With so many rapid advancements in the field of AI, business development professionals across the spectrum are asking:
Are humans becoming obsolete in sales?
What are the implications for existing sales forces?
On this episode of Evolved Sales LIVE, host Jonathan Fischer sits down with Anton Dobrzhanskiy & Miro Putkonen, founders of Finland’s AI tech startup, Epicbrief, to teach you how to work with AI (not against it) to get an edge on your competitors.
Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn for more engaging sales insights and discussions! Happy watching!
Meet Anton and Miro:
Anton Dobrzhanskiy & Miro Putkonen are two of the founders of Epicbrief, an AI technology startup out of Finland which is aimed at making human work in sales more meaningful and valuable.
Check out the transcription of this webinar episode below!
Jonathan Fischer 0:04
Welcome back. Thanks for joining us. I'm Jonathan Fisher. With so many rapid advancements in the field of artificial intelligence, business development professionals are asking what are the implications for existing sales forces? How can I integrate this powerful technology to get an edge against your competitors? Well, our guest today, Anton Dubinsky and Muto Pitkanen are two of the founders of epic brief, a technology startup out of Finland, which is aimed at making human work more meaningful and valuable. As players on the very front lines of this issue. Anton and Miro have the perfect vantage point from which to help us grapple with these questions in a meaningful way. Miro. Anton, what a pleasure to have you on the show. Welcome.
Miro Putkonen 0:44
Thanks for having us.
Anton Dobrzhanskiy 0:45
Hi, everyone. Hi, Jonathan.
Jonathan Fischer 0:47
So before we jump into our topic, which obviously is of great interest, I'm curious, how did you guys get into the field and gain some of the expertise you're gonna be sharing with the listener today?
Miro Putkonen 0:58
Yeah, so both Anton and I have been working in sales for the last 10 years, as AES and as a sales leaders. About a year ago, we, me and Antoine were basically, we had had left our job at a startup. And we were thinking, thinking back at our time as AES, and about some of the challenges that we had had. And we, we realized that one of the challenges was literally just, you know, sharing what we were learning from customer facing conversations. And we met our co founder who has a PhD in machine learning. And we had just heard about these large language models that everyone was talking about. And, and then we basically came up with an MVP to solve one of the problems that we're having personally. And yeah, that started an interesting journey. We were pretty early adopters to like large language models. Back then no one was talking about that. Now everyone's talking about them. But yeah, it's been an interesting journey, journey until now.
Jonathan Fischer 2:08
Well, and it feels like it's this overnight change. It's been many years in the making, though, right? I mean, people been talking about artificial intelligence for literally decades. But it does seem like the curve is suddenly steep. And would you agree, what do you how do you account for that?
Miro Putkonen 2:25
I mean, like this goes into into, you know, a deeper, deeper conversation. It's. Yeah, I mean, I think the reason, at least for us as salespeople why this has been really interesting is, I don't know if it's a combination of what's happened through with COVID, where we have salespeople who've been like cooped up in their own, you know, extroverts who have been in the in the building in their rooms for like two years. And there's obviously there's this technological shift. But what's really interesting when we go out and talk to salespeople is that many of them just feel drained. And what's really interesting about that is, you know, if you think about like, salespeople who are extroverted, but they're feeling really drained, like there's this interesting mix between like a technological advancement, and then salespeople who are sort of tired of the way sales is being run? And so yeah, it's, it's really interesting, there was a recent study from from Salesforce that found like 72% of of salespeople spending their time on non selling activities, right. So if you imagine like, you're spending $100,000 on a salesperson 72,000 of those dollars are not being spent on on sales. And so for, for both the leader and for the salesperson themselves, they're spending their time not doing the thing that they love, which is being with customers. And so yeah, it's AI, we'll we'll get into it, like how AI can help salespeople, and as some of the risks maybe that are associated with this. But yeah, we think this is all coming together at a very interesting time for for sales as a profession.
Jonathan Fischer 4:15
Well, I think you gave us a little indication of what your answer is likely to be, they'll still ask the question. Is there a threat to some people's jobs represented by these advances in artificial intelligence? And if so, what are the what are the parameters of that threat? What would that look like?
