Welcome to SALES with ASLAN, a weekly podcast hosted by ASLAN Co-founders Tom Stanfill and Tab Norris, geared at helping sales professionals and sales leaders eliminate the hard sell. At the end of the day, we believe that selling is serving. ASLAN helps sellers make the shift from a ‘typical’ sales approach, to one that makes us more influential because we embrace the truth that the customer’s receptivity is more important than your value prop or message.

The goal of these interviews is to spotlight various experts in the world of sales and sales leadership – sharing informational stories, techniques, and expert interviews on the sales topics you care about.

The following are notes from EP. 195 Leveraging AI To Skyrocket Your Sales Performance

In this episode Tom sits down with top-performing sales rep and account manager from Cisco, Drew Armitage, to discuss how he's leveraging AI to skyrocket his sales performance.

Drew dives deep into his daily routine, revealing how AI tools help him:

• Uncover valuable insights about clients and their needs beforehand so he can tailor his approach and maximize his chances of success.
• Gain a deeper understanding of their pain points by analyzing data and past interactions, allowing him to craft more relevant and compelling pitches.
• Automate repetitive tasks like data entry and scheduling, freeing up valuable time for building relationships and closing deals.

They also discuss essential tips for anyone just starting their sales journey. They praise the discipline of hard work while you are building your career in sales and how important it is to seek feedback regularly. This episode is a must-listen for anyone in sales, whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting your career. Discover how AI can be your secret weapon to assist in sales. 

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00:16
Tom Stanfill
I'm your host, Tom Stanfill. And if you're familiar with the show, you know, from time to time, we like to invite sellers from the front line, sellers who are successful, who are crushing it, that come on the show and talk about what's working for them, what are their challenges, and how are they overcoming those challenges. And today we have drew Armitage on the show, who's one of the top performing reps for Cisco, who happens to be one of the most, you know, respected sales organizations in the world, and he's going to talk about what's working for him, and specifically, how is AI making his job easier and helping him connect with executives. I hope you enjoy the show, my friend. I am super excited that you are willing to take time out of your busy schedule. You know, what are you running?

01:00
Tom Stanfill
Are you running Cisco now? Is that what you're doing? You're running Cisco? All of.

01:04
Drew Armitage
No, not yet. Not aspirationally, yes, but functionally, no. So, thankfully, functionally.

01:14
Tom Stanfill
So we met, you know, for our audience. We met at my daughter. You guys are friends of my daughter, and were hanging out at Easter, and I think I had just come out of. I just spoke at a conference on AI, and then you and I got to talking about AI, and I thought, I got to have you on the show. Not only are you an incredibly successful seller from one of the largest sales and most probably most respected sales organization in the world, I mean, that's possibly true, but you also. What you were doing with AI and how were playing, you know, at Tyndall's house, even how we leveraged it to get help Benji sell Tyndall on what were. He was a snack, or he wanted you to sell Tindall.

02:01
Drew Armitage
He wanted candy. We helped. We use the AI to form an argument for him of how. Which it's. It's actually funny you say that, because one of the things thinking about this is, like, it's a perfect example of how I think AI is an experiential good, if you heard that term. It's like. Like the air fryer term. So. So an air fryer is an experiential good. I can still remember. I don't know if you guys. Do you have an air fryer at your house?

02:26
Tom Stanfill
No, but I want one because I was just at somebody's house, and I used it. I'm like, this is cool.

02:30
Drew Armitage
There you go. Right? So I can still remember. My mom came and visited us. I'm a New Orleans native grew up in south Louisiana, and she literally came and she ordered from Amazon an air fryer. And when it showed up, I'm like, we do not want another appliance on our countertop. Appreciate it. Thank you. See where your heart's at? And she's like, no, it does this, it does that. And then within a week, we use our air fryer more than our microwave. And so that experiential good term is, I think, a very relevant one because it's like, you have to own it, you have to use it. And then once you're there, you're like, oh, I now understand the value of it. And that's, I think, a good, just example from an AI standpoint. Oh, what is this technology?

03:12
Drew Armitage
I don't really know how it applies. And then you start to play with it and start to see the integrations and start to see the power, especially of generative AI. And then the light bulb starts to go off of some of the places it can be leveraged. So.

03:25
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, yeah, well, that was one of the reasons I really wanted. I wanted to talk to you. And then I'm like, our listeners would love to get. Would like to hear what you're saying, because there's still a lot of people that are unsure. There's a public, what I thought was super cool, which I want you to talk about. There's the public aspect of it. Like, Chad, DBT is right. You're pulling information public, and you were showing me how, hey, I got a meeting with the CEO, or I got a meeting with an executive, and we've got this new solution, and you guys have built this sort of sales assist AI driven tool, which you can tell us what it is or maybe some of it right here, and you can't talk about it.

04:02
Tom Stanfill
But there was the combination of being able to leverage chat chibt and saying, what's happening at the decision maker level, which is going to be public. And then you had a private side of it that was under, you know, that had, I guess, was built by Cisco. Right. Saying, this is what, you know, the solution. And the ability to connect those two pieces of information and prepare you for the meeting was. It was amazing. So, so talk a little bit about how you use AI. I know you know, it's a little bit of a challenge because you're, you know, you've some of it specific to Cisco, but help the typical seller or sales leader on, hey, here's how you need to be using AI and how it works.

