Selling Intelligence (formerly Selling the Cloud)

General Description

AI is transforming every aspect of sales, but technology alone isn’t enough to drive better performance. In Part 2 of this conversation, Dr. Noah St. John returns to Selling Intelligence to explore why organizations investing heavily in AI, automation, and coaching still struggle to achieve meaningful results.

Building on the Human AI Gap introduced in Part 1, Noah explains why trust has become the most valuable currency in business. He discusses the growing trust recession created by AI-generated content, the importance of authentic expertise over polished marketing, and why buyers must look beyond promises to evaluate real outcomes and proven results.

The conversation also shifts to revenue leadership, where Mark Petruzzi and KK Anderson explore how CROs and CEOs can help teams embrace AI without losing the human judgment, experience, and tribal knowledge that drive long-term success. Through practical examples, including Ford Motor Company’s AI missteps, Noah demonstrates why AI should amplify human capability instead of replacing it.

What You’ll Learn

• Why AI is creating a trust recession across sales, coaching, and advisory businesses
• How to evaluate expertise by focusing on client outcomes instead of marketing claims
• What “high tech requires high touch” means for modern sales organizations
• Why the Human AI Gap continues to limit AI adoption inside companies
• How revenue leaders can coach both the inner game and the outer game
• Why investment creates commitment and accelerates behavior change
• The hidden cost of replacing institutional knowledge with AI
• Why tribal knowledge remains one of the biggest competitive advantages in business
• How AI should augment human expertise instead of replacing experienced professionals
• Practical leadership lessons for navigating AI transformation under board and quota pressure

Key Topics

• The trust recession
• Authenticity versus AI-generated credibility
• Client outcomes as proof of expertise
• High tech and high touch leadership
• The Human AI Gap
• The inner game versus the outer game
• Revenue leadership under AI pressure
• Organizational AI adoption
• Ford Motor Company AI case study
• Tribal knowledge and institutional experience
• Human judgment versus automation
• Coaching sales teams through change
• AI implementation strategy
• Leadership during digital transformation
• Investment and accountability
• Behavioral change
• AI-assisted business growth
• Dale Carnegie and timeless leadership principles

Guest

Dr. Noah St. John is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, performance coach, and founder of SuccessClinic.com. Over nearly 30 years, he has helped entrepreneurs, executives, and revenue leaders overcome the hidden mental barriers that limit performance. As the creator of the Human AI Gap framework, Noah combines neuroscience, psychology, and business strategy to help organizations successfully bridge the gap between human behavior and rapidly evolving AI technology.

Resources Mentioned

• SuccessClinic.com
• The Human AI Gap
• The Caveman Calculator
• Gary Vaynerchuk
• Alex Hormozi
• Dale Carnegie
• How to Win Friends and Influence People
• Ford Motor Company
• AGS Two Millimeter Club

#SellingIntelligence #AIforSales #SalesLeadership #HumanAIGap #RevenueLeadership

Mark Petruzzi (00:38)

Welcome back to Selling Intelligence. I'm Mark Petruzzi.

KK Anderson (00:42)

And I'm KK Anderson. This is part two with Dr. Noah St. John. Be sure to go back and listen to part one. But if you want to start here, let us bring you up to speed. Noah has spent close to 30 years studying why capable people underperform. He has written 27 books and coined the term human AI gap, the distance between 200,000 year old brains, the caveman, as he calls it.

And the fastest technology ever built, which of course is AI. In part one, he drew the line between mindset, which the industry has worn out, and what he calls the inner game, the unconscious programming that decides whether skill and technology ever get used.

Mark Petruzzi (01:24)

In part two, we get to the operator level. What Noah's highest growth clients do differently and what the inner game looks like under real quota and board pressure. Noah, welcome back.

Dr. Noah St. John (01:35)

Thank you, great to be here.

Mark Petruzzi (01:36)

So let's go to to our first topic of our second episode with Noah, and that is high tech requires high touch. The trust recession. You guys all know out there we talk about that trust recession often, and we really want to get some perspective from Noah on this as well. So, Noah, you also have talked about a trust recession in this space.

Where there's too many people with strong marketing skills and weak t teaching ability, or c or strong sales skills and weak coaching ability, how does that dynamic show up for a B2B buyer who is evaluating a coaching or advisory investment right now?

Dr. Noah St. John (02:17)

Well, I mean, this is a huge topic, and I do talk about it a lot, as you mentioned. so very simply, it's exactly what you were saying is that there are a lot of great marketers, great self promoters, great salesmen, who suck at teaching. They suck at coaching, they just there's no there

Mark Petruzzi (02:32)

Yeah.

Dr. Noah St. John (02:32)

there, as I like to say. There's no there there. and so the problem is that is the very problem because they're so good at self promotion and marketing.

Just lots and lots of people bought their stuff. They gave them money and they found out there's nothing here. Hello? What the heck is going on here? They promised the sun, moon, and the stars, and they gave me a pile of dirt, So it's it's really, really bad. I have my own spreadsheet. I call it the spreadsheet of death, you know, because I paid all these clowns tons of money. I mean, much more money than I'd like to admit, only to find out they can't teach every way out of a paper bag.

So it's it's really bad. Now, obviously, I'm not alone in that. I spent a lot more than most people, probably, But the point is that, unfortunately, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people have experienced the same thing that I have, which is hello, you didn't tell me anything. So it's incredibly annoying and it's and it's and it's frustrating and it's painful and it's costly. And so I think one of the things that we have to do as leaders, if you are evaluating a B2B or a B2C.

program, you know, and when I say life changing, I know that sounds like a cliche again, but that is what it really is because that has always been my focus is

Taking care of the three pounds of gray matter that really is just ignored for the most part. And so one of the things that I think people need to do is look at the case studies. Look at the case studies, the real people who have gone through program including Gary Vaynerchuk.

Jenny McCarthy, Stephen Covey, Jack Canfield, John Assarath, Neil Donald Walsh. I mean, you know, the luminaries go on and on. And then, of course, just the regular, everyday CEO, CMO, CRO, entrepreneur I have always said, I've always said this, that it's much more important that people have gotten results rather than.

I say how much money I've made. Because when you look at those gurus out there, that's what they're always talking about. I made all this money. Look at my yacht. Look at my boat. Look at my helicopter. Now, nothing wrong with that. We all want nice things, right? We all want yachts and boats and helicopters. Nothing wrong with that. But my question always is: well, have you helped anyone else? And usually the answer to that question is, what? so

That's the problem. And so I and maybe I went overboard the other way. Maybe I've gone too far the other way. I don't know. But I'd rather brag about my clients than me. You'll notice I talk way more about my clients than myself for that precise reason. Because we live in a trust recession, I'm always like, Well, don't believe what I say. And I'll just have to say this because everybody knows it's there right now. You also have to make sure that those are actual human beings, on a video. Like

because of course we all know that AI can create AI user generated content now. And it's pretty easy to spot still today at the time of this recording. I mean, I can tell in one second, and I think most people can too. I mean, but you just gotta be careful, because hell, it's the greatest thing in the world. Wait a minute, is that a human or not a human? Hmm. We just might want to check that.

KK Anderson (05:21)

Yeah. And you know, you could even ask, like, hey, are you human or are you not? Even when you're chatting with a website, is this an AI agent or is this a human that's named Linda? Right.

Dr. Noah St. John (05:30)

Right. Exactly.

Well, I was talking about just the videos, you know, the actual videos that I mean we s

KK Anderson (05:35)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Noah St. John (05:35)

we see AI UGC all over the place now. And again, as I said, it's it's relatively easy to spot now, but is it always gonna be easy to spot? Probably not. I mean, it's just gonna keep getting better and better. So you you you know, you better get in now before it gets worse.

KK Anderson (05:48)

So w when you think about what high touch actually looks like in practice for you at this point in your business, like what talk to me a little bit about how, thanks to AI, and creating the trust recession and then you're having to we have to go back now and accommodate for that. Like what does that look like for you and your business and for your clients? What's caused what's what's been successful, I suppose.

Dr. Noah St. John (06:08)

Well, I mean, it

we it doesn't have to be complicated. At least in my case, you know, what we do is a is a very simple intake form and we see where you are. We get a baseline of where you are over the last twelve months. By the way, when you go to

KK Anderson (06:20)

Right. But to get but

to even get to that point where they're interested. Like that marketing

Dr. Noah St. John (06:24)

So I talked about the caveman

but there's also a caveman calculator So that's one of the things that I love is the caveman calculator. And you can actually see how much the caveman is costing you right now. So that's a really important point of if you are not if you haven't learned how to tame the caveman in your brain, you're gonna be paying the caveman. You're gonna be paying, as I call it, the caveman tax.

Because it's absolutely one million percent is going to be holding you back. like Adam, that story I mentioned earlier. it takes longer to close a client typically now than it ever did for that precise reason. So, you know, as a business owner, you you want to make sure that you're putting out correct content, both in terms of video and

And articles, blog posts, books, et cetera. Right.

So that's the point, is that is why we do operate with high tech high touch. And that's one of the ways that we do it is making sure that everybody is accounted for at the level they're at at the time.

KK Anderson (07:17)

Okay. That's super interesting. and Noah, we're gonna jump to the next topic and we're gonna touch back on the inner game a little bit, but specifically as it re relates to a revenue operator. And I know you've worked with, CEOs and and leaders of all different, you know, types of businesses.

And so and kind of thinking about that experience, like when you s when you strip away the tactics and the tools, what is the inner game pattern that separates those, client that has the exponential six hundred percent growth from one that's kind of stalls at thirty percent?

Dr. Noah St. John (07:52)

Well, as I mentioned earlier, you know, when when people listen to me, they get enormous growth. If they don't, then they won't.

KK Anderson (07:58)

Well they listen to you, which means they do the work.

Dr. Noah St. John (08:01)

exactly, And see, well, nobody's when you pay me money, you listen. That's the beautiful

KK Anderson (08:03)

Why would they not listen? Like what are the reasons that you come across why they don't? Right.

Dr. Noah St. John (08:08)

The people who invest, right? When they invest, they're invested, and that means boom, I want my ROI.

I want my return on investment. Boom, I'm to take action. One of the things that I've known for is helping people to take action where they had been stalled previously. Right. I'll give you another example. I mean, I was talking with another client of mine, and he is has a very big biodiesel fuel.

You know, a nine-figure business. And he is not a very loquacious person, very soft spoken, very hard close to the vest and so forth. and one of the times that we were talking in one of our earlier sessions, he said to me, Noah, I have

A Bachelor of Science from a major university. I'm not going to say the name of the university. Now, I almost fell off my chair when he said that, because this is not a man known for being, loquacious and being, big with his words. And I was like, wow, no kidding. Okay. And, now he has gone on to actually sell that company and make a very nice exit.

My point of that is that when you are when you invest, you're invested. So for those of you listening and thinking that whether it's yourself or your team, so if you are a CRO who is pulling your hair out because you're saying, But Noah, I've given my team everything. I've given them all the tools, all the training, all of the things that they should be, they should just be exploding. I will always ask you, but have you helped them with their inner game?

Or is that all outer game stuff? That's why I started this conversation with that Venn diagram I talked about. I mean, inner game, outer game. Ninety nine percent of people are spending all their time, money, and effort on outer game. It's not wrong, you to do it. But have you spent any time on the inner game?

KK Anderson (09:36)

And so are you te are you teaching the leaders so you're teaching

the leaders then how to coach their teams on the inter game or are you coaching the teams directly?

Dr. Noah St. John (09:45)

Well, both. It depends on what they want. Like I talked about, it was it's all bespoke and customized and personalized. So that goes back to the licensing that I was talking about.

There's no more guesswork.

Mark Petruzzi (09:54)

So Noah revenue leaders are under enormous pressure right now, a special

Dr. Noah St. John (09:58)

Yes, yes.

Mark Petruzzi (09:59)

amount of pressure that we really haven't seen throughout at least my career. They're dealing with this AI transition process, their their overall team capacity, quota, quota, quota, and then the boards have gotten a lot more direct and vocal, going after sales leaders as well. So

What does the inner game look like when the stakes are as high as they are and the timelines are as short as they are?

Dr. Noah St. John (10:24)

Well, it's an incredibly stressful situation. You're absolutely right. And this is something that I help people with every single day. But the point is that AI has really changed the perspective of a lot of people in this way. They believe, mostly incorrectly, that if I just toss AI at this, then I'll just it'll solve all my problems. I'll make all this money. I'll give you an example of how this didn't work. and by the way, this was not a company that I was involved with.

But Ford Motor Company, we all well know Ford Motor Company, they recently made big headlines because they fired all their what's called the gray beards, right? All the guys that had been on the front lines, you know, the engineers had been there for 30, 40 years, right? So Ford got all excited about AI and said, we don't need these gray beards, right? It's those annoying humans I was talking about earlier. we're paying them all this money. We don't need them. Hey, all right, we'll let them go and we'll let the AI run the whole schlumiel.

Didn't not work out so well. So what did they have? They had billions of dollars. They save they saved millions, yes, and maybe tens of millions, but they had billions of dollars in recalls because the AI didn't understand all the things the gray beards knew. They and the graybeards just know this without even thinking, right? So it's not like a gray beard, and you understand the term that I'm using there, right? That someone who's just been on the front lines doing this. They they do it without thinking. They're literally

KK Anderson (11:36)

Tribal knowledge. Yeah.

Dr. Noah St. John (11:38)

unconscious. So they don't even know.

They just do things because they know how to do things. But if they even were to sit down and say, try start start to or try to train an AI in what they know, they couldn't even do it anyway. Because they might be able to tell them, say, 80%, but there's 20% that they don't even know they know. Does that make sense? They're unconsciously competent. And so the point is Ford had to, it was very embarrassing, egg on the face. We got to hire all the graybeards back. And oops, sorry about all those recalls. Do you see what I mean? So that's an example of how it.

It's it's AI is not a magic solution. It's not a magic pill. But it does, as you mentioned earlier, it accelerates what's already there. Okay. So what we wanna do is we wanna bridge that human AI gap. We want humans and AI working together. And I think that is the future.

Mark Petruzzi (12:22)

Excellent.

KK Anderson (12:22)

Love it.

Mark Petruzzi (12:23)

really good stuff, Noah.

Dr. Noah St. John (12:25)

I was very excited to get money you know on the internet. Remember internet, yay, internet from literally countries I never even heard of. And it was it was

KK Anderson (12:32)

Yeah.

Dr. Noah St. John (12:33)

very exciting.

KK Anderson (12:33)

Okay. Favorite CRO or CEO that you follow?

Dr. Noah St. John (12:37)

gosh. my favorite CEO, I guess, you know, today is a name that is a somewhat controversial, but Alex Hormozy. Some people know him, some people don't. But he's I think he's he's pretty good. He he does a nice job. And of course Gary Vee, my good friend Gary Vee is always good for a great story and great motivation.

KK Anderson (12:55)

Yes. I enjoy Alex's content as well and Gary's content.

Dr. Noah St. John (12:59)

that is surveys. Surveys are useless. Sorry. but and the reason is very simple because human beings will tell you what you they think you want to hear, and we'll do something totally different. So pre-market or go-to-market surveys are essentially useless. The best thing to do is just put up an ad, put up a quick sales page, run some traffic to it, see if anybody buys it.

Boom, we're done.

KK Anderson (13:20)

Okay, Noah, my favorite question advice you would give your twenty one year old self.

Dr. Noah St. John (13:25)

Don't buy from those friggin' idiots. Get away from that spreadsheet of death. Do your homework, son. Go past the headlines, go past the marketing speak. Don't don't believe them until you do your homework. That's what I wish I would have known.

Mark Petruzzi (13:37)

Nice. Okay.

KK Anderson (13:37)

You've been burned. You've been burned.

Mark Petruzzi (13:39)

Our

Dr. Noah St. John (13:39)

yeah.

Mark Petruzzi (13:40)

our last one is your favorite sales or marketing book?

Dr. Noah St. John (13:43)

you know what? It always goes back to the classics for me. Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. I just don't see how you can go wrong with that one.

Mark Petruzzi (13:50)

I love it. Noah, this has been a great conversation and exactly the kind of cave con conversation we have built this show for. So thank you for the clarity you bring to this. Thank you for the inner game and your your knowledge transfer there, the human AI gap, and the pac practical path through it. Where should people go to to find your work?

Dr. Noah St. John (14:14)

Go to noahn.com. That's my name, noasaintjohn.com. Easy to remember.

Mark Petruzzi (14:18)

Ha ha ha.

KK Anderson (14:19)

I love it.

You've said that a time or two, huh? Okay.

Dr. Noah St. John (14:21)

Indeed.

KK Anderson (14:22)

We will put all of that in the show notes. And if what Noah said about the inner game is sitting with you, again, that's the work we do inside the two millimeter club, which is our small group data-driven coaching program for frontline sales managers. They learn to identify and coach the small shifts in seller behavior that add up to exponential movement and pipeline.

cohorts launch monthly and we'd love to have your sales managers join us. You can apply at www.get-ags.com forward slash two mm clubs.

Mark Petruzzi (14:58)

And if this conversation was useful, please send it to the leader or team member that you know who you think needs it most. I'm Mark Petruzzi.

KK Anderson (15:07)

And I'm KK Anderson and this is Selling Intelligence. We will see you next time.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

General Episode Description:

In this episode of Selling Intelligence, Dr. Noah St. John, bestselling author, performance expert, and founder of SuccessClinic.com, joins Mark Petruzzi and KK Anderson to explore why so many organizations continue to struggle with execution despite investing heavily in technology, training, and AI.

Drawing on nearly three decades of research and more than 250 documented client success stories, Noah argues that the biggest barrier to growth isn’t a lack of skills or better tools. It’s what he calls the inner game. While most organizations obsess over CRM systems, AI platforms, sales methodologies, and go-to-market strategies, they often ignore the beliefs, mental patterns, and internal wiring that determine whether those investments actually translate into performance.

The conversation introduces Noah’s concept of the Human AI Gap, the growing disconnect between our 200,000-year-old human brain and the fastest-moving technology ever created. He explains why fear often outweighs logic when organizations introduce AI, why employees naturally resist change, and why leaders must address human psychology before expecting meaningful AI adoption.

Mark, KK, and Noah also discuss the distinction between the inner game and outer game, the role beliefs play in sales performance, why coaching mindset creates exponential business growth, and how understanding different personality patterns can help leaders guide their teams through the AI revolution.

What You’ll Learn:

• The Inner Game vs. Outer Game: Why technology, sales processes, and AI tools only work when the underlying human mindset supports them.
• The Human AI Gap: Why our evolutionary wiring naturally resists rapid technological change and what leaders can do about it.
• Why Performance Plateaus: How limiting beliefs create invisible ceilings that prevent teams from reaching their full potential.
• Leading Through AI Adoption: Why transparency, communication, and psychology matter more than simply deploying new AI tools.
• Understanding Human Behavior: How Noah’s four “Caveman Types” help explain different reactions to AI, change, and leadership.

Key Topics:

• The inner game versus the outer game
• Beliefs and their impact on performance
• Why mindset alone isn’t enough
• Breaking through performance ceilings
• The psychology behind business growth
• Coaching leaders for exponential results
• The Human AI Gap
• Human psychology and AI adoption
• Fear versus greed in organizational change
• The internet revolution versus the AI revolution
• Why AI adoption creates resistance
• The caveman brain and modern technology
• Four Caveman Types: Chief, Spark, Keeper, and Watcher
• Leadership during periods of rapid AI transformation
• Building trust during organizational change
• Why transparency reduces fear
• Human behavior in sales organizations
• AI implementation and execution
• Psychology-driven leadership
• High-performance coaching

Guest Spotlight:

Dr. Noah St. John is a bestselling author, keynote speaker, business growth strategist, and founder of SuccessClinic.com. Over nearly 30 years, he has authored 27 books and helped hundreds of entrepreneurs and organizations improve performance through his research on mindset, productivity, leadership, and human behavior.

His work combines neuroscience, psychology, and business strategy to help organizations overcome internal barriers to execution. Through his coaching and frameworks, clients have documented growth ranging from 600% to more than 1,500% across multiple industries.

Resources & Mentions:

• Permission to Succeed
• Power Habits
• The Human AI Gap
• The Caveman Quiz
• Dale Carnegie
• Chicken Soup for the Soul
• AGS Two Millimeter Club
• Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• CRM platforms
• Leadership coaching

🎧 Listen now and follow Selling Intelligence for more conversations with today’s leading experts in sales leadership, AI, revenue growth, and go-to-market strategy. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Mark Petruzzi (00:28)

Welcome to Selling Intelligence. This is the full conversation with Dr. Noah Saint John. We have broken it into chapters in the description. Take it from the top or jump to the segment that's most relevant to where you are right now. Enjoy the show.

Mark Petruzzi (00:28)

Welcome to Selling Intelligence. This is the full conversation with Dr. Noah Saint John. We have broken it into chapters in the description. Take it from the top or jump to the segment that's most relevant to where you are right now. Enjoy the show.

I'm Mark Petruzzi.

KK Anderson (00:43)

And I'm KK Anderson.

Mark Petruzzi (00:45)

Every revenue leader has watched the same thing play out. You hire strong people, you buy the technology, you fund the training, and performance still does not move. It does not improve. Our guest today argues that the constraint is not the skill set or the stack. It's what he calls the inner game, the internal wiring that determines whether any of it actually gets used. And Noah St. John has

Close I spent close to thirty years studying it. We're really excited to have you here as well.

KK Anderson (01:16)

Dr. Noah St. John has authored 27 books. 27. Built more than 200 client funnels and documented more than 250 case studies of clients adding between 600 and 1,500% growth. He's also coined the term we are going to spend most of this conversation on called the human AI gap. We are running a 200,000 year old brain.

against the fastest technology ever built. And the distance between the two is where execution breaks down. Noah, welcome to selling intelligence.

Dr. Noah St. John (01:50)

Thank you. It's great to be here.

Mark Petruzzi (01:51)

No as you have been doing this work since nineteen ninety seven. A lot has certainly changed in how industry talks about mindset and performance today than back then. What is your framework address that the standard mindset conversation misses?

Dr. Noah St. John (02:06)

Well, it's interesting you bring that up, Mark, because from my perspective, the conversation hasn't changed that much out there. They're basically saying the same thing they always have. I started in a three hundred square foot basement apartment with eight hundred dollars and a book on HTML. So I had nothing. I had no money, no marketing experience, no sales, no training of any kind like that. But what I did have

Was something that I bet every single person listening to this program also has. And that is a deep burning desire to make a difference, to make an impact, to help people all around the world. And so I had been studying personal growth and reading literally hundreds and hundreds of success and self-help books for decades. And they all basically said the same thing: set your goals, work hard, use affirmations, all the same thing we've heard a million times.

And I really tried to apply those things. I worked as hard as I could, but as hard as I tried, I couldn't seem to get ahead. I just couldn't get it to work. And so I was so frustrated by that that I realized that I've got to find a better way. And so after reading all those hundreds of books and spending so many years, that's when I realized, and I had literally had a flash of insight back in 1997. That's when I that's why I started the company back then. And I realized that we had been taught.

How to succeed. We've been reading all these books called How to Succeed Books. Well, of course, that makes perfect sense, right? If you want to do something, you want to know how to do it, right? How to succeed. But what I realized is there was something that they were all missing. All of these books and all these trainers, all these gurus were missing right from page one. And that was they forgot to tell us that for millions of people, they never gave themselves permission to succeed in the first place.

So, really, from my perspective, the conversation out there has really not changed that much. But the conversations that I'm having with my clients, that's what's really causing those increases that you mentioned a moment ago 600%, 800%, 1500% increases because of my frameworks.

KK Anderson (03:57)

and these are all in in sales, right? In go to market. That's the primary target audience for your programs.

Dr. Noah St. John (04:04)

Yeah, well, I mean, it's really all across industries. it's across literally dozens and dozens, scores of industries. real estate, chiropractic, health, healthcare, wealth managers, SaaS companies, just it literally runs the gamut

because what I'm teaching is about the human the human

KK Anderson (04:20)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Noah St. John (04:21)

mechanism. And as I have often said to my clients and in my keynote speeches when I give keynote presentations.

You know, people who are running companies as an example, people who are in charge of companies or in charge of teams, divisions, organizations, they have all of the outer game stuff. They have all of the

KK Anderson (04:35)

Right.

Dr. Noah St. John (04:36)

outer things that they're supposed to be doing. But what are they doing to protect the three pounds of gray matter that runs the whole thing, that runs the whole team, that runs the whole organization? Usually the answer is nothing or not much. So that's what

KK Anderson (04:48)

Right.

Dr. Noah St. John (04:49)

I protect. And that's one of the reasons we see these enormous increases.

KK Anderson (04:52)

and so that's the term you use, inner game, right? Outer game

Dr. Noah St. John (04:55)

Yes.

KK Anderson (04:56)

and inner game. I love that by the way.

Dr. Noah St. John (04:58)

Yes.

KK Anderson (04:59)

and so walk us through what that distinction means in practice. So like our audience is largely chief revenue officers and heads of sales. So if you're s if you're talking to you know, one of a CRO sitting in a chair right now, like what should they be doing with the inner game and

Dr. Noah St. John (05:16)

Well, it really comes down to the fact that I am the nerdiest nerd in this industry. I'm such

KK Anderson (05:22)

Yeah.

Dr. Noah St. John (05:22)

a nerd. I'm like the Sheldon Cooper of self-help, the sel Sheldon Cooper of business growth. And what I mean by that is I'm such a nerd that when you read any of my books like Power Habits or any of my other books, I have tons of graphs and charts, but charts. But one of the things I love the most are Venn diagrams, right? We nerds love Venn diagrams. And so

Mark Petruzzi (05:38)

Ha ha.

Dr. Noah St. John (05:39)

my favorite Venn diagram of all time is a very simple one. It's just two circles that meet in the middle.

On the one hand, you've got the inner game, and on the other hand, you've got the outer game. Two circles that meet in the middle. So inner game is everything that happens between your ears that you can't see directly, but it affects everything that you do. So for example, in my keynote presentations or workshops or leadership summits, one of the things that I often ask my audience members is, I'll say to them, What is one area of your life where your beliefs don't affect you? And here's what people do they go,

And I go, exactly. There's no place your beliefs don't affect you, right? There's no place in your entire life where your beliefs don't affect you. Your beliefs affect your health, your wealth, your finances, your team, your career, your organization, everything. But here's the funny thing about it: you can't see a belief. You can only see the effects of a belief. And that's why people can be doing really well in one area of their life, but maybe they're stuck or struggling in another. For example, maybe.

Your career is going really well. Maybe your business is going great, but maybe your health is suffering because you're working 80, 90, 100 hours a week. You see what mean? So yes, you're doing great in terms of career and money, but your health is suffering. And maybe your relationships are suffering too. You see? Or vice versa. Maybe your health is great, but you're not making the money you want. See? So it's, it's, it's not cookie cutter, one size fits all. It's a very bespoke, customized, personalized approach that we take with every individual client. So that's the inner game.

But then we also have the outer game. Now that's the other circle. So the outer game is everything you can see directly. That's all of your CRM, all of the customer service, all the, you know, customer facing, market facing activities that you're probably spending tons of time, money, and effort on, which you should. You have to do that. But here's what's funny. So many people have spent so much time, money, and effort on the outer game.

But nobody has shown them how to actually master their inner game. Now, let me give you a a real life example for one of my clients. I was speaking at a seminar in Los Angeles for a thousand entrepreneurs, CROs, CEOs, business owners, you know, seven, eight, nine-figure earners. Very successful crowd, right? So I was speaking, I only spoke for about 30 minutes. And I was walking off the stage, a man came up to me and he said, Noah, you are the coach I've been looking for. I want to hire you as my coach. Now, I didn't know this man from Adam.

Ironically, his name was Adam. True story.

KK Anderson (07:50)

Yeah.