Anton Dobrzhanskiy 4:34
Yeah, I think this is a very good, very good question. Jonathan. We've been thinking a lot with Mira and Peter, about, you know, what's going to happen in sales with advances in AI and in our humans obsolete in sales. I think the intellectually honest answer to this question is that we don't know. I don't think that anybody can claim that they do know We can play different scenarios, think about, you know, will humans become obsolete in sales? You know, there, there are some things which need to be true or to happen. Like advancements in AI like, you know, there needs to be a little bit more developed. In some scientists said there's already like AGI like, artificial general intelligence inside it's also needs to have to develop like empathy and emotional intelligence. Yeah, but what we, what we and you can be really confident about is that non value adding sales is going to go away. Like, if you, if you think about in today's in today's sales, and today's buyers journey and customer journey, only, really only 10% of the whole customer journey is where sales people or sales teams actually come in, then there for 90% of the whole journey. And yeah, it's a quite tight window for you to add value. And if you're not adding value inside of that tight window, then the buyer doesn't want you there. And it's not just, it's not all about AI, it's just the buyers expectations. And we can already see in the past 510 years the rise of technology or go to market motions like product lead growth, right when people don't actually talk to salespeople to make a purchase. I think this is sort of like to answer your question is that to recap is like we don't know. But non values, adding sales is definitely going to go away? Well,
Jonathan Fischer 6:48
I think it seems fair, it sounds like what you're saying is the more transactional the sale, the less less humans are, in fact needed as this technology matures. And frankly, the humans doing the buying don't really like it any other way. So that's where it's gonna go. But there is that open door that you've left for human beings where a lot more creativity or a lot greater complexity in terms of the buyers journey pertains. So tell us more about that, like so? If so, that sounds like there's both promise and peril, right? The parallel is yes, some of these some selling functions that are currently conducted by people, they're no longer going to be conducted by people. However, the ones that remain what is your opportunity here? Or is it just it's just ever? This never ending rivalry that, you know, until it gets more and more capable? What are your again, you said you don't know. But what are your thoughts on that in the in the immediate term?
Miro Putkonen 7:38
Yeah, I think the opportunity is to make the human work and sales more more meaningful and valuable, right, like, like, when you think about that Salesforce study that, you know, 72% of the time is being spent on non selling activities. So that definitely, that kind of works, should and could be automated, right? And I think that gives an opportunity for the for the human in the mix to, you know, spend time doing the thing that what they love, obviously making money, but also, you know, being with customers and helping customers and problem solve, as opposed to like, being told by their manager, the fill in the pipeline, you know, things like that. And so, I think also, like when we've talked to salespeople, like, we just hear like, like, when you speak to a salesperson, one to one, and they tell you like, like, we've had a bunch of sales reps reach out to us that that they've been feeling quite drained and burnt out. I don't know if it's like combination, like I was saying about, like, COVID, or is it just, they have so many technological tools or whatever, but like, we've heard stories we spoke to, for example, this mom sales salesperson, who she, at night, when she was with her baby, she was like watching like recordings, and then trying to take notes. And so I think like salespeople will just just overwhelmed by things, and they feel pretty drained. And so I think AI can literally make the human work like just more meaningful, like, even if it's not spending time, more time selling, but also doing what they want to like doing the things that they love to do if it's like going on a nice vacation, or like spending time with their friends. But I think the this this, salespeople just typically have quite a bit of stress and often paranoia like that, you know, you don't want to make mistakes and right so like, it's, it can be pretty exhausting. So I think the AI what it can do is it can take away some of those things that don't help the salesperson just just do the human stuff that they really love to do. And then they're really good at and I think that's where the AI can really actually add value and like the combination of the AI and the human.
