Anil and Rohan discuss how AI will transform the way sales professionals and managers work. They talk about how sales professionals must show agility, adaptability, and openness to the possibilities of AI dramatically improving productivity in their roles. They also talk about how AI will affect the attributes and characteristics that managers seek when hiring sales professionals and how AI automates more mundane tasks - freeing up managers to focus on training and coaching the sales reps.
Rohan, Eugene, and Shayne talk about what are the technical innovations driving the explosion in Large Language Models recently. Shayne talks about how much uncertainty there is about which applications LLMs will be good at - uncertainty that might take a decade to be resolved. Eugene brings his perspective on what a successful seller will look like in a world where synthesis, Mail outreach, summarization, and information retrieval are taken care of by LLMs. As they continue the conversation - they talk about trusting AI models, and whether we’ll ever move from AI-assisted human selling to human-supervised AI selling. Rohan, for one, believes that AI will never be able to completely replace the human seller because human beings want to talk to another human when they are making $10K purchases or larger. Lots of interesting stuff for folks interested in a plain English introduction to LLMs and future applications they might enable.
Major discussion topic: could AI eventually replace sales managers? Rohan and Cory talk about the limitations of AI in sales – without a shared language and systematic approach, AI suggestions may only offer one-off solutions instead of fostering a cohesive sales methodology that continuously drives better sales performance.
Rohan and Dave talk about the impact of AI at every point in the customer journey - top of the funnel, active deals, onboarding and engagement with existing customers, and retargeting/remarketing for closed lost deals.
Tammy and Arwa share their inspirational, but very different, journeys to tech sales leadership - Tammy started off as an SDR, while Arwa started in finance and accounting. Rohan, Tammy, and Arwa talk about how AI is likely to play a pivotal role in the evolution of the sales profession – liberating sales leaders and reps from mundane tasks and empowering them to focus on high-value activities. They also talk about the potential of AI to democratize sales by making it easier for people from all backgrounds to enter the profession. Big discussion topic - Does AI change the relative importance of: (a) prior domain knowledge, vs. (b) attitude: curiosity, commitment to learning, and discipline when it comes to success in sales? For example: are sales leaders more likely to hire people with limited prior domain expertise but a fantastic commitment to learning, because AI allows faster learning and education than ever before?
The challenge for enablement has always been to prove the ROI of their work and their indispensability to the org. Taryn shares her advice and perspective on how enablement professionals can use AI to make themselves more efficient and effective. Rohan and Taryn also talk about the transformations AI will bring to the entire revenue org, including the enablement role.
Ken and Rohan discuss the importance of embracing AI tools for personalized outreach and the challenges of capturing customer attention in a content-saturated environment. Ken shares his perspective on immersive and consultative sales and how that’s the future of sales.
David and Rohan talk about sales acceleration, automation, and the need for personalization in a tech-driven era. David shares that while transactional sales may lean towards automation, the complex sales that rely on relationships and high-value solutions still demand personalization. In a world where sales performance drives a revenue organization’s success, sales teams must leverage AI for engagement, coaching, and communication strategies.
Rohan and Cassidy discuss the potential of AI and LLMs to transform raw data into actionable intelligence, driving better sales performance. They talk about the various sources of data - customer conversations, emails, collateral, and assets - that can be used in combination with LLMs to drive better business decision-making. They also talk about the power of community influence in marketing and the need for a reimagined outbound approach in a world saturated with outbound from BDRs.
Chris and Rohan talk about the major areas of progress and improvement for LLMs in the future and the landscape of LLMs in 5 years. The multi-billion dollar question - what will the landscape of LLMs look like in 5 years? Do people expect a handful of dominant LLM Models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google, etc., or will there be an ecosystem of LLMs created by every enterprise? They also talk about AI Safety: what are people's concerns from an AI safety standpoint? Do people subscribe to the more general-purpose Alignment?
Rohan and Mark talk about Mark's fascinating journey at Outreach (outreach.io) - Mark was the first GTM employee at Outreach, and grew the business from a few leads on a CSV to $200M+ in ARR. Rohan and Mark also talk about: (i) “AI washing” - companies in a rush to claim “AI capabilities” by creating basic, marginally useful AI tools, (ii) data anonymization for training AI models, and much more.
Mike shares his journey at Google in 2003 when the company was still a relatively small start-up with around 1,000 employees. Rohan and Mike talk about the parallels between the rapid development we’re seeing now in AI and those early days at Google… the energy among builders, the possibility of whole new markets, and industries being created. Other topics they chat about: (a) Value capture: how can B2B AI startups effectively compete with incumbents and capture value, (b) AI safety: what does “responsible” use of AI even mean?
Mikita shares his vision of PandaDoc being the default location for deals to be conducted in 5 years and explains how PandaDoc plans to use AI to achieve that vision. Rohan and Mikita also talk about: a) the ups and downs of being a bootstrapped founder, b) what CROs are looking for in AI, c) data privacy considerations in using off-the-shelf models vs building in-house.
Rohan speaks with Jon Ziglar, CEO of Rent. Group (including Rent.com, Rentals.com, Redfin, among others), to discuss the role of technology and AI in the rental property market. They talk about Rent.’s adoption of a unique omni-channel strategy and how Rent. has been pioneering content creation and highly targeted social media campaigns powered by AI. Jon shares his vision for how AI adoption will create an even more healthy and robust rental marketplace - property owners can be incredibly efficient in scaling their businesses, and renters can more easily find properties suiting their needs.
Rohan and Godard talk about: - Godard’s entrepreneurial journey: how his first company, BigMachines nearly failed 3 years in, how he and his co-founders kept going - AI Monty - G2’s latest AI release, a chat-based assistant for evaluating and choosing software vendors - How AI is likely to lead to a complete overhaul in CRM and associate sales tech Why G2 is fundamentally a data company, and why every software company will be a data company in the age of AI - G2's proprietary data advantage and how it will continue to expand that data advantage
What does it mean to integrate AI and create a comprehensive, automated sales motion? How can we deploy AI at every part of the sales funnel? Rohan and Cody talk about these questions - and a lot more. They also discuss how Workato is evolving to be the system of action for AI.
4 years ago, Oleg was incredibly prescient about the future of AI in B2B on a podcast with a16z. Many of his predictions in that podcast - around how data models and workflows will be transformed in the years ahead with the explosion in AI capabilities - are now proving to be true. Rohan and Oleg talk about the future of sales tech, copilot, and autopilot use cases for Language Models, and how proprietary data is - more than ever - the biggest competitive advantage for companies.
Rohan, Shayne, and Kian chat about the impact of AI on the skills of the future. How should professionals think about the durability of skills in the age of AI? What skills should be double downed on? How can people be lifelong learners in an age of frenetic change? Kian also talks about T-shaped careers and how to balance breadth and depth in skills.