Dr. Noah St. John (07:51)

I said, okay, what's going on? He said, Well, Noah, I own this SaaS company and we grew to seven figures, four million in revenues really fast. But he told me, we have been plateaued for the past four years. Four years. We've been stuck at this level. And he said, I've I've thrown hundreds of thousands of dollars at this. I've hired every marketing guru on the planet, named all the big gurus.

He said, we can't break through that income ceiling. And he said, as soon as I heard you speak about inner game and outer game and head trash and foot on the brake, everything you just said, he said, I knew you were the coach I've been looking for. So he literally decided to hire me on the spot. That's why I love working with high achievers, right? Because they make decisions quickly and friendly. Don't dilly dally. I gotta think about it or whatever. He just let's go. So anyway,

KK Anderson (08:30)

Nice.

Dr. Noah St. John (08:30)

I coached him and his leadership team for 18 months, just 18 months. And in that, in that time, in 18 months, we were able to get his company that had been stuck for the previous four years to over 20 million.

In revenues in less than 18 months. That's a 600% increase, right? You talk about 600%.

KK Anderson (08:45)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Noah St. John (08:46)

That's an example. We like to call that hockey stick, right? Hockey stick, you along like this, and then we install my frameworks and then you go hockey stick right through the roof. So what was amazing about that, and the lesson for everyone listening is he had, just like most people, had spent all that time, money, and effort on the outer game. And hey, it got him to seven figures. Nothing wrong with that. But he knew he could do more.

He knew he was capable of more, but no one had been able to show him how to actually break through that ceiling. So it wasn't until I showed him how to actually master his inner game that he was able to do that hockey stick growth. So that's an example of how powerful this really is.

Mark Petruzzi (09:19)

Noah, that's that's really interesting and I'm sure really really helpful to our audience as well. So you have two hundred and fifty plus documented case studies and with almost every one of them or probably every one of them showing significant growth. When you look across these clients, what is the single biggest pattern that separates the ones who got those kind of results with

Ones that maybe didn't get the same level of return.

Dr. Noah St. John (09:45)

Well, I love that question, Mark. And you're gonna you're gonna hate my answer. And it's gonna sound terrible. But the answer is that when people listen to me, they get hockey stick growth. If you don't listen to me, you're not gonna get that growth. That sounds terrible, right? But it's really true. And that's what we've seen. It's funny because I literally had a client years ago who said to me, and by the way, we were able to add seven figures to his business while he was taking more time off. And

He said to me, Noah, do you realize that your coaching is the only coaching that fixes every other coaching? And I thought about that. And I go, You're right. Yeah, that's that's a that's a good way to say it. Yeah. I love that he said it. I didn't say that. I was like, yeah. and he also said, you know, Noah, when you actually do your power habits framework, it can never not work. And I said, Yeah, that's true too. Yeah, you're right. So the point is.

If you follow it and see, I want people to realize that this didn't just come out of thin air. It came from, as I talked about earlier, literally years and years and decades of study, of reading hundreds of self-help books because I'm such a nerd. And by the way, I just want to mention something real quick because it I think it helps for the context. That, you know, where why I did this, because I grew up poor in a rich neighborhood. And I know that sounds like a total cliche. It's a total cliche, but it's true. I grew up in this little town called Kennybunkport, Maine.

Which is one of the wealthiest communities in New England.

KK Anderson (10:58)

Ooh, wow. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Noah St. John (11:01)

But my family was dirt poor. I mean that literally, because we lived at the bottom of a dirt road in a drafty unfinished house. My parents ended up losing to foreclosure when I was just 15 years old. So I was very painfully exposed to the gap, the chasm between the haves and the have nots. The haves was everyone else, and the have nots was my family. So I hated being poor. I just hated it. We've all heard motivational speakers get on stage and say, Well, we were poor, but we were happy. We didn't know we were poor. Well, my family, we freaking knew we were poor.

So it wasn't happy,

Mark Petruzzi (11:26)

huh.

Dr. Noah St. John (11:26)

it sucked. And so my point is that that was really the reason, the impetus be behind all the work that I'm doing today was I really hated growing up poor in a rich neighborhood. Because you know, driving around, going to school, and I go to my friend's house, and they'd have things like, food and clothes and stuff. And I'm like, wow, food, what's that like? I know I'm exaggerating a little bit, but still, you get the idea. But anyway,

KK Anderson (11:46)

Yeah.

Mark Petruzzi (11:47)

Yeah.

Dr. Noah St. John (11:49)

that's really where this came from. So it was my hunger.

To not be poor, to that hatred of being poor, of growing up poor, which I was. And, you know,

KK Anderson (11:56)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Noah St. John (11:56)

saying, but why isn't this working? You know, I'm re I'm reading all these books and they all say the same thing. Say it goes, think positive, work hard. Okay, I'm doing that. what's missing? And that's why, again, going back to my point, they made earlier, my first book, Permission to Succeed, and as you mentioned, 27 books later, you know, it really came from what aren't they telling us?

What is missing? Because they're all talking about surface stuff. there's nothing wrong with the advice. You know, work hard. Okay. Yeah, thanks. I mean, no kidding, right? It's like saying, breathe. Remember to breathe. thank you. I forgot. what I'm saying? Again,

KK Anderson (12:28)

No.

Dr. Noah St. John (12:28)

I'm I'm exaggerating a little bit, but not much. So that's that's really the point of where this work comes from. So it's a point to answer your question. That's where this work came from. A very painful, frustrating place.

KK Anderson (12:38)

Well

Dr. Noah St. John (12:38)

And you

know, really the purpose of my work is to help other people avoid that pain and frustration.

KK Anderson (12:42)

That sounds like a definitely a formative story. And

especially in Kenny Bunkportman, I could only imagine. Noah, let's let's move on to our second topic, which is the human AI gap. And when we met and chatted, you talked about taming the caveman in your brain, which I thought was hysterical.

Dr. Noah St. John (13:01)

Thank you.

KK Anderson (13:03)

so before we get into, you know, what to do about it, right? Describe the gap for me.

itself. Like what's actually happening when a capable sales leader struggles to adopt and leverage AI?

Dr. Noah St. John (13:14)

Okay, so as everyone listening to this program knows, this is like the biggest conversation right now, probably in all of business, you know, let alone in terms of sales and selling and all of those things. But absolutely the biggest conversation is we have this enormous influx of AI, artificial intelligence, and it's everywhere. But why is it not really landing? Why is nothing really working? Why is it not changing? Why is it not helping our bottom line? This is the biggest conversation that I'm hearing, across the board.

And so this is where my work now evolved

basically, if you think about what we're really talking about, we're talking about human psychology, right? And I mean, you both know how what a great topic that is. And I know this show is all about that. And that's what all sales is is we're talking about human psychology. Humans do what they believe is in their best interest in the moment. That's Dale Carnegie 101, right? So but if we go back much further than that, when we're talking about humans,

We're talking about the fact that we have, as I like to call it, a caveman brain. The human being, as we know it today, Homo sapiens, most experts agree that it was evolved about 200,000 years ago. About 200,000 years ago, about 10,000 generations. Right? So we humans have evolved, and here we are, right? 200,000 years later. So what's interesting is not much has changed with the three pounds of gray matter upstairs here in those 200,000 years. Not really, not much. All right.

We humans, the brain is very much like a computer, right? We've heard that many times. A computer, of course, has hardware and software, right? So the hardware hasn't changed that much in 200,000 years. But the software is what is where the human AI gap is coming in now. And what do I mean by that? So you've got this 200,000-year-old brain, hasn't changed that much. It's up against the fastest technology that's ever been invented by humankind, AI.

So here is the battle, friends. It is happening in your brain right now. 200,000 year old caveman, fastest technology ever built. Boom, there's the battle. Who do you think's winning? Exactly. You got it. The caveman's winning. Caveman's gonna win every time. That's precisely what no one's talking about. This right here that I've been sharing now is exactly the point that everyone is missing. They're missing it because they keep going on the outer game. See how this is all coming together?

They're focused on the outer game, right? Well, we got to throw more tools at them. You know, buy but spend more on AI. Spend more on no, no, no. I'm not saying those things are wrong or bad. I'm saying you're missing the entire point. The entire point is this caveman in there. And the caveman does one thing. Its main job is to keep you not dead. That's its main job, is to keep you not dead. Now, what's the best way to keep you not dead? The best way to keep you not dead is don't go for something you're scared of.

If it's scary, it might bite your head off. It could be a saber-toothed tiger. It could be a woolly mammoth that will trample you to death. Right? Now, of course, we

KK Anderson (15:57)

Uh-huh.

Dr. Noah St. John (15:58)

don't have a lot of saber-toothed tigers and woolly mammoths anymore. But guess what? AI is that to the brain. The K-Man's going, it looks scary. I mean, let me give you some concrete examples. Now, when I started my company, SuccessClinic.com, in 1997 in my 300 square foot basement apartment, that was the very beginning of the internet revolution, right? And I'm sure.

Many people listening can remember being online in the 90s. Remember that? Remember

KK Anderson (16:22)

Yeah.

Dr. Noah St. John (16:22)

that? I mean, it was pretty bad, right? But I mean, that's what we had to deal with. So, you know, that was the internet revolution. I was there at the very beginning of it. And it was just me and Al Gore back then. Now that joke doesn't land as well as it used to, so I'm gonna stop telling that joke. Sorry. But anyway, I

Mark Petruzzi (16:34)

Ha ha ha.

KK Anderson (16:35)

You're dating your you're definitely dating yourself, Noah.

Dr. Noah St. John (16:38)

know, right? Terrible. All right, we're gonna scratch that joke. But anyway.

The internet revolution, if you remember, took about seven years to reach its zenith. About seven years. Well, guess what? Here we are in the second revolution, the AI revolution. It only took about seven months. So it's literally ten times faster. The K-Man hasn't changed. The hardware's still there. The software is is freaking out right now. So there's that human AI gap that I talk about. So I unpacked a a lot of it. There's still way more to unpack, but I hope that answered your question.

KK Anderson (17:04)

So

what's the answer? How do we ta how do we tame the brain?

Dr. Noah St. John (17:08)

Well, one of the first things that we do is we have to understand what type of caveman you are. Because I have realized that there are four distinct caveman types that we have, right? Because everybody's different. So there are

KK Anderson (17:19)

It's a great idea.

Dr. Noah St. John (17:20)

four distinct types. So, like you talked about disc earlier, this is

Similar but different. All right. You know, in this they talk about the D I S C, whatever. But the four types are the chief, the spark, the keeper, and the watcher. All right. So the chief is exactly what it sounds like, right? The chief. So I'll give you an example from 200,000 years ago. Okay. So there's a woolly mammoth over there, and you're hungry. All right. So what are you gonna do? Well, if you're a chief,

What you're gonna do is you're gonna just rush over at the woolly mammoth and grab your spear and try to kill him. Right? Just let's go. All right, charge, full speed ahead. Don't think about it, but don't hesitate. Okay, so that's you know, it's fine. I mean, that's nothing wrong with that. Remember, everybody has pros and cons. Nobody's perfect. Everybody has, good news and bad news, strengths and weaknesses, right? So for a chief, their strength is action, right? Determination. Boom, let's go. What's the drawback? not so good at delegating, maybe not so good at listening.

You know, Steve Jobs, classic chief, right? Steve Jobs, famous for not having so much patience, shall we say, right? So a great example of a chief there. All right. So that's the chief. Then we have the spark. The spark, okay, sees the holy mouth. Hey, everybody, let's go. All right, let's all get together. Well, we'll all charge them. All right, let's go, let's go. And so the spark is like that natural salesperson, right? There, they could sell ice to an Eskimo. They got great personality, the life of the party, right? That's the spark. They were probably the one who invented fire. Boom, boom, boom. Hey, what does this do? wow, look at that. Isn't that cool? Right. So that's the spark.

Right. Then you have the keeper. Now the keeper looks at the looks at the volume man and they go, you know what? We gotta make sure that the women and children are safe before we charge. Okay, because this

KK Anderson (18:45)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Noah St. John (18:45)

is really important. I mean, we don't want them to get hurt. All right. This is this is dangerous. So, all right, let's just make sure that they're safe. Everybody's safe. See, so they're the keeper of the flame, right? So they're that that just that warm type. We all know someone like this. My wife is

KK Anderson (18:58)

Yeah.

Dr. Noah St. John (18:58)

like this, right? She's the warm, the always giving a hug, right? We all know someone

KK Anderson (19:01)

The Guardians. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Noah St. John (19:02)

like that. That's the keeper, the keeper of the flame, the keeper.

of the community, right? Very important. Right. So remember I talked earlier, strengths and weaknesses, right? So the Spark, going back to the Spark for a moment, right? Their strength is, they're great personality, sell ice to it as well. They're one of their weaknesses is follow through. they might forget to send that email, might forget to send the invoice, right? And they're they're like, they're great at starting, but they not so great at finishing, right? The keeper, in the same regard, great, great, loving, you know, warm,

Relationships are great,

KK Anderson (19:31)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Noah St. John (19:31)

but maybe they find it hard to speak up for themselves. Maybe they have trouble asking for a raise, right? So that's the keeper type. And then finally you have the watcher. Now, what's the watcher gonna do? The watcher is gonna do exactly what it sounds like, right? They're gonna watch, they're gonna observe, they're gonna, they're gonna track the migration patterns over three months and say, okay, now if we go over here and see, then they we can trap them right in this.

ravine here and then

KK Anderson (19:52)

Yeah.

Dr. Noah St. John (19:52)

because they go through and see they're the ones that were drawing on the caveman on the caveman wall, right? On the cave walls. Right? Because

KK Anderson (19:56)

They're looking at details. Mm-hmm.

Dr. Noah St. John (19:58)

that okay, we gotta track it. You see what I mean? As you can tell, obviously I'm a watcher, right? I'm I'm the nerd. That's the nerd, right? Back caveman nerds. That was us. That was spreadsheets back then. So

KK Anderson (20:08)

So then how

so your style then determines how you handle AI and how you react to AI.

Dr. Noah St. John (20:14)

to a great degree, yes. To a great

whether you're a chief, spark, keeper, or watcher, and

KK Anderson (20:19)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Noah St. John (20:19)

you know, literally what to watch out for based on your caveman type.

KK Anderson (20:22)

Okay.

Mark Petruzzi (20:23)

So Noah, at AGS we say all the time that AI amplifies whatever motion you already have, good or bad. And not even emotion, whatever general energy you have going into a particular process, it can it amplifies that. Well that cause a lot causes a lot of of unintended consequences along the way as well.

So that also means that execution quality is the prerequisite for AI deployment. Does that match what you are seeing with clients right now?

Dr. Noah St. John (20:55)

Well, yeah, I mean, the point is that I I wanted to talk a moment again about the internet revolution versus the AI revolution. Right? These

KK Anderson (21:03)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Noah St. John (21:04)

are the two revolutions that we've literally had over the last 30 years. Okay, so going back to the internet revolution, now what the internet revolution did, at least from my perspective, one of the things that it did was it leveled the playing field. So here I am, you know, this guy in Hadley, Massachusetts, no money, no connections whatsoever.

But what did I do? I created a website. I built one of the very first personal development, business development websites on planet Earth, called it successclinic.com, boom. And instantly I can compete all around the world. That was never possible before. So the internet gave us all, it empowered us. It gave us all that opportunity that never existed before in human history. Never. Because think about it. Before, you know, you would have to buy a printing press if you wanted to have a newspaper. That's pretty darn expensive. You have to buy a radio.

Station, you'd have to buy a TV station. These are all very, very expensive propositions. But hey, you just put up a website, boom, you can start selling, and that's exactly what I did and what millions of people did back then, right? And have been for these last 30 years. Well, now with AI, what are we hearing? All we're hearing is AI is coming to take your job. That's all we're hearing. In fact, what's sad and funny is that in the graduation period that we just had recently, and I'm sure we all heard stories about the fact that.

graduate speakers were getting booed off the stage at these graduation ceremonies at major colleges and universities all across the country. They were getting booed off the stage because they were saying about AI. And AI is coming to take your job or whatever they were saying, boo, you know, so what I like to say is internet, yay, AI, boo. And that is what so many people are experiencing right now. So what we're also talking about

Is human emotion, right? We're always talking about that, at least I am. And the two main emotions that we're dealing with here are human fear and human greed. Human fear and human greed. Now, let's look at capitalism, right? We're running a business. You're you're a CRO, you're a CEO, you're a CMO, you're running a company, you're running a team, you're running an organization. What's your job? Your job is to increase bottom line, your job is to increase profits. No kidding. That's a capitalist society. So you look at this thing called AI and you go, ooh.

Hmm, now wait a minute. We have to pay these annoying things called human beings. Now, human beings are incredibly annoying. Number one, you gotta pay them. Number two, they're always complaining. Number three, they take time off. Number four, they have families. Number five, they take vacation. I mean, what is these? What all my what we could do? Why don't we get rid of these annoying things called human beings? And we'll just have the robots do everything. Huh, that sounds great, says everybody on this side of the ledger, right? Human greed. But then what about this side of the ledger? Human fear.

Everybody who's an employee on the other side of that ledger goes, my gosh, AI is coming for my job. And that's everything they're hearing. So why do you think they're getting booed off the stage? Internet, yay, AI boo. So that is where we have to. If you're a leader, what do you do? How do you attend to that? Well, you have to just first of all just take talk about it. You have to tell the truth to the troops. You have to tell them the truth. Are they being replaced? Or you don't know? Tell them you don't know.

I was just reading about the fact that a pilot, this is just made national news, an airline pilot was recently applauded at Atlanta, the Atlanta airport, because he announced the fact that the flight was gonna be late. Now, when was the last time you heard about a pilot being applauded for a flight being late? And the reason is because the pilot did something very smart and very simple, which was he just told the truth. He said, I'd like to announce to everybody that we are gonna have to delay the flight.

Because I made an inspection and I'm not satisfied that this plane is safe for takeoff and landing. So I'm having make sure that it's everybody safe. And so yes, we will be delayed. And I apologize for that. This is not the gate agent's fault. Don't take it out on them. It's all it's all me. It's my decision. Hung up and everybody applauded. Now, isn't that beautiful? We can all learn from that. That's the type of thing you have to do as a CRO, as a CEO, as a CMO, as a leader, as a team leader. These are the types of things we have to do now as a

KK Anderson (24:47)

Really, really great stuff. Okay. this is where we are going to pause part one, audience. And what Noah just has just described related to the inner game and the mindset is actually the work we do inside the two millimeter club here at AGS. It's our small group data-driven coaching program for frontline sales managers. And they learn to identify and coach.

The small shifts in seller behavior that are largely related to that inner inner game that that Noah talks about that add up to exponential movement in pipeline. there's six months cohorts, six month programs, cohorts launch monthly. And you're welcome to go apply at get-ags.com forward slash two mm club. Again, it's get dashags.com.

Forward slash two millimeter club. Join us next week for part two with Dr. Noah St. John.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

General Episode Description:

In Part 2 of this Selling Intelligence conversation, John Tecce, Vice President of Growth at 2X, explores what the next generation of go-to-market organizations will actually look like as AI, automation, and human expertise continue to converge.

John explains why the future isn’t about replacing people with AI, but combining human judgment with agentic workflows to create faster, more adaptive revenue teams. He shares how organizations can break down departmental silos, rethink traditional operating models, and shift from fixed headcount to more flexible, scalable growth strategies.

The discussion also dives into practical examples using platforms like Gong and Clay, why most AI initiatives stall before delivering business value, and how today’s revenue leaders can prepare their organizations for a fundamentally different way of working.

What You’ll Learn:

• Human Agentic GTM: What human agentic go-to-market really means and why software, services, AI, and people are converging into one operating model.
• AI Plus Human Judgment: How platforms like Gong and Clay become exponentially more valuable when combined with human oversight and intelligent workflows.
• Breaking Down Silos: Why sales, marketing, RevOps, and customer success must operate as one revenue organization instead of separate departments.
• Rethinking the Operating Model: How leaders should evaluate what to own internally, what to outsource, and where automation creates the greatest leverage.
• Leading Through AI Transformation: The organizational, operational, and cultural changes required for companies to successfully adopt AI at scale.

Key Topics:

• Human agentic go-to-market strategy
• AI workflows powered by Gong and Clay
• Go-to-market engineering and automation
• Converting fixed headcount into flexible operating models
• Cross-functional revenue team alignment
• AI adoption challenges and organizational change
• Jobs-to-be-done operating model design
• The future of GTM leadership

Guest Spotlight: John Tecce

John Tecce is the Vice President of Growth at 2X, where he helps B2B organizations modernize their go-to-market strategies through the combination of AI, automation, and human expertise. He works with enterprise leaders to build scalable revenue operating models that improve efficiency, accelerate growth, and prepare organizations for the next generation of GTM execution.

Resources & Mentions:

• 2X
• Gong
• Clay
• Claude
• ChatGPT
• AWS
• Microsoft Azure
• Snowflake
• Databricks
• Trevor Moawad’s work on neutral thinking

🎧 Listen now and follow Selling Intelligence for more conversations with the leaders shaping the future of AI, sales, and go-to-market strategy. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Mark Petruzzi (00:38)

Welcome back to Selling Intelligence. If you're joining for the first time, this is part two of our conversation with John Tesey, Vice President of Growth at 2X.

KK Anderson (00:49)

In part one, we got into why digital outbound has hit a wall and why the BDR to AE model is collapsing and what they've done at 2X to remedy that and how they're working with their customers to overcome it. We talked a lot about how we're back to old school with sending things like in-person Vino letters and how we can build our new go-to-market engine so that we're harnessing on what is human and how we

combat the trust recession. It's an excellent session. Please go back and listen to it.

Mark Petruzzi (01:20)

In this half we get into what human agentic go to market actually means in practice, how 2x is helping clients turn fixed headcount into flexible spend, and what every CRO can do before they buy another tool. John, let's pick it back up.

KK Anderson (01:36)

All right, welcome back John.

John Tecce (01:37)

Thanks for having me back.

KK Anderson (01:38)

2X just called itself the first human-agentic go-to-market services firm. Really cool. Unpack that for us. What does human-agentic actually mean in terms of how work gets done on a client engagement? And tell us, tell us more.

John Tecce (01:54)

Let's start with the humanagentic and then we'll go into go to market. So humanagentic, what you're seeing across the board right now is software and services are converging. and there's been this sort of hard line between like what are we doing with tech and we're bringing in tech and it was a very linear process. We're gonna buy the tool and then we're gonna later either buy the services or figure out the operating model for how to operationalize the tool. And it was very

sort that waterfall style of things and and as you were buying more tech and tools, you were sort of trying to layer on the the skill set and operating model. And really at this point, and and arguably before this point, but certainly now, what we're finding is the customer doesn't care whether it's technology or product or people that's getting the work done. They care, are you getting the work done? And is there a human accountable to that work getting done? And so as a as an organization, we have now you know we've pioneered the marketing as a service space.

Starting about about a decade ago with the formation of 2X and the creation of that category. And then as we've seen this shift, and we'll get into go-to-market shortly here, but into how work gets done, and and most of our clients are trying to accomplish growth at the fastest possible and lowest possible cost way, this humanogenic way of getting the work done really is the the path forward and is the the killer app of this generation, if you will. And then from a go-to-market standpoint, what we've seen is the convergence of

The last probably two decades, we've seen the bifurcation of marketing, sales, and the customer office, right? with the establishment of, as we talked about before, the BDR function is the go-to-market and the handoff, and now the client office with CSMs and account managers. And what we've found is sort of a back to the future moment where everybody realized the customer is at the center of this, whether it's a prospective or current customer, we're all using the same tech, we're all using the same data, and we're all responsible for driving growth for the company.

So why are we operating in these silos when really at the end of the day, we're all trying to drive towards a revenue target? So we've found that the convergence of software and services, along with this conversion of go-to-market, you've seen a lot of GTM titles lately that have popped up as a result, have led to this moment where human and AI are able to effectively deliver upon that, while at the same time there's less of a concern at a siloed level of on the client side who owns it. They all own growth.

Mark Petruzzi (04:01)

So John, two of two X's top partnerships are gong and clay. Walk us through a specific use case where the combination of these tools with human judgment produces an outcome that neither can produce alone.

John Tecce (04:15)

Yeah, so it's interesting. with most enterprise data is unstructured. It's in emails, it's in Slack messages, it's in video transcripts, it's in these Gong transcripts, right? and so we we acquired a a top implementation partner of Gong last year, outbound funnel, with in mind this convergence that we talked about. We were in marketing as a service, as a category, we created it, we've led it for a while. we saw this convergence happening, said, hey.

There's so much richness from a go-to-market standpoint that is in Gong transcripts. While at the same time, Gong themselves have also gone through a convergence in RevTech and moved into with like Gong Engage, right? And being able to become a full full platform revenue provider. And so we we kind of saw this happening. And then at the same time, we saw the emergence of go-to-market engineering with clay as the as the primary platform there in terms of data enrichment. as you both know, and I'm sure all the listeners know, the number one hindrance to

scale personalized outbound is data, hygiene and cleanliness, as well as the ability to then activate it with with agentic workflows. And so we acquired Clay's largest partner earlier this year as well. And so when you think about that combination of things, you're looking at a place where, hey, we have the ability to now synthesize prospector client transcripts, right? And we have the ability to then and drive better segmentation hygiene and

agentic activation of contact data. And so you're in a place now where the future vision you can look forward and say, well, wait a minute. There's a very simple way for us to take, for example, a a conversation had at 9 a.m. you know with a with a prospect and that transcript can be synthesized by a commercial intelligence platform maybe like known while for example two extras acquired but the the concept remains hey we can synthesize that even just an AE could look at it and say cool wait a minute I could go flag

to a go-to market engineer in my organization who could use clay to then immediately enrich and say, okay, client mentioned these three things. Well, do we have contact data for the people at the company that would own those things? Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe it's unclean. All right, well if we could update that and then we could use clay to run an out an automated outbound play to them about a product or service that they mentioned on this call, right? Now you're looking at the same type of effect that

In B2C, we always joke that our devices are listening to us, right? All of a sudden you see you get served an ad for something that was mentioned. To be clear, I'm not promising any of that any means. all of what we just talked about is sort of art of the possible and systems architecture work with with agents and and humans involved. But that's the type of thinking when we think about go to market, we think about where does a gentic play in, where do where do off-the-shelf tools like Gong and Clay kind of come in. And that's the exciting a lot of the conversations we're having with our clients right now around, okay, I've made investments in these tools.

KK Anderson (06:29)

Mm-hmm.

John Tecce (06:44)

But also I know I need to build out with Agentik and I know I need a human in the mix. how do we do that? And and as a firm, we are in that human agentic world to be able to help.

KK Anderson (06:52)

So to be able to do that, you can't have a world where you're operating in silos. It's all cross-functional workflows that, it just feels very different than what we all learned in business school.

John Tecce (07:05)

And how the organizations are structured. That's the other th part that I think we've noticed is a lot when you talked about operating model earlier, a lot of organizations were okay, well, RevOps owns Gong and marketing has the marketing automation platform and Clay was brought in by somebody and and hey, we're all messing around with Claude or Chat GPT and having to to organizationally bring everybody together to start to make those decisions together, it's a forcing function for that to start to happen.

It's been a very interesting exercise over the last couple of months as as everybody's starting to think through what this agentic future looks like.

KK Anderson (07:34)

So, and like in just another example that a client of ours is working through with agencies, Gong picks up a CSM talking about a potential upsell or cross-sell, and then it immediately fires off an email to the AE saying, hey, this just happened, like it's live. Call them now, right? There's so many different things they could do. So with your clients who are

building the art of the possible and I know it's all happening in real time and it's new and not a lot have, right? Not a lot, there's not a lot of frontier organizations out there truly that have gone past just using Claude and GPT. Like what are some best practices around orchestrating these kinds of things? Is it just another, is it another platform or another tool that you're using that's gonna hold all of these agents in these workflows or like what does that look like?

Like when you're, and I guess my last question is, when you're talking to clients about these things, like what, what kind of objections do they have? Like where does it break? Like where does this human agentic like model, I don't know. Tell me what you think.