Anton Dobrzhanskiy 9:58
Yeah, I would I would add to that. I'd like we talk or what we deeply care about is salespeople. But then you also think about sales leaders. I think what's interesting in this in this kind of environment we live in is that there's a huge advances in AI, which can, you know, automate a lot of tasks and augment salespeople. But at the same time, we are in this a little bit shaky economic, we're kind of in recession, like there's not a very good economic environment, then you can see an old people laying, oh, it's companies laying off people and cutting costs, etc. So what it means for sales leaders today, it's pretty much hit can be summed up in a really small sentence, like do more with less, you know, like you, it's an impossible task for a sales leader, whether you're a Chief Revenue Officer or VP of sales, you know, one of the jobs increases revenue, shorten sales cycles, and increase conversion, right, those are the three things sales leaders need to care about. What they've done for 15 years, you know, for the past 15 years, to solve those challenges is pretty much hire more people. hire consultants to train those people that train, train, train the workforce, and then to increase conversion, it's a combination of the quality of the sales force, so your sales force, and then product, right? You don't have those levers anymore, you don't have budget, you don't have people. And you know, you can't really you haven't been talking to, you haven't been impacting the product as much as you want it to, because it's quite a exhausting conversation most of the time. So as a sales leader, we feel quite we really resonate with sales leaders jobs as well. It's an impossible task. And I think AI has has a potential to, to help there as well.
Jonathan Fischer 11:54
Well, I like what you guys have said, because it really is tackling from both sides, the some of the positive potential that this technology represents for the sales producer. Getting back to the stat mirror I mentioned earlier of 72% of the salespersons activity is non revenue producing, that's not just hair pulling, for the management, it's hair pulling for the producer, because he or she is not having fun, managing CRM, updating notes, tracking pipeline, you know, getting data, all that stuff. So there's a lot of opportunity, I think to make the life easier for the the sales producer, I love that you guys are focused on that. And then yeah, I mean, what, what levers can you pull to make change? It sounds like there's a lot more that could be done here. So let's, let's dive into that. Let's let's kind of get down to some of the concrete ways in which this technology can do these things make the manager and the producers jobs that much better.
Miro Putkonen 12:49
Yeah, so there's basically like five, five areas that we think about, and it kind of goes up in terms of like complexity for both the human and well, mainly for the AI where we think like, if you ask the question, like where AI could make the human obsolete, like, there's sort of like five areas that we're interested in. The first is like automation. Like is it can AI automate things? Clearly it can. The other other areas are analyzing customer needs, which basically means that you can analyze the customer need and tailor the solution. So humans can do that. But AI, I think can can do that. And I can share a few examples of how we've been playing around with with the AI to do that. The other areas, these are the areas where humans really are like unique, but like, it's surprising how good they are AI seems to be at these kinds of areas, which is like problem solving, which is problem solving the unique issues of the customers. A fourth area that seemed at least for many of us, like I can touch that which is like strategic thinking. And the fifth area, which is clearly the area where I think we all have a bit of doubt or hardware if AI can actually impact that and it's the like the the trust the empathy. You know, it's the human relationship, like will buyers ever really trust buying from an AI? I mean, it's an interesting thing to think about, like whether it's it's possible that that, you know, humans might trust an AI to buy from an AI. I mean, there's an interesting question of like, if the AI is able to promise a better, better, bigger impact, better results, then it's kind of a question maybe some people start saying like, Well, sure. I really liked the good feeling I get being with another human but like, the AI promises better results. better, it's better for the bottom line. Right? So, I mean, I like, yeah, it's an interesting question like to, like, really honestly look at it. Like, at least many of the people watching this, like, I probably played with Chad GPT. And when you think about those areas like problem solving or strategic thinking, it's quite surprising how good the AI is at some of those, those types of aspects. And so, yeah, definitely that the empathy and the trust and the relationship building is stuff that like, AI, let's say, is going to be it's going to have a hard time and but I think we need to also be intellectually honest, when we played a play with LGBT that like, you're like, okay, like, this is pretty good. So but yeah,
Jonathan Fischer 15:56
well, yeah. And I think that whole issue of trusting and empathy, a lot of that is, how cleverly can the code be written? Right? Because we already know humans can anthropomorphize anything. I mean, from the time we're kids and get attached to a teddy bear, right, we're already gonna get making forming an attachment to something that doesn't actually reciprocate in exactly the way we need. So tying into that could be very powerful, maybe in a scary way. But, but in terms of what we could do today, with today's capabilities, how can can we make maybe give us two or three additional ways that this could make the life of managers or producers easier, guys?
