James Underhill is the Senior Director of Sales Operations and Strategy at MongoDB. He started his career as a pre-sales engineer at Videology and later spent two years at Twitter as a Revenue Operations Analyst. Since joining MongoDB, James has been promoted four times and now leads the Sales Innovation team.

In this episode, John McMahon and John Kaplan are joined by James Underhill to discuss the potential impact of AI on sales. They explore how AI can enhance sales productivity by automating time-consuming tasks and providing valuable insights. James breaks down the different stages of the sales process and explains how AI can be leveraged to improve territory management, discovery, preparation, coaching and forecasting. He emphasizes the importance of combining AI with human skills and highlights the need for curiosity, critical thinking, and a customer-centric approach in sales. The conversation also touches on the potential changes in the buying experience as AI becomes more prevalent in sales.

HERE ARE SOME KEY SECTIONS TO CHECK OUT

[00:04:42] Importance of combining IQ and EQ in leveraging AI tools
[00:08:11] The role of human elements and trust in the sales process
[00:11:15] Traditional territory management problem and the use of AI in contextualizing data
[00:12:42] AI can assist with knowledge procurement and enablement for new reps
[00:14:58] AI can aid in equitable territory management and hold managers accountable
[00:21:00] AI can automate the process of gathering foundational information, but reps still need curiosity and hunger to progress in the sales cycle
[00:22:21] AI will expose bottom reps and decrease ramp time
[00:25:01] AI enables instant coaching and on-demand knowledge
[00:34:08] AI can help transfer knowledge and boost productivity in sales
[00:46:09] Warm introductions becoming more meaningful in sales

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Learn more about aligning customer-facing teams to improve execution: https://forc.mx/48o1jyP

Connect and learn more about James Underhill.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-underhill-ba22313b/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/mongodbinc/

HIGHLIGHT QUOTES

[00:54:42] "Are they planning a merger with another company and they're going to go bonkers? Are they launching a new product? Like it's hard to predict that. And so that's where the human element is really important."
[00:55:08] "And now I'm taking that information and then I can have, I can use an assistant of sorts or a tool to help me understand how that translates into what you're going to pay over time. But it's not going to tell me, Hey, James, they're going to bill this over this time period. That's unlikely." 

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