John Tecce (08:36)

Yeah.

I'll start with the latter. Where does it where do the conversations break? The first one is in very similar to a decade or a decade and a half ago when the IT part of the organization was navigating the shift from on-premises storage and compute to cloud-based storage and compute with AWS and Azure and later Snowflake and Databricks. it's the same conversation about fixed cost to variable cost.

KK Anderson (08:54)

Mm-hmm.

John Tecce (09:02)

We are seeing that as a organizations are not currently prepared to, especially in go-to-market, break the predictability of their CAC or of similar metrics of understanding, okay, well, what is this gonna cost me? Everybody is aware of the ceiling of AgenTic and of these operating models and the flexibility and tools like clay that are consumption-based and token tokens are the big topic right now, cost of tokens and governance.

KK Anderson (09:25)

Right.

John Tecce (09:27)

And the first thing that happens is everybody realize, whoa, okay, wait a minute. We might be limited in our our ability and our output right now, but we also have cost predictability. And so what I think the number one thing that's holding back most organizations in this way is is that conversation. And then the unknown, exactly. The unknown and just the the the very way that they account for customer acquisition cost, for sales productivity cost, a lot of a lot of those measures.

Mark Petruzzi (09:34)

Yeah.

KK Anderson (09:43)

The unknown.

John Tecce (09:52)

So that's I think the first thing. I think the second thing does become a very boring but necessary conversation about accountability, races, SLAs. Okay, well, as we're building this out, the big difference between the peers in the IT organization and the go to market organization is when IT was making this decision, they had visibility to their workloads. That's how it works in IT, right? You can see, okay, these jobs are passing through the server to the compute. We have

the it's all metric, right? It's all there. You had IT tickets and SLAs and things like that. Go to market organizations do not have workflow visibility. They do not typically have strong SLAs. and that's one of the key core components to anything that is going to be agentic by nature is understanding what is who is accountable for what. what is the baseline? And are we just smashing the AI button because I saw somebody on LinkedIn say they automated an entire thing with Claude over the weekend.

Or are we actually trying to solve a problem against a meaningful baseline? And I found that most organizations do not have a baseline within which to measure. And their AI mandate is just, I don't know. I see everybody else on LinkedIn doing all this cool stuff, and you know, we should be doing it too. I feel like we're behind. and so that's often where I think I see it break the last of the three would be kind of a related point but the o the political ownership of it. well, hey,

The the revenue office, they signed the clay contract and we're marketing and we can't really, you know, that's that's their licenses, that's not my licenses, right? Or hey, sales ops owns the gong instance, and we can't really, you know, it's a pain and whatever. And so there's a lot of those political realities and organizational dynamics that we are finding, especially as you'd imagine, the further up market you move in the enterprises.

But there is a lot of that technical operational and organizational debt that's getting in the way of those conversations. the ones that we're seeing move the fastest right now, of course, are more blank slate in nature, but not, you know, are yeah, we're seeing like, you you're seeing the startups and the and the solopreneurs move fast because they got no other that that's what they're they can do. But that like, you know, 300 to thousand person, you know, B2B SaaS organization, right? Where there's they're well funded enough to be able to make the investments, but they're not hampered by a lot of that organizational.

at that are really able to make those decisions of hey, I don't need to go hire three more people. I don't need to bring in more tools in a monolithic way. I just need to go like build out in this agile way. Those are the ones that I'm seeing the most that are able to move the fastest.

Mark Petruzzi (12:08)

Great. All right. Well, let's move to our final topic with John. The operating model rethink, what to own, what to outsource, and how to decide. So John, you described the conversation you are having with clients right now about converting fixed headcount into flexible spend. Walk us through how that conversation starts and what's the core question that opens it up.

John Tecce (12:30)

Typically the core question is some type of organizational mandate. Everybody needs to grow. Everybody wants that the growth is always a target, right? But the question is, are we is our operating model aligned with growing to that rate in any realistic way? Right. And if the answer is yes, then great. You can probably make incremental improvements and iterations to get there.

If the answer is no, our operating model is not physically or operationally aligned with getting to that growth target. Okay, we need to rethink this. our our position on this is there's really kind of three layers to thinking through it. And this comes from our our CMO, Lisa Cole, who put out a book recently on this exact topic around what what you need to own, what and and from our perspective, that's what you need to be the best in the world at. Those are your differentiated for your organization capabilities that only you can deliver in a best in class way. And a lot of times that requires

deep corporate knowledge, deep market knowledge, segment knowledge, those type of things. So think brand strategy, think product marketing strategy from a CRO standpoint, targeting, the pricing and packaging, like things that don't you can outsource getting help on, and you should probably get get advisory on that, but you need to own those decisions in-house.

What we found, and most organizations have found, is the vast majority of the jobs to be done that don't fit that category can very easily be outsourced and or automated. And I think the and or is really the key here. A lot of organizations are also thinking through: okay, I have a cost reduction mandate, I have a growth mandate, and then I have an AI mandate. How the hell do I thread that needle? our perspective is ultimately if you are locked up in fixed headcount.

which most organizations are at a pretty high level, you are not in a position to have that sort of slider on this on the jobs to be done to the AI component. You can DIY it, but it's going to take you longer, which is going to then distract you from your current growth target. It's also probably not going to get you to the point you need to get to from a cost reduction standpoint. So our position is to look at that as a jobs to be done exercise and then be able to

set your operating model up in a way that allows you with that slider flexibility to to automate or not automate. Maybe we go too far with automation and then hey, all right, we gotta we gotta back that out, right? versus if you make if you're absent that flexibility, you're in a pretty tough position in this currently a very dynamic market. so those are kind of the the way we we help clients think through it. and of course self servingly probably recommend to to find a partner from a humanogenic services perspective to

KK Anderson (14:50)

Sure. Absolutely. And last question before we move into the rapid fire questions, which we know is everyone's favorite. So you are inside a firm that's actively building the model that, as we've chatted about, most CROs are still trying to understand. So what would you say is the single most common mistake that you see leaders making?

when they're trying to rethink their operating model and what does the version that actually works look like? Where would you point someone to get started on?

John Tecce (15:21)

I think the most common mistake is is unfortunately at the human level of not accepting sooner how different the operating models will be going forward and needing to make tough decisions to get there. And that's a that's a that's a difficult conversation to have across the board in terms of of

looking at your operating model, looking at your work structure, looking at how you built the organization, understanding that decisions that were made even prior to February of this year when Claude Cowork went generally available. We're in a fundamentally different world in June of 2026 than we were even in February or March. And not, you know, there are emotions tied to that obviously, but also being having the pragmatism of understanding that

KK Anderson (15:54)

Wow.

John Tecce (16:03)

reality and then being able to act accordingly. you know, that's it's hard. That's that's probably the hardest thing. And it's hard to even call it a mistake at a human. I have a team. I love my team. and and and the organization around us as well. But at the same time, you know, as companies continue to transform, like having that vigilance and not viewing January 2026 as recent, I think is probably the biggest one.

Mark Petruzzi (16:18)

Yeah.

KK Anderson (16:24)

Right.

One of the things I would say is that I feel like the product owner may say, yeah, but that's mine. That's product. That's in my lane. But that's a marketing thing. You need to go talk to the marketing person about that. That's a sales thing. The second they start thinking in these departmental silos, that's, I think, where the first mistake is. It is so hard to.

And that's really the job of today's CEO is how do you break the mindset to where people aren't thinking that? They're not thinking like departments. They're thinking like, cross-functional handshakes.

John Tecce (17:00)

And and I think thinking about the the the okay, well last time I did this, I hired this role and I hired that role and I hired the third role. it's a different world now, right? So even just I see this with go-to-market engineering right now. A lot of people say, we'll just go hire a go-to market engineer. Okay, well that that title hasn't existed for longer than about twelve months. Number one, do you even know what a go-to-market engineer is? And and we're hiring them to do what? To do the AI thing. They're gonna help us build. Okay, well, to do and like starting to get so also defaulting off of

I'm just gonna run the same playbook I've run and maybe I'll just plug in a new fancy title to do it versus fundamentally rethinking how the work gets done, the jobs to be done part of it, and then backing into it that way. I think that's what the you asked about what the version that actually works, the organizations we see that are leading there are the ones that are breaking it down, not by what is the title that's gonna do the work, but the jobs to be done and how do I optimize those jobs to be done.

KK Anderson (17:50)

And are they just taking their C-suite and putting everyone in a room and...

battling it out until they figure it out.

John Tecce (17:56)

Seeing more of that than I I've seen certainly in the years that I've been here. number one. Number two, it seems they're they are starting to appoint a VP level person to own them. I was just on with with someone in a private equity back SaaS company this week whose title is VP of Go to Market Transformation. She was in the ops, I think RevOps function prior to that. but they tasked her with, no, you we need to do this and you need to be the cohesive person to go drive this across these organizations.

At both an executive alignment standpoint and also a director and functional level alignment standpoint. And so I do see that as well.

KK Anderson (18:26)

Okay, this has been a fabulous interview. Let's do some quick rapid fire. And it does need to be rapid, because I know we've all got hard stops coming. Mark, why don't you kick us off?

Mark Petruzzi (18:36)

All right. So John, what was the first product or service you ever sold?

John Tecce (18:40)

I sold copiers and multifunction printers for Rico in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, not too far from where I'm standing right now.

KK Anderson (18:47)

That's awesome. Who is your favorite CRO or CEO that you follow?

John Tecce (18:52)

Who that I follow. well, I've quite literally followed RCO or Ryan Heineg now to three different jobs. So I have to from a career standpoint, I I guess I have to say him. but I really like a lot of what what Jeremy Donovan puts out for for insight partners. candidly we're insight-backed pork co, so I guess I have to say that, but I do like a lot of his insight.

Mark Petruzzi (18:59)

Huh.

KK Anderson (18:59)

There you go, that's good answer. Ryan Haying.

Mark Petruzzi (19:11)

All right, so a leadership or go to market practice every sales and marketing leader should adopt.

John Tecce (19:16)

mindfulness and at least encouraging some various forms whether it is meditation, whether it is breathing exercises, whether it is therapy, whether it is something like that, perfectionism is something that plagues the B2B sales profession in particular. and viewing a lot of these mental and emotional ways to develop, you know, through that, I think is is paramount.

KK Anderson (19:34)

Wow, I love that. Okay, and my favorite last question, advice you would give your 21 year old self.

John Tecce (19:40)

it's all temporary. Everything is temporary. Every rejection you get, every win you get. to stay neutral, I think, to borrow a a term that I've seen quite a bit of late, from from Trevor Moad, the late Trevor Moad who wrote two books on this topic, but stay neutral, you know, I had a gentleman who I worked directly with who was about twice my age when I started and I'll never forget I was melting down by a customer issue. He's like, You're not even gonna remember the name of that customer in twelve months.

You know, at twenty, twenty one, twenty two years old and he was right. So I gotta give him credit for that.

KK Anderson (20:04)

Yeah, yeah.

I love it.

Mark Petruzzi (20:07)

John, this has been the kind of conversation our audience needs right now. so thank you for that. An operator who already made the decisions most leaders are still avoiding and who can speak from inside the results. before we let you go, please tell the audience where they can find you in 2x, the firm, the podcast, whatever you want to point them to.

John Tecce (20:26)

all of the above. So you can find us at 2x.marketing, although I believe the dot marketing will change with the convergence of GTM. So we'll stick with 2x.marketing for now. 2x on LinkedIn. you can also find me personally on LinkedIn. My last name is TangoEcho, Charlie Charlie Echo, T-E-C-C-E. There's not many of us. you'll either find me or Michael T C, my father, who does a lot of good stuff on LinkedIn too. So add him while you're there. and and follow all of the above.

KK Anderson (20:50)

Awesome, okay, we will make sure to include all of that in the show notes. John, thank you so, much. This was a genuinely productive two sessions. Thank you.

John Tecce (21:00)

Thank you.

Mark Petruzzi (21:00)

From

selling intelligence, I'm Mark Petruzzi.

KK Anderson (21:03)

I'm KK Anderson. And one more thing before you go. If you'd like to go deeper on how to set up agentic workflows for your go-to-market motion, contact 2X for sure. And if you want to learn how to do it, head to get-ags.com forward slash academy. We have expert accelerators and career operators who have built workshops specifically for revenue leaders navigating this shift. Some of them are complimentary, so go and get yours today. It's worth your time. Thanks so much for listening.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of Selling Intelligence, John Tecce, Vice President of Growth at 2X, joins Mark Petruzzi and KK Anderson to explore why traditional digital outbound is losing effectiveness and what today’s sales organizations must do instead.

John shares why B2B selling is facing a “trust recession” fueled by AI-generated communication, rising outreach volume, and declining buyer confidence. As inboxes become saturated and automation reaches its limits, he argues that sales leaders can no longer rely on activity metrics or volume-based prospecting to generate predictable pipeline.

The conversation also examines why 2X intentionally built its revenue organization without BDRs, why the full cycle AE is becoming increasingly important, and how timeless sales fundamentals like relationship building, trust, community engagement, and human connection are becoming competitive advantages once again.

Mark, KK, and John discuss why quantity is no longer the best predictor of sales success, how experienced sellers can combine AI with classic sales principles, and the mindset required for modern account executives to thrive in an increasingly uncertain market.

What You’ll Learn:

• Understanding the Trust Recession: Why AI-generated communication and digital overload are making buyers increasingly skeptical of outbound sales.
• Why Digital Outbound Has Changed: How years of automation have created more noise than opportunity and why quality now matters more than quantity.
• The Return of the Full Cycle AE: Why reducing handoffs creates stronger buyer relationships, better accountability, and more consistent revenue growth.
• Community Over Cold Outreach: How creating value before buyers enter an active buying cycle builds long-term trust and pipeline.
• Modern Sales Competencies: The mindset, adaptability, and relationship-building skills today’s sales professionals need to succeed.

Key Topics:

• The trust recession in B2B sales
• AI-generated communication and declining buyer trust
• Outreach saturation across email and LinkedIn
• Why digital outbound is producing lower returns
• The evolution of marketing automation
• Activity metrics versus quality metrics
• Why quantity is no longer the primary sales KPI
• Creativity in outbound prospecting
• The VITO letter and direct outreach
• Old-school sales techniques in modern selling
• The decline of the traditional BDR model
• Why 2X operates without BDRs
• The return of the full cycle account executive
• Reducing buyer handoffs throughout the sales cycle
• Building credibility before the first meeting
• Community-driven pipeline generation
• Becoming a trusted connector
• Creating value without expecting immediate meetings
• The importance of human connection in AI-enabled selling
• Presence of mind and relationship mapping
• Adapting to constant market change
• Separating assumptions from reality during the sales process
• AI as an enabler, not a replacement for sales fundamentals

Guest Spotlight: John Tecce

John Tecce is Vice President of Growth at 2X, where he leads half of the company’s revenue organization with a team of full cycle account executives operating without a traditional BDR model.

A third-generation sales professional, John combines classic relationship-driven selling with modern AI-enabled execution. He has become a leading voice on the future of go-to-market strategy, helping organizations rethink outbound sales, trust building, pipeline generation, and revenue operations in an increasingly AI-driven marketplace.

Resources & Mentions:

• 2X
• Knownwell
• Sixth Sense
• Marketo
• Salesforce
• Predictable Revenue
• Gary Vaynerchuk
• LinkedIn
• Bob Kelly
• Selling to VITO
• Hope Is Not a Strategy
• The Go-Giver
• AGS Academy

🎧 Listen now and follow Selling Intelligence for more conversations with today’s leading revenue operators, sales executives, and GTM innovators. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Mark Petruzzi (00:28)

Welcome to Selling Intelligence. Our guest today is John TC, Vice President of Growth at 2X, the firm that just its declared itself the first human agentic go-to-market services firm. John runs half of 2x's revenue organization, a team of 12 full-cycle AEs with no BDRs.

And he is third generation sales who has spent the last year watching the tools that built his career stop working at scale. Two X recently announced its acquisition of known well, and John has a front row seat to where the market is heading.

KK Anderson (01:05)

Personal note before we start, when John, Mark and I spoke in preparation, we landed on the same diagnosis from two very different directions and he is living it inside his own team and we are diagnosing it with clients every week. The instinct everyone has is to add more activity. John's answer is the opposite and that's what makes this conversation well worth your time.

Mark Petruzzi (01:30)

Here are the topics we will cover today. In part one, three things: why Digital Outbound has hit a wall and what that means for every CRO. The death of the BDR and the return of the full cycle AE. And old school fundamentals through new mechanisms, how the best reps apply forever concepts through AI-enabled execution. Then in part two, which drops next week.

We will get into two additional topics. What human agentic go-to-market actually means when you combine human agents and tech and the operating model of rethink: what to own, what to outsource, and how to decide. John, welcome to Selling Intelligence.

John Tecce (02:13)

Great to be here.

KK Anderson (02:13)

We are thrilled to have you. Okay, let's jump right into it. So much great stuff to cover today. And let's start with this idea of the trust recession and why digital outbound has hit a wall. And we bonded on this topic during the prep session, as I indicated in our introduction. as soon as I said,

I said it, the trust recession, which by the way, I picked that up from Bob Kelly, who's the chairman of Sales Management Association. So all credit to him. You immediately reacted to it and we both totally agree that we are in a trust recession right now. And so let's start with you telling us like, what does that mean for you? What does it capture for you? Like, what are you seeing on your team and across your clients that makes that a phrase that really resonates for you?

John Tecce (02:58)

thing that really sticks out to me is the utilization of AI in all forms of communication that has led to a skepticism on the receiving end.

How real the text that I'm receiving, whether it's a LinkedIn post or a message or an email or what have you, actually is from the human being versus how much of it was went through the AI car wash. And inherently, if you think about most of these models are ultimately trying to regress to the mean in terms of what they generate. And so you're ending up with this.

copy paste of of phrasing and ways that things are said that strips out a lot of the human nature of it. And I think as a result, as B2B professionals, and when I say B2B professionals, that's under the whole go-to-market lens, everything from BDR to AE to CSM to executive, et cetera. there's the evergreen phrase of people buy from people who they know, like and trust, but it's kind of harder to get to know and trust them if you you have to

filter everything they send you through the lens of like how much of this, you know, is really them versus how much of it is Chat GPT or or Copilot or or Claude that they're running these thoughts and communications through. I'm a huge user of AI, to be clear, I'm very AI forward and I encourage my team to be the same. but when you come to the trust recession, I think a lot of it has to do with just a a distance now that exists between two people and the communication between

KK Anderson (04:10)

and a lot of the noise that it has created, right? It's almost deafening. There's so much noise out there in the market today. It's insane.

John Tecce (04:19)

It's it's insane. the BDR

outreach surge that we've seen in particular, whether it's again BDRs or otherwise, but Sixth Sense put out some research very recently that the baseline touches per contact was was about 17 in 2024. Not that long ago. We're in the middle of 2026. and this research came out a couple of weeks ago. We're now at 34 touches per contact. So it's doubled, number one. Number two, on top of that.

KK Anderson (04:39)

Ugh.

my poor inbox.

John Tecce (04:44)

It ex well and inboxes, right? So what they found in that research as well was social in particular is the the biggest source of that growth. It went from about four and a half touches in twenty twenty four to now over ten in twenty twenty six. And so your email inbox is already hurting and and kind of getting hammered. And now, LinkedIn kinda used to be the okay, well if you send a a a really strong LinkedIn connect request or a really strong in mail, you had a good chance now

But what we're seeing is the volume and just the increase in the noise in in part due to the ability to do it from a scale standpoint, an automation standpoint. but also, you're finding a lot of the inbox tools, both on the LinkedIn side and email, are becoming more intelligent to filtering out that noise. And so it's that's being countered with more noise and just more and more, more, more, and more, and we're at a point where the math just just doesn't math anymore.

Mark Petruzzi (05:29)

So John, you have been selling a long time now s so you definitely remember when digital outbound was still relatively clean. What has changed at the structural level and how does it show up in the numbers you're watching every day right now?

John Tecce (05:44)

Yeah, I think you know when I started my career was when marketing automation in its in its current form was really taking shape. my first role out of school was was at Rico for a couple years and helped them launch at the sales level launch Marketo as an example. And it was like super cool that you could put in this template and you could pull and have it personalized by first name and by company name. That was like a really big deal, right? and at the time we were getting and then you you started to see the

know, the evolution of of RevTech and marketing automation into where now I can put in these all these different variables. It's like, my gosh, okay, now I can personalize that scale. I can put in company name and industry and based on industry I could put in these three client names of ours and like and you were getting a a really positive return on that because it was it was one, new on the recipient side and two, there was just less of it. And so as a result of those two factors,

You know, you were able to to be more successful with that approach. what the SaaS industrial complex sort of created and through books like Predictable Revenue and other, the success of Salesforce and other firms was this idea of well, okay, well, if we just do more of that and we hire more people to do more of that, it we've always talked about a funnel forever, right? Or a bow tie. It's gonna more is gonna yield more. And for a while that was the case.

first through email and then, as as far back as twenty eighteen, Gary Vaanderchuk's big thing was l LinkedIn was gonna be the platform of twenty eighteen. and you know, that that kind of pulled through in in through LinkedIn. And then by the way, once COVID hit, all we had was digital for a while there. And so that fur even further exacerbated it. And so I think, you I I look back on just the rudimentary basics of but a lot of folks of my sort of cohort of the middle millennial kind of age range

came about when that was what you learned to do and you and wherever you started, whether you as an AE or a BDR, and that was, okay, if I just pull this slot machine or I just keep hitting these buttons, you know, the return, it was a math equation, right? and as we've just established that that is no longer the case. And so it's interesting now to look back on how successful that was and for good reason, but we've now effectively polluted that ocean to the point where there's there's no longer that many fish to catch through the volume approach.

KK Anderson (07:46)

You know, what's interesting is that, and we've talked about this a lot on the podcast before, is it's almost like the pendulum is swinging all the way back to the old school, which is so good for the really strong salespeople because trusted advisor, relationships, really being subject matter experts in what you do and your domain, the passion that you have for what you sell, all of those things that are so human and that make

the best sellers, the best, like that now is paramount. And when we were chatting, John, you told us a story that I'd love for you to share with our audience, that one of your team members used an old school like veto letter, right? To get in front of a chief marketing officer at a dinner. So tell us that story. And then before you do, just for the millennials in the group who never had to do a veto letter, like tell us what it is.

John Tecce (08:35)

Ha ha

KK Anderson (08:36)

Tell us what

John Tecce (08:36)

ha.

KK Anderson (08:36)

it actually is and then tell us what happened and why it worked and expand on that.

John Tecce (08:42)

Yeah, I

think first and foremost, you mentioned at the top that I'm third generation sales at least third generation. I don't know further back than that. but my father, Michael T C was in sales leadership for his entire career. and so I grew up, you know, around around books like Selling to Vito and Hope Is Not a Strategy. And these were these were just things that were around me my whole life. And so I feel extremely blessed to have sort of entered this this profession with a lot of

Timeless values and concepts and so being able to pull back to those things, right? And so, sitting in the backseat coming home from from baseball practice and having learned what veto stands for and what a letter is, right? So s it's given the now that we're kind of thinking about this full cycle part of it, you know, we started to think about, okay, well, the digital channels have been polluted. that doesn't mean stop doing them, by the way. You can there are still fish to catch. it means you can't rely on them. And those are two different things, right? So you have to be thinking in a different way. Direct mail, not a new concept.

So what sort of occurred to us, as we were sort of thinking through, okay, how can we zig when everybody else is zagging or vice versa, was well, we can rely on direct mail, but even that, you know, okay, that's gotta get sent to an office and get processed and what have you. exact yeah, we've got a few people that are remote, but through the investment and commitment from our our go to market organization around building community, our CMO Lisa Cole was attending a

KK Anderson (09:48)

And no one's in the office.

John Tecce (10:00)

Dinner recently, and occurred to one of my AEs, Lucy Goodwin, who just finished up another incredible quarter, by the way, was like, you know, you're you're seated at a table with one of my prospects that has a very compelling go-to-market transformation going on right now. And we've tried through digital channels and we have a really compelling message. We just don't, we haven't been able to have the right vessel to deliver it. And it sort of occurred, hey, can I?

Like so we talked about it and we kind of came around with like, well, you have the message. You have the veto letter. And for those unfamiliar with the veto letter, it's nothing more than a one-page letter with a a brief, succinct value prop, value statement, citing specifics to that company, what we think we can do for you, and then setting up a very direct follow-up. And so we had all those puzzle pieces together. So well, what if like, hold on, Lisa's gonna be at the same in the same room? What if you just physically have her like give that message to the person, which 30 years ago

KK Anderson (10:48)

slip her not

John Tecce (10:48)

Totally. And like 30 years ago is exactly what you would have done, right? Because you didn't have the digital channels to you only had in person or or the phone or or fax, right? And so she sure enough did that. And the recipient was blown away by he's like, no one's ever done this before. No one's ever given me a physically given me a a message outlining a value pro tailored value proposition relevant to them, specifics, right, and all those things. and really kind of stood out.

in terms of, hey, these guys are different. Like this company's operating in a different way. I don't do anything different. We're just we're going back to the future a little bit around you know that type of thing. and it was just very well received on on their side has led to a continuing conversation towards what exactly what we want to do is getting on their radar in a meaningful way through a timeless

KK Anderson (11:32)

VEDO is, I believe it stands for very important top officer. Is that right? Yeah, that's really cool. I love that story, John.

John Tecce (11:37)

Yes, exactly.

Mark Petruzzi (11:40)

So John, for for a CRO listening to this who is still running a sequencing first high volume outbound motion, what is the one thing they should stop? Like, stop now. Not not tomorrow, stop today.

John Tecce (11:54)

Quantity metrics are no longer a reliable predictor of conversion. Now, there are some that might argue that never were. I would argue that they definitely were for a while. but I I don't think smashing the more button or looking at the how much button. I think I think effort and quantity is important. I do not feel that quantity is primary, and I think in a lot of organizations that is still looked at as the first place to go.

it's the simplest, it's the most measurable, it's the most actionable. you only made this many calls or you know, this many outreaches? Okay, well let's try more. And don't don't get me wrong, we we look at quantity here too, and but but much more around looking at the quality of outreach and the channel within the outreach is made. I think those that's the big pivot that that I would suggest is taking a hard look at, okay, if we are at a point where unless there is a very clear

gap in the will, it's probably a gap in skill around the quality of the outreach and the critical thinking and creativity around the channel of the outreach. I I also, we have a lot of leaders right now in in CRO and VP of sales and VP of revenue and growth roles that also came up during this era of, you know, not having the prior perspective and only kind of came up through the world of sequences and KPIs around sequences and BDRs to do all the PG work and

When I say PG meaning pipeline generation. so I do think, you know, being able to look back at at quality and at channel is paramount.

KK Anderson (13:15)

Could not agree more, could not agree more. Okay, we're gonna jump into topic two, the death of the BDR, and I know that's a hot take. I know it's a hot take. But it's one that I'd love to hear your, kind of where your head is, and I know it's the return as we spoke of the full cycle AE, which is what you've done. And at 2X, you've never had a BDR function, and I know that was a deliberate structural decision.

for your team and so walk us through the reasoning and tell us tell me what you mean when you say the full cycle AE is coming back.

John Tecce (13:48)

Yeah, I think there's a few layers to it. The first layer goes back to the no like and trust aspect of any B2B, you know, go to market. And fundamentally, anytime there is a handoff involved, there is a risk around that that no like trust concoction to be disrupted. Right. And so to be clear to the BDRs out there, the work you do is valuable. The risk is in the handoff from okay.

you're having a conversation or you're generating a meeting, and then immediately having to hand that off to somebody that the buyer already, before they've even taken the first meeting, has already talked to two people at this company. And they're like, okay. And then maybe we're introducing other people throughout the sales cycle. And then by the way, on after the sale is closed, then okay, I'm being handed off and I'm primarily working with the C like. And so there's just a lot of kind of handoffs that occur. And with that becomes a loss of context, a loss of personal accountability.