Anton Dobrzhanskiy 16:31
Yeah, I give you a couple examples where which, so if you talk about AI as a way to automate tasks, nowadays, there's a lot of literal tools AI tools out there. I think one of the one of the most popular ones is the one switch tried emails for salespeople, like a cold outreach emails. And those are interesting, it's pretty much like it's a gold rush. The ones who gets the crickets at first, right, the perfect email, gets the gets the lead or gets the engagement from from the buyer, right. So that's, that's one of them. That's, that's one of the automation tools, automate emails, email campaigns, writing of emails, writing content, a lot of salespeople are on LinkedIn. And I think another example, second example is for you to try would be working with charge up to GDP for it's the one we discovered ourselves is how to prepare for a meeting with with executive buyer, or what would be your prospect, let's say it's a discovery meeting or initial qualifying meeting, it's really simple and try it, you can. So basically, what you do is you just copy the copy of the LinkedIn profile of the person you're meeting. Just literally copy the whole page, paste it into the chargeability, then paste what your product does. And basically ask it helped me to prepare for discovery meeting with this person. And you will be amazed, we will literally try that with some of the largest companies in the world exactly, from what just comes to the world. And we follow the script just to test was amazing. We just hit hit those points hit the discovery questions, it was pretty, pretty, pretty cool. The third one, which which mirror discovered is more is more towards strategic thinking things like if you if you ever heard of value framework, value framework is basically a way for you to conduct like a string between between corporate objectives, business strategy, initiatives, critical capabilities and your solution set. So what you can do is you you can you can put your what your product does, you can put the company and the profit of the buyer into the charge up, just paste it there and ask it, can you create a matrix for me of value framework and identified this corporate objectives, strategy, initiatives, capabilities solution set, and it just gives you amazing table which just shrinks everything and you can, you can say this is my feature. This is how it relates to critical capabilities here you need as a buyer, in your team in your in your in your project. This is how it attaches to your initiatives. This is what's the strategy, this is how it goes to the strategy and this is your corporate objective, increase revenue, reduce cost or reduce risk. That's pretty valuable. And then the third one, you can just ask it, can you generate me three slides on that and then put the put the text in slides and set it to executive?
Jonathan Fischer 19:47
Wow. I mean, it's kind of amazing to think about you're making me I think I know what my playtime is going to be spent on over the weekend. You talked a lot about speed to lead in terms of the very front end of sales funnels and going from marketing to say Those conversations that's really critical there. But now we're talking about speed to presentation, even for fairly complex enterprise level sales activities. That's very powerful. Are there so we obviously know some of the most famous examples of AI? Are there opportunities for companies to be more tailored in their approach? Would you recommend on that front?
Miro Putkonen 20:20
Like, when you say tailoring, do you mean like, like tailoring their their pitch to the to the customer or?
Jonathan Fischer 20:28
Yeah, their pitch, and there may be may be some very specialized, like, you know, your addressable market may be very highly technically adept, like, say, engineers, you know, perhaps it could be whatever aerospace, the sciences, or somewhere where it's something is very specialized. I doubt that these tools are going to have everything they need. For some of that, are there ways companies can or their API's can be developed? Or what? What are some of the technology solutions that you're aware of on that front?
