The Biggest Sales Shift Since the Internet with Peter Grant

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let's make it happen together. Now, let's get on with the show. People say to me,

people, what is an amazing salesperson? Is it a great communicator to be able to page

knowing all the product? Yes, all those but they actually two is in one mouth, right? You need to

listen to what the customers are saying as a salesperson, you have to be a domain expert.

Hey, everyone and welcome back to make it happen. One day is when we talk about sales,

business, our different eras of personal growth, mental health and everything in between,

we guess what, truly respect and I think make a positive impact on the world around us.

Now, today's conversation is with Peter Grant, who is the CRO at U.com, which is y-o-u.com,

where he's helping fast going startups and global enterprises achieve real ROI on their AI

deployments. He's also a four-time unicoin operator. He's got a track record of

dragging hyper growth at companies like Salesforce and Sebel, and now he's bringing his expertise

to one of the fastest and most competitive categories in tech, which is enterprise search.

He's a proven revenue leader who's helped some of the most successful software companies

thrive from their early stages of development to maturity and IPO. And boy, does he get a lot of

experience in this space as far as hyper growth and what he's seen out there? I think he's around

the same age as me a little bit older maybe, so he was right there when the internet was popping

and right there at the beginning ages at Sebel. So he comes from a military background too,

which I think gives him a very unique perspective. And we talked about a lot of stuff as it relates

to AI in this new world of sales. And for instance, pilots, pilots or trials and where do they fit,

right? And how fast and easy it is for customers to find out information and what is ROI in this world

that is so fast moving that none of us can predict, you know, next six months what's going to happen.

I talked about his frameworks for diagnosing problems as a CRO and what he looks for, right?

People and then the market fit and a few other things. And also how hiring is his number one focus

because you're higher the right people, you're training the right way, a lot of the other stuff

takes care of itself. So there's a lot to unpack with this one. He jammed a lot of value

into this conversation and we talked pretty fast here. So hope you're ready for a good one. Let's make it happen.

Peter Grant, welcome to the Make It Happen Monday podcast, my friend. How you doing today?

I'm Ekston, John. Great to see you and thank you for the opportunity to talk to you today.

Yeah, thanks for coming on, man. I've been been interested in this conversation since it popped

on the calendar as far as, first of all, your experience is pretty significant with a bunch of

the companies that you've worked for and seen a lot of stuff going from zero to a billion

and unicorns and all the fun stuff that we can get into. But more importantly now,

the kind of your experience in AI with you.com and what's happening in the marketplace right now,

which I am extremely curious about from a sales standpoint. So we're going to get up to all that,

but Peter, I always love to start these podcasts off with kind of your origin stories, stuff that we

can't find on LinkedIn. Like, where'd you grow up, parents, what influenced you to, you know,

and then, you know, school, what'd you get into? And then how'd you stumble into sales here?

Because everybody has their own journey getting into this profession.

That's really deep. Yeah. So a group in England, so I'm English, not Australian or Kiwi.

Often just confused over here. I live in the US now, but I get to how I came over here.

I had a pretty standard education. I actually didn't go to university. I joined the

military, which is not on my resume. So it's not on my LinkedIn. So you wouldn't see that there.

And I had aspirations to sort of go into special forces, but unfortunately on that journey got injured.

And I couldn't achieve my goal on what I wanted to do, but I was pretty successful as a young

soldier, as forward air control. So I used to bring in all the basic, the artillery, the mortars,

and the ground attack aircraft onto targets. But I did that very young age. I love a

responsibility, like a 20 years old served in Northern Ireland as well, but I came at the

military, a friend of mine said, I think he'd be quite good at sales. Yeah. And yeah,

I was quite good communicator, quite good building relationships with people. Trust is really

important to me as well. So you deliver on what you say you're going to do. But the military is

really important to me because it gave me, gave me respect for other people. I came from a pretty

small village, wasn't exposed to big cities, different ethnic backgrounds, different educational

backgrounds and everything else as well. And you get all co-mingled into the military. And you

you basically have to fix problems. And you have to come together as a team. Yeah. So it

told me to do that. How to pay you as a team, give me some leadership skills as well. So I

shouldn't quite a lot of responsibilities as I said before at a young age. And I don't know why,

but I'm in my 50s now, but it hasn't left me in 30 years. And also the other important thing

is that 24, 7, 3, 6, 5, always on work environment, which you need in the start-up, especially in

today's environment with AI. I just don't know when to switch off from that point of view. And

but that's that's the military for you. We get paid to work literally 24 hours a day,

365 days a year. And our salaries is not in a 9 to 5. That's how it is work for us. And I've

just always had that mindset. So that was a good round. If we came out, we're actually

going to publishing first. I sold advertising. And that's really hard to do. Don't

physically sell a product. It's not like I saw you this water bottle because you're seriously

unique to droop right. You have a need for it. It's quite easy to sell it. It contains the

water. He's got 1.5 liters in here. I'm going to keep you hydrated for most of the day, etc.

You saw something on a page. As soon as someone's gone past it is dead. Yeah. So you have to

sell a vision. You have to sell the readership. You have to sell the promised land and the

art of the possible. And everything else in the work for a company called Redel Sivir and

this is an excellent sales training there. Things like IEDO, tension, interest, desire, action.

So you learn all that in your sales process isn't everything else. And then in 95,

the worldwide web sort of came along actually a bit before them. But it's some become more

prevalent in the UK. I thought this is really cool. This is something I really would like to

get involved with. And I didn't have an academic background, but I was running a local cricket

club and someone that played cricket for me was working at ICL for Jitsu. And they were looking

for a different profile, a person living for entrepreneurs to come in. I'd try various things.

