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S2E15: Will Bots Buy From Bots at $10K? | Maruthi Medisetty (Blue AI)
Subscribe on https://podcast.paid.ai
Maruthi Medisetty thinks your sales enablement team is wasting 50 hours a week, and he's built AI agents to prove it. After watching reps practice with AI for 60-75 minutes straight (when they won't even spend 30 with their managers), he's got some contrarian takes on why humans will always close the big deals, how to charge 10% of the value you deliver, and why companies pay McKinsey millions just to have someone to blame.
The 50-Hour Week Nobody Talks About
Five enablement people reviewing 10 calls each per week equals 50 hours of pure waste. Nevara (formerly Blue AI Labs) compresses that to 1-2 hours of approval time. But here's the kicker: Maruthi's not even charging for all that saved time yet. While he could price at $200K+ per year (a full enablement person's salary), he's starting with "cappuccino pricing" to prove the value first.
"The 50-hour week is massive. It's like a person and a quarter".
Why Nobody's Signing $10K Contracts with Bots
Maruthi draws a hard line: AI can handle your McDonald's-style transactional sales, but the moment there's "second order skepticism" - when someone needs assurance this will actually solve their problem - humans win. Even for a $7K employer of record deal, buyers want 30 minutes with a human to understand German employment law.
"I don't think I would be able to sign a $10,000 contract with an AI account executor. Not yet, no."
From Seat Pricing to Outcome Capture
The pricing evolution: Start with per-seat, move to consumption ("seats times usage"), then land at human equivalent value (hours saved), before finally reaching outcome-based pricing. Maruthi's endgame? If he can turn 20 sellers into "super sellers" handling 5x quota, that's $4M in new revenue per team.
"We are not looking at per seat- per user."
The McKinsey Scapegoat Premium
This brutal truth explains why consulting firms buying AI companies doesn't eliminate the partner who sits with the CEO. Someone needs to be accountable when things fail.
"When you're sitting in a board meeting and want to say why this went wrong, you still want to blame McKinsey and not a McKinsey agent, right? That's the premium. That's the premium you're paying for."
Your Learning Management System is Dead
Reps are spending 60-75 minutes practicing with AI agents - time they'd never spend watching videos or talking to managers. This kills BigTingCan, LiveRamp, and the entire enablement stack.
"I see that the reps are practicing at least 60 to 75 minutes with the AI, and I've never seen them even do that kind of talking with their managers or even with their colleagues."
The AISDR Goes to Marketing
Hot take: AISDRs aren't sales tools anymore - they're "AI demand generation" that belongs in marketing. Why? Because people buy from people, and in a world of bot noise, the human touch becomes the differentiator.
"People buy from people. And then in this noise of the whole bots coming in, if you can stand out as a seller, still retaining that human touch, then the best thing is to augment individuals."
Models Get 10x Better Every Six Months
Following Sam Altman's advice to "never bet against OpenAI's modeling," Nevara builds on the assumption that today's limitations vanish tomorrow. They're not building custom models - they're orchestrating multiple models for specific tasks.
"For every six months, the agents are getting 10x better, or the reasoning models are getting 10x better. So that means the agents will get 10x better."
Sales Management Ratios Flip from 1:5 to 1:20
When AI handles all the call auditing and identifies exactly what each rep needs to improve, managers can handle 4x more direct reports. The future sales org looks radically different.
"I think the managers, the 1:5 ratio managers are going to be like kind of shrink to probably 1:20 because they would have a lot more time."
The 18-Month Churn Problem
Both sellers and VPs of sales average 18-month tenures. Maruthi's mission: use AI to make your best people so successful they never want to leave.
"Think of what are the ways on how you can empower your best employees or your best workforce. Forget about everything else and then see where AI can augment these individuals because super these these people with super skills are God's given gift and they're rare."
The 90% Automation Reality
When it comes to sales training and enablement, AI isn't just helping - it's doing almost everything.
"90% of that aspect is done by agent."