Miro Putkonen 20:54
Well, if you look at some of the latest like, like, like tests that they build on, on chat, GPT, like GTP, for, like, it's able to, I think, like across a bunch of different subject matters, it's able to pass like, with honors, pass the like, the exams. So like, it's, it's, it's like, it's surprisingly good. And one of the things that, like, what, what I've experienced meeting with, like, executives of publicly listed companies, is they come to us and they're like, Oh, we really want to try this, like technology like GPT. Obviously, they have sometimes like security constraints, like because like GPT, for example, says like, we were going to use this something like we're going to use this for our internal learning of how this tool works, and so forth. And then obviously, there's some security concerns. And there's like the need for more commercial vendors out there to help corporates. But like, one of the one of the questions that I like to ask them is like, What are you scared to ask it? Like, like this, this scenario, you're like, Oh, what about like, the aerospace like very complex things. And I think there's like a human instinct to go like, Oh, but they can do this. Like, it's not able to do this. But what I've experienced is like, is when I asked that question, like, What are you scared to ask it? And she's, and then I say to, the person will ask that, because that's the, that's, that's where at least my journey using this technology started is where I, I just was like, Well, I'm just gonna try, I'm gonna try the things that are almost a bit scary. Like the things I think, like human doesn't. A human can do this, but the AI can, but every time I take that leap of faith with the tool, I'm surprised, like, wow, it actually can do that. And, and that's when you start actually building trust with the AI because you learn how to, you learn how to talk to it, to use it, and that's my encouragement to people is just to, just to try, like, go and check GPT and just try, like, what comes to your brain. And it's, it's surprising, just talk to like, it sounds really weird, but talk to like a human and then you'll, you'll sort of learn how to talk to it and get the results out and and not giving up immediately. A lot of people we talk to like they say like, Well, like I tried, it didn't really work out. But sometimes you just need to learn how to ask the question a little bit differently, just with like, with a human, if you want that right answer, so you're going to try different things. And you will be pretty surprised. So
Jonathan Fischer 23:37
push the boundaries a little bit. I like it. Well, I'll see. I'll test its knowledge of hypergolic frost thrusters for rocket travel. The the, the the the train you're on is one I want to continue moving on in a moment. But first, a quick reminder to the live audience. We've already got some questions coming in. That's fantastic. Keep them coming. In just a few minutes, we're going to have your questions put in front of our guests to get you a live answer. So go ahead and post those in the chat. And we'll circle around for some q&a here just shortly. So yeah, I want to follow that train a little further in terms of what are some concrete steps that the listener can take to integrate this into their actual workflow, whether that be an actual, like a business development C level leader, whether that's a manager, whether it's national producer, maybe you can speak on all three of those levels just briefly here.
Anton Dobrzhanskiy 24:26
Yeah, sure. I think I think one of the one of the things to separate is is Chad GPT and and other tools I think what what people need to be comfortable with first is what mirror was saying with this what we'd see you know, working with executives or managers or users is just try to play with charge up T separate from the tooling first, and and second is try to find value. There's who actually integrate into your workflow. I think one of the very interesting challenges for for vendors out there when using AI is is your ability to actually know what is that personas workflow, because based on our research, developing a generic AI tool is is is not going to work because people want it to help right there right when they need it not, when good example would be, you know, a solution for an engineer, let's say a tool, which helps you with your meetings, for engineer is very different for them for the salesperson or for the doctor, or they just do it slightly different job, the same context, but the jobs are different inside and they need different help at different points. So if you are looking for a solution, so so let's get you get you get it first step you you say okay, I trusted it can do what I wanted to do on I figured it out on my own, I have I got that first step. The second one is tried to find vendors for integrating in your workflow, exactly what you do as an executive as the VP of sales, or, or as a rep, what are steps you do in your day to day job. And those are the specific moments where AI should help you. So that would be the concrete steps is first play with play around with it. Ask those uncomfortable questions, get familiar. And second one, make sure that the tooling which you pick, integrates in the workflow, and then also going to be adopted from the perspective of user experience that people are going to use it, it's going to be adopted across your organization.
Miro Putkonen 26:45
Yeah, I'd also add just like start learning, like we we all of our employees have a chat GPT like premium cost, like I think 2020 bucks a month. So everyone has it engineers, like the leadership, everyone has access to the tool. And at first, it's like everyone's just at least they have access. And then you see everyone starts playing around with it. Like we just had dinner with one of our engineers. And he's like, Well, actually, he's like, I can imagine, like, 40% of my work, maybe one day being replaced by AI and 60%. Not so like, like, it's just you start, it sounds like a terribly simple answer. But if you just start playing around with it, and then you then you start having conversations as a team, like, what are we learning? What's the experience, like? And you start actually realizing like this is actually pretty helpful. So the hardest step is just to get started and just try. I think, from our experience,
Jonathan Fischer 27:48
I love it, I think a lot of the reticence and maybe even if we're honest, slightly, slight bit of fear, perhaps probably just as worn that lack of familiarity. It's I love that advice just to dive in and push the boundaries, see what this thing can do. Well, you guys are on the front lines of creating a real world solution called Epic brief. Why don't you tell listeners a little bit about that, and then maybe how they can jump in because you guys are actively doing much of what we've been talking about today?