I don't need to go into it by various businesses. And there's a young 24, 25-year-old. I just

wanted to be an entrepreneur. I wanted to be the next Richard Branson. And I'd failed. And but

I had this opportunity to get to ICL, get trained, long story short. I went in as a new technology

sales manager and I said to product, what does that mean? So we don't really know. We've never

had one before. But you and the soul is internet stuff and deliver the stuff by, you know,

over the internet into stores. And we're going to do this thing called, well, workplace shopping

and home shopping. And this was basically back then where you were going to the internet and you

would basically order something from Tesco's or Sayingsbury's or Mark's and Sparks like Walmart.

And then some pickers would go and store and they would basically pick it for you and then we

would get delivered to your house. We do everybody does it now, right? But back then it was brand

spanking new. And I read in a magazine that Tesco's were having customer sat issues because basically

that you got a CD-ROM because there's that product catalogs. You can do it over the internet

is dial up Modem back then. Most of the people in this podcast are going, what the hell's that? But

there's a dial up Modem. You put it into your computer and it gave you the product catalog and

you would pick it. And what the pickers would do if they couldn't find the goods, they would

substitute it for something else. And he was having a lot of problems and customer sat issues

and they wanted to improve all of this. So long story short, Tesco's were not a customer of ICR

for Gitsy. They wouldn't do business with us because we had maps of Spencer's, we had Sayingsbury's

and we did all their what's called E-Post systems for them. And these are like 50, 100 million

pound deals back then. So significant deals and they've never touched us. But because we were

a part of Gitsy with a flat screen computer that just came out like a measurement iPad, but by an

inch thick. And I thought if we could put that on a trolley and we could tapping to the RF network

in the store, we could send it live to the pickers in the store. So I went to the solutions team.

A long story short on a Kichino. We got these batteries. We went and got Tesco's trolley. We

welded on a little computer to it, right? We welded on an RF network and we tried it in store and

I got an initial order of 30,000 pounds or about 50,000 dollars. And I skipped a down, I never

forget, down the corridor with the order from the fax machine like this. Oh my God, I've just

got into Tesco's. That turned into six million. We've turned into roughly a hundred million

in total orders over a period of time. I won the ICL Innovation Award at the whole company. Wow.

But that set me on my way for a solution selling. And then my boss who was my mentor, he left

and he went to a little company called Reef Thoughts, called Cybers, called Siebel. And I

burned him up one then. And so why have you not taken me with you? And he said, because you're

doing so well where you are. And I said, get me out of here. It's like working for the, you know,

the government, right? ICL is a big company and everything else. I just, for me, it was just a

grounding and everything else. And I managed to get myself into Siebel, which is very, very hard.

And I'll come back to it. And it was tough. It was really hard. However, being X military,

the way it was run and the discipline that we had, I hadn't experienced anything like that in

civilian street before. So I felt I was back in the military and I liked and I liked the accountability.

I liked the teamwork. I liked the professionalism. I liked the fact that everybody around me was

better than me. And I had to pick up my game, the matter of reading. I had to do and study etc to

become an expert and understand basically proper IT. And then we were selling perpetual software.

And long story short, I've got the media market with back in 1996, John, you try selling a

multi million dollar CRM solution to newspapers when that we were using flip cards. Basically,

I would go, a John Barrow's like this, where I worked here, call you up, hey, John,

you're going to buy some advertising, they're going to do that. And she would transform your

note, go away, phone down, go back to the back of the list and pick up the next phone. That was,

that's, you know, and I grew up with that because I came from publishing. So I knew it. But luckily,

for me, Reuters was in my patch. And those days, we didn't really scale the internet. You read all

the trade magazines. You were looking for what people were doing, what they were talking about.

They were looking to transform their sales organization, which was approximately 700 sellers.

And I thought it was an opportunity here. Long story short, got in there, did a pilot, I believe,

didn't know, didn't do a pilot with them actually got in there. And then as I was in the sales

process, they wanted to add 1200 customer service people as well. So the order basically became

multi-million dollar order. And it was the largest single transaction anybody did at sea

board at that time, without doing a pilot that we went for. So we did that. And then that turned

into significant revenue pull through for our partners and everybody. I'll just pause

actually. Just curious on that one point question on the pilot, right? Because I think a lot of

reps get lazy using a pilot, get lazy using a trial because they're like, oh, just test it out

and check it out. What's your kind of approach to pilots, non pilots? Like, was that a conscious

thing that you didn't want to give it to them? Or was it just the sales process that you were

going through? It was a sales process we were going through back then. Remember, this is perpetual

software. So you had to install it, configure it. It's not like SaaS, we can just stand up

with instant, the tenant for them. And it's pretty much out the box you can get going. So you

didn't have this, what we now call POG, didn't have this premium model to penetrate and everything

else as well. But I think it's more important. It's an interesting question because if you're

further along in your journey, and you have your product market fit, your reference ability,

then you can push back on the pilot and you can use your existing customers to negate having

to do a pilot. If you have to do a pilot, you only do a pilot if you know what success looks

like before you go into the pilot. Yeah. And what's really important is you, you basically have

documented, yes, it's not, and it's not subjective, right? And it has to be realistic in the time

span of the pilot. Is it a week, two weeks, a month or whatever? You're not going to close a million

dollar deal if you see your own system you're selling, right? But will you have a good view of your

forecast, right? Will you get all your activities in there? Will you not miss any follow-ups and

everything else? You need to control what it looks like and be realistic with the customer.

And Tom told me that Tom Siebel. So when we would do it, he would sign off every single contract,

he would check it and he would put himself in the position of the buyer. And if he didn't think

he was getting value for what he was spending, yeah, he said, no, no, go back and read it.

Read the KPIs aren't correct, right? So we would be very focused on making sure that was

getting the customer allied. How do you think that plays in today's market with AI, right? Because

what I'm seeing right now, and I'm sure you've seen, you know, Challenger Sale, Challenger customer,

and then Jolt Effect, right? And Jolt Effect's highlight, you know, highlight the indecision factor

and how it's because there's just so many options right now and things are moving so fast.