Companies Mentioned:
- Nevara (Formerly Blue AI Labs)
- Outreach
- Rippling
- Remote
- ServiceNow
- Salesforce
- McKinsey
- BigTinCan
- LiveRamp
- ElevenLabs
- OpenAI
- Microsoft
- Apple
- Meta
- Superhuman
- McDonald's
- Stripe
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
View all episodes
By Manny Medina, Arnon ShimoniSubscribe on https://podcast.paid.ai
Maruthi Medisetty thinks your sales enablement team is wasting 50 hours a week, and he's built AI agents to prove it. After watching reps practice with AI for 60-75 minutes straight (when they won't even spend 30 with their managers), he's got some contrarian takes on why humans will always close the big deals, how to charge 10% of the value you deliver, and why companies pay McKinsey millions just to have someone to blame.
The 50-Hour Week Nobody Talks About
Five enablement people reviewing 10 calls each per week equals 50 hours of pure waste. Nevara (formerly Blue AI Labs) compresses that to 1-2 hours of approval time. But here's the kicker: Maruthi's not even charging for all that saved time yet. While he could price at $200K+ per year (a full enablement person's salary), he's starting with "cappuccino pricing" to prove the value first.
"The 50-hour week is massive. It's like a person and a quarter".
Why Nobody's Signing $10K Contracts with Bots
Maruthi draws a hard line: AI can handle your McDonald's-style transactional sales, but the moment there's "second order skepticism" - when someone needs assurance this will actually solve their problem - humans win. Even for a $7K employer of record deal, buyers want 30 minutes with a human to understand German employment law.
"I don't think I would be able to sign a $10,000 contract with an AI account executor. Not yet, no."
From Seat Pricing to Outcome Capture
The pricing evolution: Start with per-seat, move to consumption ("seats times usage"), then land at human equivalent value (hours saved), before finally reaching outcome-based pricing. Maruthi's endgame? If he can turn 20 sellers into "super sellers" handling 5x quota, that's $4M in new revenue per team.
"We are not looking at per seat- per user."
The McKinsey Scapegoat Premium
This brutal truth explains why consulting firms buying AI companies doesn't eliminate the partner who sits with the CEO. Someone needs to be accountable when things fail.
"When you're sitting in a board meeting and want to say why this went wrong, you still want to blame McKinsey and not a McKinsey agent, right? That's the premium. That's the premium you're paying for."
Your Learning Management System is Dead
Reps are spending 60-75 minutes practicing with AI agents - time they'd never spend watching videos or talking to managers. This kills BigTingCan, LiveRamp, and the entire enablement stack.
"I see that the reps are practicing at least 60 to 75 minutes with the AI, and I've never seen them even do that kind of talking with their managers or even with their colleagues."
The AISDR Goes to Marketing
Hot take: AISDRs aren't sales tools anymore - they're "AI demand generation" that belongs in marketing. Why? Because people buy from people, and in a world of bot noise, the human touch becomes the differentiator.
"People buy from people. And then in this noise of the whole bots coming in, if you can stand out as a seller, still retaining that human touch, then the best thing is to augment individuals."
Models Get 10x Better Every Six Months
Following Sam Altman's advice to "never bet against OpenAI's modeling," Nevara builds on the assumption that today's limitations vanish tomorrow. They're not building custom models - they're orchestrating multiple models for specific tasks.
"For every six months, the agents are getting 10x better, or the reasoning models are getting 10x better. So that means the agents will get 10x better."
Sales Management Ratios Flip from 1:5 to 1:20
When AI handles all the call auditing and identifies exactly what each rep needs to improve, managers can handle 4x more direct reports. The future sales org looks radically different.
"I think the managers, the 1:5 ratio managers are going to be like kind of shrink to probably 1:20 because they would have a lot more time."
The 18-Month Churn Problem
Both sellers and VPs of sales average 18-month tenures. Maruthi's mission: use AI to make your best people so successful they never want to leave.
"Think of what are the ways on how you can empower your best employees or your best workforce. Forget about everything else and then see where AI can augment these individuals because super these these people with super skills are God's given gift and they're rare."
The 90% Automation Reality
When it comes to sales training and enablement, AI isn't just helping - it's doing almost everything.
"90% of that aspect is done by agent."
Companies Mentioned:
- Nevara (Formerly Blue AI Labs)
- Outreach
- Rippling
- Remote
- ServiceNow
- Salesforce
- McKinsey
- BigTinCan
- LiveRamp
- ElevenLabs
- OpenAI
- Microsoft
- Apple
- Meta
- Superhuman
- McDonald's
- Stripe
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.