Anton Dobrzhanskiy 28:19
Sure, I think what we basically where the stage will, I hope it comes across we what our mission is, is to make human work in light human work in sales more meaningful and valuable. With AI, obviously, using AI. What you can do to obviously, we already gave you some some advices, how you can get started. If you want to join us genetic, we've joined the user user testing group, just visit our website and sign up to become a tester. We'll we'll be we'll make sure to reach out and give you access to the tool. And yeah, see how you get along with it.
Jonathan Fischer 28:57
And what does that epic brief do? What's this? What is this intended design parameters? Right?
Anton Dobrzhanskiy 29:04
So so what we do is we care about sales salespersons day, what do they do every day. So one of the problems we're solving is 70% of time salespeople are spending and their non selling activities. So and most of that work is done. Post them calls, right so salespeople jump on the call, they prep for the call, they jump on the call to the split second decision to have the discussion. And after they want to have their work done, ideally within two or three minutes after the call. Right now, that's not happening. That's a big problem there. So what we're what we're doing is automating those POST call activities like filling in the CRM, sending the follow up email to the client with, you know, just a simple summary. These are your needs. This is what we discussed. This is how we can help this are the next steps. And then obviously people can create their own summaries. They can customize them and then do Do the handoffs for one of the interesting use cases we found this is people doing handoffs, there's so much handoffs happening in b2b sales, it's not the same individual selling. So people selling typically as a team, and access to information, access to what's happening in the meetings is currently very rigid people watch recordings or listen to transcripts, or do or just jump on meetings. So just having a simple summary, which is customized to that use case. So that handoff is extremely valuable to salespeople.
Jonathan Fischer 30:32
Okay, well, excellent. Well, your opportunity to maybe help give some feedback in their agile development of this solution, become a tester at Epic brief.com? Well, it's time to have some live q&a, we've got some questions already lined up, we're gonna dive into some of those, feel free to add to those listening audience. And I'm going to grab from what we've got over here in the chat. There's a few and one was a comment here. So Thomas Capone just makes a simple comment, guys. And I wonder if you would maybe, riff on this. He just simply says Sales Team Plus AI equals revenue. Is that, does that summarize a little bit of what what we're what we've been saying here today?
Anton Dobrzhanskiy 31:11
Yeah, that's, that's pretty much it. I think one of the interesting things about this equation is, I just want you guys to imagine I know we have quite a bit of salespeople and sales leaders on the call, is if you just have a sales team, and you think that equals revenue, just think about AI buyer. Just Just Just think about the possibility that somebody, maybe people like us develop an AI buyer. Right now you're struggling with, you know, people don't have pipeline, all of a sudden, the buyer can just go in the box and say that say CFR goes in the box and says, These are my requirements and my problems, right? And what it does is just reaches out to all the vendors, and all of a sudden what your salespeople have, if there's no AI in there, your salespeople have every day 50 new open windows, and AI is very, very friendly. They answer all your questions. They're like, Oh, what else do you want? Right? And then it filters out the vendors Did you jump on the call with AI buyer? They show them your demonstration, you show them the product? And then it reaches back out to economic buyer and says there are three vendors that are really good, they want to talk with them. And the economic buyer says no, no, not yet. We're not done. I'm not ready to make a decision. And a buyer just keeps talking with you. And all 5050 a day just comes in your sales reps are just just in the box, talking with their buyers.
Jonathan Fischer 32:38
That's amazing. Yeah. Well, that may lead into an answer to Joshua's question, which is will aI have better answers to objections?