04:45
Drew Armitage
Yeah. So a few things right. Kind of in the most general sense. You know, there's kind of the right brain and left brain activities of sales, and, you know, there's the preparing and kind of data analysis and proposal, all that stuff. Right. You know, it's time in front of the computer probably more often than not these days, right. And then there's the sort of creative, strategic, really preparing and understanding and thoughtfully thinking about a customer's business and their priorities and where there's overlap and the reality is their cycles. I grabbed a quote for us, and I think it's probably the best way for anyone, not even just from a sales standpoint, from AI. Is it just, how is this going to affect everybody's life in the course of the next few years? And this is what this guy said. He's very informed.

05:35
Drew Armitage
His name's Eric Steinbe. You can just type that in and look and see some of the stuff he's doing. But as far as AI intelligence as a unit of input will be abundant. That's the summary. Whatever is intelligence bottlenecked will go a lot faster. And so I would say from a sales standpoint, I would really think about productivity integrations, and I would think about ways that it could bring information quicker to the forefront and sort of decrease that sort of task switching that goes on when you're like, okay, I need to think about the email that I want to write. In the circumstances, then I need to write that. Maybe even add an edit step, right, and certainly for grammatical, but maybe make it more concise and then send it right. And there's a lot of cycles there.

06:24
Drew Armitage
And even if a tool like generative AI, when we talk about that, we're talking about chat, CPT, you know, some of this other stuff could just give me a first draft and really kind of set me to the races. And then I would say, like, as you get a little bit better at the terms called prompt engineering, but just knowing how to ask the right question the right way, that's the key, isn't it? It's.

06:45
Tom Stanfill
The key is how to prompt.

06:46
Drew Armitage
Yeah, well, it's just Google search. Like, think about, you know, if you're looking for something or if you're thinking of a customer who's looking for your solution. And, man, don't you wish you could tell it what to type, right? Because what you type matters. How you prompt the search engine matters in terms of the results. Well, very similarly, or even, like, probably by a whole factor increase, how you prompt the tools really affects what you get. And, man, there's some good stuff, some easy training. There are some barriers there. Understand everyone's hesitation. But maybe to go back to that experiential good idea, once you really start to try it, and then as you start to expose yourself and really see how other people are using it, you know, it starts to make sense a little more where there's an opportunity to increase productivity.

07:33
Drew Armitage
So you asked the question, you said, how am I using it? Right? Yeah, yeah.

07:39
Tom Stanfill
I mean, I had a situation just what you're talking about, because we still aren't. It's not, our first go to is, well, let's, let's prompt engineer, you know, and kind of be good at learning how to do that. I had a situation where we just got added to the selling power top 20 list. And every year when we do that, you're supposed to come up with a hundred word description of ad one. So I'm working hard to, you know, are one of our core differentiators is we drive receptivity. How do you convert people who are unreceptive? Change? To me, that's our thing. Right. Well, I'm talking to one of our consultants, and he says, well, have you tried to type it in and the chat GPT and see what it says?

08:19
Tom Stanfill
And so I basically gave it the prompt to say, hey, how would you differentiate us? And how would, what's important about receptivity as it relates to being successful in sales? And I needed in 100 words, and it came back and I was like.

08:34
Drew Armitage
Okay, that's pretty good. I might want to make an edit. I might want to make a change.

08:38
Tom Stanfill
But, yeah, I will tweak it a bit.

08:41
Drew Armitage
Well, because I'm not a writer, I don't think it's going to take the place of a writer. And the reality is, even for an opportunity like your write up and situation, selling power, you're probably not going to contract a writer. And who knows how many hours and snap of the fingers you got to start. And if you don't like it, you can edit it or you can add more. I'll tell you one big application, and I actually used it just this week, I had a dinner with a very important customer, kind of unreceptive customers took them over as a bank, a CIO, and uploading their ten k. So think about the work involved as a professional seller to read through a ten k and instead uploaded, hey, give me the summary.

09:22
Drew Armitage
Give me some examples of some Cisco solutions that may be able to help here. And again, some of those tools are specific. That was the internal tool that has been filled up with all of our sales data. But there's not a huge barrier for a company, any company, especially if you have the collateral to do that yourself. If you see with Gemini, I mean, you could upload every single proposal you have. Microsoft's offering this solution. Their AI on Windows can, you can train it on your onedrive and look at all of your files and then ask it questions.

09:53
Tom Stanfill
Oh my God, I had no idea. I mean, I have RFP responses from, for 20 years. I could. You're saying I could tell all of them.

10:02
Drew Armitage
You could upload, I could upload it.

10:04
Tom Stanfill
And then tell and then have it.

10:06
Drew Armitage
Organize it and ask it to fill out another one. And again, you know, the big watch out there is, it's going to give you answer that at face value can feel really confident about. And especially in the case of an RFP, you're really going to need to go through it. But there's no doubt in my mind there's a lot of cycles that are saved there. There's a lot of information, there's a significant productivity gain that has big implications for most sellers as they start to utilize it.

10:39
Tom Stanfill
You also got me thinking about this ten k, right? So any publicly traded company, and you think about all the data I know you're talking about, there's two sides of this, right? As you communicated to me, I don't know, when were hanging out at tendles is there's the private and the public, right? So the public is ten k. So the private is whatever you might, whatever information might be loaded in related to Cisco. But everybody can leverage AI to see, to decipher through all the maybe terabytes of information about the companies that we want to read. So talk to me a little bit about that. So like you're going to a CIO, right? You're going to go meet with a CIO. And how do you prompt it? What do you say? So let's say talk to somebody who's.