And so risk is the big issue of making decisions right now. People are too scared to make a decision

because nobody got fired for not making decisions. A lot of people get fired for making bad decisions.

And so in this world of AI, where things are changing so frequently,

part of it is like you almost have to do the, like at least in some reps of mine,

they have to do the demo because the client's like, I am not going to implement anything

until I see how this works. So I guess what, how do you think it plays right now in this very

dynamic market that's changing drastically? I mean, you were in one that was changing pretty drastically

when, you know, 95 and the internet was hidden. But I, and I was there too. I graduated college in

98, right? So I came a little bit, maybe a little later, but I was, you know, but that was,

that was kind of like, huh, this is interesting, right? Like, okay, oh, that's weird, right? But you

dipped your toe and people doubted that it was even going to be a thing, you know, I remember news

of people being like, oh, yeah, I was a fad. Hey, taking a quick break here to remind you to check

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AI is obviously not a fad and it's moving faster than anything I've ever seen in my entire

life and career and it's just rupting things faster than I've ever seen. So with a kind of a

pointed question on that, how are you selling or helping seller sell or seeing sales evolve right

now as it relates to AI and the risk factor and is demos, trials, those type of things are they

now necessary to leverage as opposed to something you should avoid. I think we could spend the

whole podcast just talking about this. If you go back to perpetual software when SaaS came along,

perpetual software, we didn't like doing pilots because it was so complicated and it was

difficult to do and everything else. When SaaS came along and back then it was good utility

computing but when the SaaS came on, you could stand up an instant, you could configure it really

quickly and you could do a very fast pilot for them and you could control the set success as I

said about before but always your end game with the sign of 12 months, 36 month contract, whatever

it may be and you just move a lot faster through the sales process than you were before. With AI

today, there's a new saying called the fear of committing too early because you just write quite

rightly said and people are so scared because things are moving so quickly in changing they want

that optionality. So we're in search. So for us from a pilot point of view, we need to control

the narrative right and specifically what we call the eVal set. So when you're doing search,

you need to understand what people are searching for and what type of answers they want to get back.

It's called the golden data set right doing grounded in the truth because AI basically hallucinates.

So what you, what I think you're seeing is an acceleration of consumerization in the enterprise.

We always spoke about it with SaaS, Mark Benioff was a bit would delete this but I don't

to get really happened but now it is right now. Absolutely. So what you're seeing in accounts is

you're seeing all your competitors are in there and everybody's doing these point solutions,

different use cases and everything else as well. And the problem is technology now is not so much

as different shaders it used to be. It's more you go to marketing your brand, distribution,

actually your customer success and things like that that sort of differentiating you. So that's

what people are looking at is will you maybe be successful and are you going to innovate and grow

at the speed that I need and people need and especially the VCs need to get used to the fact is

they're going to run month to month contracts right a lot of the big deals like really big deals

that we do they don't like committing for 12 to definitely not for 24 36 months we have a few of them

in a more institutional type like the universities how but enterprises that are moving really

quickly want to try things they want that optionality and you just need to change a mindset to do

that right with them and you need to continually keep innovating as well but you also need to

that what doesn't goes what why are you doing this right why are you doing it now why are you doing

with us right yeah what a success look like for you yeah and then solving that particularly use

case that problem and then obviously people like to buy solutions as opposed to buying point

point solutions right now so certainly the really they can grow with you and they can share that

patient with you I think that's super important and and is that so that's what I'm seeing too is

like these point solutions I can't I can't understand I don't understand how the big platforms don't

ultimately win because now historically with SaaS let's go back to Benioff and Salesforce right I

trained every rep there was with them from 2010 to 2020 and had a blast doing it right and in

for Salesforce it was like okay there was a point solution first of all money was free grow at all

costs so people really didn't care as much about overlap of tech stack details and you know Salesforce

would see a point solution that was was good and they would either build it themselves but it was

kind of be like 70 percent of the functionality of whatever that point solution was or they'd buy it

and they'd try to cram it in and it just wouldn't yeah I mean some of them did well but most of them

didn't now with AI at least theoretically like these platforms can just say hey go build me that

feature and all of a sudden that feature is done and I know it's obviously much easier than that

but how we go through these phases and you've been through them just with me where we go from

mainframe computers to individual computers then we go to the cloud and then we come back right and

we're in a consolidation zone right now where everybody's kind of going back to the platform trying

to cut down all their additional expenses non necessary point solutions so how do you survive if

you're a point solution right now and not a Salesforce not a Microsoft not a like how do you

survive from a sales standpoint in this in this environment it's super tough right and that's

that's why we pivoted right so we were we were a GPT yeah and we were a really good GPT a good

research GPT but we do not have the resources that open AI have the Claude and Thropic have for

example so we don't want to compete with them right so then you have to think about everything

about your ICP right so not everybody wants to go on and Thropic not everybody wants to go on

open AI for example so we find a sweet spot in what I call this sort of upper mid market lower

enterprise space and we find it there for a couple of reasons one is that they're not getting

the attention from open AI Microsoft and all these people right so they're not getting the love to

put around them to make them successful and more importantly they can't influence them whereas

I can influence the company of our size to grow and there are many more companies later than

or rather the big enterprise companies as well so you do a lot of more small ideas I say smaller

I'll come back to that in a moment but that's one area the second area is like the speed to open

