[SPEAKER_02]: This is The Sales Grady Podcast. [SPEAKER_02]: Hi, I'm Jeb Blunt, bestselling author, fanatical prospecting objection, sales EQ and ink. [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm here to help you open more doors, close bigger deals, and rock your commission check. [SPEAKER_02]: Alright, next up on the show is Shikib Arzalan, all the way from Pakistan, that's the first, so this fantastic, first one the show from Pakistan, tell me what's happening in your world.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just to give you a bit of context, how I landed up here, so I'm Shikib and I'm a city of a company and not related to sales domain in any way, but there was some development in the last two weeks that have put me on this chair in front of you, we ran a company by the name of Ultra Code since the last six years.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we have around 120 people working with us and we have a proper sales department that handles the resource augmentation part and we sell technical software resources to the US companies. [SPEAKER_00]: I felt that the sales department is doing good, but PASS CEO felt that we need to transition to a human less sales going forward.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what he meant was that I, as a technical head of the company, should move into the sales department and observe their working and introduce the AI agents in the flow. [SPEAKER_00]: So that less humans are required to achieve the same results. [SPEAKER_00]: So, for that reason last week, I said, okay, if I make to do this job, I need to read good people on the internet and I found your book.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's the first time I heard about you, and I went through the book during the weekend. [SPEAKER_00]: I was like, okay, this person has... [SPEAKER_00]: Very good ideas on this particular domains of the question that comes into my mind after this transition that I had is that the introduction of AI agent into different fields have raised the question that up to what extent we can involve them into the process.
[SPEAKER_00]: RCEO, and I was in talk with one another CEO of a company of big company in our country, and he was of the view that we can move to human less sales. [SPEAKER_00]: And that was very strange for me, like how can we achieve that? [SPEAKER_00]: But he had some prototype of an app, and he was saying that using this app, I'm going to remove all the humans from the loop, and I am going to introduce [SPEAKER_00]: a full-time AI agent takes sales.
[SPEAKER_00]: So RCEO was also impressed by the idea and he wanted me to do something similar in our company. [SPEAKER_00]: My question is that I'm going to do it, but what are your opinions on this aspect of sales that will it be the right idea to go human-less and up to what extent my personal opinion is that I should keep the human in the loop and don't remove them at all. [SPEAKER_02]: could I go to your website and click a button and buy it? [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, you can, okay?
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like a subscription-based service that I can just buy without having to. [SPEAKER_00]: Actually, we sell human resources like technical resources, developers related to the software field, and [SPEAKER_00]: we have this website of our company on which we have listed them also. [SPEAKER_00]: So both the ways are there. [SPEAKER_00]: You can come to our side unit. [SPEAKER_00]: You can click a button and you can avail the services.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the other way, we have to reach out to you and we ask you to avail ourselves. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, both things are [SPEAKER_02]: And if I'm going to buy overseas talent that's going to help me in my company, I'm the CEO of this company, and I'm going to bring you in and let you into my systems and help you build things for me or work through my IT problems, I'm going to want to talk to somebody.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no possibility that I'm buying services that involve you doing complex things in my systems without talking to another human being. [SPEAKER_02]: none whatsoever. [SPEAKER_02]: I use a couple of different apps where I've got people that work overseas for me, but the relationship was built. [SPEAKER_02]: In fact, I've been overseas to meet them personally, but they're a big part of my company. [SPEAKER_02]: I count on these resources like your resources for my organization.
[SPEAKER_02]: If it's complex, I need to do a people sooner or later, I'm going to talk to somebody. [SPEAKER_02]: If it's something that I can buy, [SPEAKER_02]: It's not complicated and doesn't require a lot of risk and I can push a button the easiest way to go humanless is marketing because all you got to do is just go buy enough paper click and you'll get enough people coming in and then they'll buy your stuff. [SPEAKER_02]: you'll need AI for that at all.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you can have a AI chat bot that if they got questions taken as, but you're just going to have to spend a lot of money to get people to come to you. [SPEAKER_02]: But again, you're going to have to have a compelling enough offering on your website that people can buy without needing you. [SPEAKER_02]: And by the way, that's been happening. [SPEAKER_02]: Since the early 1900s, at least in the U.S. where we had catalog sales, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So people could order something in the catalog and then we went to e-commerce and you can go to Amazon or wherever else. [SPEAKER_02]: I buy software all the time that I don't need a human to help me with. [SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I bought a $12 a month, voice activated AI software that they go to test it out. [SPEAKER_02]: I didn't need to talk to you human for that.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I were going to run that across my entire enterprise and it was going to cost, you know, $100,000, I'm probably going to talk to somebody. [SPEAKER_02]: So it all comes down to, what are you selling, what's the risk, what's the complexity? [SPEAKER_02]: And can people buy it without having to talk to someone to make sure that they trust it and they feel comfortable making the decision on their own.