11:29
Drew Armitage
Never, I mean, you literally take the PDF, you go to some company's website, publicly traded, you download the PDF, you have the ten K, you upload it into the tool and then you ask it questions. Biggest takeaways were, and I'm just thinking through and it leads to a question, this is where. Cause it's kind of in there. Okay. Is the AI doing my job for me? No, it's just I know what to ask. I know where we're trying to go. There's just knowledge barriers and cycle barriers. And I would almost say, from a tool standpoint, it's really increasing my return on invested time, and let me tell you how. Right? So I upload this ten k. I'm asking it for insights.

12:10
Drew Armitage
One of the big insights it tells me is in this specific bank's instance, is that relative to the amount of deposits, they have more demand. It's just like a simple business instance. You have more demand for loans than your deposits can cover. So we sit down and pay. I was reading through your ten k, and I noticed this, and I'm curious what role you see technology playing in terms of your attempt, the bank's initiative to increase deposits. And I mean, the conversation that came over came from that. Would I, on my own, glean that from the ten k relative to everything else? I don't know. I mean, I'm moving pretty fast, and we're talking about, this was a probably ten second process of uploading this, asking what business priorities are, asking what kind of questions.

12:57
Drew Armitage
A CIO, I mean, I even, I pulled it up so that we could see it. I even asked kind of a general question, not that evening, but as I was preparing for this podcast, just thinking through some of the different applications, especially when we think of newer sellers. And I said, hey, what do I need to be thinking about as I'm going into this dinner? And it gave me, I mean, it's a normal question for a sales associate to ask their boss, or ask, who knows what kind of answer, hey, be yourself. This, that, you know, a lot of fluff. There was a very specific, I actually have it up if you want me to just reference a few of them. But this thing gave me a ten point overview of. I just got it right here.

13:40
Drew Armitage
A ten point overview of what I should be thinking about and what I should do going into this meal. So it says, prepare for a dinner with an important customer, like a CIO, especially in a sales context. Several key points to keep in mind. Okay, ensuring the evening is both enjoyable, professionally beneficial. Research and prep. Then it gives me a bunch of bullets around research and prep. And looking at his background, agenda and objectives. Clear but flexible agenda. Right. Building rapport. Focus on building a genuine connection. Show interest in them as a person. Active listening. Practice active listening. Discretion and professionalism. Be mindful of sensitive topics. Right. Maintain a professional demeanor. Dining etiquette. Choose a good restaurant. Familiarize yourself with dining etiquette. It keeps going, right.

14:21
Drew Armitage
Be aware of any compliance regulations from a security standpoint at your own company, especially as you're taking someone out to dinner in the banking industry. Right. Wow.

14:30
Tom Stanfill
Now that's nothing. You could have missed compliance. Like we work with pharmaceutical companies, compliance is huge. But I'm like, I just know where.

14:37
Drew Armitage
The count, you know, but I don't.

14:38
Tom Stanfill
Really know the details.

14:39
Drew Armitage
Yes. You know, because you have the experience and you found out and you, but think of someone newer in career and how much more valuable. Right. It's nice for me to just go through it and it's good, remember. Right. And then it's, you know, follow up. Think about how you follow up after dinner. Personal touch. If you know of any personal preferences. Right. Keep that in mind when making an arrangements. Expect the unexpected. So it's a great overview. Ten points again. If I asked my boss to prepare a 1 hour presentation of how his reps should be preparing for dinners with executives, I don't know that he could have come up with a better ten point overview and realizing that in the right hands, especially if you think of a young, hungry, very teachable, moldable, high emotional intelligence seller, this stuffs dynamite.

15:31
Drew Armitage
I want sellers to think about that from a competitive standpoint, I don't think it's replacing salespeople, but I think there's going to be a really big difference from the folks who learn how to leverage this and the ones that don't just because there's some barriers there. Right.

15:48
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. Some of the people that I've met with. Frank Safety is a Harvard professor who also has had a large consulting firm. We had him on the show.

15:57
Drew Armitage
I listened to it.

15:58
Tom Stanfill
Author. Yeah. Multiple books. So he talked about like, and I don't know if he said this on the podcast or said this to me privately, but, you know, the basic functions of a seller are going away. The menial task, which is kind of what you're talking about. Like a lot of these products like this, like loading your notes into, you know, or talking about the mundane things that your company or service can do. You know, all those things. It's going to, it's more, it's not eliminating our role. I want to see if you agree with this. It's elevating our role. In other words, we now can work at a higher level where we're more productive. We can have deeper level conversations. And if you can't adjust, yeah, maybe you're going to be eliminated.

16:42
Tom Stanfill
If you're the rep that says, hey, I'm here to answer questions or just talk about my product that's probably going to being used.

16:50
Drew Armitage
Yeah. So I'd say it like this because there's a little bit of that. And that's it. More than anything, as you're talking, I was just thinking, you know, I don't know if you know this. I'm on my second sales career. Okay, so previously, chemicals, currently, technology, you know, love, both companies I've worked for, but the biggest enemy or that I feel like I was aware of through the entire time, you know, someone who gets paid by commissions is non revenue generating activities, and just the inefficiency. And as you're so aware of it, and so many cycles, there's so many cycles that go into having a meaningful meeting with a customer, right? And those things don't necessarily feel like they directly correlate, but then there's so many other things that just period. End of story. Or just a time suck.