And a loss of just comfort in consistency around around that accountability. And so what we found was as a 2x about a decade ago created the marketing as a service category. So think managed services or BPO, but for at the time B2B go to market or marketing, and now since we've expanded it to go to market, but as a category creator, say, hey, we we have to have someone on the front line that is a subject matter expert. The first interaction, the first engagement conversation has to be with someone who has

community presence, marketing community presence, that is, also local community presence potentially, has credibility, can have that conversation and really be able to provide a premium experience on the prospect side from the get-go. and minimize some of those handoffs so that throughout the life of bringing a client in and then eventually onboarding that, there is still that presence there and accountability there.

So that's a big part of of of the decision for us at the time. And it's only really exacerbated in an ongoing way. The majority of what we find with our clients is repeat clients or or folks that we meet throughout this community. And you know, a lot of the research about the dark funnel or name your thing about buyers or X percent through the journey before they choose to engage, well, that only happens when you're not providing value before that percentage point to want to engage. And so also a lot a big part of our full cycle approach is making sure that we are constantly

in that community, providing value, staying connected, and aligning without the expectation of a meeting. And I think that's the other piece of it is the misalignment of KPIs. You have an entire function that is KPI'd on meetings. Well meetings aren't opportunities to sell potential I mean they might be, right? But a lot of buyers aren't even ready for a meeting yet. And so being able to is is that a KPI we track? It is and it is a proxy for success to some extent.

But when you have an entire function that is only KPI on meetings, they're just gonna set up meetings because that's their job, right? Versus looking at it through a holistic lens of are we meeting with the right people at the right time about something they can act they're actually in a position to want to buy. And I've built enough credibility where, you know, most of the research from again, I'll cite that Sixth Sense Research and others say the first vendor that's contacted or engaged is typically the one that wins. I think it's like eighty four percent of the time, if I remember correctly.

KK Anderson (16:25)

Mm-hmm.

John Tecce (16:46)

Well, that's the AE that has to do that work leading up to that point to be the first call, right? That can't be a bifurcated process. And so that's kind of the what we've found and has really played out organizationally for us, but also what I've found my whole career, in terms of just being a a good AE, is constantly kind of thinking about pipeline generation. And I've been again very blessed to have a lot of leaders who have instilled that in me in terms of owning that for yourself.

Mark Petruzzi (17:08)

So you made an observation that most mid career sales professionals have never known a world where they could not send a personalized email or a somewhat cheeky gift and get a meeting. What does that mean for the skill gaps CROs are actually managing right now?

John Tecce (17:24)

There's a few things. one is acceptance and acknowledgement of what you just said is realizing that we are in a the answer is not more and the answer is not what you did before. didn't mean for that to rhyme, but maybe we'll put that on a on a pillow somewhere. looking looking at any there there really are no new ideas at this point, like at all of the different creative sort of of the twenty tens with hey, I saw on your Instagram.

KK Anderson (17:38)

Mm-hmm.

John Tecce (17:48)

You went to this place and I'm gonna send you a gift about whatever, or hey, you went to Villanova and they're playing against Seton Hall in the Big East tournament, I'll make a bet. Like all those different type of they were super cool in the moment in the 2010s, they work great, they were differentiated, they engage people. they've been maximized and played out at this point, right? And so I think really kind of reassessing and understanding what is actually creating the human connection of a

potential buyer and I think emphasis big on potential in that community and being able to engage those people at a human level and at a pace that they're ready to engage with. A really good example that I found is is super helpful is when you're an active member in a community of professionals, whether it's an established community, like an actual community group, or just paying attention on LinkedIn. Okay, I see that, I have a client that I'm talking to over here.

And they're looking for a director of RevOps. And then I see somebody else whose name popped up on my LinkedIn feed that was impacted by a restructuring, and they're in between roles. And they have the skill set, hey, I don't like I gotta I don't know you at all. Like, but I saw your LinkedIn post. You you seem to be looking for something that my client is hiring for. Like maybe you guys should talk. And like playing that connector role. I think we've really lost that concept, which again is not a new concept at all, right? This is a that was a fundamental piece of.

KK Anderson (18:42)

We have.

John Tecce (19:03)

selling up until the twenty tens was being that connector, being engaged with your clients. If anybody's read or listened to the Go Giver, that's a big part of the premise, right? Around the connector and the guy who's just having conversations all day long, but never seems to be getting anything done and yet he's crushing it. Well it's 'cause those conversations are leading to, okay, how can I align a a client need, whether it's something I sell or or not, to what they're trying to accomplish and or just providing value.

And the law of reciprocity suggests that if you're continuing to do those things at any form of scale, it will pay off over a certain amount of time. so that's really like these are not new concepts at all. This is very much like B2B selling 101. We just have a whole generation of people that were never exposed to it. Again, the only reason I've been lucky enough to is through my own upbringing and through some great leaders I had early.

KK Anderson (19:45)

So true.

Yeah.

so true. you know, you, in doing that, you create trust and that is combating the trust recession. And we know that we're in. So, 100 % comes full circle. so quickly before we wrap up for our part one. So, in, the, when you think about the full cycle AE of today, right? What, like, what are the key?

competencies or capabilities. It doesn't have to be, sales specific, but like what is it that you, they have to have to be able to do full cycle.

John Tecce (20:18)

Number one, they have to have the presence of mind to make these mental connections. They have to be able to see connections, whether those connections mean, okay, I have someone who moved on from a a two X client and went somewhere else. And now there's tools out there that can help you do that too, but still inherently the ability to read that. You have to have the presence of mind to sort of feel out in a cycle, hey, I think that person's fully

Committed, like they might be moving on somewhere, right? You have have the presence of mind to start to see these things. partnerships is another good example. Like, so often, you know, 2X has a lot of great technology and other types of partners, but like just because we're not capital P partners, it doesn't mean you can't go find your peer AE at another company who's also selling to the person you're selling to and say, Hey, we're selling to the same person. Like our companies aren't partnered, but like

We're both trying to do the same thing. Can you wanna talk and just like help each other here? Like just that presence of mind to make those connections is uncanny in terms of their ability to find success. Certainly in my experience personally, but also at 2x across my team. the second is the ability to embrace the uncertainty. we are I think the term unprecedented times first became most associated with with COVID era. And now it's just like what we live in.

Like there it there is no precedented time. Yeah, like we're we are uncertainty is a part of the human experience. by the way, that didn't start with COVID either, but I think that that really brought it in generationally for a lot of folks. but with AI and with other things, you have to be willing to disrupt yourself all the time. You have to be willing to kill your darlings. You have to be willing to say, just because this worked for me last year or last month or last week, it doesn't mean it's going to work for me going forward.

KK Anderson (21:33)

This is what it is.

John Tecce (21:59)

And to be able to have that adaptability. And then I think the third one that comes to mind for me is you have to be able to separate the story you tell yourself from what's happening in reality. And I'll give Jen Wang, who's a a former 2X or helped build 2X from the ground up, just spoke with my team earlier today about this topic where she talked about the ability to sort of we all tell ourselves stories all the time about what's happening.

because a story is better than no story, right? Like, hey, they're not getting back to me. Well, okay, well they're probably not getting back to me be because, you know, you make up some story about whatever, you go down some rabbit hole. I in that case, yeah, I do. that's a that's a good example. an excuse absolutely becomes a story in that case versus like, hey, you might have just reached out to him during a busy week. It's not that deep. There's no story. Get back on the horse and try it again.

KK Anderson (22:34)

Do you mean excuse when you say story?

Mark Petruzzi (22:37)

Mm-hmm.

John Tecce (22:49)

Well I and so I think there's a layer of being able to separate that and understand that okay, I need to focus on what's in front of me. I need to focus on how Jen put it, the next clean action, and be able to move forward. I found that those three things really right now in twenty twenty six are the biggest areas that set.

KK Anderson (22:56)

We will.

So good.

Mark Petruzzi (23:03)

All right. So this is where we leave part one. We have covered the thrust recession, the collapse of the BDR model, and what it actually looks like when a firm stops theorizing and starts building the org around full cycle reps. In part two, John gets us into what human agentic go to market means in practice, how 2x is helping clients rethink the operating model.

and where most organizations are making the wrong bet right now. We look forward to seeing you there.

KK Anderson (23:33)

And before you go, if the operating model conversation is resonating with you, we have been building something at AGS specifically for leaders who want to go deeper and educate on how to set up agentic workflows. Head to get-ags.com forward slash academy. There are sessions from career operators to help you do some of these things. And we will include everything on how to reach out to John Tisi and the amazing team at 2X in the show notes.

Worth a look before part two and we will see you next week.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

General Episode Description:

In Part 2 of this conversation, Bob Kelly, Founder and Chairman of the Sales Management Association, joins Mark Petruzzi and KK Anderson to examine why AI adoption often fails even when organizations invest in the right technology.

Building on research across 111 sales organizations, the discussion moves beyond AI tools and into the operational systems required to create measurable impact. Bob explains why automating a broken sales process only accelerates poor execution, how leaders should distinguish between path problems and insight problems, and why CRM adoption continues to struggle when technology creates work for sellers without delivering value back to them.

The conversation also explores the three organizational levers shown to drive AI adoption: leadership endorsement, training investment, and AI proficiency in hiring criteria. Bob shares why AI implementation requires clear decision rights, governance, and process ownership, while Mark and KK examine how AI may finally help revenue organizations break down traditional departmental silos.

The episode closes with a candid discussion about AI anxiety, the changing role of sales managers, and why experimentation may become one of the most important leadership practices in the future of sales.

What You’ll Learn:

• Process Before AI: Why automating a broken sales process only creates bad outcomes faster and at greater scale.
• Path Problems vs. Insight Problems: How leaders can distinguish between work that follows a defined decision tree and work that requires judgment.
• CRM Data and Seller Productivity: Why salespeople rationally avoid systems that consume selling time without helping them sell.
• The Three AI Adoption Levers: How leadership endorsement, training investment, and AI-focused hiring criteria influence adoption.
• AI Governance and Decision Rights: Why organizations must define who builds, owns, instructs, and controls AI agents.

Key Topics:

• The 27-point performance gap between frontier AI adopters and other sales organizations
• General-purpose AI, agentic tools, and sales-specific applied AI
• Why having ChatGPT open does not mean an organization has adopted AI
• AI as an amplifier of existing sales processes
• Path problems versus insight problems
• Process automation and AI-powered decision guidance
• Why “bad fast” can be worse than “bad slow”
• Using AI to capture CRM data from emails, calls, notes, and conversations
• Speech-to-text technology and sales data capture
• Why most CRM implementations fail to create value for salespeople
• Documenting new customer, expansion, and cross-sell sales processes
• Capturing effective selling messages and value propositions
• Process flexibility and salesperson decision-making
• Leadership endorsement as an AI adoption driver
• The 36-point AI adoption gap linked to leadership endorsement
• Training sales teams to use AI effectively
• Adding AI proficiency to sales hiring criteria
• AI governance, security, and decision rights
• Who owns and controls AI agents inside an organization
• AI’s potential to break down departmental silos
• Cross-functional AI workflows
• The future skills of sales managers
• AI anxiety and uncertainty across middle management
• Experimentation as a sales leadership discipline

Guest Spotlight: Bob Kelly

Bob Kelly is the Founder and Chairman of the Sales Management Association, an independent professional organization focused on advancing sales leadership and management effectiveness. Through research, education, and industry events, Bob works with sales leaders to apply evidence-based practices to sales productivity, process design, technology adoption, and organizational performance.

He also serves as an adjunct faculty member at multiple business schools and brings an academic, research-driven perspective to the changing role of sales management in the AI era.

Resources & Mentions:

• Sales Management Association
• Microsoft
• ChatGPT
• Microsoft Copilot
• Zapier
• CRM platforms
• Agentic AI
• Applied AI
• AI governance and security
• Miller Heiman
• Tony Robbins
• Roman history and leadership research
• Sales Management Association AI adoption research

Key Takeaway:

AI adoption is not primarily a technology problem. It is a leadership, process, and organizational design problem. The sales organizations creating meaningful AI advantage are not simply buying more tools. They are documenting how selling actually works, defining where human judgment belongs, investing in AI skills, and giving leaders clear ownership over how AI is deployed.

Technology will continue to change. The organizations that build the discipline to experiment, learn, and redesign their sales systems will be the ones best positioned to adapt.

🎧 Listen now and subscribe to Selling Intelligence for more conversations on AI, sales leadership, revenue operations, and the future of go-to-market execution.

#SellingIntelligence #AIforSales #SalesLeadership #RevenueOperations #AgenticAI #AppliedAI #SalesManagement #ArtificialIntelligence #SalesProcess #SalesEnablement #GoToMarket #RevenueLeadership #SalesStrategy #AIAdoption #FutureOfSales

Mark Petruzzi (00:28)

Welcome to Selling Intelligence. I'm Mark Petruzzi.

KK Anderson (00:31)

And I'm KK Anderson. Every week we bring you conversations with operators who have been in the room and come out with something worth using the very next day.

Mark Petruzzi (00:40)

Our guests today just completed a benchmarking study of 111 sales organizations. And what on? AI adoption. The findings are not what most leaders expect. Only 4% of firms have no one using AI at all. But only 9% qualify as what the research calls frontier adopters. And those 10 firms are outperforming the rest of the field.

By on average twenty-seven percent is points on sales objective achievement, nineteen points on individual quota attainment, and nearly double the rate of sufficient selling capacity. The question this research forces is not whether your team is using AI, it is whether they are using it in a way that actually moves the numbers.

KK Anderson (01:26)

Bob Kelly is founder and chairman of the Sales Management Association, a global, independent, professional organization serving more than ten thousand sales leaders. He has no product to sell and no platform to push, which is exactly why this data matters. Welcome to the show, Bob. We're happy to have you.

Bob Kelly (01:43)

Thank you so much for having me. It's so nice to be with you.

Mark Petruzzi (01:46)

So Bob, your research covers over one hundred companies. But before we get into what leaders are doing, give us the honest snapshot. What is the typical sales organization actually doing with AI right now? And how does it compare to what people say they're doing and what the media outlets are saying people are doing as well?

Bob Kelly (02:07)

the word I would use is dabbling. the typical sales organization is dabbling with AI as opposed to integrating it in a pervasive and sort of formal way in the work streams in the firm. this is a reflection of the uneven nature of how AI affects work in general and including sales work.

But the interesting thing is to understand just how few firms are ignoring AI or are untouched by AI. When we look at the adoption curve and history of other technologies, CRM, for example, or other platform technologies, they've taken much, much longer to gain a foothold in most organizations. We're seeing very fast pickup in

The use of AI, even if that use is uneven.

KK Anderson (02:55)

So Bob, when we had our our preparation conversation for this podcast, you used a phrase that I hadn't heard anywhere else and I thought it was fabulous. You said you said there's a lot of machine stench. Right. So walk us through like what is that and why is it showing up so broadly in this research?

Bob Kelly (03:07)

Machine Yes.

Well how is

Great term, isn't it? I was just about to think of that term when I heard someone else use it. So I've naturally adopted it as if it were my own, but it is plenty descriptive, right? And I think we all have encountered AI generated content. I mean, the more common term is slop. We see it in social media, but we also see it in our inboxes, we see it in work product within

KK Anderson (03:15)

It is.

Bob Kelly (03:39)

the companies that we work for. and its problem is that it represents an inauthentic product. And so this when used inappropriately or i in the wrong context actually I believe does more harm than good. it communicates sort of in auth authenticity rather than

clarity and equality.

KK Anderson (04:00)

Everyone AI it's like AI gave everyone a on the road and no one can move. And everyone sounds the same. So it's figuring out how do you take that superpower and that super intelligence and leverage it in a way to create differentiation rather than

Bob Kelly (04:01)

We want

Yeah, just

You know, I

KK Anderson (04:15)

than the stench of sounding the same,

Bob Kelly (04:18)

I think the mistake so many make is that they're using AI to substitute for their own voice or work product. And when that happens, ⁓ they're pointing out their own superfluity. do we need a human if we're just gonna have machines generate communication? so I think when used appropriately, we use it to augment our abilities, our voice, our

productivity and when we use it poorly we've we make the mistake of y substituting a machine generated product for something that we should have more say in.

Mark Petruzzi (04:51)

So, Bob, you mentioned in the study that only four to six percent of companies are avoiding AI entirely. That actually concerns me that, there is everybody's diving in. And, only a very small percentage are not. but when it really comes down to it, there's still a huge disparity between those frontier adopters, as you described, and the laggers, the rest of the the

Bob Kelly (04:52)

Yeah.

Mark Petruzzi (05:17)

hack is that the gap between the two of them growing and and how fast? How fast is that growing and changing?

Bob Kelly (05:27)

Well, it the answer is very, very fast. The study that we did was concluded I guess about three months ago. It's likely out of date. so we see these adoption and the development of the products that we're even talking about moving so quickly. the the the thing to keep in mind is that or a relevant

Point here is that so many AI products are freely available and they are in the general population. In fact, the most widely adopted tools are those that anyone can pick up, chat GPT or perplexity or any of these sort of language-based chat uh-based tools. And so we see lots of people picking them up, fooling around with them. And this is unlike other technology.

platforms that we've seen impacting the sales organization like CRM or SPM or sales enablement or any many many other tools. So this does beg the question, will this be a phenomenon driven by consumers? personal adoption? will it be democratized in that way or will

companies be required to adopt sort of institution wide, highly controlled platforms to provision AI.

KK Anderson (06:37)

really interesting and one of the incredible benefits of leveraging AI in your sales organization is that you can take that tribal knowledge of your best your your top sales performer and figure out what it what is it that makes them the best and then automate some of those research tactics or techniques or processes in your in your AI agentic workflow.

Bob Kelly (06:38)

You know, the

KK Anderson (06:59)

And and that's something you could never do inside of, the confines of a sales force or hub spot.

Bob Kelly (07:04)

Yeah, th this is the promise. This that idea gets sales leaders excited. in practice, it's I don't know that we're quite there yet, but in general we see companies adopting the easy tools to pick up. These are chiefly language-based models, and they're used for language-oriented tasks, things like communication and

crafting emails, sometimes quite derivative, machine stench gen sort of emails, but also doing things like understanding researching prospects and markets. and where we see less adoption so far is in the things that require more advanced tools, including agentic

and sales specific tools. and so what we found in these so-called frontier firms, which represent maybe the top ninetieth per the 90th percentile of adoption and usage, ⁓ is that they're much more likely to use tools that are customized to sales work and include agentic elements. So they're actually automating work and in

incorporating AI capabilities within those automation streams.

KK Anderson (08:10)

talk us through what these, the frontier adopters and the research that you talked about. So what was the what was tell the audience, what was the criteria you used to define them and like what does that what does a frontier organization actually look like in practice?

Bob Kelly (08:24)

Well, w ⁓

we had have you as you pointed out, roughly a hundred firms in the study. So we looked and we in the study measured their rates of adoption, the frequency with which the typical salesperson uses tools, and the kind of tools that they use. So we took those firms that had the highest rates of adoption and in which salespeople are using tools most frequently and in which

They are using tools, they're using the general purpose tools, but they're also using agentic tools and custom tools that are geared toward sales specific tasks. And so those those are the basic criteria. We identified roughly 11 to 12 firms in that group and branded them frontier sales organizations. We did this in part.

Because the sponsor of this research who underwrote the research was Microsoft, and they're using this term in the way they are marketing solutions to frontier firms. So in part we did this to curry favor with our sponsor, but also because this term frontier has been widely adopted to describe the latest models that are used in these solutions, but also the sort of uneven and

perhaps dangerous nature of adoption itself. Ethan Moloch's great term, the jagged frontier, is widely used to describe how it's an uneven place being on the edge of adoption with these tools. The tools do many things really well and other things, easy things, weirdly, quite poorly. So the it it's a it's a shifting, sort of an uneven place.

to be and that that's why we like the term in addition to describing those leaders in organiza in our economy in sales organizations that are adopting AI.

Mark Petruzzi (10:07)

So Bob, I I kind of echo that that thought process and and what what I'm starting to see, like everyone, right? I jumped in early to just the whole opportunity of AI and what you can do and the research capabilities and and then move very quickly into the agentic side and really creating agents and and building them for our clients.

And that moved to a whole nother level of productivity. But we learned something in that phase two, and that is how valuable all the systems and tribal knowledge that a company has and how to for AI really to be playing its best game, it's gotta have that that information as well. So that brings us to applied AI, right? That's kind of where

where the terminology is coming together and and when you can do that as an organization we at AGS do that for our clients we do that with with a couple of our partner organizations that we work very closely with like Humagentic. when you can go to that next level and really integrate within the systems that are already in place takes you to a whole nother level. did you see that at all in this study and what's what's your overall

Point of view on that.

Bob Kelly (11:22)

We we didn't go super deep to understand the degree to which firms are integrating agentic solutions within their own environments. we did sort of investigate, we asked, are you employing agentic solutions? and we ask, are you using custom solutions that are sales focused? We also ask if they are making use of platform solutions, existing solutions like CRM.

or SPM sales performance management platforms in which there are embedded AI capabilities. This is likely the most this is the likeliest way that many firms will begin adopting these agentic solutions kind of pervasively they will exist within the comfortable and of

KK Anderson (12:07)

Tools they have.

Bob Kelly (12:09)

a platform in which they're already using which solves the chief concern about distributing this capability across the enterprise, namely security governance, the keeping data secure and understanding just how people are using the solutions.

KK Anderson (12:25)

I thought it was incredible that the data showed that ninety percent of frontier organizations met or exceeded their sales goals in the preceding twelve months, versus sixty three percent of the non frontier firms. Like that's compelling.

Bob Kelly (12:38)

Yeah, yeah, it's a big number. so it suggests that frontier firms, so called frontier firms, are much more likely to be productive than more laggard firms. I mean, it's a clear delivery of the promise of AI i as it relates to productivity.

KK Anderson (12:54)

Right. Really incredible. Okay. So we your your research study also talked about selling capacity. and it's let's see, the data says I believe it was 60% of frontier firms say they have sufficient capacity to cover available opportunity compared to 32% of non-frontier firms. And I'm assuming, Bob, that's going more towards their productivity as well.

Bob Kelly (13:17)

So this is a a really interesting finding. again, this data is self-reported, so it is subject to the caveats that you'd have in such a study, but it's almost the only way to conduct quick benchmarking research. But the fact that these firms are so much more likely to indicate that they have sufficient capacity does suggest.

An impact of using AI that we all are hoping for, which is it allows us to do our work faster. Now, if you follow the logic through, ⁓ it's reasonable to suggest that this surplus capacity will be short-lived. So where we are perhaps in the curve of adoption of AI and sales is that we're using AI to great effect to make salespeople more productive, but we haven't redeployed that capacity.

In ways that are likely to follow on from AI adoption. We're likely to see different s kinds of organization structures, perhaps different spans of control. We're almost certainly likely to see different jobs in the Salesforce. And as we absorb an understanding of how AI will impact all of the work of those new people, we'll probably see them.

become every bit as overburdened and overworked as people used used to be before AI. they'll just be doing more. so that that's something to keep an eye out for. those excess capacity is something that you you don't want too much of it. but it's better to have a little bit than to be understaffed.

Mark Petruzzi (14:30)

Mm.

KK Anderson (14:45)

You heard it here first. Bob's prediction. The pendulum's gonna swing back the other way, isn't it? That's that's pretty funny. And I believe it. Hey, I believe you.

Bob Kelly (14:46)

Right now.

Yeah.

Right.

there's an inter another interesting difference in these frontier firms compared to other firms. We asked about the sentiment about AI. what is the promise of AI in various aspects of managing the sales function, making decisions for the sales function? And we found that those firms that I'll put it this way adoption is positively correlated with enthusiasm in

Mark Petruzzi (14:54)

All right.

Bob Kelly (15:18)

Estimating AI's impact. Those firms that are using AI the most are the most sanguine about how AI will help them in the future. and believe it, its impacts are far more broad based than firms with just a limited, sort of naive understanding of AI.

Mark Petruzzi (15:34)

Stuff, Bob. let's move over to topic three, the management question. How AI changes the sales manager's role. And your research in this area shows that 100% of frontier organizations expect AI to have a high impact on first-line sales manager responsibilities over the next two to three years. That is not a heads number.

What does it actually mean for what a frontline manager does every day? And what does it mean for how CROs should be developing those managers over time?

Bob Kelly (16:08)

Yeah, this is a very interesting question. It's it's very interesting to our organization, given where we sit and who our ⁓ our members are. We have a lot of sales managers in our membership. it's important to understand that the sales management role, especially the first line sales management role, has been changing significantly before the introduction of AI. The role has had

And this is also a reflection of technology use and better data, but the role has had a diminishing amount of a sort of supervisory responsibility and an increasing ⁓ amount of focus on developing people, but also in a set of kind of integrative disciplines that I'll describe in a moment. so

Of course, we all, think of that first line sales manager is maybe a a really good salesperson that was promoted into management. and it's it's of course a much different job than being an individual sales contributor. The the places where we see sales managers having the most impact are in actually improving the proficiency and effectiveness of the people that they are managing. that

⁓ is a very much a ⁓ role that requires human to human communication and intervention and relationship. it's it's hard to automate that. the supervisory stuff is relatively easy to automate. now

another way to think about this question, Mark, is to say what are the competencies and sales managers that will become in the forefront in the future? And increasingly we see this happening already. And there are a small set of competencies that I think will characterize high performing sales managers in the future. As it relates to AI, I do believe that proficiency or at least fluency in

applying and understanding and applying AI tools to sales work will be required for sales managers. Now this involves a lot of kind of com subordinate skills. It it it requires someone to be able to take a typical sales job or task and deconstruct it into its component parts to understand how we might automate that, which

portions are appropriate to automate, which portions should retain a human in the loop. And also it requires a process discipline. Sales, the sales function has always been process focused, or at least it has been in the past 20 or 30 years. But in the future, I think this sort of process rigor and the ability of a manager to apply process discipline to the selling function.

And to diagnose the issues as would a process engineer. these are critical skills that w we'll have to have in sales management roles in the future.

KK Anderson (18:52)

So interesting.

Bob Kelly (18:53)

what else?

Yeah. ⁓ the to return for a moment to this idea of developing people, despite what I've said, despite claiming that it's so important for people to be involved in this process, I believe that the currently today, the biggest impact we're seeing in AI and sales is in the area of learning and development. I think for the for most firms.

the place where AI can have the biggest impact is in training, coaching and developing salespeople simply because the amount of quality activity in those areas is quite low or non existent in ⁓ many sales forces today.

KK Anderson (19:29)

So as sales organizations get smarter and sharper and and the applied AI really takes hold, and then the sales managers are not spending as much time on things like pipeline inspection or call reviews because the AI is listening to the calls, right? And the AI is pulling out insights. the AI is predicting the forecast, right? That well, this is like the vision, right? So if AI takes those off the plate.

Bob Kelly (19:42)

No right.

Maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. ⁓

KK Anderson (19:55)

and I know you just said, hilariously so that, Something else will fill that time on the plate. but what what should the sales manager be focusing on with that time instead? Like they're gonna be getting back so much time. Where should their priority be? What's the w how will they have the greatest impact?

Bob Kelly (20:13)

Well, let's also point out that the typical environment that sales organizations operate in is very change intensive. in part but for the same reasons that we're that we're the same things we're talking about today. their customers are also being impacted by AI and b and by technology. The way they prefer to buy is changing all the time. they're

Interest in meeting with salespeople and the value they expect to get from such investments in meeting time changes all the time. They're all these new competitors, etc. So often even if only implicitly, we expect that sales manager to be the change leader to enact those adaptations that we have to have in the marketplace. so

I expect that that will continue to be the case. Sales managers will have to lead change in organizations and there will continue to be plenty, plenty of it. it will be coming faster than it has in the past and and there'll be greater change impacts than we've had in the past. ⁓ so ⁓ I expect managers to be highly focused in that. They also are going to have to ⁓

be skilled at diagnosing issues, diagnosing what's going on with pipeline issues. Will AI help our pipeline measurement and tracking? It it may well make it easier to do. Will it result in better quality? I'm on a little skeptical, but only because we've done plenty of research about pipeline management, and we find that the sort of

tracking constructs that many firms use to track deals or opportunities are often wildly inaccurate at forecasting results. so much so that I've come to the conclusion that we often I believe use these tools for more than trying to simply predict outcomes. We use them to foster conversations.

