation for it for its master. And sometimes the the systems freak out when they realize that it's two two bots talking to each other. Um that's almost like what you described. What happens when you do have both sides using the same technology in a negotiation? I understand that they're they're not talking directly to each other, but they are through the the you know the humans that are buying and selling. It sounds like you were suggesting you can get to a situation where these people are really good at dealing with each other. They may not be able to perform what they're promising though. Is that what the AI is ahead of the actual performance of the business? Yeah. Well, it could be and and and you know it's it depends what you're how how you do think about a couple ways. I I want to comment on one thing you said. There was a podcast that was done by Sam Elderman and Joe Rogan. Sam found it, Chad GBT and Joe Rogan, obviously people know who he is, podcaster, and it was a AI version of both of them talking to each other about AI. Oh, I didn't hear about that. Oh, it was phenomenal. And you you wouldn't even know it wasn't them. It was the AI version of both of them. It was on Joe's podcast and they were talk the whole conversation is how would somebody be good on AI? like who are you and in the tendency Sam had said that that it's it's somebody that's very creative is always going to do best on AI because it's going to know how to prompt a very creative person will know how to prompt better than like even an engineer right because because you're narrowing questions down you're hitting it with different variations of questions so you kind of like green light a lot and that's and that's how AI behaves the best but the the people that are using AI like in a negotiation against each other. It's it it's you know, are you putting things in you can't you can't deliver on, right? But I think the the real negotiate the what what's going to happen is you're going to have to really get really good at like the process. You're going to have to have a good process by which to negotiation negotiate with or go back to what I said like there are certain things in a sales process or negotiation that have to be dealt with live and the tendency with AI since it's a machine learning and it then it's a than it shows in text more often than not that's how we see most people at least in our industry is using it to build proposals and things like that or how to respond. you're still going to have to respond in certain cases live with humans. So, um, and and I don't see that going away. In some cases, I think it gets more you get more efficient, but you're still going to have people wanting to do business face to face um, and more complex selling and things like that. Now, I agree with you on the the menial tasks like answering the phone, taking orders with stuff like that. I I think that go that will go to AI. um much like if you're selling an airplane ticket, you don't really talk to anybody about an airplane ticket anymore, right? So, um that's that's where some of that's going. Do you see businesses that are trying to eliminate actual sales humans um and replace them with AI? I see companies looking for ways to reduce anything that's labor intensive like for even in our own company and and I'll answer the the the sales human thing in a second also. Even our own company, we're looking to how do we how do we use AI to build proposals that take a lot of labor? How do we use AI to um not have three different people on a call, right? When we may need two to kind of summarize some things, right? There some of our customers in sports entertainment, we're seeing some of the smaller sales um that are made by by people. How do how do they get AI to you do that? Now, that's not new because I think you see that in a lot of cases. You see it in selling airplane tickets. You see you see that in selling theater tickets and things like that. I think it's the more expensive stuff that you're going to want to talk to somebody a little bit because it becomes a little bit more believable, right? Um, but there's definitely a shift. You can definitely see that shift. If somebody's listening to this who hasn't really taken the leap yet, that they I talk to business owners, I know they're out there who know this is where the world is going, but they just haven't been able to uh get started. If somebody wants to try to start bringing AI into their sales process, do you have any suggestions on how to get started? Maybe one, two, three steps to to to get going? Yeah. Well, first of the first thing I'd say that to anybody who has listened that's kind of hesitating, don't be the last of the buggy whip people, right? You know, there was a group of people out there that said that car thing is really not going to take take root. I'm going to keep selling saddles and buggy buggy whips, right? So, so I would say number one, like don't be that person. This is here. It's here to stay. You're going to kind of embrace it at some level. I I would say number one, I I would start looking at if you're not using in your business, I'd start getting some paid