AI is developing you look at Claude co-work it's looking at that today where Claude works what

is co-work what is called rent but the fact is that can go across your whole desktop for you and do

a lot of things automate your MCP connect to all the sorts of stuff right you like I don't want

to be in that blaster radius so then you think yeah how can I serve those people and that's all

we've gone through this AI infrastructure and building their web index for AI agents so they can

proficiently and accurately answer any domain question so we can serve the B-spositively

right and we can be the picks and shoppers for the particular marketplace and then from there we

can extend expand to building a vertical in the sea right so general web index is a mile wide

in inch deep vertically index is more an inch wide on the mile deep so it's like going to your primary

or your GP if you're English right your general character doctor right and he or she would know

everything about medicine but they're not domain experts I know you've got a bit of a cold

you've got sinus problem if you you know put it antibiotic or whatever it may be you're a heart

issue right they're going to refer you to cardiology so you've got cancer you know you prostate

problem you're going to go to urologist that individual is studied for years and know everything

about it well agents are going to be the same right so you've got to look at where the parts

going right and you've got to be able to pivot really quickly right and you've got to see the

writing on the wall and that's what we'll be doing we call it chaos internally and it is and you

know your planning is not a year out is quarter and if you're lucky is six months for what you're

doing right now but you've got to see what's happening what people are doing and yet what's really

different here jump if you think about when when we were at sales force ever we didn't have a

hub spot license and a base license and you know all the we didn't have all these as sales people

to see what our competitors were doing but we can all use claw chat GPT and complexity and all

these other licenses to see where they are how their products are performing yeah and make sure

we're keeping abreast of design actually I'm not going to win that distribution battle I need to

I need to change my strategy so that's we've gone through it we've pivoted very it and you have

to do it very quickly as well yeah faster now than ever and and so so how do you look at our

then you brought that up and you know it's it's you know strategy sessions of a year out two

years out nobody can look to two months out so my my struggle right now is I've always had a little

bit of an issue with like the ROI calculators and all that other stuff and let's you know especially

the generic ones nobody really believes them but right now how are you looking at ROI it you know

is it even a thing because ROI theoretically is well not through it really is is the investment

today for the potential return in the future and with the future being so uncertain how are you

even coaching people or or thinking about ROI right now or is it more

CLI cost of inaction or or current problem we're trying to fix this right now to save you

to and the future as the future is we're just going to evolve as it goes what's your thought process

on that yeah it's a good is a great question and it is hard to track right because the obvious ROI

when social media productivity is ours give them back right so if you if you take a sales person

from a research and I did before I actually came here is 20 is reps only spend 23% to 28% their time

actually from the customers so why is that what what else are they doing well most of them are

doing hopefully they're doing research on their customers right they're doing unfortunately

internal meetings they're getting trained on new product stuff and everything else as well right

yeah and kept at speed a lot of that one AI is going away yeah so it gets into where AI is

really affecting the sales process right then you look at your bell curve have you talk

of formers right what's actually happy are we are we bringing the lower performers up to the

middle tier and the middle tier up to the top tier what I think the research I've seen is actually

your top tier getting even better right even better right and you mid tier maybe with the ones here

and and the biggest problem is it actually engagement and training as there's a big AI literacy

problem with people not understanding the power of the models of what you can do so what we do in

you.com is we basically trap all the usage and we do all the training as well so we train you to

be a domain expert in your field of expertise by using LLMs and how they're going to help and

support you and then whilst and so we take you from fundamentals all the way through to mastery the

partner call pair absolute amazing with any company does is embeds it but it's roll based training

it's not called Sarah it says i pedagrand cero u.com it will go out to web index our web index it

will find basically it's in the jd's and job roles and situations that a cero will be in an

attack firm it will give me tasks to solve that I have to do using with technology and then it will

mark me and then it will certify me then I can post it out so that's the first step is getting

everybody up addressing the AI literacy as it does it it will never say well how much time do you

say doing this right so if you're preparing for a really important meeting with a cxO of a

of a fortune one thousand there's lots of information out there but you'll probably spend two or

three hours doing the research doing the report writing it out having to send it to your boss

and everything else that can be done like that now and it's a lot more comprehensive it's more

accurate and not only would it give you the information it will give you a strategy right based

on what they're doing as well and that's where it starts to come in the ROI so now it affects

your win rates it affects the deal volume you can do and if we're XCRN guys John so if you remember

it's all about the quality and leads to come in right can you improve the quality can you improve

the win the upsell excuse me the deal size right can you improve your win rate over your competition

might and can you reduce your sales cycle I think all of those from an ROI point of view are better

if you embrace AI and music properly yeah and I think that's the the the augmentation piece and

the heavy lifting of the research but that that human being the last mile and one of the things

I'm really concerned with right now is in I've been searching for this answer and I don't know

if it's out there you know the all the work that you and I did when we were young right all the

grunt work that those cards and writing down the notes and all that stuff that that gave us the

context that gave us the business acumen that gave us the ability to have this conversation without

a script now all of that junior stuff that junior reps or or pick a profession would do is getting

done better with AI so so there's one piece of that which is to me is where the fundamentals

going to come from and what are the fundamentals anymore but then the other danger factor here is

I think for people like you and me who have the context and who are curious this is a super power

it's wait tell me more about that can be because I can say oh yeah I used to spend five hours doing

that research but now I can do it like this because I can tell it what to do and where to look and why

it's doing that but we've gone from a search engine to an answer engine and and for those of us

that are curious that's a good thing because it's cool tell me more but for the vast majority of people

that that latter half of the bell curve who are quite frankly lazy and they take the answer they

gives in the answer in the copy paste and send I feel like AI is could either accelerate the top

