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“I fell into a job in sales which… is a really common story” - Leslie Venetz
We recently sat down with Pod Ambassador and all-around GTM guru Leslie Venetz to get her thoughts on the state of sales with regards to a major trend: artificial intelligence (or "AI").
Like most sales professionals, Venetz did not see herself in the field when she first started out.
Fresh out of college, Venetz was applying to jobs with non-profits, field marketing, and things that she’d previously done. These roles were offering as little as $28,000 a year. Being the person that she is, Venetz wasn’t going to break her back only to make an extra few bucks per hour every year.
She ultimately took a job with a global business intelligence firm where she got her first sales experience. Starting out with sales, Venetz felt she would “just do sales” until something better came along.
As you might expect, Leslie fell in love with the craft and developed a real passion for selling. All these years later, she can’t imagine doing anything differently.
I think that folks deeply underestimate Exactly how much sales has changed in the last 15 years. - Leslie Venetz
In Venetz’s first job out of college, she worked in what she described as a very “boiler room-esque environment”. There was a stack of physical leads and she was instructed to smash the phones with cold calls. The proposals Venetz was sending out were so long, they had to be faxed to their prospects because they were to too large for email!
Venetz feels people underestimate how much progress has been made in the last 10 to 15 years in terms of technology that enables sellers to be more strategic, more intentional, and more buyer centric.
In working with her customers and sales teams, Venetz hears a tremendous amount of talk about AI, but sees that “very, very, very” few reps are actually using AI. When asked, reps often respond that their “use of AI” really starts and ends with a conversational intelligence bot (e.g. ChatGPT).
At this point, some sellers might be using AI-powered tools like Regie or Lavender, which Venetz feels like are great for automating certain “jobs to be done”, but only scratch the surface of what AI can do for sellers.
Reps should really be looking at their processes or information management and asking “how can I automate this?”. AI might not have all the answers, but Venetz argues it can be doing more in a seller’s day-to-day than is the average right now!
The best use cases for AI are assistive, not replacing. - Leslie Venetz
Venetz feels that folks in sales are getting into trouble when they try to use AI to completely replace other forms of tech or processes. In practice, this might look like “sending out a bunch of really crappy emails at scale.” This could also be things like automating voicemail sending where unfortunately the voicemails already weren't good to begin with.
AI is still brand new, Venetz feels there is a need for a “change management motion” to truly take advantage of it. There were early adopters and now we’re reaching a “peak of the wave” where we’ll see the best applications of the technology make it’s way into the mainstream.
Venetz feels like there are a lot of people that are afraid or unsure about this new technology. These individuals might want to let other people figure out what’s useful or safe about the technology before they decide to really dive in and figure out how to use it.
We have to acknowledge that as cool as AI is, not everybody's going to be an early adopter. - Leslie Venetz
As with any big wave, there is a large number of options to choose from. Venetz agrees that it's hard to know where to start. Combined with the fact that very few sales organizations have enablement, it’s difficult to see how to get started.
We are in agreement that AI is here to stay and that there is an opportunity for the sales world to better adopt and leverage this powerful new technology.
Many sellers are using AI for conversational intelligence or simple outreach copy generation. While good applications, AI tooling is evolving and can offer much more to sellers. As Venetz points out, this is not about replacing a bunch of existing processes or tools, but looking at how to layer AI on to make it faster & easier for sellers to manage their book of business.
This is exactly the approach we take with Pod. It leverages your existing sales data, adds the right amount of AI analysis and enablement, and offers up the perfect next step to take it to the next level. Try it for yourself!