17:32
Drew Armitage
And so think of this, okay? There's a lot of tools out there, and a lot of them Cisco, one of them within our WebEx platform is an AI tool that listens to the whole meeting and summarizes it and pulls action plans, summary notes, and all of these different things. And again, there's other solutions that do the same thing. But just think of the role as a seller and your follow up of. I mean, not only am I talking to C suite executives, but a lot of times I'm talking to whole technology teams, and the tasks are going left and right. You do this, we do this on our next meeting will follow up, especially when we're kind of on that deployment schedule.

18:08
Drew Armitage
And having a tool like that gives me a really good starting place to compare to my notes in terms of follow ups already drafted. Super helpful. Super helpful.

18:19
Tom Stanfill
And I found that. I found that it's really accurate. Like, it's a good summary. Like, it not only has the transcripts, but it'll give you a summary. What I also love is it tells you the percentage of time talking that can be incredibly like, am I talking that? Like, it tells you who talked the most. And obviously, certain meetings, you know, I need to be talking more than other meetings. But if I'm in discovery and if I see that I'm talking too much, I'm like, okay, that's a good learning.

18:49
Drew Armitage
Totally. And we've seen so in call center, if you think of, like, the role that a seller plays in there the way that they did. What's the term? I'm trying to think of it here, this sentiment analysis. And so it's even going as far as angry and this and that. And so think of the value to a business to know you know, relative to that customer representative, how often the temperature's going up. Right. There's a really cool application, and Cisco has actually been a part of it that, I think just kind of stimulates the overall conversation of where some of this technology's going. And that is the sentiment analysis is now just monitoring the difficulty of the level of customers that these customer service reps are getting. And then once it reaches a certain threshold, they get a 15 minutes.

19:41
Drew Armitage
I mean, it automatically shuts their screen down, like, stops writing calls to them. They get this 15 minutes break where they picked out their own video and their own songs, their pictures. It shows them pictures of their family. And so, yeah, and you can literally Google it. Cisco, Webex, and I can't remember the name of the customer, but they've actually seen not only customer satisfaction scores go up, but retention scores in their call center go up, because they're really using the technology to hit the pinch point. Because you just got to imagine in the everyday. Some days, it's great, and all the customers are happy and sometimes not. And there's never been a context for anyone to really assess that real time.

20:23
Drew Armitage
So, again, maybe not necessarily a one to one selling application, but if you think of some of these things in the way that they potentially are, especially from a business outcome standpoint, that's a one to one connection, right? To.

20:37
Tom Stanfill
Well, I'm definitely seeing that in all roles, because one of the clients we work with, gong, records every meeting, and they're all virtual. And it's the kind of business where they all can. Most all their calls, almost all their calls are virtual. What percentage of your calls are virtual, by the way?

20:54
Drew Armitage
So during COVID it was like 99.99, right? We were even under a meeting.

21:00
Tom Stanfill
Now I feel like.

21:02
Drew Armitage
I feel like it's still probably in that 60% to 75% because of the frequency, I think a lot of the sinks, a lot of the touch points. I push. Push pretty hard, actually, for in person, I think myself and the team, it just shines better. Oh, you know what it is, this thing. I just always have this sliding awareness that the further and further we get away from an in person, the more tactical, reactive, and just in general, like, my. Even my feelings are just kind of more blah. And then we get together. It's kind of, oh, I know who you are, and I know how you feel about me, and you know how I am.

21:35
Tom Stanfill
Isn't it crazy? Like, you're there, you know, there's such a connect. So 60%, you're still virtual. That was more of just a kind of a curious question because I kind of track how people are selling. But like if you tell, if all your, you know, like your whatever recording you're using, whatever platform you're using, webex system team, I think that actually can capture sentiment analysis as well. I mean, they can, it can tell your, how you're responding because I've seen some of these simulations where AI gives feedback to the rep and tells them that they demonstrated empathy. I'm like, how the hell do you know?

22:16
Drew Armitage
Oh, yeah.

22:18
Tom Stanfill
Demonstrated empathy. That was.

22:20
Drew Armitage
Well, this will perk your ears up. We're using mind tickle internally for our sales training, and a big part culturally always at Cisco, leveraging the technology has been recording pitch videos. Because how do you get your team to properly understand a technology will require them to record themselves and submit it of them talking about it. There's a lot of uses send it to customers, a lot of things. But the AI, it's pretty harsh in terms of a judge. But the first time I uploaded a video to see exactly how many ums that I used in a five minute pitch video, it was like, because, you know, she pulls the whole transcript and then it puts them all there and. But it does, it focuses on eye contact because it's a video, right?

23:05
Drew Armitage
So eye contact and safety words is what we used to always call me, public speaking. Right. The UMs, the UHS, then it also had, for lack of a better way to say it, the rubric of all of the sales content that the organization had trained us on. Because went through a bunch of trainings first, and you clicking through all these e learnings and you're watching these videos and you're learning this. And then it's comparing that sort of base level of knowledge to the content that I actually put in the pitch. And then it's saying, hey, you talked about this and this, but you maybe miss this value piece. You miss this whole kind of, you know, and inevitably there's going to be those types of blind spots. Now, that's a pretty, you know, significant application.

23:48
Drew Armitage
It might not be necessarily relevant, but I'll tell you, the barriers for even that technology to be leveraged as an individual contributor organization are getting less and less. I mean, this is a kind of a separate note, but I was just in my feed, my social media feedback. There's this individual entrepreneur guy. He's got a background in corporate selling, and now he's on his own, and he's talking about all the different ways he's outsourcing and there's an artificial intelligence tool that literally he can upload a video of him doing a task. It turns it into a training video. He sends that training video overseas, and he's paying someone. Like, he's outsourcing the menial tasks that he has in his, you know, professional services business that he's just started. He's outsourcing them to someone overseas, and he's getting everything off of his plate.

