Tag Archives: AI

How to Easily Spot AI Blog Posts – And How to Use AI Properly

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Hey there, savvy sales champs! Ever thought about having a secret weapon that boosts your sales game? Enter ChatGPT, your new best buddy in the sales world. It’s like having a Jedi master of conversation on your side, helping you charm clients, answer tricky questions, and close deals faster than you can say “commission.” Whether you’re a seasoned sales pro or just dipping your toes, this AI wizard is about to revolutionize how you hustle. Buckle up and get ready to unlock the magic of ChatGPT for your sales hustle!

Now, did that sound like me, Troy Harrison, the Sales Navigator?  Hell, no, it didn’t!  And if you use AI applications (whether ChatGPT or others) without any editing, it won’t sound like YOU either.  I purposely asked ChatGPT to write an intro for this article knowing that it would come up with something that was so transparently NOT me as to (hopefully) get your attention.  What we’re going to be talking about today is how to easily spot AI in blog posts, articles, and other written documentation – which, hopefully, will show you how to use AI correctly.

At current count, there are over 5,000 Generative AI applications competing for a growing AI user base.  “Generative AI” is the proper term for applications that accept a prompt from you and then generate some sort of written document as an output.  AI can write blog posts, articles, books, and even movie scripts (which is a big reason that the screen writers have been on strike – seems self-defeating to me, but I digress), and it’s easy to get started.  It can do this well or it can do it badly.  I hope we can agree that the opening paragraph of this article was “doing it badly,” but I bet you’ve seen a ton of posts on social media that looked pretty much like that.  AI is in its infancy, but at the moment, it has a number of verbal “tics” that are dead giveaways.  Let’s look at three of those now.

  1. Over-the-top language: Don’t get me wrong, I like enthusiasm. I once had a client describe me as a “human exclamation point!”  But too much AI output can sound like the person is on the biggest sugar high ever. My opening paragraph is an example.  “Hey there, savvy sales warriors” is a phrase unlikely to ever be typed by human fingers.  When you see a post that is virtually screaming at you, it’s probably AI.Your Hack:  I asked ChatGPT to use “casual language” in my prompt for the intro, and that was the result.  If you don’t specify your wording, you’ll get an abundance of business buzzwords and language that sounds like a term paper for an MBA program.  If neither one of those extremes mirrors how you speak and write – and they probably don’t – you need to be specific in the language you want for an output.  “Don’t use buzzwords” is one of my favorite prompts, and sometimes I’ll paste in a couple of paragraphs of my own work as a writing sample and tell ChatGPT to mirror my verbal cadence.  Until you get really good at your initial prompts, don’t accept the first result you get.
  2. Giveaway words and phrases: There are certain phrases that are dead giveaways.  “Say goodbye to X and say hello to Y” is a frequent one.  Or, “I hope this email finds you well.”  (That one sticks in my craw a bit, because I used to open a lot of emails with, “I hope you are doing well.”  AI took that one away from me.)  Words like “unleash,” “revolutionize,” and “unlock” are also common tics that give away a written product as AI-generated.Your Hack:  Sometimes, it’s enough to just accept a result with some buzzwords in it, and then rephrase it yourself into more direct and plain lingo.  Watch LinkedIn and Facebook ads, and you’ll see a ton of AI generated ads.  Read them and analyze them, and you’ll see other common verbal tics.  Then avoid them.
  3. Intros and closes: ChatGPT uses very familiar patterns of introductions and closes to its output.  Again – you probably already know what they are.  Avoid these, especially the intro.  The first paragraph or even sentence tells the reader if they want to continue, and if your first paragraph sounds AI, many readers will bail out.  Hmmmm….I’m hoping that most of you knew what I was doing and made it past that crappy first paragraph!Your Hack:  Always write your own opening and closing to a written document.  ChatGPT is actually pretty good at writing the body of an article with bullet points and analysis, but is weaker at getting into the article.  Your solution is to use your own ideas and thoughts to open your posts, blogs, etc., and then allow ChatGPT to do some of the heavy lifting in the middle.  Remember – make sure that the language flows and sounds like you.  If you come off as inauthentic, people won’t read you, and they won’t buy from you.

The bottom line is this:  Anytime you want to use a Generative AI tool to make your communications more efficient – and you should – don’t look at it as the complete solution.  As my friend Chase Aucoin likes to say, “ChatGPT is the best intern you ever had.  It’s smart, it has 20 PhD’s, and it has no street smarts whatsoever.”  The first paragraph of this article was an example of the lack of street smarts of ChatGPT.  It’s also the only piece of this article written with ChatGPT – but when I asked ChatGPT to write an article explaining how to easily spot AI in written documents, something happened that has not happened to me before.