20% in and it does from a learning standpoint but also retard in a lot of ways the people that are

lazy who are just kind of get the answer right like oh instead of me going through the process of

doing my research on the account prepping up my point of view for the QBR and thinking through

my strategy it's like oh just give me the strategy for this great there's my strategy and and we're

skipping this whole learning we're skipping this whole acumen phase here so is is are you seeing

the same thing and and for those people who might not be the intuitive enough to be like yeah no I

know exactly how to use this stuff for the right reasons how do you suggest they use it so that they

don't get replaced by it yeah I mean it's called pseudo intelligence and our brains over the years

that they they've developed the human brain yeah and they it's like a muscle and if you don't train

if it doesn't have the work things out it gets lazy right and the pseudo intelligence is

accelerating that for the people that aren't embracing this hybrid model of using the AI to do

the legwork for them but still questioning it and using it more as an assistant to work with them

yeah and getting the full benefit from it and educating them on stuff they didn't know that they

can bring value to the customer right it's one of my rules of enterprise selling you have to add

value every single time to the customer if you just do what you said you just go go off do it and

bang send it they won't know it's so synthetic the way it goes through and you will get found out

very very quickly right which is why you need to as I say go through the training go through the

sophistication and is it continuing it's not one I'm done because the models keep getting better

every single time you know amazing developers or even people like you and I five coding can do

stuff that you could never imagine that you could do before you have to constantly be learning

keeping abreast but that to me right is exciting yeah that's why I'm in this space I wish I was

25 again but but that's the mindset everyone needs if you don't have it go back to that 23%

when I talk to CEO's they want to double their revenue not their head count that's frightening

right that is right and I'm afraid I think there's a winter coming for a lot of people that are not

going to get with this you know 300 million jobs are risked from a billion knowledge workers

and if it is happening faster than you think it is right so yeah you have to get into your point

you have to see how you use it and how it makes you better doing your job and adding more

value to your customer yeah and how you can basically almost use it to what I say to a friend's

of mine who weren't really into it and they're in the job market right now and they're not they're

struggling you know so I have an accountant friend right and he was at a work for nine 12 months

whenever it was and I asked him I was like hey um so where are you with AI like you know what's

your skill set with this and he goes oh well you know I used it to you know update my resume and

I'm like oh dude I go I go look and he's 50 like me right and I said my friend Jeremy and I said

Jeremy you have to be able to walk into an interview and say hey I've been messing around with AI

quite a bit and I've actually been able to automate 80% of what I do like I've been able to automate

all of it because it's not much better however the reason you're going to hire me is because that 20%

I got 30 years of experience to tell me that when it produces this that it's not right and I have to

check that and I can so I'm going to be far more efficient but that last mile is where I add the

most value and I think that is what all of us have to have that conversation like if you are a

process person where you are putting you know following the process that's why I'm so scared for

sales reps because most sales reps quite frankly are our process monkeys you know okay let me

qualify now let me set up the demo let me bring in my SE let me now you know get the like and

and they're just following a process they're not engaging they're not adding value to your point

and so the value of a sales rep is getting squeezed where the client now has access we've all heard

that by the time somebody comes to us they're already 60 to 70% of the way through the process whatever

but that was that was more that was such an overused stat and that was also one that was you know

an inbound like somebody who was genuinely interested did their homework and reach her you know

now you could get a call call from an SDR and go yeah that's kind of interesting why don't we set

up a call with an AE and five minutes before that call with the AE I could jump into chat GPT and

say tell me what I need to know about this client about the software the how does the lie with my

strategy what are what questions should I be asking to make sure that this is worth my time

and come in so prepared that if an AE then sits and asks you bent questions you know forces you

through a generic as demo can't answer your technical question has to wait for and like that

conversations over yeah I'll give you a really good I'll give you a really good example so I hired

a new guy and he joined on a Monday and on a Thursday a partner of ours a very well known partner

and you're here on the west coast said hey we we've got one of the world's largest cruise lines

coming in and we had a renewal with the partner so they're a partner but we're also a customer

and they said oh we've got a slot for an hour would you like to come meet the C-suite for them

and I went yeah and it happened to be in this new wrecked territory and lights on the Thursday night

he said when's the meeting I said Monday we have to work over the weekend to be prepared for the

meeting right and there's a window with the page and what we do and everything else and he said

oh yeah let me let me prepare some stuff for you long story short he used R is our advanced

research and insights and he basically he he mapped the whole guest journey for a cruise line

what it would be for search what it is now for this particular customer and what it would

transform like if they had enterprise search yet he created all the swim lanes all the use cases

and everything else right he then rebranded the whole presentation to them he created a mobile

app to provide code codey all over the weekend yeah we went in there we were the only vendor got invited

to their HQ after they met everybody else was in this space because of what these boat is literally

three days in our company he did all of that using our technology oh my god and I call it

Dom Draper Selling what he may imagine right so we open the presentation right and we would

literally walk back from their customers and how they would experience our technology and I

thought this is freaking amazing so we we do a lot of that now with everybody we go into to show

them the art of the possible because it's like you know when when I've always liked you being

the precipice and new technologies we are always ahead of our customers they don't know most of

the Lord you respect what they're good at running cruise cruise lines hotels car companies via whatever

right they don't know necessarily what the technology can really do and how can transform their

business so you have to give them that vision and this AI just accelerates and helps to do a lot of

that and to your point earlier you you don't do a 50 discovery calls now before you show the demo

and everything else you don't need to when we're at Salesforce we were market makers right no one

knew what we were doing well how are you but here you don't need to GPT's your best marketing

part ten billion dollar marketing budget right so you don't need to you need to say well you're

different how I'm going to change your business how I'm going to add value to you you have to

read it quickly and help them figure it out this is why what my thing is is like it's not necessarily

as much about your product or service anymore it's how you partner with the company to help them

figure out what they're at help them evolve to your point their experts in this they're not experts

in what they're trying to accomplish which is why I'm you know for a lot of the smaller mid market

companies that work with them like I personally recommend that every company created their own

internal GPT basically like you.com right so so they so that but their own internal that is

effectively an SE so now when you and I are talking because there's all these tools out there now

that are like you know surfacing up like oh John he just said this so here's a couple of talking

points and it's like don't do that right don't pretend like you know there's on my screen and

then I'm going to regurgitate a question from AI so let's learn out loud with our customers

and so one of the things I suggest is you know obviously not configuring the software or whatever

it is but but enough to answer the vast majority of technical type questions or run scenarios

and when that question comes up instead of the rep saying hey you know what why don't we schedule

a call with my SE in a week that's actually that's a good question you know what Peter let's let's

let me share my screen here we have our own internal you know GPT effectively it's all right it's