24:35
Drew Armitage
And you think about those applications. That's not a big Cisco multibillion dollar technology company. That's an individual guy just figuring out ways that this tool can give him a significant return on his time.

24:49
Tom Stanfill
Really, the key is, if we go, if we embrace it, we dive in. Don't be afraid of it, and just think about how we can leverage it. And think of it. I think you called it assistant sales assistant. What did you call it?

25:03
Drew Armitage
So this concept here that playing with, and I think, you know, go trade market now is the AI assisted seller. And, and that's the best way, I think, to Frank, it's not the AI replace seller. It's not. I mean, you've seen some of this stuff. It's creepy, honestly, when you see some of the phone calls and what they're able to do, like, over the phone, because this AI can. It is, I mean, they walk through it and, you know, there's a cybersecurity risk there. When you talk about, like, phishing, like, make it sound like your wife calling you and needs x or whatever. So, you know, that stuff's pretty wild.

25:35
Drew Armitage
But I think for the everyday application, especially over the next five years, it's really going to just be this return on invested time and getting a significant factor back in terms of quality of life or return on effort. And that AI assisted seller is what I'd call it if you, as the seller we're talking to, the individual out there is thinking about, how can this help me? Where does it fit? Even if it's just a question, right? Like, think of a sales manager who maybe is a really strong individual contributor, but doesn't wake up with the most empathy. Well, why don't you just give it a prompt and ask it a question? Hey, my team, we've missed our number of these last two times. What are some things that I should be thinking about or what's a good way to.

26:21
Drew Armitage
To potentially have my team more engaged and excited? And there's ways to outsource a lot of different functions that maybe aren't there necessarily at first value to supplement your strengths or your weaknesses.

26:35
Tom Stanfill
Talk about related that to the AI system because I think you've got it on your phone, and I know a lot of people think of it as typing it in. When you type it in on the computer, online, whatever, it comes back in writing. But when you. We can also talk about it and it can speak. So talk. Talk a little bit about the difference between, you know, the mobile app.

26:57
Drew Armitage
Yeah. So I just say in general, the barriers aren't nearly as high as you think where you got to sit in front of a computer because all this stuff's cloud based, so you can interact with it. And what's pretty wild is you look at some of the different tools, like even Google, you send pictures. You can, like, I mean, it's. It's really impressive. Like, hey, you could take a picture of your logo, think about being a new company, and say, hey, make this look different. Give me a better look. You know, I want my logo to have this and this. Okay. And. And it'll give you a picture. Now, I don't know that.

27:25
Tom Stanfill
Tell me that. After we. We spent like $50,000 doing it. Yeah, I don't want to.

27:29
Drew Armitage
Yeah, no. Nobody wants to hear about the efficiencies here because it's. It's wild. Right? So most of the tools have either a mobile or application interface. Everybody's got, you know, if you got an iPhone or something else, right, you gotta talk the text. And so I think when I was doing the example, it's just a lot easier to just talk it out and just, you know, say, hey, this is what we're doing. You know, Benji wants piece candy. What's a good argument? I still go back to, you know, as were kind of showing it off, it was, you know, if he's, you know, first he'll, you know, he'll ask his parents, he'll say, please. He'll tell him, he'll brush his teeth and, you know, yeah, there was some trade off. It was a trade. It was beautiful in terms of the simplicity.

28:06
Drew Armitage
And it's just showed again, especially for this younger generation coming up, who, I would say in many cases, knowledge, along with emotional intelligence in many cases. But knowledge is one of the bigger barriers that they're facing compared to a lot of their peers, and this tool is going to significantly reduce that barrier. So, yeah, I don't know if that quite answers your question from an interface standpoint.

28:33
Tom Stanfill
No, it does. Well, I think what's. What.

28:36
Drew Armitage
I maybe.

28:37
Tom Stanfill
Yes, it does answer my question, but I want to. I want to kind of shift from productivity because that's one of the things you talked about, like it's a huge productivity lift to improving my ability. Right. So more. Right. So the, I've tried to dive, you know, full force tried to, you know, diving into figuring out how to leverage this in our industry, retro sales training. So, you know, we're coaching, we're helping people learn how to build capabilities to be more successful. One of those things obviously is productivity and getting information. And then of course we're training people on how to leverage that information, but also how to develop the capabilities to sell. Well, one of the webinars that I went to was a guy showing us how he was using these simulations for coaching now. So he was using chat GPT mobile version.

29:28
Tom Stanfill
So he would, the prompt engineering was key. How you prompt it. We're going to do a role play and I'm going to be, you're going to be a customer and I don't want to go into it because I'll probably, you know, botch it. But the bottom line is he would role play and then he would end role play and then the, this is all the lady, you know, the AI lady would, I don't think there was a name would give him feedback. You know, you were empathetic, you listened to me, that was good. But you didn't isolate the benefit and literally would give him feedback. Now, of course, if that was a public version, if it was private, it could have also given him information that he did not communicate, but that was not provided.

30:10
Tom Stanfill
But the point of me asking this question, long question is it was, it looked effective as a way of coaching this person on how to overcome or respond to. Objection. So have you use that as have you. Is that part of your development, either personally or corporately, to leverage AI to get better at your job?