[SPEAKER_02]: If you have all that, easy to go sell without humans because all you got to just bring them to your website. [SPEAKER_02]: If you're thinking that, [SPEAKER_02]: You're going to shift to a pure outbound play without human being. [SPEAKER_02]: You're not going to do it by voice. [SPEAKER_02]: The technology is trying to catch up, but it just doesn't exist in a way that's going to allow a voice to call somebody and have a conversation with them about something that's complex.
[SPEAKER_02]: Because as soon as they start throwing complex, [SPEAKER_02]: objections at them are doing have a conversation the AI is going to completely break down. [SPEAKER_02]: And the moment that they figure out that they're talking to an AI and that you fooled them, they're going to hang the phone up because nobody wants to talk to an AI. [SPEAKER_02]: There's tons of AI programs where you can just spam basically everybody. [SPEAKER_02]: Do you just send tons of email?
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's one of the reasons why email is a sales channel. [SPEAKER_02]: And to some extent, a marketing channel has really diminished in its effectiveness over the last 24 to 36 months. [SPEAKER_02]: because there's so much AI slot that's being thrown at people that they're basically just deleting everything. [SPEAKER_02]: And here's what's important about this. [SPEAKER_02]: The people that you're marketing to for your services are true decision makers.
[SPEAKER_02]: I got to have money and budget in order to hire you. [SPEAKER_02]: If you're spamming me, as soon as I figure out that an AI Senate and it's not too hard to figure that out, I'm going to block your URL completely. [SPEAKER_02]: And the reason I want to block you is because I realize that as the AI, the AI is relentless. [SPEAKER_02]: It's going to come back the next day, the next day, the next day.
[SPEAKER_02]: If I think it's a real person, I probably don't block it because I know that you'll give up in a couple of tries. [SPEAKER_02]: What'll happen and what a lot of companies have figured out is you take your whole list of people that you're marketing to.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you run them in your AI engine so you can go humanless and sales the AI is going to burn your list and less than 30 days and you're going to have no list left you'll probably get some results then everything's going to drop off the face of the earth so to try to sell this [SPEAKER_02]: humanless I think would be a massive mistake and just based on what you've told me what you sell. [SPEAKER_02]: That doesn't mean that you can't AI enhance the people that are selling now, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you've got people that are working for you now selling, what can you do to speed them up? [SPEAKER_02]: What can you do to get better information in front of them? [SPEAKER_02]: How can you feed them with data on particular signals, for example? [SPEAKER_02]: You can put them in front of buyers that you're selling to a sales like you're selling a lot in the U.S. [SPEAKER_02]: But how can you sell to buyers there that are ready to buy?
[SPEAKER_02]: We're looking for your services. [SPEAKER_02]: How do you combine that with what you're doing in marketing? [SPEAKER_02]: You may be able to shrink your sales force right by making them more efficient by getting in front of the right people at the right time. [SPEAKER_02]: And that's really where I would be focusing on is how can you AI enhance the sales people that you have? [SPEAKER_02]: This is just me.
[SPEAKER_02]: I fear if you went humanless for sales and you didn't have a marketing and PPC campaign that was robust to create lead gen that would come to your website and buy without having a human intervention, you're going to tank your company really, really fast. [SPEAKER_02]: You'll do a complete turnaround in 60 days. [SPEAKER_02]: If you get rid of all your salespeople, [SPEAKER_02]: getting them back is going to be hard. [SPEAKER_02]: You've already trained them.
[SPEAKER_02]: So the balance is how do I AI enhance the salespeople that I have so that they're more effective so that I can get more sales with less people. [SPEAKER_02]: I get that right and bigger sales with less people because you're feeding them the right information and the right data. [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that big sense, and that was also of the opinion that keeping human in the loop is important. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes. [SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it makes sense.
[SPEAKER_02]: And maybe that you get to a point where there are certain size hills that you turn over to AI. [SPEAKER_02]: This is a big economic sense to have a human involved. [SPEAKER_02]: But when you're talking about big projects, so you're working with your bigger customers, you gotta have people to talk with. [SPEAKER_00]: Okay. [SPEAKER_00]: Do I have time for one more question? [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: controversial question it can be, but in our part of the world in the subcontinent and the middle Eastern Asia region of the world, when the sales people do the calling to the clients in the US, there is a gap in terms of the trust. [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, you do a lot of phrases that there are bad actors in the are part of the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: They do the things the wrong way and ultimately the people in the US lose the trust on people from this part of the world are their salespeople. [SPEAKER_00]: They are doing the good job. [SPEAKER_00]: They also face the burn of being associated with a region.