SE let's let's ask us some questions because you might not know the questions to ask but I do and

that's kind of what I bring to the table it's not how awesome our product is because it's going

to evolve really fast it's not the features and functions like it ever like it ever has been

it's our ability to communicate the EQ side of the house to get that person to trust that we are

going to be that partner whoever solution that is going to help them evolve and figure this

shit out as we go and I think that's the agility and the transparency factor of being able to

leverage AI and admit that IQ is effectively over you know what I mean like anybody can

vibe code prompt whatever the hell it is to get whatever answer they want but it's the EQ component

of being able to understand that help guide people through this that I think is going to be the

differentiator am I am are you seeing I think partly you are I also think the profile in our space

right the profile of the rep is changing as well and the ratios are changing as well and you go to

market model so we're still the rep profile first we look for more technical backgrounds

right so they can naturally hope you have a good IQ anyway but but but they need to have that EQ

as well but they need to be able to understand the power of the technology to your point early and

the value you can bring to that customer and the customer can say I trust you I'm going to go on

this journey with you on the ratios the go to market all got fat and lazy about six or seven years

ago John right just pre-COVID right I was seeing you know there's a great there's a great

a VC presentation like to get 36 million dollars in revenue I think it was was costing like 28

million or something like that right and now it costs like about that it's costing like 50 so the

economics will work it because you had one a one s c one s t r but those are rate luck WTF

right my day it was like one eight three three three eight eight eights to one s t r and the

same for pre sales people what we're seeing now is a six to one ratio rather than the three to one

ratio because you have a more technical seller to your point anybody can buy code spin something up

know what questions to ask and all those sorts of things as well so and that has a that has an

impact on the unit economics as well absolutely yes I think that those are the sorts of changes

that we see let's go back to kind of your experiences a CRO and as much as you've seen right because

you went from CRO to then CEO which gives you a different perspective on the CRO role and right now

with things is moving as fast how does a CRO know that it's it's the sales the sales motion is the

challenge the the the the market is the challenge like how do they feed or the strategy is the

like when if those aren't working right now what's your approach to diagnosing the problem to identify

is it product market fit is it things are just moving too fast is it risk is it the sales reps that we

have we don't have the right pro how do you diagnose coming in as a new CRO because CRO is right now

I think the average CRO stays like I don't know 14 15 months or something like that in our position

so they have to make it they have to make changes fast and they have to be more adaptive than ever

before do you have a framework or an approach that you use to help diagnose problems and adjust

quickly yeah I mean the the first framework is obviously the the quality of the people they're

working with right to begin with that's that's the number one in tech right I have to be the best

of the best and you have to invest in them you have to enable them you have to do everything to

make them successful hopefully you work with people especially in this everything situational I

said when you're pretty early from trying to build and scale and everything else as well the

second thing is you said the market so what is that market doing right is it exploding is it

contracting is it slow moving are you in U.S utilities I'm going to forget Tom Seable saying to

me Peter never walk away from utility company run yeah because I you know regulated really hard

to sell to in that particular market right so yeah what market you selling into what the dynamics

of the market yeah and then how do they buy and everything else then it's your product yeah so

is it is it is it a great product as he got lots of foibles in it now in the old days if you're

the right people in the right market the product wasn't so important because you can set around it

they those days have gone my friend they have completely gone because this consumerization GPT

the speed it moves at nicotine else as well right and then it comes down to timing are you in the

right he is right market at the right time with the right crew and I've been in the wrong I've

been I've been with the right people the right product with just the wrong timing in the market

before right and just melt what you do you know you can't believe your own BS right you can come

out of these hyper growth companies you can think I'm these sprinkles and gold dust and everything's

going to be party right but you need everything working and going in your direction right so I would

look at all of those things first but the thing is I yeah people say to me people are reading

amazing salesperson is it a great communicator being able to pay each knowing all the product yes all

those but they actually two is in one mouth right you need to listen to what the customers are saying

you need to go and do win loss reports right win loss is really important I think people forget

to do it nowadays the amount of companies like advisers are being to and they're not doing a an

impartial win loss for those that don't know if you lose a deal you basically get somebody to go

in there had nothing to do with it and they have a set of questions to find out why you lost that

deal you know and it's can be get confidential but the important things you will learn so much from

that and why you won why are we winning right may not be the reason why you thought they bought from

you then they'd be buying for another reason right but that then permutates through into your marketing

messages and everything else as well so I do that as you they're assessment of the people assess

but in the market obviously the different verticals are settling into is it the right ones for what

we're doing everything else the ICP all those sorts of things you'd have to look at everything there

to make sure and then you might just be a timing issue right or it could be an execution right or

it could be the product isn't quite working or where it may be or it could be like you say the sales

people are just not doing the fundamentals then you get the performance for performance management

so what are the fundamentals yeah well not when I started selling you had to do 20 calls a day five

meetings a week right and get one proposal now yep yeah and I don't think last change much Joel

I remember that's when people say it's oh sales isn't it's still a numbers game my friends you

you still have to put there's the quantity and quality and the one thing that I can

the one thing that you can absolutely control is the quantity the quality we can work on but the

quantity is just putting in the in the effort so they but the challenge that I've always seen

is the reps they might do the core their teams or the companies might do the quantity but they don't

learn anything from the quantity it's just quantity and that's why I'm a huge fan of

a b split testing everything and having an agile framework to test intros to test messaging to

test questions to processes all of that stuff so that you can continue to evolve right now because

what worked six months ago at this point is not working anymore at this point no it's all right then

and I think so going back you know so certain rules that I have right is obviously betting on

people right is the the hiring process to me is very very important right go back to what I said

right beginning of this podcast right I want to go into special forces and fortunate I got injured

but that's the hardest selection process in the world but on that has a job interview

and I have the same mindset when I'm hiring people like what we put people through the questioning

the panels and everything else as well but that's just getting in right once you're in it's all

about a enablement it's all about training right it's all about boot camp right it's all about

certifications about passing as well if you don't do that then you're setting them up for failure

or I call the train hard to find easy the very things Russian general came out with that saying