So another way to think about this question is will AI result in better quality interactions between management and ⁓ individual contributors to foster quality and figure out how best to close deals? I'll I'll see that. I'll believe the pipeline accuracy and efficiency impacts when I see them.

But the good news is we blow a lot of time. Managers blow a lot of time fooling around with forecasting and pipeline tracking, especially in complex selling environments. And if we could have that go away, that would be a a good thing.

Mark Petruzzi (22:32)

Excellent, Bob. Okay, this is where we will leave part one. In part two, Bob gets into what the research says about the management role specifically and why process has to come before AI, or you are just accelerating the wrong things. And also we're going to cover the three organizational levers that the data shows actually drives adoption. We look forward to seeing you there.

KK Anderson (22:33)

She won't.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode of Selling Intelligence, Bob Kelly, Founder and Chairman of the Sales Management Association, joins Mark Petruzzi and KK Anderson to unpack the findings from one of the most comprehensive benchmarking studies on AI adoption in sales. Drawing from research across 111 sales organizations, Bob reveals why simply using AI is no longer enough. The real advantage belongs to a small group of “frontier organizations” that have moved beyond experimentation and embedded AI into the way sales actually gets done.

The conversation explores the current state of AI adoption, why most organizations are still only “dabbling,” and the growing performance gap between companies that integrate AI strategically and those that simply rely on general-purpose tools. Bob also introduces the concept of “machine stench,” explains why authenticity has become more valuable than ever, and shares why sales managers will play an even more important role as AI transforms the revenue organization.  

What You’ll Learn:

• Frontier AI Adoption: What separates the highest-performing AI-enabled sales organizations from everyone else.
• Beyond AI Experimentation: Why most companies are still dabbling instead of transforming their sales process.
• The Problem with “Machine Stench”: Why AI-generated content often destroys trust instead of creating efficiency.
• Applied AI in Sales: How leading organizations are combining general-purpose AI with sales-specific and agentic workflows.
• The Future of Sales Management: Why coaching, process discipline, and change leadership become even more important in the AI era.

Key Topics:

• Benchmarking 111 sales organizations on AI adoption
• The difference between AI experimentation and AI integration
• Frontier organizations outperforming peers on quota attainment and sales objectives
• AI adoption compared to historical CRM adoption
• The rise of ChatGPT, Perplexity, and language-based AI tools
• “Machine stench” and AI-generated content fatigue
• Authenticity versus automation in customer communication
• Tribal knowledge and AI-enabled sales execution
• General-purpose AI versus sales-specific AI platforms
• Agentic AI and workflow automation
• AI embedded inside CRM and revenue platforms
• Selling capacity and AI-driven productivity gains
• Why AI-created capacity will reshape sales organizations
• The changing role of frontline sales managers
• AI for coaching, learning, and sales enablement
• Process engineering as a future sales leadership competency
• Leading organizational change in an AI-first environment

Guest Spotlight:

Bob Kelly is the Founder and Chairman of the Sales Management Association, the world’s largest independent professional organization dedicated to advancing sales leadership. Serving more than 10,000 sales leaders globally, Bob has spent decades researching sales management effectiveness, organizational performance, and revenue leadership. His work focuses on helping organizations apply evidence-based practices to improve sales productivity, leadership development, and business performance.  

Resources & Mentions:

• Sales Management Association
• Microsoft
• ChatGPT
• Perplexity
• CRM platforms
• Sales Performance Management (SPM)
• Sales Enablement platforms
• Ethan Mollick’s “Jagged Frontier”
• Agentic AI
• Applied AI
• Sales coaching and enablement
• Pipeline management
• AI governance and security

Coming Next Week:

Part 2 dives into why processes must come before AI, the three organizational levers that actually drive successful AI adoption, and how the best sales organizations are redesigning leadership, coaching, and operating models to thrive in the age of AI.

🎧 Listen now and subscribe to Selling Intelligence for more conversations with the leaders shaping the future of AI, sales leadership, revenue operations, and enterprise growth.

Mark Petruzzi (00:28)

Welcome to Selling Intelligence. I'm Mark Petruzzi.

KK Anderson (00:31)

And I'm KK Anderson. Every week we bring you conversations with operators who have been in the room and come out with something worth using the very next day.

Mark Petruzzi (00:40)

Our guests today just completed a benchmarking study of 111 sales organizations. And what on? AI adoption. The findings are not what most leaders expect. Only 4% of firms have no one using AI at all. But only 9% qualify as what the research calls frontier adopters. And those 10 firms are outperforming the rest of the field.

By on average twenty-seven percent is points on sales objective achievement, nineteen points on individual quota attainment, and nearly double the rate of sufficient selling capacity. The question this research forces is not whether your team is using AI, it is whether they are using it in a way that actually moves the numbers.

KK Anderson (01:26)

Bob Kelly is founder and chairman of the Sales Management Association, a global, independent, professional organization serving more than ten thousand sales leaders. He has no product to sell and no platform to push, which is exactly why this data matters. Welcome to the show, Bob. We're happy to have you.

Bob Kelly (01:43)

Thank you so much for having me. It's so nice to be with you.

Mark Petruzzi (01:46)

So Bob, your research covers over one hundred companies. But before we get into what leaders are doing, give us the honest snapshot. What is the typical sales organization actually doing with AI right now? And how does it compare to what people say they're doing and what the media outlets are saying people are doing as well?

Bob Kelly (02:07)

the word I would use is dabbling. the typical sales organization is dabbling with AI as opposed to integrating it in a pervasive and sort of formal way in the work streams in the firm. this is a reflection of the uneven nature of how AI affects work in general and including sales work.

But the interesting thing is to understand just how few firms are ignoring AI or are untouched by AI. When we look at the adoption curve and history of other technologies, CRM, for example, or other platform technologies, they've taken much, much longer to gain a foothold in most organizations. We're seeing very fast pickup in

The use of AI, even if that use is uneven.

KK Anderson (02:55)

So Bob, when we had our our preparation conversation for this podcast, you used a phrase that I hadn't heard anywhere else and I thought it was fabulous. You said you said there's a lot of machine stench. Right. So walk us through like what is that and why is it showing up so broadly in this research?

Bob Kelly (03:07)

Machine Yes.

Well how is

Great term, isn't it? I was just about to think of that term when I heard someone else use it. So I've naturally adopted it as if it were my own, but it is plenty descriptive, right? And I think we all have encountered AI generated content. I mean, the more common term is slop. We see it in social media, but we also see it in our inboxes, we see it in work product within

KK Anderson (03:15)

It is.

Bob Kelly (03:39)

the companies that we work for. and its problem is that it represents an inauthentic product. And so this when used inappropriately or i in the wrong context actually I believe does more harm than good. it communicates sort of in auth authenticity rather than

clarity and equality.

KK Anderson (04:00)

Everyone AI it's like AI gave everyone a on the road and no one can move. And everyone sounds the same. So it's figuring out how do you take that superpower and that super intelligence and leverage it in a way to create differentiation rather than

Bob Kelly (04:01)

We want

Yeah, just

You know, I

KK Anderson (04:15)

than the stench of sounding the same,

Bob Kelly (04:18)

I think the mistake so many make is that they're using AI to substitute for their own voice or work product. And when that happens, ⁓ they're pointing out their own superfluity. do we need a human if we're just gonna have machines generate communication? so I think when used appropriately, we use it to augment our abilities, our voice, our

productivity and when we use it poorly we've we make the mistake of y substituting a machine generated product for something that we should have more say in.

Mark Petruzzi (04:51)

So, Bob, you mentioned in the study that only four to six percent of companies are avoiding AI entirely. That actually concerns me that, there is everybody's diving in. And, only a very small percentage are not. but when it really comes down to it, there's still a huge disparity between those frontier adopters, as you described, and the laggers, the rest of the the

Bob Kelly (04:52)

Yeah.

Mark Petruzzi (05:17)

hack is that the gap between the two of them growing and and how fast? How fast is that growing and changing?

Bob Kelly (05:27)

Well, it the answer is very, very fast. The study that we did was concluded I guess about three months ago. It's likely out of date. so we see these adoption and the development of the products that we're even talking about moving so quickly. the the the thing to keep in mind is that or a relevant

Point here is that so many AI products are freely available and they are in the general population. In fact, the most widely adopted tools are those that anyone can pick up, chat GPT or perplexity or any of these sort of language-based chat uh-based tools. And so we see lots of people picking them up, fooling around with them. And this is unlike other technology.

platforms that we've seen impacting the sales organization like CRM or SPM or sales enablement or any many many other tools. So this does beg the question, will this be a phenomenon driven by consumers? personal adoption? will it be democratized in that way or will

companies be required to adopt sort of institution wide, highly controlled platforms to provision AI.

KK Anderson (06:37)

really interesting and one of the incredible benefits of leveraging AI in your sales organization is that you can take that tribal knowledge of your best your your top sales performer and figure out what it what is it that makes them the best and then automate some of those research tactics or techniques or processes in your in your AI agentic workflow.

Bob Kelly (06:38)

You know, the

KK Anderson (06:59)

And and that's something you could never do inside of, the confines of a sales force or hub spot.

Bob Kelly (07:04)

Yeah, th this is the promise. This that idea gets sales leaders excited. in practice, it's I don't know that we're quite there yet, but in general we see companies adopting the easy tools to pick up. These are chiefly language-based models, and they're used for language-oriented tasks, things like communication and

crafting emails, sometimes quite derivative, machine stench gen sort of emails, but also doing things like understanding researching prospects and markets. and where we see less adoption so far is in the things that require more advanced tools, including agentic

and sales specific tools. and so what we found in these so-called frontier firms, which represent maybe the top ninetieth per the 90th percentile of adoption and usage, ⁓ is that they're much more likely to use tools that are customized to sales work and include agentic elements. So they're actually automating work and in

incorporating AI capabilities within those automation streams.

KK Anderson (08:10)

talk us through what these, the frontier adopters and the research that you talked about. So what was the what was tell the audience, what was the criteria you used to define them and like what does that what does a frontier organization actually look like in practice?

Bob Kelly (08:24)

Well, w ⁓

we had have you as you pointed out, roughly a hundred firms in the study. So we looked and we in the study measured their rates of adoption, the frequency with which the typical salesperson uses tools, and the kind of tools that they use. So we took those firms that had the highest rates of adoption and in which salespeople are using tools most frequently and in which

They are using tools, they're using the general purpose tools, but they're also using agentic tools and custom tools that are geared toward sales specific tasks. And so those those are the basic criteria. We identified roughly 11 to 12 firms in that group and branded them frontier sales organizations. We did this in part.

Because the sponsor of this research who underwrote the research was Microsoft, and they're using this term in the way they are marketing solutions to frontier firms. So in part we did this to curry favor with our sponsor, but also because this term frontier has been widely adopted to describe the latest models that are used in these solutions, but also the sort of uneven and

perhaps dangerous nature of adoption itself. Ethan Moloch's great term, the jagged frontier, is widely used to describe how it's an uneven place being on the edge of adoption with these tools. The tools do many things really well and other things, easy things, weirdly, quite poorly. So the it it's a it's a shifting, sort of an uneven place.

to be and that that's why we like the term in addition to describing those leaders in organiza in our economy in sales organizations that are adopting AI.

Mark Petruzzi (10:07)

So Bob, I I kind of echo that that thought process and and what what I'm starting to see, like everyone, right? I jumped in early to just the whole opportunity of AI and what you can do and the research capabilities and and then move very quickly into the agentic side and really creating agents and and building them for our clients.

And that moved to a whole nother level of productivity. But we learned something in that phase two, and that is how valuable all the systems and tribal knowledge that a company has and how to for AI really to be playing its best game, it's gotta have that that information as well. So that brings us to applied AI, right? That's kind of where

where the terminology is coming together and and when you can do that as an organization we at AGS do that for our clients we do that with with a couple of our partner organizations that we work very closely with like Humagentic. when you can go to that next level and really integrate within the systems that are already in place takes you to a whole nother level. did you see that at all in this study and what's what's your overall

Point of view on that.

Bob Kelly (11:22)

We we didn't go super deep to understand the degree to which firms are integrating agentic solutions within their own environments. we did sort of investigate, we asked, are you employing agentic solutions? and we ask, are you using custom solutions that are sales focused? We also ask if they are making use of platform solutions, existing solutions like CRM.

or SPM sales performance management platforms in which there are embedded AI capabilities. This is likely the most this is the likeliest way that many firms will begin adopting these agentic solutions kind of pervasively they will exist within the comfortable and of

KK Anderson (12:07)

Tools they have.

Bob Kelly (12:09)

a platform in which they're already using which solves the chief concern about distributing this capability across the enterprise, namely security governance, the keeping data secure and understanding just how people are using the solutions.

KK Anderson (12:25)

I thought it was incredible that the data showed that ninety percent of frontier organizations met or exceeded their sales goals in the preceding twelve months, versus sixty three percent of the non frontier firms. Like that's compelling.

Bob Kelly (12:38)

Yeah, yeah, it's a big number. so it suggests that frontier firms, so called frontier firms, are much more likely to be productive than more laggard firms. I mean, it's a clear delivery of the promise of AI i as it relates to productivity.

KK Anderson (12:54)

Right. Really incredible. Okay. So we your your research study also talked about selling capacity. and it's let's see, the data says I believe it was 60% of frontier firms say they have sufficient capacity to cover available opportunity compared to 32% of non-frontier firms. And I'm assuming, Bob, that's going more towards their productivity as well.

Bob Kelly (13:17)

So this is a a really interesting finding. again, this data is self-reported, so it is subject to the caveats that you'd have in such a study, but it's almost the only way to conduct quick benchmarking research. But the fact that these firms are so much more likely to indicate that they have sufficient capacity does suggest.

An impact of using AI that we all are hoping for, which is it allows us to do our work faster. Now, if you follow the logic through, ⁓ it's reasonable to suggest that this surplus capacity will be short-lived. So where we are perhaps in the curve of adoption of AI and sales is that we're using AI to great effect to make salespeople more productive, but we haven't redeployed that capacity.

In ways that are likely to follow on from AI adoption. We're likely to see different s kinds of organization structures, perhaps different spans of control. We're almost certainly likely to see different jobs in the Salesforce. And as we absorb an understanding of how AI will impact all of the work of those new people, we'll probably see them.

become every bit as overburdened and overworked as people used used to be before AI. they'll just be doing more. so that that's something to keep an eye out for. those excess capacity is something that you you don't want too much of it. but it's better to have a little bit than to be understaffed.

Mark Petruzzi (14:30)

Mm.

KK Anderson (14:45)

You heard it here first. Bob's prediction. The pendulum's gonna swing back the other way, isn't it? That's that's pretty funny. And I believe it. Hey, I believe you.

Bob Kelly (14:46)

Right now.

Yeah.

Right.

there's an inter another interesting difference in these frontier firms compared to other firms. We asked about the sentiment about AI. what is the promise of AI in various aspects of managing the sales function, making decisions for the sales function? And we found that those firms that I'll put it this way adoption is positively correlated with enthusiasm in

Mark Petruzzi (14:54)

All right.

Bob Kelly (15:18)

Estimating AI's impact. Those firms that are using AI the most are the most sanguine about how AI will help them in the future. and believe it, its impacts are far more broad based than firms with just a limited, sort of naive understanding of AI.

Mark Petruzzi (15:34)

Stuff, Bob. let's move over to topic three, the management question. How AI changes the sales manager's role. And your research in this area shows that 100% of frontier organizations expect AI to have a high impact on first-line sales manager responsibilities over the next two to three years. That is not a heads number.

What does it actually mean for what a frontline manager does every day? And what does it mean for how CROs should be developing those managers over time?

Bob Kelly (16:08)

Yeah, this is a very interesting question. It's it's very interesting to our organization, given where we sit and who our ⁓ our members are. We have a lot of sales managers in our membership. it's important to understand that the sales management role, especially the first line sales management role, has been changing significantly before the introduction of AI. The role has had

And this is also a reflection of technology use and better data, but the role has had a diminishing amount of a sort of supervisory responsibility and an increasing ⁓ amount of focus on developing people, but also in a set of kind of integrative disciplines that I'll describe in a moment. so

Of course, we all, think of that first line sales manager is maybe a a really good salesperson that was promoted into management. and it's it's of course a much different job than being an individual sales contributor. The the places where we see sales managers having the most impact are in actually improving the proficiency and effectiveness of the people that they are managing. that

⁓ is a very much a ⁓ role that requires human to human communication and intervention and relationship. it's it's hard to automate that. the supervisory stuff is relatively easy to automate. now

another way to think about this question, Mark, is to say what are the competencies and sales managers that will become in the forefront in the future? And increasingly we see this happening already. And there are a small set of competencies that I think will characterize high performing sales managers in the future. As it relates to AI, I do believe that proficiency or at least fluency in

applying and understanding and applying AI tools to sales work will be required for sales managers. Now this involves a lot of kind of com subordinate skills. It it it requires someone to be able to take a typical sales job or task and deconstruct it into its component parts to understand how we might automate that, which

portions are appropriate to automate, which portions should retain a human in the loop. And also it requires a process discipline. Sales, the sales function has always been process focused, or at least it has been in the past 20 or 30 years. But in the future, I think this sort of process rigor and the ability of a manager to apply process discipline to the selling function.

And to diagnose the issues as would a process engineer. these are critical skills that w we'll have to have in sales management roles in the future.

KK Anderson (18:52)

So interesting.

Bob Kelly (18:53)

what else?

Yeah. ⁓ the to return for a moment to this idea of developing people, despite what I've said, despite claiming that it's so important for people to be involved in this process, I believe that the currently today, the biggest impact we're seeing in AI and sales is in the area of learning and development. I think for the for most firms.

the place where AI can have the biggest impact is in training, coaching and developing salespeople simply because the amount of quality activity in those areas is quite low or non existent in ⁓ many sales forces today.

KK Anderson (19:29)

So as sales organizations get smarter and sharper and and the applied AI really takes hold, and then the sales managers are not spending as much time on things like pipeline inspection or call reviews because the AI is listening to the calls, right? And the AI is pulling out insights. the AI is predicting the forecast, right? That well, this is like the vision, right? So if AI takes those off the plate.

Bob Kelly (19:42)

No right.

Maybe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. ⁓

KK Anderson (19:55)

and I know you just said, hilariously so that, Something else will fill that time on the plate. but what what should the sales manager be focusing on with that time instead? Like they're gonna be getting back so much time. Where should their priority be? What's the w how will they have the greatest impact?

Bob Kelly (20:13)

Well, let's also point out that the typical environment that sales organizations operate in is very change intensive. in part but for the same reasons that we're that we're the same things we're talking about today. their customers are also being impacted by AI and b and by technology. The way they prefer to buy is changing all the time. they're

Interest in meeting with salespeople and the value they expect to get from such investments in meeting time changes all the time. They're all these new competitors, etc. So often even if only implicitly, we expect that sales manager to be the change leader to enact those adaptations that we have to have in the marketplace. so

I expect that that will continue to be the case. Sales managers will have to lead change in organizations and there will continue to be plenty, plenty of it. it will be coming faster than it has in the past and and there'll be greater change impacts than we've had in the past. ⁓ so ⁓ I expect managers to be highly focused in that. They also are going to have to ⁓

be skilled at diagnosing issues, diagnosing what's going on with pipeline issues. Will AI help our pipeline measurement and tracking? It it may well make it easier to do. Will it result in better quality? I'm on a little skeptical, but only because we've done plenty of research about pipeline management, and we find that the sort of

tracking constructs that many firms use to track deals or opportunities are often wildly inaccurate at forecasting results. so much so that I've come to the conclusion that we often I believe use these tools for more than trying to simply predict outcomes. We use them to foster conversations.

So another way to think about this question is will AI result in better quality interactions between management and ⁓ individual contributors to foster quality and figure out how best to close deals? I'll I'll see that. I'll believe the pipeline accuracy and efficiency impacts when I see them.

But the good news is we blow a lot of time. Managers blow a lot of time fooling around with forecasting and pipeline tracking, especially in complex selling environments. And if we could have that go away, that would be a a good thing.

Mark Petruzzi (22:32)

Excellent, Bob. Okay, this is where we will leave part one. In part two, Bob gets into what the research says about the management role specifically and why process has to come before AI, or you are just accelerating the wrong things. And also we're going to cover the three organizational levers that the data shows actually drives adoption. We look forward to seeing you there.

KK Anderson (22:33)

She won't.

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General Episode Description:

In Part 2 of this conversation, Jared Zelman, Founder and CEO of Othello AI, explores what happens when AI moves beyond helping individual sellers and begins transforming entire sales organizations.

Jared shares his perspective on the future of sales management, explaining how AI can handle repetitive coaching, call analysis, and execution consistency while allowing managers to focus on higher-value leadership activities. The conversation examines how AI-powered coaching systems are changing the role of frontline managers and why sales leaders must rethink how they develop and scale teams.

The discussion also dives into Jared’s founder-led go-to-market journey. From cold-emailing executives, investors, and industry leaders to building relationships with some of the most influential business figures in the world, Jared explains how disciplined outreach, persistence, and deep personalization helped accelerate Othello’s growth from startup to seven-figure ARR.

The episode concludes with practical lessons for founders, CROs, and sales leaders on scaling efficiently, shortening sales cycles, achieving product-market fit, and balancing the art and science of selling in an increasingly AI-driven world.  

What You’ll Learn:

• The Future of Sales Management: How AI changes the role of frontline sales leaders.

• AI-Augmented Coaching: Moving from repetitive coaching activities to strategic leadership.

• Founder-Led Sales at Scale: How deliberate outreach can build customers, investors, and mentor networks.

• Product-Market Fit First: Why founders should focus on learning and validation before scaling teams.

• The Art and Science of Selling: Understanding what AI can teach and what remains uniquely human.

Key Topics:

• Managing AI-augmented sales organizations

• The future role of sales managers

• AI-powered diagnostics and coaching

• CRM automation and systems of record

• Salesforce versus next-generation CRM experiences

• MEDDPICC automation and sales process intelligence

• Sales velocity as a growth metric

• Founder-led go-to-market strategies

• Building relationships through cold outreach

• Howard Schultz and executive networking stories

• Product-market fit versus revenue growth

• Shortening sales cycles

• Why founders should delay hiring sales teams too early

• The science versus art of selling

• Human trust and relationship-building in sales

• Scaling enterprise SaaS companies

Guest Spotlight: Jared Zelman

Jared Zelman is the Founder and CEO of Othello AI, a real-time AI sales coaching platform designed to improve sales execution before, during, and after customer conversations. Prior to Othello, Jared founded Cicero, an AI-powered celebrity avatar platform. Through Othello, he is helping organizations scale elite sales behaviors while preserving the human elements of trust, empathy, and relationship-building that drive long-term success.  

Resources & Mentions:

• Othello AI

• Salesforce

• HubSpot

• Notion

• MEDDPICC

• Howard Schultz

• Steve Ballmer

• Sam Altman

• Paul Graham

• Dale Carnegie

• Costco

• Lenovo

• Science of Scaling by Mark Roberts

• Entrepreneur.com

Key Takeaway:

AI can automate coaching, surface insights, and improve execution consistency, but it cannot replace the human side of selling. The organizations that win will combine AI-driven discipline with authentic relationships, strong leadership, and a relentless focus on understanding customers.

🎧 Listen now and subscribe to Selling Intelligence for more conversations on AI, sales leadership, revenue growth, founder-led scaling, and the future of enterprise sales.

KK Anderson (00:38)

Okay, so you are, and we're gonna wrap up the second topic here with this question. You're reporting 10 to 15% win rates improvement, 8 to 10% reduction in sales cycle length, which is huge. ⁓ a lot of AI tools are making, some some pretty large claims like that. so like generally speaking, just w help us understand a little bit, like what what are you measuring over what time period?

Jared Zelman (00:51)

Crazy.

KK Anderson (01:02)

how was work to some of your success?

Jared Zelman (01:04)

Yeah.

These are like guess depends, because ⁓ like some of these numbers are pointing time numbers, some of these are ⁓ like over a period of time. so if it's a period of time, these are like over a course of twelve months. what's unique is these are all for large enterprise, these are for Fortune one hundreds. When you see AI companies quoting crazy growth or performance metrics, it's because they're selling to a two person business in YC. in other words, bullcrap.

Right. ⁓ these are metrics that are proven at some of the biggest companies in ⁓ multi-sectors. that said, the bar for the expectation the expectation of buyers these days is kind of ridiculous. frankly, if you're a sales tool and you're affecting win rates and you're not improving them by over 10%, that you're a failure.

our minimum is like fifteen, we're aiming for like twenty five, thirty in some cases. Yeah, I mean w the buy the buyers are just so damn pro snickety these days. People's standards have gone through the roof.

KK Anderson (01:49)

wow.

Mark Petruzzi (01:57)

Beautiful. All right, let us move from topic two to topic three. Topic three is from rep consistency to overall CRO intelligence and how that impacts the overall management of an AI augmented team. And the first question I have on that is once your technology is levered across a team.

What what changes for the manager? Because if the AI is handling execution consistency, prompting the right questions, catching objective handling in real time, the manager's job needs to change as well. So what does a great sales manager do differently when they have a productive and effective AI layer between them and the team?

Jared Zelman (02:43)

So we try to do three things in a closed up cycle. So we try to diagon it's kind of similar to like a I'll use like doctors as an analogy. We try to diagnose what's working, what's not working. So pretty much diagnosing what happens in sales calls, that stink. We then report that right back to the ⁓ to the managers and we give them a prescription. We'll actually give managers direct suggestions on what they should be doing differently to coach their team. Specifics, because managers they need specifics, they have a lot of other stuff going on.

We will then actually implement that prescription. We'll then create the cure, hopefully, and reinforce those best practices in every single call. Right? And that system goes on, it's a close-up system. The way the manager job changes though is threefold. They now don't need to do all the diagnostics, they don't need to listen to 300 call recordings to identify the trends and what's working and what's not working.

They don't even need to then draw the conclusions to how to fix that. Right? They can always be a human diluent director, but they don't have to do it from scratch anymore because of Thela's helping. Most significantly, they don't need to reinforce that training. They don't need to actually be sitting there coaching reps every single day, every single day. I mean, sorry, every single week. Because Thelo is doing that for them. So it's it's threefold. it's interesting. It's a point solution in that it's focused on sales calls.

but it's doing every single part of that cycle such that the manager's job is similar, but it's not menial anymore. There is very little repetition in the manager's job when they have effectively an AI agent that is doing their journey work for them.

KK Anderson (04:05)

I would think that, as someone who has managed sales teams for many years, I find myself saying the same things, and as a sales coach, right, with our clients, I find myself saying the same thing to this, over and over again, like a broken record. And ⁓ it could be really interesting if you have to take away some of the fundamental that some of the repetitive stuff, like you said, it could be really interesting how those how that

value of that coaching conversation would change. So ⁓ and I'm curious to get your take on this as we're evolving. Like what do you see the future of of CRM? Right? We know every salesperson, hates logging CRM. I had this conversation with the CRO just today, like, our CRM is a mess. And it's it but it's still the crux of everything. I imagine that what you're what you're

Jared Zelman (04:29)

Yeah.

KK Anderson (04:49)

the notes you're pulling and the insights you're pulling on these calls are are feeding into CRM. Like what do you see the future of of CRM? Is it gonna be more in the background? Is it gonna be a big part of of the future?