[SPEAKER_00]: So my sales team, they usually come out with this, that we should ask someone in the US to be the face of the company, just to narrow that gap between the person representing the company and the client and the US. [SPEAKER_00]: So that the trust can be there, the client will trust the US person and we will provide the work. [SPEAKER_00]: As a company, we have always tried to provide a best work, but the region we are in affects [SPEAKER_00]: are overall sales numbers.
[SPEAKER_00]: So is there something that has been discussed before or we shouldn't move to hiding a person from US ultimately? [SPEAKER_02]: So when you have someone calling from your part of the world into the US, there's an immediate distrust because you don't sound like you're from the US, right? [SPEAKER_01]: So you don't have that same accent. [SPEAKER_02]: There's a couple of things. [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you can hire a couple of people in the US.
[SPEAKER_02]: Then you've got to manage people in the US from Pakistan, which could be tough, right? [SPEAKER_02]: Unless you have a presence in the US. [SPEAKER_02]: The better thing would be to think about when you're talking to people in the US, how do you differentiate yourself or change the way you're talking with them? [SPEAKER_02]: And I've been in your part of the world teaching over there. [SPEAKER_02]: I'm really focused on empathy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Right, so what happens is someone in your part of the world calls someone in the US and the person in the US is immediately taken back because you don't sound like me, similarly bias, right? [SPEAKER_02]: And it's always going to be there for human beings. [SPEAKER_01]: What you really want to focus on is how am I changing my pace and my tone, not necessarily my accent. [SPEAKER_02]: You are who you are, right? [SPEAKER_02]: You can't change that.
[SPEAKER_02]: But how are you being more empathetic so that you're asking better questions or you're slowing down a little bit or you're not just like pushing so hard Americans don't do very well with that so you could hire someone in the US, but that's going to be very hard is going to cost you a lot of money and you got to figure out how to manage them.
[SPEAKER_02]: or you can really focus on how are you interacting with the people that you deal with and you might even like to talk to some of your existing customers and say, what would we need to do if we were calling someone to lower the risk wall and get people to trust as more?
[SPEAKER_02]: some of its familiarity, some of it's showing up again and again, a lot of it's just slow and down and changing your pace, and I would say being authentic, which is really hard to just laugh at yourself and go, look, we do really, really good work here, and I just want a little bit of your time.
[SPEAKER_02]: Americans really respond well to that type of authenticity, and I think them is no more in your part of the world is that you have to be super serious and you have to [SPEAKER_02]: come off like super professional and you have to go right to business and that's what creates the distrust, right? [SPEAKER_02]: So I would really focus on training my people.
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you've got people in your team and I bet you do that are really good and sell a whole lot, tell your CEO, if you've got people that are really good in sell a whole lot, don't you get rid of those people, hold on to them. [SPEAKER_02]: But maybe you can use them to teach everyone else, what are they doing that is creating emotional connections quickly so that they're able to lower that wall and move into a conversation. [SPEAKER_01]: It's a barrier.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not going to change selling cross culture. [SPEAKER_01]: It's always going to be there. [SPEAKER_02]: But the one thing that's like always true no matter where you go. [SPEAKER_02]: I don't care where you are in the world. [SPEAKER_02]: If you smile, if you're polite, if you're yourself, if you're nice, if you're authentic, if you can laugh at yourself, I don't care where you are. [SPEAKER_02]: You can get along with other people. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, Jeff, for answering me and so much due to it. [SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you so much. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for jumping on. [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for buying my book. [SPEAKER_02]: I appreciate it. [SPEAKER_02]: And thanks for coming in from Pakistan. [SPEAKER_02]: I hope more people from Pakistan are listed and then we'll come on into it. [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: The more complex a decision, the more a buyer needs a human in the loop who can cut through the noise, build trust, and make it easy to say yes. [SPEAKER_01]: Buyers are looking for confidence in their decisions. [SPEAKER_01]: In complex decisions, we'll always require human beings. [SPEAKER_01]: The less complex a decision has, the more at risk a sales team is to automation.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, as you're planning out your next moves, always be sure to check out one more resource, one more article, and one more way to level up your sales skills so that you can be in the top 20% when it matters the most. [SPEAKER_01]: And this is why sales leaders all of the world are turning to sales gravy University. [SPEAKER_01]: so that they can help their teams level up the skills one lesson at a time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Go to salesgrabby.university to check out our entire catalog right now. [SPEAKER_01]: That's learn.sillsgrabby.com, learn.sillsgrabby.com, and I'll catch you next time on the salesgrabby podcast.