I'll use that in my in one of my rules right I think that's very very important and because to your

point earlier this market's changing as such a rapid rate instead of doing two boot camps a year

or whatever we would do that but we also have a person dedicated just to self-training enablement

our new product releases the letter literally in a weekly cadence for the reps which may use a

further engineer but you have to when the market's changing and my number one thing is that these

as a salesperson you have to be a domain expert you're only going to get that if you're

studious and you and you have that appetite to learn and why wouldn't you want to do that in this

market it's so exciting right that's the type of people we look for I look for passion energy

because you can't coach that right everything else you can coach right so if they've got those

fundamentals right and they've got that learning mindset then you need to enable them to make

sure they can go through execution then it becomes a performance side what they're actually doing

the inputs etc to get the right sort of outcomes they're obviously looking for other hey it's

funny because I don't have you ever heard of the group service to software by any chance

I have not so service to the number two software okay look at that you might want to take a look

at them based on your background because I've partnered with them and it takes military veterans

and trains them and helps them get into tech and SaaS sales yeah I've had an organization that

does I hear in the US yet yeah yeah so I they actually take my training get certified and then get

placed in the tech because I've always said that the military and service like you know you have

these kids who are you know scared to pick up a cold call because they're able to get yelled at

and then you know a military veteran who's just had bullets wasn't by their head and you know

stress is a whole different thing and they follow process they they go through some like I'm a huge

fan of military transitioning into sales because I think they're better suited than most to actually

be successful in sales in a lot of ways yeah no I mean the sales process itself is actually one of

my favorite interview questions I say it's broken down to five components so you basically got

prospecting qualification running the deal closing the deal custom success quite management

afterwards and I say rate yourself on one to five what you're best and Worcester so in number one

you're the best and five you're the Worcester and you can't have all ones right so yeah yeah yeah

yeah so and and I and I think through my career right see the number one skill you need

qualification in sales right so but you also need to be as when we took about starter early growth

through everybody the context you also need to be really good at prospecting which is to your

point it's picking up the file right which is the dying art dying art but I used to love it

because I grew up in ad sales right so you yes you get all the rejection but as soon as you get

somewhere on the hook that is so exciting right the middle bit is boring and the closing is action

anti climax especially if you're an enterprise sales with long sales cycles because it's so

emotional when you finally close it you like you need a hit again yeah yeah yeah yeah and then

you have to get back after I mean I think that you know I was told early in my career you know never

let the highs get too high or the lows get too low it's like you know you have that long sales

process and all of a sudden you close it and you do this yay and it's like nope nope nope nope don't

get too excited you get to get back after it because next quarter next month you got to keep going

and that and I that's the thing that I'm like again just watching the evolution of sales

and the mentality it takes to be successful in sales and you know I feel like I've

sounded like dad every time I say you know work ethic and those type of things were lacking that

work ethic or the cure to your point earlier the curiosity the why wouldn't you want to be constantly

learning in this environment because it's it's quite frankly it's so easy it's so much easier to

quote unquote learn right now if you're curious only if you're just somebody who's just trying to

cash a check go through the motions man I am that's why I am massively optimistic for those of us

who are curious who who have the work ethic and who want to get better I think this is an error

that we're going to be insanely valuable for both the client for us ourselves and everybody else but

I am insanely pessimistic for everybody else quite frankly yeah yeah and I agree and I have some

younger sales people in their in their mid 20s who work for us am I absolutely loving a door

there right I just love their tutors and their dried their intellect to what they're trying to do

and I think I wish I was like that twenty but I think it probably was but not smart to send but I

just I just love helping guide them not to move mistakes that I made but it's so it's so encouraging

to see people like that coming through and as you say the people that don't have that unfortunately

this may not be the wrong profession for them in the next 12 to 18 months and I don't know what

profession will be at the end of the day I mean I look at every role I look at doctors I look at

lawyers I look at you name it and the ones who are just kind of part of the machine are gonna

just be part of the machine or not actually not going to be part of the machine because the

machine is going to actually do it for them I mean this vibe actually last night I'll I'm curious

on your your take on agents because quite frankly I am scared to death of agents and I'm pretty

progressive with like all right I'll try that you know like let's see what this is all about but

the idea of letting this thing run wild on all the tabs that I have open and have access you know

I have last pass for all my passwords so I'm pretty much auto logged into almost everything on my

desktop and and with agentic AI coming and you know all those different things like where where you

at right now with that because that is the line I'm I know I'm eventually gonna cross it where

I'm just gonna say fine my my iPhone is gonna basically know every it already knows everything

about me so might as well just tell it to do shit um but I'm I'm holding on to that one where are

you on the agentic piece of this which is just like hands off it does it better than me I can go

grab my coffee or lunch and then it come back and everything's great yeah I'm maybe a bit too

trusting I love the younger generation they tell everybody everything right and um

there are two types of agents right so there's an action agent and there's a research agent might

so um a research agent and they still they're both agentic right so that will go down into the LLNs

and it will do stuff you don't even know what it's doing right I would do recently in China