I got a blank response. Zilch.  Zip. Nada.  Seriously – I learned that ChatGPT cannot explain to you what the dead giveaways of ChatGPT are and how to easily spot AI! After I stopped laughing, I wrote this article.

Generative AI is a great tool and will make you more efficient – but it won’t replace you.  So don’t ask it to, and you’ll be fine.

Why Doesn’t Cold Calling Work Anymore?

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of selling.  Last week, I defined the four trends that I believe will drive sales into the rest of the 21st century, and I’m even hosting a Webinar on those trends on July 6.  One of the dangers of thinking about the future, however, is that you lose sight of what worked in the past and can still work today.  I’m not going to do that.  That’s why this week’s Navigator is going to be about why, if you think cold calling doesn’t work, maybe the problem is you and your skills.

Cold calling is probably the oldest technique for generating new prospects.  It’s taken many forms over the years, but it’s still around.  Should it be?  Spoiler alert – YES.  But you have to be good at it.  Yesterday, I had a cold call that illustrated something I’ve been saying for years:  If you think cold calling doesn’t work anymore, you’re probably lousy at it.  I’m going to tell you about the cold call I received, where he went wrong, and how you can do it right (and why you still should).

Yesterday, I was cold-called by a guy who was selling recruitment services that matched military veterans to employers (a worthwhile cause).  On the face of it, this is probably a guy who should be talked to if you are hiring.  Here’s where he went wrong.

The first time he called, his phone connection was so bad that I couldn’t understand anything he was saying.  He said, “This happened on my last call, let me switch phones and call you back.”  Wait – if it happened on his last call, why didn’t he just stay on the other phone and call me from that one?

When he called back, he introduced himself with his name and company (good so far).  Then, he went into a long spiel about what his company did, and that this was definitely a sales call, that he’d be wanting to talk about getting my hiring business, and could he have 30 seconds?  This spiel took him more than 30 seconds.  I timed it.  So at this point, I just explained that I don’t do hiring because I don’t have a staff.  That’s not 100% true, as I just hired my very own sales executive (the business is growing), but I didn’t have any MORE need for hiring.

Then he asked, “Well, could you tell me who would do all the hiring at Salesforce?  It’s a big company.”  That’s when it dawned on me.  He thought he was calling an executive at Salesforce.  For those of you who haven’t been with me for the nearly 19-year ride of my business (most of you), I’ll give you the backstory.

When I started my business on September 1, 2004, I called it “Salesforce Solutions.”  The idea was not that I worked with the Salesforce CRM, it was that I solve companies’ problems with their own sales forces.  Seemed like a great idea, but it wasn’t, due to marketplace confusion (up to and including calls like this one).  That’s why I rebranded around my own name in 2014 – ten years ago.  This guy had somehow gotten ahold of ten year old data and thought that he was calling an exec with a large company.  I explained his mistake to him, politely, and wished him well.

He is probably thinking, “I don’t know why I’m cold calling – cold calling doesn’t work!”  No.  He’s just very, very bad at it.   Before I give you the four keys to being good at cold calling, however, I want to talk about the elephant that I put in the middle of the room.

If I’m talking about the future of selling, artificial intelligence, what ChatGPT can do, etc., then why am I talking about this old sales technique?  Simple.  First of all, cold call prospecting is STILL the most controllable way that salespeople can build their businesses and attract new customers.  Other strategies, such as networking events, social media, etc., are great and can work, but they are not numerically predictable and controllable.  And we need a method that is.  Cold-call prospecting should be part of your repertoire and routine.

Second – and now we can directly look the elephant in the eyes – cold calling is not (yet) something that AI can do well.  In the article I wrote a few weeks ago, I said that salespeople need to get better at those things that AI cannot do well.  Cold calling is one of those things. By using AI well in things that it’s good at, and then using the time saved to improve your skills at the things it does not do well, you can become the complete package.  With that said, here are the four keys to being good at cold call prospecting:

  1. Test your technology. This means that, if you’re using the phone, make sure that you get a good connection and that you are understandable on the other end of the line.  If you sound like you’re calling from the bottom of an oil well, find a different phone.  You MUST be understandable.  And while we’re on the topic, no damned auto-dialers!  As a call recipient, nothing kills your chances quite like the 2-3 seconds of dead phone line between the time that the call recipient answers and says, “Hello?  HELLO?” and you pick up and start talking.  Use your fingers and dial the phone.
  2. Use a good database. Even the best databases can have about a 10% obsolescence factor – but in this case, “obsolete data” means a year and a half, not ten years.  I think someone would have to be working hard to find data old enough for my past company name.  By the way, here’s a quick hack.  Most good library systems have subscriptions to free database services like ReferenceUSA, Data Axle, A to Z Databases, or the like.  These databases give all pertinent information including contact names.  You must have a NAME to ask for – not “the person who.”
  3. Be concise and powerful. From the time your prospect picks up the phone, you have 15 seconds – MAXIMUM – to give that person a reason to talk to you.  Crap like “How are you today?”, “is this a good time?”, or other babbling uses up that 15 seconds, as well as your prospect’s patience.  Introduce yourself and give ONE powerful sentence that explains how you benefit your customers, and how you could benefit them.  Yes, this requires thinking and refinement.  DO IT.  You could even try getting ChatGPT to help you write the sentence!
  4. Ask a strong question. After giving your one-sentence explanation, ask an open ended question about the prospect’s potential problems and needs to stimulate the discussion.  Then you can ask for an appointment.

If you’re thinking that cold calling doesn’t work, it’s time to get good at prospecting.  Don’t waste your prospects’ time – or yours.

Can Salespeople Be Replaced by AI?

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“Can salespeople be replaced by AI in five years?”  That was the topic of the poll on LinkedIn.  My instinctive reaction was probably the same as yours – “Of course not.”  Then, I did a little thinking before I answered.  And I realized that, yes, a lot of salespeople could be replaced by AI – not in five years, but RIGHT NOW.  That’s because their skills aren’t really any better than your basic chatbot – and therein lies a problem for those of us who care deeply about the role of the professional salesperson.

In 2011, Selling Power Magazine interviewed me as part of a cover story on the future of selling.  I’ve always thought of myself as a very forward-looking person when it comes to our profession – but boy, was my crystal ball broken when I gave my responses to their questions, and I realized this when I looked back at the article.  If you click, you’re going to read a pretty long article, but if you care at all about the sales profession and your role in it, you’d better click.  I’ve written over 600 articles on selling and this might be the most important.

Here’s what I said.  In response to a question about what the future of the sales profession looked like, I said, “Midline salespeople of tomorrow will be displaying the same level of expertise ten to fifteen years from now that the superstars display today, and the superstars will be on a whole new level.  Staying on top will require a higher level of mental commitment.”

I was wrong, but I should have been right.  I’ve written about this before, but if anything, the aggregate level of sales ability has declined somewhat in the twelve years since I made those comments.  That’s because most salespeople of today spend less time and energy developing their skills.  They find a level and stick to it.  Midline salespeople are, at best, no better than they were in 2011.  Some of the responsibility for this rests on the salespeople themselves, and much of it rests on CEOS and sales managers who don’t foster a culture of continual sales skill development. Are there exceptions?  Yes.  Absolutely – I’ve encountered some remarkable salespeople (although I don’t think that “whole new level” has happened).  But they are exceptions.  By and large, the aggregate sales skills at each level have remained constant.

When I was asked how the Internet is changing the game, I said, “The Internet can take orders and distribute content [thus taking up functions once designated to salespeople], but what it can’t do it discover customer needs.  It can’t build relationships, and it can’t prospect on its own.”  Well, I was wrong about that one, too.  AI bots can do a rudimentary job of discovering customer needs at present, and that will only get better as time and technology marches on.

What about the other two components of what I said – relationship building and prospecting?  Obviously, AI cannot build a true, interpersonal, face to face relationship.  However, AI can do an excellent job of REMEMBERING what was said and has transpired (because it can feed directly into CRM systems) and from a business perspective, it can make excellent use of a customer’s time.  That’s a threat to, but not a replacement for, traditional sales relationship building.

Can AI prospect?  That’s a tantalizing thought, isn’t it?  Most salespeople dislike prospecting (full disclosure – I’ve never been in love with it myself).  I can envision a time when an AI bot is able to prospect through email, LinkedIn, and even the telephone.  In fact, the technology for email and social media is already here, and I’m willing to bet that if the phone prospecting tech doesn’t exist yet, it will shortly.  Imagine an AI bot that dials a prospect, engages in a voice to voice conversation using prospecting and sales best practices, and even sets appointments.  Heck, take it a step further and imagine it doing so in the same voice as the real salesperson who would handle the live appointment.  Or how about an AI bot that sets Zoom sales appointments and then carries them out in a hologram?  This kind of thing would have been science fiction five years ago – now it’s a coming reality.