versions of some things. And you mentioned it earlier, you had a an associate of yours or somebody that you know that that uses AI to help them make decisions. I do that all the time. I I use AI to help me plan. It's like having a couple PhDs there and then it helps me summarize things when my eyes get tired to read, right? Um, you can compare and compare contrast things. I would buy AI if you haven't. I would get some AI on my phone. You can chat GPU on your phone, a paid version, and ask AI how they would how you should use AI in your business. So, I start testing that out immediately. I think that, and as silly as that seems, I think you'd be kind of blown away. How about specifically for sales? Yeah, for sales. I think I think where I I'd be using AI if you're um right now I' I' I'd start with like email campaigning and things like that. You can see we we've been using AI a couple years for to help us build some good like um social media messaging, right? Um I think I think that's warranted and and you you don't have to at first maybe you take some baby steps with it on some posts and then you have it build it out. I I know we've reduced our our marketing headcount because we use AI so much um but we still have the creatives to build build certain things and I know they use AI to do do some do some work also. So, I think I think they're they're things I would really be looking at, Lauren, I think are important, right? I I think I think I think AI can affect your business in two ways, right? You you can be efficient, not effective, and you can be effective and not efficient. I think AI at some level helps with both. You mentioned social media. Maybe this is showing my bias as a uh a lifelong journalist. Um, but that's one area. I mean, I I really get it for things like proposals and anything where you're um bringing together thinking and analyzing, but when I use it to create language that I'm going to uh share with other people, I I'm usually disappointed. I feel like it it it just smooths out the rough edges. It it's professional, but it's not interesting. How do you think it works with social media? Has it been effective for you? Yes. So, so being an example and and like I'm with you. I'm a purist. So, I'm not, you know, I've written three books. That's my IP. They're my stories and things like that. I I I I gave a talk um not long ago actually in your neck of the woods in Atlantic City at a casino for a pretty large um healthc care organization like Senior Living and things like that. And somebody wrote me a a question on social, right? And I was kind of on a plane on the tarmac and and I put the question in AI and I said, "Answer this like I normally would answer. Make it short. Make it sincere." Now remember, my AI has taken a lot of my input and knows how I kind of write. So I I had it and I was just toast at the end of the day. And but I but I know I'm smart enough to know social media. You got to kind of answer in a timely fashion. You lose your audience a little bit. And I had it it framed it out and I added some things to it and I took some things out. I massaged a couple things. It just helped me. I had a little writer's block. I was tired. I'm I'm double nickels this year. So I'm 55. So not as fast as I am sometimes. So I would say, is that cheating? No, because I actually took the time as far as I'm concerned to put it in there and help me think a little bit and massage it. So I think it helps with stuff like that. I'm That's how I use it, too. And they were my words. They were my words and I but I have no problem saying it. I'm I'm not automatically responding to people. I'm thinking about what they said. I'm looking at it. I'm spending time with it. Right. That makes sense to me. I I hate doing a first draft. And I find that AI can be tremendously helpful with that first draft, but then I want the final version to to feel like it came from me to be you to really be you. I have done I've messed with it a couple times where I kept prompting it to write it more like me. And I looked at how many times I prompted I said, "Damn, I should have just wrote it." You know what I mean? So, I've I've been down that road a couple times, but I I I think it saves some time. Like I I use it a lot to I read some things. I'm like, "I don't know if I quite understand that." And I take a picture of it and I said, "What does this really mean?" And what I what I really use it for as a personal coach is I live I I learn the best with a metaphor, an analogy, a simile. And when I put something complex and I'll say, "Give me an analogy of that because that's how I teach, too." And I find it wonderful for that. I just I live in the world. I love analogies. I love a short story. I love a point like that. So, I I I do a lot of that just to help me. It helps me retain things. That makes sense. Lance Tyson is CEO of the Tyson Group based in Columbus. Lance, uh, let's not let another year and a half go past. No way. That's I I'm so for fortunate to have a relationship with you over the years and I appreciate you and thanks for having me on. My pleasure. Thank you, Lance. Have a great week, everybody. [Music]