30:33
Drew Armitage
Not yet. And I will say kind of relative to where we are, we've used it again, like the instance I mentioned before in a few of those pitch videos. I definitely think it's there. I think Cisco specifically is probably very hesitant with a bunch of furthering career professional sellers to unleash a technology like that from a development standpoint without some big caveats. Now, could I. Yes. Should I. And are the tools already there? Absolutely. Have I. No, but again, I'm getting a pretty good return on my efforts relative. But inevitably you're going to reach this point that people are in order to keep up. Again, think about my competition and your heart starts to palpitate.

31:27
Drew Armitage
Who's just drilling a really well calibrated AI and now with their super sales skills, because never before has there been this opportunity to just cycle through, to become more and more better and better at aligning and understanding about affecting the message, about getting it back, you know, calling on my customers and just coming across, you know, in essence, a lot more effective than I'm able to come across. And it's like, well, maybe I should be using the tool. So, I think we may be a little bit further off from there, but not that far off. Right.

32:02
Tom Stanfill
Okay.

32:03
Drew Armitage
Yeah.

32:04
Tom Stanfill
So, yeah, that's good. I just was curious to see if you had any experience with that.

32:10
Drew Armitage
Yeah, I had experience with the AI telling me you didn't do this and your ums and blah, blah and all of that.

32:17
Tom Stanfill
Yeah, right. That was a little bit of. You did speak, that is about your ability to present more effective.

32:21
Drew Armitage
Yes, for sure.

32:24
Tom Stanfill
Yeah.

32:25
Drew Armitage
We have not gotten into the mean, I mean, real, you know, like, nothing like your manager pulls you to the side and, hey, you spoke two words to everyone. You know, all of that. But it's. I mean, the potential is there. It's probably more than anything, you know, the number one rule of coaching is probably, like, as you start making sure it's gonna be effective, I don't know that with the current understanding or perception people have of the tools that it would be very effective. Like, people would be very open to it.

32:55
Tom Stanfill
That was my concern. Like, even if it was effective, are.

32:58
Drew Armitage
You gonna really, are you gonna humble yourself to this? You just. Again, you'd have to see it. You'd have to see the end result. But, I mean, I gotta imagine people on their way up, small competitors, like, you know, there's. The Harvard professor talked a lot about it about, like, some of those core competencies. Those things are agilities in my mind, like, of a salesperson. Right. These are. Yeah, there's some things that are more innate or kind of more aligned with a person's wiring and strengths, even these ideas of, like, charisma and stuff.

33:32
Drew Armitage
But, you know, I would say, and I'm of the philosophy when it comes to sales training, this is more a function of knowing what to say and what not to say and knowing how to approach and how to align and how to ask the right discovery questions and reps and cycles by far more so than anything else, help you get there. And there's no doubt about it that artificial intelligence is disproportionately going to offer that to someone when they literally wouldn't have that chance to get in front of 20 or 30 customers.

34:03
Tom Stanfill
I love it. So dive in. Try it. The main thing right now is we don't know the percentage of increase in productivity, but it's, we know it's great because, I mean, I've experienced it. I think that we're just not still used to. Maybe some are, but we're just collectively. I don't think people are very used to saying, okay, the first thing I'm going to do is ask. I'm going to go to AI to answer my questions, but I think we should. And some of the things you shared about uploading k one s and, like, the ability to decipher all lots and lots of information, whether it's our information or it's, what's, what do we need to know about a company that we're working with and ask it to decipher it?

34:45
Tom Stanfill
And then, and I remember you showing it to me, you said, give me the five things they care about. And then you said, now write me a script on what I should say to this decision maker about this solution. I'm like, and then you showed it to me and I'm like, not only did it give you the bullets, but gave you the script. I'm like, this is good.

35:01
Drew Armitage
Yeah. And I still got to transfer it. Right. I still got to make it my own. Yeah. It's, there's, you know, the human side to this is very real and needs to be accounted for. And so I think it's more in anything a function of, like, in the right hands with the right application. We're talking about a pretty significant game changer because a lot of times, you know, especially I've had the opportunity to do this for a while. Give me the information, put me in front of the person, right? Like, you know, I need some time, right? Give me, give me some cycles on my own to kind of process and make it, you know, take ownership over it, and then we're off to the races, right? That's it.

35:41
Drew Armitage
And so I think one of the big barriers, just personally, as I'm talking about my own productivity from a selling standpoint, is like that left brain, right brain. Like, I don't have the time to sit down and, like, really learn all these things and look up all this information and all this stuff, but somebody basically serves it up on a silver platter. And then I go through and I drill those points and I feel confident and, yeah, maybe I do some googling and dig in where there's information gaps. That's a game changer, especially when we talk about this gap between a company's ability to create value and then a customer's need, individualized need for value. And I think the AI potentially puts the seller in a better position to bridge those two, certainly more efficient.

36:24
Tom Stanfill
That is a great way to wrap up. I want to shift gears to talking about your success in sales. And this is giving back through. You need to give back. I need to help the junior seller who's maybe I'm coming out of college, you know, I want a career in sales, or I just started in sales and you said, hey, look, I'm looking back over the last, I don't know, 15, I don't know how long you've been in sales. And if I can, they're coming to you and then saying, drew, what's the key to being successful? You know, what do I need to do? What are some of the things that you would tell a new seller? And another way to say that is, why have you been successful and how would you leverage that to help other people?