Don’t misunderstand me – I still think that a well-trained, skilled, passionate, and engaged salespeople can do all of those things BETTER – but too many salespeople are not well-trained, skilled, passionate, and engaged.

Now that I’ve told you two areas where I was wrong, allow me to tell you one area where I was right – or will be soon.  When asked, “How do salespeople keep social media from being the tail that wags the dog?” I responded, “Social networking is a strategy for marketing promotions and relationship management.  It is not a prospecting tool [OK, I was a little wrong about that]. A lot of those functions are going to slide down to the lowest-paid person who is competent to do them.”  Given the level to which AI apps like ChatGPT write social media posts, I was right on target – ChatGPT is definitely cheaper than even an administrative person.

Where I went wrong, I went wrong for two reasons.  First, I anticipated a higher level of sales skill development on the part of the average salesperson.  Second, I didn’t see AI coming.  Shame on me.  Apps like ChatGPT have the capability of being game-changers, and they also have the capability of being harnessed (by skilled salespeople and managers) to increase the effectiveness of a company’s sales force.

How to avoid being replaced by AI

So if the answer to “Can salespeople be replaced by AI?” is “yes, it’s very possible,” then the question for we human salespeople is, “How can we avoid being replaced by AI?”  Here’s where the wicket gets sticky, because this requires some serious engagement and effort on our part.  Here’s a three-point plan.

  1. Get better at your job. The key for salespeople in this environment is to constantly learn, develop, add new skills, and shed old techniques that aren’t working anymore.  Unfortunately, few salespeople do this.  When I interview salespeople on behalf of my clients, I always ask, “What’s the most recent sales book you’ve read?”  Ten years ago, I got a good answer more than half the time.  Today, it’s rare that I get one at all – in fact, about half of the salespeople I interview have never read a book on selling.  When I ask a follow up question about how they develop their skills, they answer that they really don’t.  Sales is a profession of constant change and constant development, and if you don’t care enough about your profession to get better at it, you are replaceable.  Don’t be that guy or gal.  Invest in yourself.  Read books.  Read articles.  Watch YouTube videos.  Attend training programs.  And then practice, practice, practice.  Next week we’ll talk about what it really means to practice and learn sales techniques. Get better and do better.
  2. Embrace technology. Yes, this article is partially telling you how to combat a new technology, but those who do not embrace it will find themselves steamrolled by it.  I’m constantly amazed when I see salespeople (and worse, sales trainers) fighting the use of tech like CRM.  I have actually seen a “sales trainer” recommending that salespeople ditch the CRM and instead use paper note cards.  The 1990s called, and they would like their mentality back!  Today, salespeople must embrace and use tech of all types.  CRM, social media, video conferencing, and IM’s are all tech that salespeople should not only be conversant with, but competent in.  Not only that, you should be ready and anticipating the next trend.  There’s a reason that I refer to “AI” in this article for the most part, and not “ChatGPT.”  ChatGPT is but one AI app, and who knows whether it will be the most prominent in five years?  Remember MySpace?
  3. Flip the script. We always like to think about the “Sales process,” and what we want from the process and what activities we will be performing to get there. I want to challenge you, and I’m taking this challenge myself.  Stop thinking about “Sales processes” and instead think of the “buyer’s journey.”  Think about the act of selling from the perspective of the person buying, evaluate the steps from the buyer’s point of view, and work to help them achieve what they want.  It’s a change in thought and terminology, and as 2023 progresses, I’ll be helping you get there with articles, videos, and even training.

Make no mistake about my outlook.  A great salesperson will always be better than AI.  A good salesperson will always be at least as good as great AI.  I’m a 100% passionate advocate for personal selling by human beings to human customers.  If I sound pessimistic in this article, it’s because I’m concerned.  But as I said, I’m here to help, and I’ll be doing so through the Navigator and through my YouTube channel.  If you’re a salesperson, start reading, watching, and practicing.  In the coming weeks, we’ll talk about how to practice and about how to view sales from the perspective of the buyer.

And if you’re a business owner or sales manager, I can help you, too.  In addition to the free resources above, I can train your salespeople to be irreplaceable.  I can help you hire great salespeople.  And I can coach you to manage the very best sales team in your market.

The future might look spooky, but it doesn’t have to be.  This is another challenge to our profession, and we can and will overcome it and be better and more valuable to our customers than ever before.