Anton Dobrzhanskiy 32:49
I think so. I mean, the, the one of the things which we discussed in the beginning is one of the things AI is not really good at is empathy and emotional intelligence. So part of handling objections is understanding not just the objection itself, but also the sentiment and seeing in what context it's all. It's all wrapped up. So it might be better from a logical and and very straightforward sort of like, this is analysis. This is the business case. I'm going to give you the answer right now. But it's not going to be able to maybe reframe the question, maybe know that you don't answer with a question with an answer to the question. Maybe you have to paraphrase. Maybe you have to clarify. Maybe we have to understand what's behind that question, as you know, understand the the voice. So all those things which are related to rappers related to emotional intelligence, trust, objections, is is very much connected to that. So until AI can, is developed to that level. I think humans are still much better at objections, they just need to be trained to handle those.
Jonathan Fischer 34:02
Well, that's ever the ever the challenge, right? Better training. It's on yet makes a point here in talking. They're having a side side conversation between a couple of listeners here, but I love that you guys have engendered a lot of great conversation here in our feed. Tonya mentions that she's referring to this sort of interface between the sales professional and AI and she's saying it's more of an issue of augmented intelligence. Maybe that's the real AI I kind of liked that. What do you what do you guys think about that?
Anton Dobrzhanskiy 34:34
It's, it's a good thing. If I'm honest, I'm struggling with the word augmented intelligence and in itself,
Jonathan Fischer 34:42
in other words, instead of like, replaced like we think of it almost like a replacement like ones in lieu of the other, but really, the human intelligence is still at the heart of this whole enterprise. And this this powerful digital mind is is augmenting the human mind almost like a cybernetic thing. I don't know. I think that's what Tonya is coming where she's coming up. You can clarify Tanya in the chat if you'd like.
Anton Dobrzhanskiy 35:02
No, that's that. That makes sense. I think what? It's a it's a very good. It's very good warning. I've recently had had a had a pleasure of being on a webinar of top finish university called Aalto University, we were invited by a thought leader in general AI in Finland. And he explains quite a bit about generative AI in general, what impact it can have? And what are one of the some of the thoughts he had, you know, the submitted things to like article to HBr. So I would highly recommend to maybe go on our, I think, on our YouTube channel, where people YouTube channel, you have like a fraction of that, and this may be a link to the full interview, but I'd recommend checking this out, he makes a very good, solid case on just that, that AI is more of an augmented intelligence versus actual, you know, general intelligence.
Jonathan Fischer 36:03
Right. Right. I think that makes a lot of sense. Here's a question from Juan Jose Ascencio. Now, he may be asking a tongue in cheek, whether he is or not, I think there is a legitimate question here, which you probably it's probably both right. Well, and you can also clarify if you like, but he says, Could AI help salespeople reduce the amount of times we say the word like, as a filler word? So it is funny, but talk to us about that? How could it help on things?
Miro Putkonen 36:31
I mean, I have definitely said like, like, 100 times during the whole thing. So probably one is, is being a bit cheeky here. But we appreciate him. Or, or whatever we're saying, I honestly think like, some of the best STRS that I've met, what are the rules, it sounds a little bit weird, but they, they put a bit of sometimes the they say the message, as I've heard them say is that they bit a little bit of a like a spelling mistake in their emails, and it gets better conversions because the person receiving it goes, Okay, this is not perfect. Like, somehow when people are using chat GPT to write articles or to write content, it's too perfect. And we don't trust that to perfect so you know, tongue in cheek, but like, the likes and the wounds, and the mistakes are actually, maybe they're gonna be there. This one makes us humans, and that's actually maybe going to be quite valuable in the future in the future that like when you're on a call with someone and they're not making any mistakes, and they're being perfect. You maybe start thinking okay, is this a is this a bot? Or is this an AI? Like? Yeah, maybe turn it around to Jose, you know, like, maybe the mistakes are not so bad.