Thor do research it would it will make decisions do you need to read this do you need to see this

based on the prompt of fanning the prompt and everything else as well and obviously there's the

agentic ones and and that by the way the the research ones go down we think we think of a

agentic has been left to right because we think your workflows but these things go down they

fan out and do various things they come back and they bring back what you they think you need to

be presented with then there's the agentic ones are some of the stuff that we're working with our

customers is they can go and book for you you know restaurants hotels all those sorts of things but

because at memory they know what you like what your preferences are and they're going to get

better over time and everything else one and to be honest with you I think it's there's almost

levels is never automation you will let them you will start to trust them more and more John

as they do certain things for them there'll be guardrails on them that you want them to do but

yeah booking the stuff like travel and and just be able to tell it you know but this is a this

is the people go get used to the whole the whole interface with the computer is going to change

quite a lot yeah yeah the human interface is changing to be completely conversational where I can

just talk like and talk to you know friends hey can you put me a flight between here and my army

right I want to go you know on this particular airline but knows that already right so and

knows I fly in a certain class and everything else as well and all it means is my credit card and

it's can actually book that particular flight and it's going to do it right and I think so I think

I want to be there because I'm lazy in some ways from that point for doing those types of tasks

but I think there's going to be a trust you know of how much on the whole journey you let them do

right so when you're planning a trip there's either multiple things you go through to plan it

is certain things are going to get automatically quite quickly and other things what I'm much

said to push the final button myself as a human but I think in 12 months I'll probably

lap away just say it and I say I'm here man that's why I'm like I'm so scared right now but then I

think of the early days of the internet and like the idea of putting your credit card and buying

something online was like are you out of your mind there is no chance and then it was like all right

I'll buy something for five bucks I'll buy something for ten bucks and then and then I'll

send it by a Tesla you know what I mean for like and it's the same thing with SaaS I remember vividly

back at Salesforce's dates like everybody was like oh like Oracle was like oh you know the SaaS

stuff was cute and adorable but when you want to make a big boy decision you're gonna you're gonna

need you know infrastructure right and then all of a sudden I think it was state farm that signed

$150 million dollar contract with Salesforce and just blew the top off of that that whole theory

it was like nope huge organizations are now in the cloud and and it just took up and and I think

the uncomfortable part here is I've been saying this a lot historically we would we would that

was a gradual evolution it was okay you know today I'll spend five bucks six months maybe later I'll

spend a hundred bucks online a year later I'm gonna okay now I'll buy it you know what I mean

whereas now it's like it's it's it's it's happening so fast where it's like I look at this

agentic stuff and I'm like we've only been really really like neck deep in AI since a year and a half

maybe you know what I mean like the public has and we're already we're where we are and so who's

to say that literally in two months I'm not just like yeah you know what AI just can do everything I

want to do I mean the way I describe to people if you go back to the internet days just do go

took five years to get to a hundred million users Changi PT trip less than 60 days that's 30x

faster in that in that in that 25 years we've had a digital platform either internet or the worldwide

web half or 56% of the fortune 1000 disappeared because it didn't transform faster so you know you

know you're you know your blockbusters of aims one code all those sort of people at war was

et cetera right in the UK this is 30 times faster that's why I'm so passionate about AI

literacy getting in the hands of everybody showing the power of what it can do Jon for your business

because if you if you ignore it unfortunately you're going to be a dinosaur and and the future is

not rosy for you and go much your early estate and right what are you going to do you're probably

going to be a plumber or something no disrespect to plumbers very but those are the sorts of things

you did that have not been recorded like what we do is white collar workers right that that cannot

be identified yeah at the moment right so that's a safer bet for you to go for I recommend kids

right now who don't know what they want to do and be a plumber be an electrician and with the

amount of data centers that are being built right now you can print money as an electrician at

this point and you'll never be out of work but white collar ye white collar you're in trouble

so if you don't jump on this train and start becoming fluid in AI fluent in AI so I think it's

a good place to end that Peter because I think there's like I said I think there's optimism for

the ones that that that are willing to put in the work and are and are curious enough to go

there but you know for everybody else listening better get off your ass pretty damn fast so

Peter talk to us a little bit about what you.com is doing what you're doing help people can find out

more about what you're working on right now so they can because I really do think that your

you.com and what you're doing with enterprises you're probably one of the only organizations I've

seen that has been truly successful implementing AI at the enterprise level without the and

keeping the NRR at a level of you know recurring versus people just trying and bailing after six

months on some failed experiments so how can you how can people find out more about what you're

working on. Yeah yeah go to go to go to you.com obviously but you.com slash business you'll find

out there there's two sort of main parts of our business ones the API business which is basically

what we're building this in to see or index for AI agents we believe that every human will have 20

to 30 agents they will go and complete task for you they need context they need domain expertise

which means they need to go out to web index or vertical index to call it to bring about an

information way to make you more informed as a human and that's a huge part of our business we do

but we are also known for enterprise search so that's external search internal searches called

private rags of private retrieval augmented generation rag is really hard to do right so most

people will try and do it themselves and they will get to 80% accuracy right but that's not good

enough in the enterprise right this not consumer product you need to be 95% plus in the day

you bring back and the auger augmentation generation inference that you're doing effectively

to do that you need special skill sets and technology that we have right and that's where we

really excel and we're doing an industrial scale you know so we would take all of your data all

from data bricks some snowflags CRNs unstructured semi-structured structured data right bring

out and vectorize all that information so you can have a conversation search over it and you

can then mash it up with the outside search as well and that's the raw power of what these systems

can do awesome my friend well again thank you very much for coming on I think you know we should

probably get back together another couple of months to see if any of the stuff that we're talking

about is still relevant again right yes exactly great to meet you and thank you for your time

likewise Peter and thanks everybody for listening hopefully you enjoyed the conversations

as much as I did like I always say it's I know these podcasts go out there make somebody smile

today because no matter how bad your day's going or how bad you think it went if you make somebody

smile today you know you had a good day and the world needs a lot more of that right now so thank

you all very much and I'll see you on the other side hey thanks again for listening to this show

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