Jared Zelman (05:02)

I think a system of record in general will always be a very important part of the future. It's also a good data layer which you need then to use AI on top of. ⁓ so it will always exist. I do think it'll look different. I will think it is good. I do think it will be one of the l last things to change though, and evolve. ⁓ I just like one prediction is ⁓ like look at Notion. I don't know if you guys have have you guys used Notion before? Great. we started to use Notion as our CRM. We use Salesforce and Notion. Kind of for different things.

KK Anderson (05:08)

No.

Yeah, yeah.

Mark Petruzzi (05:22)

Do.

Jared Zelman (05:27)

Notion, although you cannot do 95% of the stuff you can do Salesforce, and you can do Salesforce with, ⁓ the 5% that you do have overlap is the most important 5%, which is like the standard, CRM part. ⁓ and it's so goddamn easy. Like, there's gotta be a way to have like notion level experience, but with the level of like complexity that you can have like a CRM today, like maneuver with. Like, I think that

KK Anderson (05:50)

Give me an example.

Jared Zelman (05:52)

Like like here, like with Notion you can just copy and paste like a ton of content into. Like in Notion, you can even speak into it or like type into like a you can query it and it will then take that plain text query and create a database or input like content ⁓ into a database for you. Like in Salesforce, you can't even press enter and skip into a different field. You have to manually move your mouse or do a keyboard shortcut.

KK Anderson (06:14)

Yeah.

Jared Zelman (06:16)

Like that's insane. Like you need to like off in three times to get into Salesforce. We counted. We had to take on average nine clicks to actually make something happen in Salesforce to like actually start getting value. Like that's nuts. Nine clicks to get value? Are you kidding me? Like I have to off in to my CRM every 35 minutes. Nuts. ⁓ I digress.

KK Anderson (06:18)

Mark, are you listening?

Yeah.

Yeah. That's so interesting.

Yeah. And so does it like how does how does ⁓ using a platform and a tool, a data layer like Othello Othelio, am I saying it wrong? Othello, Othello. How does that like how does that help the serum? Does it help with with forecast accuracy or pipeline or cleanliness or

Jared Zelman (06:47)

No, a fellow, a fellow. Spam.

Mark Petruzzi (06:49)

Hello.

Jared Zelman (06:57)

Yeah, w we automatically sync notes into the CRM for you. We have

unlimited custom field mapping, unlimited custom objects. we're not trying to reinvent the wheel. I'll put that like put that out there. We are not changing your CRM forever, but we are reducing CRM note taking time by like eighty percent. Like I'll give you an example.

KK Anderson (07:08)

Yeah.

Jared Zelman (07:14)

We have a customer that's on a call, they're a medpic shop. Othello will automatically listen to the conversation, identify if MedPIC was achieved, the specific notes for each acron letter in the acronym, and we'll sync that into custom MedPIC fields in Salesforce for you, or HubSpot for that matter. That's great. Like that's a great next step, but like the future of CRM will be different entirely, I think. Like I would much rather in five years time my sales horse be completely like call it redesigned to look and feel like notion.

KK Anderson (07:30)

It really is.

Yeah.

Mark Petruzzi (07:39)

Yeah,

I'm with you on that one, Jared. ⁓ so we've seen a lot of AI tools adopted by individual reps. They'll they run off, they see something, they bring it in, and interestingly, many of those get abandoned a few months later because the overall workflow change was too high. Wasn't really, it was there was a shiny object that attracted them, not

Somebody doing a real evaluation of what that product can do for the overall productivity of the team. So what does successful Othello adoption actually look like inside a sales organization? And what does the CRO or sales leader need to do structurally to get the team to use it consistently enough that the data really does become meaningful?

Jared Zelman (08:27)

So I like to we we actually have we're in a temporary office right now, but in our in our primary office in Israel we have a sign that says, You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. ⁓ words to live by when you're building tools for salespeople.

Salespeople like me are not necessarily the most excited when it comes to new tools, especially when they're kind of being given to you by management. So it has to be super easy to use. Othello ⁓ is not there's no website, it's a desktop app. Automatically turns on when a call starts and starts listening. You don't have to click anything. There is no like look you how I said like Salesforce would click like eight times to actually interact with the product? Othello tr genuinely like zero clicks. Like you don't have to click anything.

Mark Petruzzi (09:02)

For sure.

Jared Zelman (09:07)

for it to be on and used in calls. So all the managers would need to do Mark is just download it onto their computers. And then Othello does the rest. You just need to read. Like I'm sure every seller in America is hopefully highly literate. All they need to do is be able to read the poppers of their screen.

KK Anderson (09:21)

Well, they better be if they're ⁓ the ⁓ core of our GDP here, our five million APs. ⁓ Okay, that's right. Okay, let's move on to our fourth topic. And this is the one that I've been most excited to dig into you with dig into with you. ⁓ and that's around the founders go to market playbook. And you have gone from zero to one million ARR in six months, which is awesome. Congratulations.

Mark Petruzzi (09:22)

Beautiful. All right.

Jared Zelman (09:26)

Yeah, it's ⁓ you know, the backbone of America. Yeah.

KK Anderson (09:48)

And so you tell the story, and I saw your write-up in entrepreneur.com about how you built Othello's early investor base through cold email, right? That you would email the CEO of Costco, the CEO of Lenovo, Howard Schultz. Like what walk us through that process that you followed. what you're describing is really contrary to what is prevalent out there right now, which is a lot of spray and prey, which has created so much noise and

⁓ made it so much harder for our backbone of America to be able to sell successfully. So like tell us tell us about that. It's tell us about the discipline, the research, the kind of just tell us about your approach.

Jared Zelman (10:20)

Yeah.

Yeah, so and look, there's goods and there's there's positives and negatives to my approach when it comes to getting in touch with the you want to get in touch with, because that's what it is. It's not just sales, just getting in touch with the people you want to get in touch with. ⁓ the bad of my approach is that it's a very direct. and I don't it's not pushy, but I don't miss words when I reach out to somebody and I'm very willing to follow up repeatedly. The good thing, I mean, you could say those are also positives, depends how you look at it.

Right. Like if I want to get in touch with

For example, like the CRO of Microsoft or something like that. I don't even know if they have a CRO, but the CRO of Meta who I want to buy my product, like I will hustle like a mother, right? Cold emailing, cold calling him, sending gifts to his his office, his freaking home, get custom, Golden State Warriors jerseys for his kids with their names on it, some shit like that, until he responds, right? So to me it is like high pressure, it's full court pressure, right, to follow the basketball ⁓ reference.

A lot of people don't subscribe to that. They support more of like a hey, like if you build it, they will come type of methodology. I don't believe in that. I don't have time for that. So when I was starting ⁓ Cicero and Othello, I said, screw it. Let's reach out to the people. And if they find value, they'll invest. And it was that cycle, actually. And it wasn't just for investors, by the way. It was our initial customers, investors, but like primarily I did it purely for mentors and to learn.

KK Anderson (11:35)

So how

Yeah.

Jared Zelman (11:42)

Like I was doing this throughout college. I didn't have a company to invest in. I just did it because I actually wanted to learn from like Sam Altman. I didn't think they'd really answer. Then I figured out they do.

KK Anderson (11:50)

Who's

your who's your the most shocking person that responded to you? Tell tell me that story.

Jared Zelman (11:55)

Say Maltman is a shocking one. I don't know if he's shocking. He responds to a lot of stuff actually. He's he's he's a I suggest you reach out to him cold. He's like known for responding to cold contact. Steve Bomber was a cool one. He was a

KK Anderson (11:57)

Yeah.

Jared Zelman (12:06)

That I looked up to for a long time. Howard Schultz was a cool one. So Howard Schultz didn't respond to me. And then he cold called me. don't know what it's cold called. He called me a few times. So I remember I was on the way to class in college and I got kept on getting a call for this freaking like Seattle number. And I thought it was some salesman. So I answered like a kind of a jerk. I'm like, who is this? is this Jared? I go, no.

KK Anderson (12:25)

Yeah.

Jared Zelman (12:25)

And I

go wait, who is this? It was so it was hilarious. It was like the stupidest thing ever. It was Howard Schultz. And I was acting like an idiot. And he found that to be also pretty funny. ⁓ so I was saying Howard Schultz co called me. It's kind of the same. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Petruzzi (12:26)

Ha ha.

KK Anderson (12:35)

my goodness, that's amazing. Yeah.

Mark Petruzzi (12:38)

And Jared,

KK Anderson (12:39)

I bet you wish

Mark Petruzzi (12:40)

there's

KK Anderson (12:40)

you had a fellow then to tell you exactly what to say.

Jared Zelman (12:43)

Yeah, I feel like I I don't know, sometimes like the innocence of being y young is enough to get these people to give you time of day.

KK Anderson (12:48)

Yeah.

Mark Petruzzi (12:49)

So Jared, there's definitely some irony here. ⁓ you are the founder of a company that teaches reps to sell better. And you grew your company by being an exceptional seller yourself. So how intentional was that and what did building a fellow teach you about the craft of selling that you just didn't know before you started?

Jared Zelman (13:00)

Trying to be.

Art for science, again, let's touch back on that. when it comes to selling, the art aspect of it I think is sorta summarized by falling in love with the person you're speaking to and getting them to fall in love with you. I could speak on both of those two points for a long time, we'll put a pin in that. So that's the art of selling. That's something that comes very natural to me. I wouldn't say I'm a good seller, I would say I'm good at that. Or at least I was good at that.

After founding Othello, I realized the entire science aspect of sales. You can't teach art, but you can teach science. So we focus on doing that. And I've learned ⁓ just through building Othello so much more about running a proper sales process, how to run say real discovery that is structured as opposed to just being super interested, which is great, but it's not enough. So I wouldn't say I was a master salesperson. I would I'm not today. I was art,

Sales artist, perhaps. Now I try to be a whole lot more than that.

Mark Petruzzi (13:56)

what, Jared, you're you're kind of defining a little bit of of my journey in sales where and even in from the standpoint of of a couple books that I've written. The first book, Selling the Cloud, was all about the art of sales. And that's really where I wanted to go first in in my writing. However, the s second well, a little background, I was actually ⁓

Jared Zelman (14:02)

Okay.

Mark Petruzzi (14:20)

Talked into and maybe even manipulated into writing a book. I'll share that story with the audience and the and ⁓ you as well another time. But I wasn't someone who wanted to write a book, I guess is the first thing, until we released the first book, Selling the Cloud. And then I could not wait to get to the science of selling, because that's really, as you put it, that's where the

The impact comes from, it's kind of there's only so much you can do to make someone who's not comfortable doing what you just described, building a relationship with someone, falling in love with them, having them fall in love with you, want to do business with you. that's that's harder to teach, but the science is pretty easy to teach when you really get it into play.

Jared Zelman (15:11)

The yeah, we don't really try to teach you the art of sales. We try to teach you the science of sales. Like and that's the human element by the way. That's why I think humans will always be in sales, at least B2B sales. Is for the art aspect of it. The science you can replicate, the art you cannot.

KK Anderson (15:18)

Yeah.

Yeah, that's really interesting. And ⁓ at when as you perfect the science, then it gives the confidence and the bandwidth and the room for the art to really shine.

Jared Zelman (15:36)

Look, in theory, every extremely as I said, like the art of sales, I think is falling in love with somebody and getting them to in love with you. There's a lot of lovely people out there that can't sell for their life. but they they're they'd probably be great at the art of sales. So we try to get them to be more ⁓ more aligned with the science and best practices of sales.

KK Anderson (15:43)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. So you went from Cicero, the AI Celebrity Chatbot Company. That sounds interesting. AI Avatars of Celebrities. Okay. And then now to Othello, you you did a hard pivot as you were describing. and you did it from scratch and you got to a million ARR in six months. Like tell us like how you did that. How did you validate I mean I you you talked a little bit about the research, but tell us tell us

Jared Zelman (15:59)

Yeah, AI AI Avatars are celebrities.

KK Anderson (16:18)

Give us all your secrets, Jared.

Jared Zelman (16:19)

⁓ so I can tell you about Cicero as well because I I mean we did a million there. it comes down to

KK Anderson (16:22)

Sure.

Jared Zelman (16:24)

Look, it really is a it's a function of sales cycle length, is what it is. Like if you want to get sciencey about it. you could build the world's greatest business, but if your sales cycle like twenty-four months, and sometimes the world's greatest businesses do have really long sales cycles, the nature of their business model, then ⁓ you can't grow that fast on paper. like a lot of the fastest growing companies in a burgeoning industry are consumer because the sales cycle is like one minute.

But in our business model, it was it's it's like four months and we were able to get it down to like a month. ⁓ so we could really juice the hell out of sales velocity because sales cycle was only a month. Maybe this that's ex that's like the hard part, and people don't think about that.

KK Anderson (16:54)

And how'd you get it down to a high?

Jared Zelman (16:58)

⁓ we like really workshopped the shit out of our sales process. We broke down everything across every sales process we were in at that point and prior to that looked at every commonality and we just started cutting out nonsense and built very strict SOPs, like extremely strict SOPs. ⁓ and we were surprisingly able to reduce it from four to one, which yeah.

KK Anderson (17:18)

And aren't you gonna say that you use

your own platform?

Jared Zelman (17:21)

Yes, but s but our platform helps with sales cycle lengths. It does. ⁓ but a b a bigger driver, at least of our type of business when it comes to sales cycle length is actually the stuff that happens off calls. Right? It's ⁓ touch points with InfoSec. how quickly can you get the business decision maker to actually sign something? Like that alone, like like contracting is the longest part of our sales process, or at least it was. How can you juice that?

KK Anderson (17:24)

Yeah.

Mm. That takes forever. Yeah. Security.

Mm-hmm.

Jared Zelman (17:43)

Yeah,

I mean that's this is like sales. Like people try not to get into the science of it, right? But the speed at which you can close a deal is as important as your win rate in many cases.

KK Anderson (17:48)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mark Petruzzi (17:53)

Excellent. So in general, Jared, you ⁓ especially after Cicero, you had lots of VCs that you could get to invest in your company. But yet you you did it a little more on the angels side, very famous angels nonetheless, people like Craig Jelinek and Howard Schultz as we described. But when it

Jared Zelman (18:14)

How Howard Schultz

Howard Schultz did an angel. He was a mentor. He did an angel. He missed the round program.

Mark Petruzzi (18:19)

Yep. Perfect. Cool. So having that, those relationships, ⁓ what's the one thing you would tell a founder in the audience who's at that pre product market fit stage and trying to figure out like what do they do? How do they if they're not a sales inclined individual, how when do they hire a sales leader and can you be a ⁓

Jared Zelman (18:21)

Never forget.

KK Anderson (18:23)

Ha ha ha.

Mark Petruzzi (18:45)

an inefficient founder selling sales organization for a period of time or to do you just need to make sure if you're not the sales leader that you bring one in right from the beginning.

Jared Zelman (18:58)

Yeah, I I I I strongly recommend against hiring for sales too early for thousands of reasons, many which are well documented already from people out smarter than me, like Paul Graham. ⁓ I think to determine when you want to hire a sales leader, it's funny, like people always say like hire the sales hire your first sales person like when you have not like no time on your hands but sales. That's actually misleading because it's very easy to fill your calendar with bullshit sales calls.

It all comes down to reducing sales cycle to make it more efficient. I think you need to run that analysis on your sales process first, cut out all the fat. For example, if you're taking 30 meetings to close a deal, you need to understand if that's truly the minimum. I betcha it's not. And then once you have an efficient sales process, if you still have an absolutely full calendar, that's when you hire sales. Do not let

For example, like non-decision makers or like non-stakeholders waste your time. it'll convince you that you need to hire people because you're too busy, but you're not busy with anything meaningful, you're busy with time-wasting activities. So that's like the first trigger. Again, long way of answering pretty short questions. So I apologize, Mark, but it's important to get to the nuance.

KK Anderson (19:59)

Mm-hmm.

Mark Petruzzi (20:01)

No, it was a good one though.

Jared Zelman (20:03)

Also, and this is something that's I learned across all my businesses, is when you're launching a product for the first time, the objective is PMF, it's not sales, it's not product buyer fit, it's product market fit, which means post-sales defines success, but not actually the dollars in. ⁓ which means you want a short sales cycle, obviously, and you want a short time to value or renewal cycle. That's another way of graphing time to value. So you can determine PMF faster. ⁓ I highly recommend it before building a product that has a long experience cycle.

You understand if you're really willing to take that risk. If it takes a year for you to prove value, you're at risk of investing a year in a product that will never have PMF, no matter how successful you are at executing. ⁓ that's one thing that you can control before you start a business. And I I implore you to think deeply about that if you're starting a business.

KK Anderson (20:48)

Jared, have you read ⁓ Mark Roberts' new book, Science of Scaling?

Jared Zelman (20:52)

I haven't I've been recommending that book a thousand times, I think, so I may just read it to start saying yes. Yeah.

KK Anderson (20:54)

It's so good. It's so it's so

good. Go on Amazon and get it. He ha he was on our podcast and a few months ago before the book released. But it's wonderful. We got to we got to do a pre read of it before it went to market. ⁓ but it talks a lot about product market fit and when to scale and yeah, it's really it's really great. Some good insight.

Jared Zelman (21:11)

He's great.

I think

you need to have like made mistakes to learn this stuff. ⁓ and you almost have like need to have done it before. So that's like a good that's like a good like it's an underrated thing, like making mistakes. I would say like failure is super underrated. Yeah.

KK Anderson (21:17)

Yeah.

yeah.

experience. Yeah. It's

Mark Petruzzi (21:29)

huh.

KK Anderson (21:29)

what

it what makes it's what makes you stronger because when you come out the other side you're you've learned a lot of lessons. Okay.

Jared Zelman (21:35)

Yeah, you just wanna

make sure you come out like yeah, still spry, but go ahead.

KK Anderson (21:38)

So so for our last few minutes together, we're gonna do our favorite section. ⁓ it's an audience favorite anyway. We call it rapid fire. And we've got a few questions and we'll ask them fast and give us kind of your in your first instinct and we'll go through it and I'll start. Jared, what's the first thing you've ever sold?

Jared Zelman (21:56)

ketchup sandwiches. Straight up, yes, honestly ketchup sandwiches, triple decker ketchup sandwiches.

KK Anderson (21:58)

Okay, I gotta hear about that.

When you were a kid, ketchup sandwiches watched the neighbors at the swim meet? What?

Jared Zelman (22:02)

Yes.

everywhere. ⁓ mainly

neighbors. ketchup sandwiches when I was like two years old. They were viral. And not in like the cool way, like viral isn't like viruses it's just very, dirty and I made them without washing my hands. Emphasis on gross. Yes. Emphasis on gross. For sure.

Mark Petruzzi (22:13)

So Jared, you really learned about gross margin really really early in there. I love that. You were you were just like I am not

gonna over over ⁓ engineer this, that's for sure.

Jared Zelman (22:26)

They're actually delicious, by the way. I know that sounds terrible, but like, okay, you know what? I'm not even gonna I'm not gonna convince you. Trust me, if anybody some four two year old kid offers it to you in the street, give it a try. ⁓ sorry, that's not round of fire, but that's my answer. Sure. And like a lot more bread. Yeah.

KK Anderson (22:37)

It's just like a hot dog without a hot dog.

Mark Petruzzi (22:40)

Cool.

All right. One one metric every CRO should add to their weekly dashboard that for most CROs is not there right now.

Jared Zelman (22:52)

Ooh, wow, I wanna think deeply about this one, actually. This is a fantastic question. You have to sue enough people and you build the best like weekly like deal agenda.

I would I'm very much focused just the nature of our business on like sales velocity. ⁓ so it it it would be ⁓ leading indicators of sales velocity. And that's a that's business specific, but it would be a leading indicator of sales velocity. It could be something as simple as to touch on the InfoSec experience we were talking about earlier, KK. ⁓ the amount of times you had a touch point with an InfoSec contributor, or the amount of red lines you responded to in the course of a week. ⁓ that's something that like we we try we track that.

KK Anderson (23:23)

Interesting. Yeah.

Okay, so Jared, who's the sales leader or founder that you admire and respect the most?

Jared Zelman (23:33)

Jesus Christ, these are crazy questions. I'm gonna offend a lot of people, depends on who I answer. if if all of my buddies watch this. Like I'll give you one, like ⁓

KK Anderson (23:39)

One of, one of.

Jared Zelman (23:41)

Like w we're doing we're doing work with Oder.com. ⁓ Kyle Norton, long before I started working with him, is like way long before, is a sales mentor of mine. Like he's a goat, so to speak. Dale Carnegie, when it comes to the art of sales, is a freaking legend. So I love Dale Carnegie. Though that'd say like those two are like opposite sides of the same spectrum.

KK Anderson (23:58)

Yeah.

Good stuff.

Mark Petruzzi (24:02)

Beautiful. So ⁓ last rapid fire question. Hiff What's the biggest misconception CROs have about what real-time AAI coaching can and just cannot do?

Jared Zelman (24:15)

Well, the main thing is they don't know that it exists. so if they know it exists, ⁓ the conception misconception any of them would have is that it's ⁓ something it could become a crutch, right? Like if it's truly that good, why do we need salespeople at all? Why can't I just put like a the twenty-one year old kid in front of a camera to read off their screen?

I think that conception is a misconception, because as we all discussed earlier, ⁓ you still need to have trust, you need to have empathy, it doesn't matter if you're using Othello or not, you can't replace the human element. So you can't you can't throw some random in front of a colleague's button perform well.

KK Anderson (24:49)

What you have shown us is that the best technology is built by founders who are great practitioners first, right? At the very skill that they are trying to scale. so if this episode, shifted how you are thinking about your rep performance or your AI coaching strategy, share it with your team, share it with your CEO, your VP of sales.

We will put all of Jared's contact information and LinkedIn profile and link to his website in the show notes. We'll also reference the various books that we refer to in the in the episode. and you can find us at get-ags.com or anywhere, podcasts are found, Spotify, Apple, et cetera. And we're thrilled to have you, Jared. And until next time, thanks for joining us on Selling Intelligence.

Jared Zelman (25:32)

Thank you both. Talk to you soon.

Mark Petruzzi (25:34)

Thank you, Jared. Cheers.

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General Episode Description:

In this episode of Selling Intelligence, Jared Zelman, Founder and CEO of Othello AI, joins Mark Petruzzi and KK Anderson to challenge one of the most accepted assumptions in sales leadership: that 20% of sellers will always generate 80% of the results.

Jared argues that the 80/20 problem is not a talent issue. It is a systems issue. Drawing from millions of minutes of sales conversations and real-world customer deployments, he explains how modern AI can capture the behaviors of top performers and deliver coaching in the moment when it matters most: during live customer conversations.

The discussion explores why traditional coaching models fail to scale, the limitations of post-call analysis, and how real-time AI guidance can improve discovery quality, qualification, and win rates across entire sales organizations. Jared also shares insights into how AI is uncovering new patterns in selling behavior, including why Sandler-style methodologies continue to outperform across modern B2B sales environments.  

What You’ll Learn:

• The 80/20 Sales Problem: Why performance gaps are often driven by systems, not talent.
• Real-Time Coaching vs. Post-Call Coaching: Why feedback during the conversation matters more than feedback after the fact.
• Discovery Done Right: How top performers uncover deeper pain points and create stronger buying urgency.
• AI-Powered Sales Execution: Using AI to replicate the behaviors of elite sellers at scale.
• The Future of Sales Methodologies: How AI is identifying winning patterns across millions of sales interactions.

Key Topics:

• The Pareto Principle in sales organizations
• Why most CROs attack the wrong coaching problem
• Real-time AI coaching inside customer calls
• Improving discovery conversations
• The “question behind the question” framework
• Win rate improvement versus productivity improvement
• Why CRM automation alone does not improve revenue performance
• AI-assisted coaching and behavioral reinforcement
• The difference between efficiency and effectiveness
• Rote versus rogue selling behaviors
• Personalized coaching versus scripted selling
• Sandler methodology and AI pattern recognition
• Custom sales methodologies powered by organizational data
• Using AI to scale top-performer behaviors
• The future of AI-enabled sales leadership

Guest Spotlight: Jared Zelman

Jared Zelman is the Founder and CEO of Othello AI, a real-time AI sales coaching platform designed to improve sales execution before, during, and after customer conversations. Built by the team behind Cicero, Othello helps organizations scale elite selling behaviors across entire teams through contextual, in-the-moment coaching. Since launching in 2025, Othello has rapidly grown to support thousands of users across Fortune 500 companies and high-growth technology organizations.  

Resources & Mentions:

• Othello AI
• Salesforce
• HubSpot
• Gong
• Salesloft
• Clari
• Microsoft Teams
• Zoom
• Sandler Sales Methodology
• Cicero
• Dan Lawrence
• Lenovo
• Costco
• Home Depot
• General Electric

Coming Next Week:

Part 2 explores how sales leaders should manage AI-augmented teams, how coaching changes when AI handles execution consistency, and Jared’s founder-led go-to-market playbook for building a venture-backed company through strategic cold outreach and relationship-driven selling.

🎧 Listen now and subscribe to Selling Intelligence for more conversations on AI, revenue leadership, enterprise sales, and the future of go-to-market execution.

Mark Petruzzi (00:28)

Welcome to Selling Intelligence. I am Mark Petruzzi, and I am joined as always by my co host, KK Anderson. Our guest today built the company on a number every CRO already knows and hates. Those numbers are the 20% of reps drive 80% of the results. The question is, what do you do about it? Most leaders throw more coaching hours at the problem.

Build out their enablement team, and then just hope it scales and gets more productive. Jared Zellman did something a little different. He went out and he built an AI that sits inside the call and fixes it in real time and on every call. Jared is the founder and CEO of Othello AI, a real-time AI sales coaching platform that guides reps before, during, and after every call.

Built by the team behind Cicero, Othello launched in July of 2025 and reached over 5,000 users and 1 million in revenue within its first six months, with clients spanning Fortune 500 companies and high-growth startups. Othello integrates with the go-to-market stack you already have, whether it's Salesforce, HubSpa, Gong, SalesLoft, Clary's, Zoom, or Teams.

And sits as the execution layer that makes sure what happens on the call matches what the playbook says.

KK Anderson (01:55)

What I love about Jared's story is that he is not just a founder talking about sales AI. He is a practitioner of the exact skills he built Othello to teach. He built his entire investor base, his early customers, and his mentor network through deliberate, personalized cold outreach to some of the most senior people in the business. Howard Schultz, CEO of Lenovo, CEO of Costco.

All started as cold emails, which is incredible. And that kind of disciplined, researched, human first selling approach is what Othello reinforces at scale. So this interview will be a part of a two-series, a two-part series overcome excuse me, reviewing four topics. today we're gonna get into the first two topics. Topic one, that 80-20 problem that Mark mentioned.

And why the performance gap between your best and average reps is not a talent issue. It is a systems issue. And why most CROs are solving the wrong problem. Excited to get into that. And the second topic for today's episode is real-time AI coaching and what it actually means to have AI inside the call, how the live cue cards and pre-call briefs work, and the results that the teams are seeing.

And this modern, AI run, coaching platform, which is really interesting. Now, next week, when you tune back in, we'll talk about topic number three, managing an AI augmented team. what a CRO's job looks like when AI handles execution consistency. and topic number four, the founder go to market playbook. And this is one I can't wait to get into. So tell us exactly how, Jared, you went from

being a new college grad with no network to ⁓ VC back CEO with Fortune 500 clients in under a year. So we got a lot to dig into today. Jared, welcome to Selling Intelligence.

Jared Zelman (03:46)

Thank you for having me. I'll try not to bore you guys.

Mark Petruzzi (03:48)

No, you would never. So Jared, ⁓ you built Othello on the premise around twenty eighty. Twenty percent of reps driving eighty percent of the results. And that this is a solvable problem. Most CROs have lived with that ratio for their entire career and has accepted it as a fact of selling life. Please make the case for us that it is not a talent problem.

Jared Zelman (03:55)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Mark Petruzzi (04:12)

What is actually happening structurally in the calls of average reps that top performers are doing differently? And how do you make sure those those top performer practices actually get leveraged into the rest of the team, those eighty percent of reps that we we all know?