37:11
Drew Armitage
Yeah, great question. And I love it, and I am very passionate. I think if there's any seller that my heart goes out to the most is the new seller. Right. Because I remember what that was like. I remember, I mean, literally, the emotion and the, this idea of when you get to a real sales job, and it's like, if I don't sell, I don't eat. And I know that, and, you know, my wife knows that. And we're an individual. You know, it's all, it's all you, buddy. I mean, you got a great company behind you, and you got a lot of people supporting you, but they're not going to make the calls for you, and they ain't going to get the signature, that's for damn sure.

37:43
Drew Armitage
So I think about it a lot, and I think about that person a lot because I think a lot of times for that specific individual who's super hungry and super dedicated, really, knowledge and knowing the right thing to do is their only barrier. I mean, they are like, point to the wall and I'll run through it. But there's not a commitment gap, but there's significant competency gaps. Right. That anyone who does a sales call with them, you know, can easily see. So I think the, you know, first and foremost, and it's funny because there's a lot of movements out there that I feel like I'm aware of. And one of them, you know, if you've heard that term quiet quitting and some of this other stuff.

38:22
Drew Armitage
But this idea of, and it comes from a good place, like having healthy boundaries with your company and how much you allow them to get from you in terms of a 40 or a 50 hours week or something like that. And I know that mentality probably doesn't resonate with the generation before me. Look, I turned 40 this year, so I'm kind of right in the middle. But you know, to the new seller, the first thing I say is when you don't know what you're doing, you don't have the luxury of working smarter and more efficiently. And we all know that. You know the phrase work smarter, not harder.

38:52
Drew Armitage
So you just got to work harder and to some degree committing yourself to the craft of sales and to the business, especially if you're in one of those kind of like, you know, turn and burn, you know, grinding, cold calling stuff like that kind of jobs. Maybe you elevated yourself a little, did a professional selling degree or program, and you're actually in an outside sales job, but still new in career. Bottom line, you're going to be frustrated with how inefficient and how little low the return on your effort is, but just accept that's part of the process and you're trying to build this sort of experiential base of knowledge and that takes time and that takes cycles and that's okay.

39:31
Drew Armitage
And you're right where you need to be and so you just got to grind and you need to be unbalanced and you need to be okay. And if anything, that maybe is one of the first. People used to ask me early in career, like, what's your brand? I get frustrated because I didn't know what it meant. And now, you know, it's like, be the hardest person working in the room, if nothing else. You might be the dumbest and know the least about sales. But if your commitment is speaking for yourself and you are the most driven, dedicated person, there are going to be clarity and conviction at an individual level. People always interpret that, in my opinion, as momentum. That person is going somewhere, they know what they're doing and they know that they're doing it.

40:07
Drew Armitage
Clarity and conviction as a seller bring that energy into the environments you're in, this clarity and conviction of your development and that you're going to have this success and let that define you. And then people are going to see that momentum and then they just have one choice, am I going to support you or not? Am I going to be a part of this individual success? So first and foremost, just know you don't have the luxury of working smarter, so you're going to have to work harder. And then the second thing, and it's very related to what I was just saying, is you just got to show up. Well, it's like people, sadly, are still primarily driven in terms of their opinions of others by first impressions.

40:45
Drew Armitage
And there's a superficial aspect to that and there's a really authentic, like, what do you have to say? And who are you? And have you done your research? All that. And in both areas, especially when you're new in career, show up early, dress the park for the job that you want, do the research on the people that are gonna be in the room that you're sitting in and find out things about them, ask them qualifying questions, seek to understand before you wanna be understood. Like, again, basic table stakes in some ways, but relative to all the noise early in career, I think you can kinda lose sight of that. So I have one more thought, but I wanna see what your thoughts are on those first two.

41:22
Tom Stanfill
I absolutely love that. I mean, I just, couple of, a couple of ideas that piggyback on that. I love the discipline. Like, you can't get away from the discipline of what's required. There is a productivity level and a discipline level that's required to be successful in sales. And it's harder, you get less return on that discipline, which is, I think a lot of times why people give up, because they misjudged the amount of discipline and work that's required. The only thing, so I love that you made that point. The only thing I would add to that is seek feedback. I think that's one of the biggest gaps. Go work hard. But if you get feedback, you get much. The return on your effort becomes exponentially greater because you get feedback. And most people, when they're young, I think they're starting their career there.

42:15
Tom Stanfill
I think it comes from an insecurity. Maybe it's just become an immaturity, but it's like, and I was this guy, you know, I didn't like, how can make me better? Put me in a situation where I could fail so I can get feedback and get better. I just was like, you know, I'm good and I'm okay. And I was avoiding pain rather than do the work. And it'll get better. And then the other thing show up. Well, that is so good, because one of the things I always tell people judge you before they know and you can't stop that. It doesn't mean it's authentic. But, like, if I'm going to. I mean, I remember flying to Europe to meet with a company, and it was like, a creative company. And I'm like, I know what this guy's going to be wearing.

42:54
Tom Stanfill
It's going to be wearing expensive jeans, no suit, sport coat, cool shirt, open collar. I mean, it's like. And then I knew kind of photography, like, what he was into. So I show up. I kind of match the room he. 30 minutes, he buys from me, and I'm like, what? What was going on?

43:09
Drew Armitage
Why?

43:10
Tom Stanfill
Why are you. So he goes, well, you met with one of the biggest companies, our industry, before me. He goes, yeah, they came in with three piece suits, and the imagery they showed us was not our. Not even aligned with our brand. So it's like, it was completely. Now, that doesn't mean I'm a better solution for. No, but to your point, he chose me because of his perception. And I, you know, I think were good at what we did. But anyway, that. I love that. So what's your number three?