Jonathan Fischer 37:48
Juan Jose, I'm sorry. Yeah, the likes might have to stay is what you're saying. Right? Yeah. Okay. So todich Sami has an interesting question here. And this is this is a real concern. We've spoken a little bit to this. But let's circle back again, isn't sales about empathy and trust, like, you're treating the person in front of you, as a human, listen, understand the problem and then respond, maybe riff on that just a little bit more guys. What What are your thoughts on on that component and how that interacts with these issues?
Miro Putkonen 38:18
Yeah, this is a big problem in sales. Like To be honest, I was on a sales call a few days ago, and someone's selling something to me. And I was explaining, like, desperately trying to explain like, hey, like, this is maybe not the right time for us, like really being honest about like, our current situation, or needs, some of the problems. And it just like the salesperson kind of just glazed over everything that I said, I was like, alright, well back to my agenda. And so like it. These are, I mean, these are age old problems that we as salespeople, irrespective of what happens with the AI, and I think it's true, the argument that there's going to be ai plus the human, but like, when the humans in the mix, like, we got to be human, like we got to be, we got to listen, we got to, like, act human, otherwise, like, the buyer does not want you on that call does not want you there, if you're just going to be worse than an AI in a way. So like, we really have to, like think about that as salespeople, like being human being present. And listening. I think it's just a lot of there's a lot of anxiety and a lot of stress. I think, from a sales process, macro level, like, you get that 10%. And there's a lot of pressure on you from your organization. And so I think there's a lot of unnatural behaviors that are happening with salespeople, and they're just like, just feeling a lot of anxiety and they're trying to do their best right. And that's why we do that as salespeople because we have a quota. We're stressed and we're, but it's it's really it's really important to it's hard. It's easy to forget that that you're selling the human and that's that, but maybe that's what will happen if it AI is more present and take some of that pressure away, then the human can be more human, I guess. So.
Jonathan Fischer 40:06
I like it. Like maybe it'll free the human being to focus on what they do uniquely, and let the technology cover all the other stuff. I like it. Well, guys, you've done a fantastic job of adding a tremendous amount of value to our audience. And I want to thank you for being actually guests on our show here today.
Miro Putkonen 40:26
Yeah, thank you for having us. This is, well, I think the first podcast we've ever done. And so it's been a, it's been a real pleasure. And we appreciate everyone who joined. And, yeah, we're happy to discuss this with anybody and have conversations and it's gonna take a village to really like, when we think about our mission of making human work and sales more meaningful and valuable, it's like going to be a lot of a lot of different people that need to work together to make this happen. So we just want to start like, we want to start talking about something that people aren't really talking about and, and hopefully, like as a, as a sales community, we can we can figure this out. Because at least in my opinion, like salespeople are some of the smartest and most most, not only the smartest, but also like very competitive and hardworking people. I think together, it's that we just need to work together on this. So yeah, we just want to start a conversation right now.
Jonathan Fischer 41:23
I love it. Well, if this was your first podcast appearance, then I think you guys are off to a really great start. When you go from beta to full launch, hey, contact me, I'd love to have you have you back. And let's find out what some of the cutting edge insights are that you guys are experiencing right there on the front lines. But I want to thank you once again for being here. We'll talk to you again soon.
Anton Dobrzhanskiy 41:41
Thank you very much, Jonathan. Thanks, everyone. Bye bye.
Jonathan Fischer 41:44
And thank you to the audience. Without you, the show would not be possible. If you've been enjoying the content of the Evolve sales leader. Of course, you can go back anytime you like, and experience some of the other fantastic guests we've had by finding the podcast, wherever you'd like to go and get your podcast. It's called the Evolve sales leader. Go check it out. We've got a lot of fantastic content, anything regarding business to business, sales, and marketing and business development. And a great shout out to our sponsor. Overpass is the world's leading platform for hiring top level talent very quickly to grow your enterprise for hiring managers. It's free to open your account. And speaking of AI, there's a powerful AI built right into the platform that will send you candidates that meet your perfect criteria to grow your tech SAS or BB services company at a lightning speed check them out@overpass.com Well, that's gonna do it for this episode. We want to thank all of you for being here. Once again. I'm Jonathan Fisher. We'll see you next time. Same time, same station. Go make it a great weekend everybody. We'll see you then.