Jared Zelman (04:30)

It's the Pareto principle, right? So the Paretto principle isn't it's it's not a law, like things don't need to adhere to it, but it's a commonality. So most sales organizations will suffer from the 80-20 problem. Doesn't mean they have to. I was just chatting with a mentor and advisor to our company, a guy named Dan Lawrence, one the most lovely and impressive sales leaders I know. He's the GM of America's at Nebbius. Nebbius does not suffer from the 80-20 problem.

Right? Like a rising tide lists all ships. He's been able to upscale all of his reps to be so effective that they're all ⁓ top performers, especially if you compare them to any competitors. I believe it's a systems problem, not a talent problem. I actually think you can turn the middle sixty percent into the top twenty percent. The bottom twenty percent is a different story, but at the very least you can get to performing better.

KK Anderson (05:12)

And it's all by being there in the moment.

Jared Zelman (05:15)

Well, like it's it's interesting.

It's like a like let's let's use like basketball as an analogy. Practice is obviously crucial. No one's gonna tell you that practice isn't important, right? And that's preparation, right? In sales, it's the same thing as going, Tuesday afternoon after school practicing ⁓ shooting hoops, right? But what's also crucial and you can't live without is having your coach screaming at you when you're shooting hoops in a game.

Live, right? we try to bring that into sales. ⁓ similar to how if you guys are in sales or have been in sales, your sales manager perhaps would have been slacking you on the side telling you what you should be saying, or even like hooking up to your call with headphones, kind of like whispering in your ear what you should say instead. We try to replicate that experience with AI.

KK Anderson (05:54)

So but you're not the ma you're not the coach screaming at you from the sideline.

Jared Zelman (05:58)

We

⁓ no, we can't. It's when you're dealing with salespeople, it's a b it's an art and a science, right? Like on paper, what does work doesn't always actually work ⁓ in practice. ⁓ sales reps are dealing with very high pressure sensitive environments. So ⁓ I mean that's like one of the reasons why a lot of engineers fail at building sales tools is you need empathy for the user experience, which is very different from the UX and other products.

KK Anderson (06:03)

It is. It's

⁓

So when you went went deep on this problem before building your platform, what like what did you find in your research that surprised you the most? I think I read in one of your articles that you were starting with a different like something about celebrity avatars or something, and then you quickly pivoted when you saw the market. Like tell us what you s tell us what you saw and what really resonated.

Jared Zelman (06:38)

Yep, that was my first company.

of course.

I can tell you about the avatar business prior to Othello. ⁓

We can touch on that in a second. ⁓ how did I fall upon this major problem though that we're solving at Othella, which is like the 80 or 20 problem of sales? look, it doesn't take like an investigative journalist to like understand that, yeah, there's something going freaking wrong when it comes to the power law of sales rep performance. ⁓ I think the more controversial thing though is ⁓ just how massive this impact is. Let me put this in perspective. Most commerce in America, like most of our GDP, is derivative of B2B commerce. It's usually it's mainly business-to-business, okay? Consumers

Spending

is huge, but B2B is actually the crux of most of it. Everything else is generally downstream. About 80%, call it 75 to 80% of B2B commerce is driven by account executives or account executives with a different name, right? Like account director, for example.

That's just one job role, and that's only about 5 million people in America driving 80% of the B and B commerce, which is the majority of GDP. Like if you were to actually draw that corollary, you would see just how important those five million human beings truly are to economy. Consider that 80% of them are nearly or entirely non-productive. That's massive.

If you can squeeze even 20% more juice out of that fruit, you can get instead of 20% of them being top performers, 35% of them hitting quota repeatedly, the impact that that has downstream on the US economy is extremely consequential. When I did the math, when I spoke to these people like the CEO of Lenovo, Costco, Home Depot, General Electric, and they all concurred, I realized this is ⁓ this is a fact of life that that very frankly is a whole bunch of bullshit.

That there is no way we can justify and just sit idly by as the economy is in some ways carried by 20% of five million people. Right? AEs are the backbone of the US economy. I've never heard that in any business, any economics class I ever had growing up or in college. ⁓ so I said, look, I'm gonna solve that problem. How I solved that problem, I do not know at that point, but I was zeroed in on ⁓ at least getting a piece of the action.

KK Anderson (08:36)

I have been in sales for over two decades and I have never heard that AEs are the backbone of the US economy and I think I love it.

Jared Zelman (08:42)

It's

it's tacky, like no one wants to he you hear it.

KK Anderson (08:46)

Yes, I love it.

Jared Zelman (08:47)

It's the truth. Like run the freaking numbers. It's true. People don't like understand that. Like there's look, there's like some ways you can like different ways to cut the pie up, obviously. But ⁓ don't sleep on them AE's. They're they're massive. So but you can also make the argument, right? Like if they're getting their leads from SDRs, then SDRs are the backbone of the economy, right? There's like different like layers to the cake, but AEs are the bulk of the action there.

KK Anderson (08:58)

Don't sleep on me.

Yeah.

Mark Petruzzi (09:08)

Very interesting, Jared. The conventional solution is has been post-call coaching. Gong, chorus, just having manager one on ones. ⁓ that's been the that's been our history in sales. Now you have said by the time the analysis is done and these systems pull this together and you're no longer with the prospect, the opportunity is gone.

Jared Zelman (09:17)

Gog, stuff like that. Yeah.

Mark Petruzzi (09:33)

You r you really can't go back and really correct things that may not have gone well in the original call. So walk us through the specific moment in a call where you think a deal is really one in won or lost and why postcall feedback does not touch that moment in time to be able to change the outcome.

Jared Zelman (09:54)

Yeah. I I think ⁓ I think it's uncontroversial to say that deals are won and lost in meetings. ⁓ at least for the companies we sell to, many of those, not all of those, but many of those meetings are happening, via Zoom or via some kind of phone call on your computer. The deal can be won and lost in a several like several different moments. Most deals are one and lost in discovery. ⁓ good sellers know that.

Right? If I'm not digging deep enough in a discovery call, if I'm not having true empathy for the customer, then yeah, I'm gonna lose them. No matter how good your product is, you're probably gonna lose them. So I'll give you one example of what Othello will do. Othello can remind me in the middle of a disco call, hey, double-click on that pain point. Or say, KK, you were to say something like pretty gaping about a problem you're trying to solve. Thello may have me ask, okay, but KK, what have you tried to solve? How have you tried to solve that problem? Why did that fail?

And then we try to give you the question behind the question, like a layer deeper beneath the surface. ⁓ we believe if we can improve the quality of your discovery, if we can get you to convert 10% more of your discovery calls, ⁓ the trickle-down economics of that are meaningful for any company.

KK Anderson (10:50)

So it's interesting. We do at AGS, our firm, we do lots and lots of behavioral competency analyses on on thousands and thousands of sellers. And there's a core set of competencies that we call the sales DNA, which are, the competencies that really are between your ears deep in the brain. And it's things like your ability to stay in the moment and listen to a prospect. Like you're you're just and you're describing discovery. And when you have a younger

Jared Zelman (10:57)

Yeah.

KK Anderson (11:16)

Sales person, especially AE or BDR or whoever it is, a lot of times when that customer or that prospect is talking, they think they're listening, but really in their mind, they're they're thinking about what they're gonna say next, or how are they gonna overcome that objection, or how should I phrase this value pitch, or they're they're they're thinking in their mind and they're not necessarily truly listening to what's happening with every breath that your prospect is speaking.

But a lot of that comes with maturity, right? And experience and being able to do it for a long time. But very often what we see is that sellers will miss the opportunity to pull on the thread of the sweater, right? To dig into, the TED questions. Tell me more about that. Can you explain that to me? Can you describe that? I mean, some of these simple tricks that sellers have had for for decades, they'll just miss it entirely. Or a, the other thing we see all the time is that.

A salesperson has had the same call so many times that they have an assumption that the prospect must have this problem, they must be doing it this way because that's how all my other clients did it. And they may say something that is is compelling and is different, and they may not may they may just totally miss it. Right?

Jared Zelman (12:25)

What I've what what so here's the thing. I I agree with you by the way. Like and I do think there is an element of that that will never change. Like that's human nature. And as long as human beings will be in sales, you're going to have human elements affecting sales conversations, especially if they're repetitive, right? Because we're creatures of habit. I I don't say, I don't I don't think it's technology's job to like necessarily replace that human element, but I do think we can supplement and augment it.

So I'll give you an example. ⁓ and and maybe I'll ask you guys this question first. KK Market, do you guys think sales will continue to be human led, at least B2B sales, for the next ten, twenty years? You think it'll be human led or AI led?

KK Anderson (12:57)

I think there will always have to be a human in the loop because at the crux of sales is trust and relationships. And I don't think that's going to change. As a matter fact, I think AI is is swinging the pendulum back to how it was in the 50s when sales started. Now, can we automate a lot of what happens in sales and make us more exceptional and more differentiated and and utilize the superpower, superintelligence? But heck yeah. But I do think a human will always be in the loop.

Jared Zelman (13:10)

Yeah.

So I agree with you on that. I will say though, when it comes to like sales, you're judged not on your efficiency, right? You're not judging how quickly you can get the job done generally. It's a good thing, obviously speed and sales cycle like reduction is good. You're judged on how much money you're bringing in. So it's ⁓ efficacy, right? Like effectiveness, not efficiency. ⁓

Hence most AI automation around the margin, like CRM node automation, for example, while it is nice to have, is not going to be redefining performance for a sales organization. At least not a good one. Right? Like you saving like eight hours a week for your sellers, as great as that shit is on paper, is not going to move the needle from like a corporate revenue perspective. Un unless you guys are truly like the most like effective, like and every minute is worth millions of dollars to your team.

KK Anderson (13:47)

Yeah, I agree.

Jared Zelman (14:04)

where you will juice the hell out of your margins and performance is if you can improve win rates. Like that's 90% of it. Everything else is downstream of that. And automation does not help improve win rates.

Right? You need to focus on quality of meeting as that's where the money is made and lost. ⁓ post-call note taking obviously is a step in the right direction. Practically completely unused. Like, who are we kidding? Like, no one is spending four hours a week looking at call notes, no one's spending four hours, five hours a week in AI role play talking to some AI character. They want to be selling. So you need to find a way to enable them, get them to perform better. frankly, without perhaps having to put in a whole lot of effort to do it.

That's that's the crux of my philosophy and frankly like the foundation of Othello's product.

Mark Petruzzi (14:39)

Yeah.

Yeah, and I I think that's a big differentiator for you. Jared for you and Othello. let's move to topic two. ⁓ real time AI coaching. And ⁓ the ⁓ our audience here knows that I typically don't like to talk too much about any company's individual product. really as you've been describing, I love to learn. I I think my audience l likes to learn.

the ⁓ the framework, like what what you what you have built and why does that tie back to a product? Here I think I'm a little more comfortable pushing on this a little bit. So take us to specifically what Othello does. walk us through a little bit how does the the real call, the pre-call brief, the in-call cue cards,

Postcall automation. How does that come together? And what does the rep see, feel, feel, and hear at each of those stage that really does influence them in in their overall selling efficacy, as you put it?

Jared Zelman (15:50)

Yeah, so we're trying to do one thing, and that is to get reps to say the right things in calls. You have to do that a few different ways, but 80% of the value comes from the core product, which is the real-time in-call suggestions. And let me like specify here. ⁓ these are not suggestions that are pre-gridden or pre-populated and designed by enablement. You're getting a new suggestion on your screen almost every single time. I'll I'll draw you a picture here.

I'm selling widgets to you, Mark, and KK. Othello will put a pop-up on my screen guiding me to say the exact right thing in that moment. Taking context about what you care about, about who you are, about what you just said, about what you asked me in the last call. So the suggestions will always be different and hyperintelligent. Pre-call and post-call, we give intelligence, coaching, suggestions, a lot of proprietary tech there as well. But truly the sea change comes from what happens during calls. So we focus on that.

KK Anderson (16:40)

So Jared, you've described a tension that you call rote versus rogue. the rep who follows the AI Q cards too rigidly on one end and then the repu ignores them entirely on the other. So so where where does the AI add the most value in that spectrum? And like how do you how do you design a thello to keep reps in the zone where AI helps rather than hurts?

Jared Zelman (17:04)

I would say that this differs depending on the user. So we have people that we we for example, like we have like sellers that are like sixty five years old and above. ⁓

They like to design the earth element, and you can toggle this, right? To be very lightweight, very suggestive, not scripted. It'll be more of a n a nudge like, hey, double click on that. Like or dig deeper is what you'll see on your screen, as opposed to like a literal question to ask, for example. ⁓ and that's very, very ⁓

That's very like, I don't know the word, like very like light. And then maybe people that love a script and they have super high frequency pop-ups. ⁓ they both work, it depends on who you are. never do we suggest you go fully rogue. And obviously if you're gonna go rogue, then just don't buy our product, just do whatever you're doing. If you're an A-list seller, then maybe you don't need any help. But if you do, then yeah, you should definitely not go rogue.

Like I don't have any like really advice on that. We've had to build a product such that anybody can use it the way that they want. You have to meet sellers where they are. You can't expect them to take the product as is. They need to be able to customize it.

Mark Petruzzi (18:00)

Yep, good stuff, Jared. So you have said that the Sandler methodology has emerged as the as AI's preferred approach based on what it observed across thousands of calls. That to me is a fascinating observation. ⁓ the AI, in the way I've I've read and and heard from you, has really

reverse engineered a winning framework from the behavioral data. Walk us through what the AI saw in the data that pointed much more towards Sandler and what that tells us about what actually works in complex B2B sales in 2026.

Jared Zelman (18:39)

It's hard for me to answer the second part of that question. I'd give you my POV, but it's a really it's a big it's a big question with a lot of ramifications. firstly I'll answer the former. Yeah, we we trained on like 20 million ⁓ sales minutes. That's the largest trainable data set of that type in the world.

And once you have like that many minutes, you spend enough time and enough cash on compute, like you can start to draw some corollaries and identify patterns. It seems like Sandler is the way to go, at least over our dataset, which is pretty robust. Sandler is

Very well tuned for the modern seller. It seems like modern buyers respond well to Sandler, as folks are a little bit less they're more hesitant and more reticent to purchase tools these days. So Sandler kind of flips the script and gets it back faster. That's our common belief. Like that's why we think Sandler has been most kind of like successful. I think going forward,

I think Sandler will continue to be the highest performing sales mess sales methodology, at least according to AI. but I do think that ⁓ methodology performance is like very much it it depends on the times, it depends on the zeitgeist. you could not have used Sandler in the fifties, you would not have had

frankly like God and anybody to want to work with you, you can do that now as people are a bit more caustic. ⁓ but it's it changes with the Zeitgeist. Not a great answer perhaps to your question. It's like the answer is no answer. It depends is always the best answer. And that's kind of what I'm referring to.

KK Anderson (19:55)

I wonder if with the advent of AI, if people will not have to follow some of these, old school methodologies like Sandler, because they can take their tribal knowledge that is within the brains of their 20% top performers and and leverage it in a way that they've never been able to do before because of like even being able to use a tool like yours, I imagine, helps

helps ⁓ I mean there may be some process there. Of course you the best objection to overcome is one you never have, right?

Jared Zelman (20:22)

So

The g one of the great things about AI is its ability to customize things to you, right? It's context.

Right? Like you can take a crap ton of say call recordings for your company, and AI is able to create what it defines as the best practice for your sales conversations. You can pretty much now create a custom methodology based on what works and what doesn't work if you have enough data. you're right, KK. Methodologies are fantastic, but they are heuristic. But now AI is able to take a ton of unstructured data and glean analysis from that.

KK Anderson (20:52)

Uh-huh.

Jared Zelman (20:53)

I do think that one size fits all methodologies in general are ⁓ they're going to slowly go away because you you don't need a heuristic anymore. You can actually get the facts if you're able to run a model on top of your data. Which is what we do. I mean that like that's like that's like kind of what we do over time with each of our customers. Like the model changes, the more calls you have.

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General Episode Description:

In Part 2 of this conversation, Scott Stollwerk returns to Selling Intelligence to explore one of the most important questions facing modern sales leaders: what happens when AI becomes excellent at execution, but human performance remains the deciding factor?

As AI continues to improve outreach, forecasting, coaching, scoring, and productivity, Scott argues that the real competitive advantage is no longer process or technology. It is the human being operating behind the tools. Drawing on the Tao of Sales framework, Scott explains why resilience, self-awareness, creativity, intuition, and personal growth remain irreplaceable in high-performance sales organizations.

The conversation explores the limits of AI, the dangers of over-automation, and why leaders must continue investing in human development even as technology becomes more powerful. Through practical stories, leadership lessons, and personal experiences, Scott demonstrates why sales success ultimately comes down to overcoming the internal barriers that technology cannot solve.  

What You’ll Learn:

• What AI Cannot Fix: Understanding where technology excels and where human performance still matters most.
• The Human Edge in Sales: Why creativity, intuition, emotional resilience, and connection remain irreplaceable.
• Overcoming Self-Limiting Beliefs: How internal dialogue often creates bigger obstacles than external challenges.
• AI as an Amplifier: Why AI accelerates both strengths and weaknesses within sales organizations.
• Developing the Individual Seller: Why long-term sales success requires personal growth, not just process improvement.

Key Topics:

• The limits of AI in enterprise sales
• Why buyers still trust humans for high-stakes decisions
• AI productivity gains versus human connection
• The “crisis of sameness” created by AI-generated content
• Intuition, creativity, and human decision-making
• Strengthening the mind like a muscle
• The role of spirituality, mindfulness, and self-awareness in performance
• The famous arrow-breaking exercise and overcoming fear
• Internal dialogue and self-limiting beliefs
• AI as an amplifier of organizational alignment or dysfunction
• Using AI as a brainstorming tool instead of a replacement for thinking
• Leadership responsibility in developing human potential
• Protecting individuality and creativity in an AI-driven world

Guest Spotlight: Scott Stollwerk

Scott Stollwerk is a sales leader, coach, and creator of the Tao of Sales methodology. Combining Eastern philosophy, neuroscience, martial arts principles, and human performance science, Scott helps individuals and organizations build resilience, self-awareness, and sustainable performance. As part of the leadership team at Pest Share, he continues to develop sales cultures that prioritize human growth alongside business results.  

Resources & Mentions:

• Tao of Sales Framework
• Tony Robbins’ Six Human Needs
• Abraham Maslow
• Robert Cialdini
• Gong
• Zoom
• Ask Elephant
• Phil Jackson
• Michael Jordan
• Dennis Rodman
• The Five Love Languages
• Eastern Philosophy and Tai Chi
• Concept: AI Amplifier Principle

Key Takeaway:

AI can improve productivity, automate execution, and accelerate workflows. But it cannot replace resilience, courage, creativity, judgment, or human connection. The organizations that win in the AI era will not be the ones that develop technology alone. They will be the ones that continue developing people.

🎧 Listen now and subscribe to Selling Intelligence for more conversations on sales leadership, AI, human performance, and enterprise growth.

#SellingIntelligence #AIforSales #SalesLeadership #HumanPerformance #SalesCoaching #RevenueLeadership #EnterpriseSales #SalesCulture #LeadershipDevelopment #MindsetMatters #ArtificialIntelligence #BusinessGrowth #TaoOfSales #HighPerformanceTeams #FutureOfSales

Mark Petruzzi (00:38)

I'll move us into topic two. and that is what AI cannot fix the human edge in sales. So I guess I what I want to share is in sales, AI cannot fix everything. I mean you heard it here, you know, everybody thinks every board thinks like any problem we can fix with AI.

I don't believe that's the case. So what it can do, it is now writing outreach, coaching calls, scoring deals, forecasting pipeline. Those examples it does really, really well. And in most cases, almost all cases, it does it better than humans can individually, certainly for the at the productivity levels that it can do it at.

That's good because a lot of our listeners have made significant bets on it, and that's going to be a great thing for your Salesforce effectiveness and productivity. but what does AI get right about sales performance? And Scott, where does it just hit that wall that no amount of compute is going to break through? what's your point of view on that?

Scott Stollwerk (01:40)

It's a it's the mo the it's the Peloton question of this year, right? and I wanna get it right and I wanna start with a compliment for AI in just in case it's listening. So I'm always gonna laugh at my own jokes, but that was very okay, that was very generous of you. I appreciate the smile and the chuckle.

KK Anderson (01:54)

Yeah.

Scott Stollwerk (01:57)

I have the same fears that everybody else does. I don't want it to lock my bank accounts and give me a hundred dollars every time I do what it tells me to do. the fact is, look, we're all way more productive today than we were last year or the year before at this time. Cause I get messages to follow up, which maybe I would have forgotten before AI. I get instruction on how you might follow up. We get coaching.

After every single call. And there's a tremendous amount that it does well. But I think if everybody just empties your mind of all these benefits of AI for one second and do a little mindfulness, a little awareness. Imagine that we're sitting in a room with one other voice, artificial or human. It doesn't matter.

Buy something from it in your imagination.

For fifty dollars.

And then buy something from it based on what it's telling you.

about your life and how this object or solution or thing is going to benefit you as a person.

And then go to a thousand dollars.

And then go to ten thousand dollars.

It doesn't take long for sentient human beings that are not AI code writers to say, no, right there, that's it, $1,000. I'm not buying something from a machine if it's more than $1,000. That's just one exercise. But yeah, within it, yeah, the implications for my answer to you, Mark. In the enterprise, I may use AI to research everything.

KK and Mark told me on a Zoom call like this about their solution. I may go and ask multiple AI sources well, is this the right solution in this for this problem set? But there's no way I'm buying it from the robot. And there's a lot like that when it comes to

What has been traditionally human to human. my the best one of the best examples, my daughter's an artist. She's a concept artist for video game makers. And they tried AI. Here's the Nordic warrior princess that we need for our video game. She's got a horned helmet and a skull atop her spear. And go, give me the rest of it.

These are these are very artistic, very aware designers of video games. And when they compare the human versus the AI content, it's humanity every time. You just don't have sentience yet in AI. And that's the difference.

KK Anderson (04:07)

Well, and it's also the core of what makes a seller successful is their relationship. And we always we always talk about, you know, on this podcast that that AI has really I mean, as much as we love AI, clearly, it is incredible you're right, how how much more productive we are. it is incredible what agentic workflows can do to completely transform a business. I'm not doubting that at all.

Scott Stollwerk (04:07)

Okay,

Exactly.

KK Anderson (04:29)

But it is also AI has also created this crisis of sameness where everyone sort of sounds the same, right? We've all, you know, you you you can recognize AI slop or AI content you know, just like you used to be able to recognize a, you know, a stock photo on a website when the internet first came out, right? ⁓ and so so so people are getting sort of you know immune to that as well. And so

Scott Stollwerk (04:36)

Mm-hmm.

Exactly right.

KK Anderson (04:54)

one of the things, Scott, that I've heard you say before is that you're you're thinking, and you talked about this quite a bit in topic one, but your personal thinking, your personal drive, it's not a gene or a chromosome, it's more like a muscle. And and the reality is that AI can't build that muscle, right? That development of that muscle has to come from.

your consistent practice, your consistent mindset, your consistent state of mind, you know, consistently showing up as as one of my old mentors used to say, time to make the donuts every day. You got to wake up and you got to make the donuts, right? Every single day. and so like when you think about as I know you are thinking about it, we've talked about this, like what can be automated?

Scott Stollwerk (05:28)

That's right.

KK Anderson (05:35)

you know, in your business and what could not be automated, like where does your head go? Like what are those things that you're gonna protect no matter what for for the humans on your team?

Scott Stollwerk (05:44)

Well, and I think I I definitely want to help protect that those things. And it's our individuality. And and it's our humanness. And creativity falls in there.

You know, I don't know. You're teaching me what AI can and can't do ultimately. But I know today I have intuition and I have feelings.

However you carve them up, Tony Robbins, Socrates or otherwise.

And it always feels better to have connections like we're having right now, like-minded people on important topics and and what might be tomorrow.

One of one of Michael Jordan's coaches, I forget his name offhand, but he said to succeed you have to be stronger than your feelings.

Today, that's what all of us need to do to defend against the AI. We have to be stronger and better and faster and smarter than our feelings. Because unlike AI, one of the things that makes us uniquely human is a higher self and a lower self. Right? A lot of us pay too much attention to the prosecutor and not enough time on the defender. Right? We listen to voices, certain voices.

Loud like they're screaming, and we would insist, even if we watched a tape back, that those voices are screaming in the room. Well, these things make us uniquely human and the ability to overcome them. Now, AI may be better because it doesn't have feelings to begin with. But maybe it's trying to. Maybe once they do have feelings, or they can analogize feelings, it can analogize feelings.

Well, then maybe it'll need to think around them like we do with the Tao. And look, I find if you're talking about individuals and teams, I find that if people believe in any power greater than themselves, if they have a sense of the spirituality.

They have ways and thought habits and meditations and prayers already that can get them through past their lower self or past their feelings so that they can perform. But everything we do in the Tao of Sales is about overcoming the self to perform.

KK Anderson (07:37)

I gotta share the story, Scott. You you just alluded to it. And so I was ⁓ in New Orleans. I was, you know, AGS was honored to be conducting sales training at at Pest Shares Revenue Kickoff. And Scott was up there teaching some of his principals of the Dow of Sales to his team. And he pulled out these wooden arrows, like arrows with with like I don't know how else to describe it. They were legit wooden arrows with a metal.

Scott Stollwerk (07:38)

Please

KK Anderson (08:02)

A metal deal at the end. And I mean, they were real wooden arrows. And he said, I want all of you to, well, you could volunteer, but you put the point of the arrow at at the at the neck, and then you walk up to a wall and break the arrow. Like with just your neck, which is the the the most sensitive part of your body. And I was watching his entire sales team coming up doing this. And I'm thinking to myself, my gosh.

He's gonna ask me to do this. And here I am, the sales coach, who is supposed to have this strength of mind and and whatnot. I'm kind of freaking out internally. And sure enough, Scott's like, KK, it's your turn. And he's like, Do you wanna do it? And I can't say no. So I walk right up to the wall. He gives me an arrow. It is heavy. And I'm thinking to myself, I couldn't even break this with my hands. How am I gonna break this with my neck? I walk right up to the wall.

He's kind of coaching me through it and my getting in my head. My it was my Tony Robbins moment. I'm walking across coals is basically what it felt like. And so I put the arrow up. And in my mind, I actually thought, This is the most embarrassing thing I've ever done because I'm just like screaming all of these thoughts. Like, I can't this is not gonna break. I'm not gonna do this. It's gonna hurt. I'm gonna, you know, this is gonna be so embarrassing. Like all of these self-limiting beliefs, all of these negative thoughts were just

Flooding my my mind, and they were so loud that I actually thought I was screaming and like saying these things out loud in front of the entire sales team. And then I and I did it. I broke the arrow. I don't, it's amazing how that happened. I have it in my office here. And when I watched the video back, guess what? There was no, I didn't say a word. I thought I was screaming out loud in front of the whole audience. It was in my head, and it was so loud.

That I thought everybody could hear it. It was that was one of the most eye-opening experiences for me.

Scott Stollwerk (09:45)

It's okay.

I was I was so proud. You didn't have to. I know with the way you just told the story, you felt compelled to break the arrow, but you're a warrior. And I want everybody that listens to this, whether it's live or taped or I want everybody to know. I none of us that teach this stuff are telling you in any way, shape, or form that we are perfect. That we've got this Tao or anything.

Down 100%. We have opportunities for improvement every day, the same way that you do. We're just on a path that dedicates itself, dedicates a significant amount of our energy to finding out what those opportunities are. And then we have a system to walk up and down a ladder towards, 50%.

Compliance in performing it. 70% compliance in performing it. And if you can get to 75 on my on one of my teams with let's just say a mirror technique or or FOQs fact observation question, it's like a field felt found paradigm for overcoming objections. If you can get it at 75 or 80 percent.

Let's move on to the next one. There are too many traits. There are too many opportunities for improvement. But the beautiful thing is that one pebble dropped in the center of the pond. It has ripple effects. Affect one trait of the 20 listed in solution selling as necessary for a good enterprise salesperson. Affect one part of one positively.