43:34
Drew Armitage
Well, it's funny you say that. It's exactly what you said about the feedback so early in career. There's this tension of, like, fake it till you make it, and, you know, the confidence. And you do want to project a healthy amount of confidence. But I think the truest form of confidence is a reflection of competence, and that competence is a byproduct of doing the work right. It's not like something you can fake. People know. And so a great mentor of mine said it, and a great mentor, a mentor who was a great mentor to me. I don't know that I've had any really great mentors in the world of business yet, but. Chuck Robbins, if you're listening. Right.

44:12
Tom Stanfill
Love you.

44:13
Drew Armitage
Yeah, send me a message. But I said the feedback's all there, and all you got to do is tap into it. And so whether it's you deliberately asking, like, your manager and a lot of my friends know this, that the most valuable thing that they can give me is they can tell me what someone honestly said about something I did without knowing that feedback would get back to me, because that, to me, is, like, the realest form of objective, you know, sort of is, how did I. How did that person say I came across in that instance when I was trying to accomplish x, when they didn't know I would hear what they had to say because they were just saying what they felt, right? And so that feedback's there, and then even I'd say, like, sometimes it's, like, even internal.

44:56
Drew Armitage
Like, there's cognitive dissonance. I think of, like, to transition a little from the professional space. Like, even in my family. Like, I could see how sometimes after a really long day, I'd show up to, I mean, not dinner, but the interactions with the kids. And there was, like, this level of dissatisfaction. But, like, where do I go? Like, I know I'm a good dad and I'm doing everything I can to do work and provide for my family, but that even that sort of dissatisfaction with, like, what's going on here ultimately led to a whole journal, that journey that ultimately has me selling at Cisco. So I mostly say, bring up this. Even this internal idea of saying, like, the feedback is all there.

45:34
Drew Armitage
Like, whether it's internally, whether it's externally, whether it's sought out, whether it's just a look, whether it's a feeling and leaning into that and just having, like, such a heart to learn and understand and then align while also. And I'll say this. This is, you know, I know there's a long winded answer here, but I think it's important, especially for a young seller. I think there's also a lot to be said of, like, not just sort of imitating or trying to conform. Like, you know, my favorite essay, favorite thing to read, and I'll read it's on my nightstand, is Emerson's essay called self reliance. And, I mean, I remember exactly where I was sitting in college when it was required reading. So not, like, some literary whatever. Like, it was required reading. Then I read this thing. I'm like, this is it.

46:16
Drew Armitage
And basically, you know, he said that, like, societies and conformity societies exist to create conformity. And as a seller, I think there's a healthy level of, like, okay, I need to show up. There's, like, business norms. There's these types of things, but then there's this whole other space, and that's what you'd find if you read self reliance of, like, I really can. Only anything that anybody did truly, significantly, you, like, even with your own business, right, Tom? Like, they did the thing that only they can do. And in sales, there is a need. And specifically, as a young seller, you need to figure out who you are and how you are going to differentiate yourself from others. And you're not going to find that by imitating or mirroring or trying to do what everybody else is doing.

46:58
Drew Armitage
You're actually going to find it, I think, from looking in and finding kind of who you are, you know, minus all the other stuff and what you can do and what you're passionate about and what you're good at. And so, you know, after what, you.

47:12
Tom Stanfill
Take, what you can leverage. Yet we all have a unique talent, and we may not be as charismatic as somebody else or we may not be as intelligent as somebody else, but we got something that's unique to us. And knowing that and leveraging it is important.

47:26
Drew Armitage
It is. So it's, you know, and it's kind of counter to the whole, you know, making the necessary changes based on the feedback from others. But I think there's a sweet spot there. It's a very healthy tension between those two ideas of finding we have managed and finding what you need to be, what the environment requires you to be. So I love that.

47:46
Tom Stanfill
Yeah. I can't remember who said this, but, or I think Andy Stanley may have said this, but, you know, we all want something.

47:56
Drew Armitage
Yeah.

47:57
Tom Stanfill
Right. We're at a. We're, you know, that's kind of always a way to sort of think about anytime I'm talking to a customer, they're at a current state and they want something, but everybody wants something. Right? And there's somebody that knows how to get what you want. Somebody knows how to do it. Like, you know, like, there's things I want to do at Aslan, and I'm like, somebody knows how to do the thing that I'm trying to do at ASLAN or I'm struggling to do as a leader. Somebody knows. And if I will seek the feedback that was so clear to me, if I'll just see, find, that person will tell me. And so don't just be wandering around. Well, I'm not where I want to be, you know, and then maybe, you know, if you don't want anything, then, you know, great.

48:37
Tom Stanfill
You don't have to worry about it and, you know, but I don't think most people want something good. Drew, this has been great to have you on. I've so loved talking to you, and thank you for helping. I think you offered a lot of value about how to sell, how to leverage AI. I can see why you're successful. And if you're listening to us for the first time, we love to hear feedback. So. So comment. Give us feedback on the show. Tell us what you like to talk about. If you want to reach out to.

49:06
Drew Armitage
Drew, I know you're on Cisco, Atlanta, Georgia. So there you go.

49:13
Tom Stanfill
You reach out to him and ask him more questions if he has time, because I know he's disciplined and he's working hard. But, of course, reach out to us at ASLAN. We'd love to help you. So thank you for joining us for another episode of sales with ASLAN.

49:26
Drew Armitage
Thanks for having.