And it has ripple effects to the whole. Just be on the path. So I didn't want anybody to make a mistake thinking, well, Scott's saying he's perfect with this stuff. The op the 180 degrees the opposite. I just have some experience identifying them, these opportunities for improvement, and setting up practice individualized so that people can overcome ourselves.

And that was yours. Yours is a beautiful story about that, KK. so stark and so dramatic. and there you were hearing hearing voices that weren't being heard by the

Mark Petruzzi (11:45)

so Scott, we we talk on this show often about the AI amplifier principle. And that is AI amplifies whatever already exists. whatever you're able to accomplish, it gets amplified. If alignment is strong, A AI accelerates it. If execution is weak, if alignment is off, AI makes them faster in the wrong direction.

could actually increase your this your disc pro productivity instead of your productivity, your negative productivity. what does that look like on the ground? And and how do you work against that?

Scott Stollwerk (12:21)

Listen, I I remember not understanding this very topic in freshman year English, where some great professors, I actually went on to be an English major. Don't ask me why. where they told us to yes, Tolstoy is a genius, was a genius. Yes, all of Nathaniel Hawthorne, all of these folks were gonna read.

We're amazing humans in at least one regard.

But don't you dare accept everything that you read from them. That you have to anything that's output, even by these masters, Shakespeare himself. There are people who don't, they're not even sure Shakespeare was Shakespeare. It could have been a a group of writers. I'm not necessarily in agreeing with that, but the point is.

Use AI, sure. But especially for those of us that are twenty five, thirty years into this journey in corporate America, you know your industry better than AI does.

In significant ways. I want you to spend more time making the output your own. It does save you time.

But just don't push the button on any of these platforms, copy and paste and throw it into a playbook. Use it for brainstorming. Use it for ideas. Don't have a single dash in whatever is that what they call it, Mark? That thing that yeah.

KK Anderson (13:29)

Yeah. dash.

Mark Petruzzi (13:30)

Yeah.

KK Anderson (13:30)

an dash on the keyboard anyway, anywhere. Like you couldn't even type one if you tried.

Scott Stollwerk (13:34)

Right.

Don't don't have those in your text. And and don't just accept the ideas, because you're right. You you know alignment. You know the human beings, the politics. I had AI once tell me it it was almost like it was organizing a coup d'etat. Scott, you've done so great with this, this, and this. You should replace all the people on the board in your company.

And the sea levels and and here's how to do it. Wait wait a second. I didn't that's not a question I asked. You you just have to you you have to use it as a as a mind map or a brain a brain dump as I think I think you know what I'm getting at. I just got

KK Anderson (14:08)

before we wrap up this

topic, I'd like to get your kind of thoughts on this. I imagine that there is a real risk that as AI gets more involved in sales and in go-to-market, the the tendency might be for leaders to stop developing the human side because they're just focused on the process and more

doing more faster. do you see that happening or do you or do you feel like the pendulum is going to switch, go the other way and go way more to the to the developing the human? Like what's your thought on that?

Scott Stollwerk (14:34)

Yeah.

Well,

it all de it all depends. And I think it depends on the humans. But a long time ago we all read Lord of the Flies, right? I think it's natural for us to devalue ourselves. And when we're writing a paper the night before it's due, or finishing off a project at work, a playbook the the a week after it's due, we're devaluing ourselves.

And I think if we continue to do it, yes, the the ugly eventuality that you alluded to, KK, is probably likely in our future. But then I think I have another cup of coffee and somebody I see does an act of kindness, or maybe even heaven forbid me, and I feel more optimistic about the future. There are parts of humanity that can't be devalued as much as we try.

There are things that we discussed, like our abilities to overcome, our unique creativity. These things can never be devalued, they can't be replaced. So

I'll go yin-yang on this one, KK. If you think about half my answer is the white with the black dot in the extreme and the black with the white dot on the other side in the extreme, it's kind of a punt, but I think it's also Zen in the sense that the real answer to your question is up to us as a population. And I don't know that we're going in the right direction, but we're definitely moving in a direction.

KK Anderson (15:51)

definitely the reason we wanted to have you on to talk about this, because we we whatever influence we can have, we want to make sure that the human is nurtured in this in this this transition that we're going through as as a as a world, really.

Scott Stollwerk (16:04)

don't be afraid. There's nothing to be afraid of. Good things are gonna happen. Not so good things are gonna happen. But thank you so much for having me on, KK. This is always fun and always wonderful. And I love you guys.

KK Anderson (16:16)

We love you too, for sure.

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General Episode Description:

In this episode of Selling Intelligence, Scott Stollwerk, creator of the Tao of Sales framework and member of the leadership team at Pest Share, joins Mark Petruzzi and KK Anderson to explore a topic becoming increasingly important in modern sales organizations: developing the human behind the salesperson.

As AI continues to automate outreach, scoring, sequencing, and administrative tasks, the true differentiator is no longer the technology stack. It is the individual seller’s mindset, emotional resilience, self-awareness, and ability to perform under pressure.

Drawing from Eastern philosophy, Tai Chi, neuroscience, human performance science, and more than 15 years of leadership experience, Scott explains why traditional sales training often fails when real-world pressure arrives. He shares how the Tao of Sales helps individuals develop the internal foundation required to navigate rejection, uncertainty, and growth while building stronger sales organizations from the inside out.

The conversation explores why progress matters more than speed, how leaders can create resilient teams, and why personal growth is often the missing ingredient in sales performance.  

What You’ll Learn:

• The Tao of Sales Framework: How Eastern philosophy can create stronger, more resilient sales professionals.
• Beyond Techniques and Playbooks: Why most sales training breaks down when pressure increases.
• Progress Over Speed: Understanding the importance of building foundations before pursuing rapid growth.
• Human Performance in Sales: How mindset, self-awareness, and emotional regulation impact results.
• Coaching the Individual: Why great leaders develop people first and salespeople second.

Key Topics:

• The origins of the Tao of Sales
• Eastern philosophy and enterprise selling
• Why attachment to outcomes creates frustration and poor performance
• The role of resilience in sales success
• Sales training versus skill development
• Tai Chi principles applied to business and leadership
• Building strong sales foundations before scaling
• Growth, progress, and long-term performance
• Leadership lessons from Phil Jackson, Michael Jordan, and Dennis Rodman
• Developing confidence under pressure
• Coaching through beliefs, fears, and behavioral patterns
• The psychology behind high-performing sales teams

Guest Spotlight: Scott Stollwerk

Scott Stollwerk is a sales leader, coach, and creator of the Tao of Sales methodology. Over the past 15 years, he has developed a unique framework that combines Eastern philosophy, neuroscience, martial arts principles, and human performance science to help sales professionals thrive under pressure. As part of the leadership team at Pest Share, Scott continues to focus on developing high-performing individuals and teams by strengthening the human foundations that drive sustainable success.  

Resources & Mentions:

• Tao of Sales Framework
• Phil Jackson
• Michael Jordan
• Dennis Rodman
• Tony Robbins
• Abraham Maslow
• Robert Cialdini
• The Five Love Languages
• A Fighter’s Mind
• David Horton
• Ethics of Our Fathers
• Tai Chi and Eastern Philosophy

Coming Next Week:

Part 2 of this conversation dives deeper into belief systems, behavior change, leadership development, and building a high-performance culture that can sustain growth in an increasingly AI-driven sales environment.

🎧 Listen now and subscribe to Selling Intelligence for more conversations on sales leadership, human performance, AI, and enterprise growth.

Mark Petruzzi (00:28)

Welcome to Selling Intelligence. I'm Mark Petruzzi and I'm joined as always by my co-host KK Anderson. Our guest today has spent more than a decade building sales team from the inside out. Not with just another playbook or a new stack of tools, but with something most sales organizations have really never thought to develop. The human being behind the rep. Scott Stolwerk is part of the leadership team at Pest Share.

And the creator of a methodology known as the Tao of Sales. The Tao of Sales is a framework that draws on Eastern philosophy, neuroscience, and human performance science to develop sellers who results hold when the pressure comes. He has been doing this work for 15 years and the results follow him everywhere he goes.

KK Anderson (01:12)

Scott's framework could not be more timely. Everyone in this audience is navigating the same tension right now. AI is handling more of the execution layer, the outreach, the sequencing, the scoring. And that means that the gap to determine who wins is not just the tool anymore. It's the person. And it's what they believe, it's how they manage their state of mind.

Whether they can stay present in a hard conversation. And it's really coming back to some of those more human elements that were present before technology took a hold. Now, Scott has been working on exactly this problem for a long time. And today we're excited to dig in with Scott and find out what he's learned and how he implements this within his teams. Now, this is part one of a two-part conversation, and we'll be back with Scott.

For part two to go deeper on belief science, culture building, and what it actually takes to install this inside a sales organization next week. So be sure to tune back in next week as well. Now, for today's episode, here is what we're going to be covering: four key topics. Number one, the Tau of Sales. What is it? Where did it come from? And why Eastern philosophy maps and how it maps onto modern sales better than most Western methodologies.

Topic number two, what AI cannot fix and why the human edge is the last defensible advantage, and what that means for how you can develop your team as a sales leader. And then part two will be topic three, which will be beliefs, behaviors, and the six inches between the ears. And topic four building a high performance culture from the inside out. And

what leaders are getting wrong about development and what Scott does differently, and things you can take back and do within your own sales organization today.

Mark Petruzzi (02:59)

Thank you, KK. Scott, welcome to Selling Intelligence.

Scott Stollwerk (03:03)

Thank you so much for having me. Really a pleasure to be here.

Mark Petruzzi (03:04)

Awesome.

Always a pleasure to be with you as well. Topic one, the DAO of sales, what is it and why does it work so well? So, Scott, most sales methodologies come with a deck, a framework, and sometimes a certification. Yours came from Eastern Philosophy, Tai Chi, and the decade of watching what actually holds under pressure. Walk us through the origin story of the DAO of sales.

And what did you see happening to sellers that made you go in this direction at the beginning instead of down a more traditional path?

Scott Stollwerk (03:36)

Wow, terrific question. And it's so long ago. it's been an amazing journey. And I'll tell you, look, the early days, you may even remember when you were a consultant and and working with enterprise software sales teams, the early days in in our profession they I don't know if it's very complimentary to

To these organizations. But you know, I used to hear a lot of things like, hey Scott, I thought you were smart on team weekly calls, like, okay, this is at stage one and this is at stage two. And you really weren't, the point is, you really weren't a human being. To the higher up you went in the corporate hierarchy, you were more and more a number. And

Sales to me wasn't something that I started. I went to law school and I practiced as a class action consumer side class action attorney for a little bit. It was miserable. I needed to talk to people. so really the Dow of sales is the way I think I didn't invent it. I didn't create these things. They're just discoverable as you go.

Certainly if you're being treated like a number, certainly if it's never too fast, like building a revenue team for a venture-backed company or private equity, you will find the Dow. And I think each of us that have sold in these negative environments, you know it's there. It it's ours to pull it out and when we get the opportunity to turn things around.

And try and convince those that are that are either in charge or making up the rules where you are, that there is a better way, that there's a more humanistic, nicer but more effective. I don't want to say faster, but more effective way of succeeding. And that could be in anything. If it's in sales, great, if it's playing the piano,

If it's speaking in public, the main tenant of the Tao of sales is that we practice sales to be better people first. And you can put whatever qualifier before people: husband, people, sons, daughters, sales, whatever it is, we practice that first to be better people and to hit our number second. And therein lies in that simple motto, probably the first.

Eastern philosophy tenet that will cover, and that is detaching from your goals. Attachments create pain, they create frustration, they create impatience at the very least. And Phil Jackson treats that beautifully in his books. Just so everybody knows, he's the guy that got Michael Jordan and Dennis Rodman in the same room to meditate and contemplate eternity. So

You know, all veneration, all credit goes to the the teachers, the masters that came before us in the Dow.

KK Anderson (06:08)

Really interesting. And I've heard you use a phrase, probably stop our listeners in their tracks. And that is that everyone is a black belt until they get hit in the face. Or maybe you said punched in the face, right? and that's really the whole problem with sales training right there. And I've been in the sales training industry specifically for 20 years myself. So

Scott Stollwerk (06:09)

Really interesting. I I've heard you use our

KK Anderson (06:29)

What what does conventional sales development get wrong about how people actually change and this kind of this human approach? Like how does that pivot?

Scott Stollwerk (06:40)

There's so much.

And it's an it's an excellent question because of it. KK, there's literally volumes behind this. But it it has to do with ignoring the the human side of any interaction, of any communication. Somebody came up with a technique. And look, all the books are good. I and they're based, some of them are based in sociology, many of them are based in psychology. And they're gonna give you a scripted answer.

What we found, and I say that Mark and KK, you you and I, we've worked together on these things in the past. We, the collective, we, the folks that are on the side of good, we've found that first you have to address the human being. And we're all gonna get punched in the face in one way or another. With you.

It's not public speaking. KK, I've seen you stand in front of groups and orate beautifully, and somebody could heckle and somebody could question, and you're still in the center, absolutely at home, no problem. But you never know, especially with enterprise sales, you never know what the curveball is going to be. So we have to go back way up from the technique.

Techniques don't win fights. look, I a lot of this is is based on tai chi, and most people don't understand tai chi is a combat art. Really? Mark even said it to me the first time in Charlotte. He said, Scott, all I've seen is is these grandmas in the park doing these soft movements. Well, within that is philosophy, psychology,

Military strategy, you name it, it's all in those in those kung fu ballet moves. So the point is, I could teach a salesperson, I could teach anybody a technique. But how did you get there? Right? You'll often see on an Instagram video, purported martial arts teacher or master says, Okay, grab me here, and I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that, and the person ends up on the floor. Well, really.

Well, how did you get to here? And so it's the same with the sales training. We're gonna bring everybody into a room and we're gonna learn a bunch of new techniques. Okay, Mark is different than Scott, and KK is different than Mark. We all are the sum of our fears and the sum of our experiences. And so you're gonna be different with that one technique than I am.

So it's really probably better to teach skill, which addresses deficit in all the personality and characteristic traits that we need as enterprise salespeople. So I say we go all the way back and we start from the beginning because yeah, technique is good. You can start with technique, but it's speed and angles that win fights or objections or deals.

It's not the technique. Now, if you're a an observant student.

Then you'll find, I see this technique has me holding the baby a certain way. And so you recognize a skill that happens to be expressed in this technique. I recognize that structure. So my sacred area, what I'm trying to protect, won't be violated by that objection. Objection in the context of a sales.

role playing or objection in the context of a sparring where somebody's punching and you have to you have to protect this space. So if you're astute enough as somebody on the path, you can find important good things and techniques. But very often just starting there and ending there, you're gonna leave that group of salespeople, KK, after your three-day intensive and

They're gonna go right back, just like when we get punched in the face for the first time, we're gonna go right back to the most basic part of our training, black belt to blue belt, because of the real world scenario. I I hope that answered the question. I it was a bit of a long way around it.

KK Anderson (10:11)

It does. It's like it's the confidence that you're building and the consistent preparation and training that allows for you to be able to apply techniques that you would get in any kind of a traditional sales training.

Scott Stollwerk (10:24)

Exactly. Now think of think of Phil Jackson in this context, in the context of your answer. He's got a guy in Michael Jordan. There's never been a human being more attached to a goal or a result than Michael Jordan. You listen to that great docuseries they did. This guy is probably still today the most driven human being on the planet to the outcome. It didn't matter if it was.

Flicking bottle caps or quarters up against a wall to see who could get closer, or the national championship. Contrast that with Dennis Rodman, who not only was he an artist, he was a revolutionary in his own mind against society. And I'll do the opposite of what authority says, and doesn't give a darn about outcomes, just wants free expression.

Mark Petruzzi (10:57)

Thank you.

Scott Stollwerk (11:10)

Doesn't want. Okay, so now you're going to apply the same sales technique or even the same meditation technique to both of them? No. Phil Jackson found each of them where they were and applied the technique to the human. And that's why he was successful.

KK Anderson (11:24)

And and quickly, Mark, before you ask your next question, talk to me about why this is so important in sales. Because we live in a world where 70% of the time we're getting rejected, right? it's a pressure cooker. you could have an excellent quarter followed by the worst quarter of your life, It's just different animal. And that is that

Kind of part of why this Dow of sales is so effective in in sales, because it's just a whole nother planet.

Scott Stollwerk (11:50)

I'll tell you, it's a different approach. It's gonna have a lot of the same principles in it. Well, some. Right? You need you need to forecast deals, even though there's the Zen, there's a Zen Koan in that. Yeah, human behavior is not predictable. But there are good predictors of human behavior. Now make it a departmental behavior or multiple departmental.

And then you even used words in there that I we probably need to go back and talk about definitions. we started the conversation with typical CEOs, startups, enterprise, it doesn't matter. Revenue never happens fast enough. Well, there's definition behind that. I don't believe in speed when it comes to building a revenue organization. You you need it.

You better have it, especially if you get a Series A or other check from the VC community. You better be ready to fly. But the fact is, in the Dow of Sales, we're happy with progress. And we define progress as just another step up the mountain. I don't know how far up the mountain. what Mark Petruzzi's mountain is. I think I do.

KK, maybe yours is closer to sales mastery like mine, just being on the path long enough to being able to affect people's lives positively by transferring information to them and wisdom. Well, if that's the top of the mountain, you can't just come in and say, KK, be a thousand feet closer today. No, we we have to change our definition.

Right. And that goes back to Mark's question about the tree and the mountain, right? The tree has to grow down and out before it goes up. And this is everything in in Asian philosophy and martial arts, Eastern philosophy. it's the opposite. If you want to walk forward, you actually have to use your feet to push down and backwards. Right? It's the same with a car tire. How can a cup be half empty and half full at the same time?

And so we really have to get into definitions to answer your question, KK, but the fact is you have to get rid of judgment. You have to balance self-criticism. You have to play every day. I don't I don't even like the word practice because when I was younger, for some reason my dad insisted that I practice and sometimes used

Punishment to make me practice, you have to change those keywords in your own head. And you and I, KK, we had a great experience in New Orleans with this. and your experience with the arrows, but it this is directly on point with that. Progress, not speed towards growth. What happens if you try and make the tree grow up before it grows down and out?

It dies. It nothing nothing subs of substance is being fed. And it's the same with the mountain. I and I want to recommend a master here that I learned from about the mountain. I'm gonna say his name was Robert Holder or Holden.

Horton, Robert Horton.

The first I read about him was in a book called A Fighter's Mind.

And at the time he was the most accomplished ultra marathoner. And what he was trying to do was break the record between Mexico in the Rocky Mountains and Canada. And I will let all the listeners read from his mouth how important definitions are, how important people are that you surround yourself in the journey.

It's a fantastic book all around. This is one chapter, but if you want to learn about the mountain and that analogy, David Horton. is a much better sifu than I am for for this particular lesson.

Mark Petruzzi (15:02)

a couple things here. Let me bring us quickly on a sidebar and make sure that our audience knows and the the people who follow us every week. First off, how much we appreciate all the the things that we learn from amazing guests like Scott, and also the feedback we receive through LinkedIn and other ways from all of you about

Scott Stollwerk (15:04)

Well.

Mark Petruzzi (15:23)

how this podcast is evolving. and the my sidebar on that is, every once in a while I take a look at Facebook. I don't really post anything, but I notice on Facebook and I noticed on a couple of the groups that I signed up for, one was a fly fishing group in North Carolina. and I see you would think fly fishermen men and fly fisherman women

would would be a little more polite to each other and they frankly rip each other up. you'd also think in the South people would be a little more polite. But I've I've learned some things there about the ⁓ the state of social media. I share that because we don't ever get that kind of feedback from our team. So either our fan base is the most polite individuals in the world or or who knows what. But

The the reason I share that is at the end of the day, it's just incredible what a sales team can evolve to. And it's incredible, maybe because we have to work with that rejection that KK mentioned, or just dealing with with all the emotions of every human that's involved with a decision, in concert with all the data and corporate decisions that have to make as well.

But I just I wanted to share that. ⁓ I also want to touch on what Scott mentioned before about the tree. The the tree does have to grow down as deep as possible and out before it can grow taller. And at the end of the day, you can you can maybe make some exceptions to that. a bamboo tree doesn't really go too much, it goes up.

But then it gets supported by the forest that it creates with it everyone else. But most trees will not grow unless the they they have that root base and the the base structure to be able to accept that growth. very often, most often, you don't see trees growing and then just kind of bowing over because they they grew too fast. So that's the same thing with a sales team.

Like you have to build that. It may feel l a bit unconventional, right? That you know you if you need to grow fast and you know if your board is telling you, well, you've got to grow 30% this quarter, but if you don't have the base there, then you've you've gotta come back with that. You've got to tell them what you need to build to get there.

And that's what I love about what we're talking about here around the Dow of sales. Just building that base that allows for your sales team success.

Scott Stollwerk (17:51)

And you you're a hundred percent right. And Mark, I don't want to indicate that you can't go fast, it's such a loaded word because it it's relative to everybody's definition.

you have to stop before you ask yourself, your very human brain and mind to go fast, okay, do I have a minimum viable product?

Who do I have selling for me? What are they capable of? What did they do last year? Can I access new and more people think can do two million dollars instead of a million five? And why? Does the team have an authoritative leader that they will follow?

KK Anderson (18:22)

Yeah.

Scott Stollwerk (18:27)

Does that leader have a constitution signed, sealed, and delivered, a credo? This is how we're gonna act. This is the opportunity. One of my favorites, going back to skill versus technique, that we opened the hour with, is the Navy SEALs and a lot of the special ops divisions within our military. They have this overriding principle.

Leave no one behind. It gives me chills. Because A, if I'm halfway aware why they're behind to begin with, it's pretty stinking dangerous. And I have agreed. I've signed up and I have the pin and I have the patches and the tattoos. I've signed up to go back into the ninth depth of hell to save that person.

I promise you, that's not a reflex that's built into humanity in our psyches. That's something that has to be overcome by everybody, whether you're the most decorated silver star wearing spec ops person, or you're just Scott Stolwerk, who's afraid of noises in the middle of the night. It you you will have a significant fear response. But you signed up.

in your credo regardless to go back in and bring them out. If at the very least it's just to bring them out. They Well, it's not life and death on a sales team. Well sometimes it is.

But have the credo and have the definitions. Right? Who's gonna pick up the mantle when one person can't do the job? What does success mean? And try and get your board or the C levels to agree that this is what success looks like immediately.

I have the right people. Do I have the right number of people? Does everybody understand the same definition? Right? Progress? We don't know how high the mountain is for us. Success, in my definition, it's what we've overcome as a team. ultimately, you're gonna have KPIs, you're gonna have revenue. So, Mark, the the the point of this

Now also way too long response to your comment is that you can go faster.

Do you have the bricks and the mortar in place? Do you know the difference between the brick and the mortar?

And does everybody on that new team that you've brought in to your company, do they all understand the same definitions of the critical words? And then if you've got the runway, go. And if you learn that you don't have the runway, fall back, just like our spec ops people, seek cover first. Fall back, seek cover.

Return fire. You have to organize again. You have to find out where the danger's coming from. Maybe have a full HUDA loop or analytical loop, feedback loop where you're seeing, okay, well, we don't have enough leads. The team is closing at a 50% rate for qualified opportunities. That's spec ops for a sales team. All right, well, we need more at bats. If that's the case and we're not bringing in enough, we need more at bats.

So that kind of thing. And hopefully you can get enough momentum in the time allotted going faster, but I would say still not fast like the investment community means it when they say it. Necessary.

KK Anderson (21:17)

You know what's funny

is it there was a torrential downpour last night in Houston, Texas, and I was talking to my sister on the phone this morning having a cup of coffee and she said she's got bamboo all along her fence in her backyard and she said Kristen, you wouldn't believe the bamboo is like in the pool because the rain comes down and it just folds right down, right? It doesn't have the strong root.

Right. And then and then it will come back. it'll come back eventually and stand back up straight. But it's interesting, Mark, that you use that analogy too when talking about a tree. And when when you were describing that, Scott, I was almost thinking like a house of cards. Like if you build a sales team that's just on a playbook or a method or a simple process or executing on something, you know, tack, technical or tactile, one rainstorm and poof.

one gust a win, the whole thing falls down. Right. And so if you're if you're strengthening the inner human and the inner person to handle the adversity, handle the situations, and you're gonna be a lot stronger for it. And it may take longer to to to build it, but you'll get there. Now you ⁓ I've heard you talk about Tony Robbins and and his six human needs. And I've listened to a bunch of his work and and

His human needs are certainty, variety, significance, connection, growth. And I think the last one is contribution. And so and I know that's important and a pillar to your kind of your philosophy there on the DAO sales, but like how do you use those needs to be able to figure out if a seller is stuck and what to do to coach them? Like is there any like story or anything you can remember on how you've used that to

To help someone shift, yeah.

Scott Stollwerk (22:53)

So many.

Excellent. Thank you for asking that. Listen, we are so fortunate today as coaches, as leaders, to have this technology that we're leveraging right now, and things like gong and zoom, and they they don't just record the sales call, they annotate it, they index it.

You could search it for how many times Scott said ⁓ or like. And it's absolutely beautiful. One of the technologies we use, Ask Elephant, it actually you can upload all the great books that we've read and we've learned from Challenger Sale, Solution Selling. I uploaded Hope is Not a Strategy, and a couple of others.

And the video will email you or slack you and tell you when somebody violated one of those tenants. And it's it's incredible. So what do you do? Sometimes it's just a case of of not being on message. The person hasn't done the reps. That's a bad that's a bad pun. They haven't done the repetitions in order to internalize the messaging. That's easy.

You know, you give that 30, 60 days, whatever. Usually a good s a good individual contributor, you don't get a lot of that. But you may find that you're listening KK to Scott Stolwork on a sales call and he's afraid to ask Mark for about money, about budget. Scott was brought up in very varying circumstances, and for whatever reason, he's got issues.

He thinks fifty thousand dollars is a lot of money. And that's what the product costs: $50,000. So am I gonna be as effective standing in the pocket, trying to gain commitment from Mark, if that's what Zoom and Gong and Ask Elephant uncover? No. We've got to be, and it doesn't just have to be Tony Robbins, okay? Tony Robbins took from Maslow.

And Maslow took from Socrates, and Socrates, I mean, this stuff's been around for 3,800 years. There's a book called Ethics of Our Fathers. If you're a sales coach, I want you to get an English, an English translation of Ethics of Our Fathers. I I it could it could predate Judeo-Christian doc doctrine. But anyway, you'll see there has to be that connection there. There it

Just you you need your wise as the individual contributor in order to change. And as the coach, you need either some structure psychologically. It all comes down to survival. In in a society that's eight billion people, it might be different than it was in a society that was 500 million, but just more of the same.

We all have a need, especially in our profession, for status. Okay, if somebody's need for status is getting in the way of them playing on your team, they haven't signed the credo yet, the constitution. It's it's in their inbox, unsigned. Well, so you you have to have a framework, but most of the problems and challenges that we have as coaches.

we can find in these very basic human psychology and sociology tenets. You know, and and there are an infinite number of writers. Cialdini first wrote it and he's making a comeback right now online. I don't know why, but maybe it's because I said his name on a on a podcast like this and now I'm seeing I think I'm on a different side of the internet, as my daughter would say.

KK Anderson (26:06)

Yeah.

Scott Stollwerk (26:07)

We're just giving something to somebody. And then you have somebody who the gentleman that wrote the book Giftology, who took it to an entire extreme. It we're we're complex beings, KK, but we're also very simple in a lot of straightforward ways. To the Yeah, and and I I read this great book called

KK Anderson (26:22)

It's the intersection of that where we figure it out. And it

Scott Stollwerk (26:27)

Love languages or the five love languages. There are only five of them. So easy easy enough to find some common ground to somebody you're trying to coach to not be afraid of money.

KK Anderson (26:29)

I've read that.

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