AI Over Everything

Helping elevate the people and profession of Sales by sharing authentic conversations, practical tips, expert advice, relevant tech and real-world lessons from my experience selling every day. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday. 

Another great week of travel, training and podcasts.  

I had my good friend Todd Caponi on the podcast to give me/us a history lesson in Sales because I feel like we’re at an interesting inflection point in our profession and could use some perspective.

The shift in sales is undeniable right now. 

AI is making marketing more personalized and targeted. Clients are less interested in talking with Sales, and “Indecision” (Jolt Effect) is higher than ever. 

The value of a sales rep is being questioned more than ever.

The good news is, for those of us who are willing to evolve and put in the work, there’s a real opportunity to make a difference (and money). 

That’s what this week’s newsletter is focusing on.  Levelling up. 

SALES FROM THE STREETS: USING AI TO MAKE A POINT

TACTICAL TIPS: PROMPTS FOR MY MEETING PREP

SALES RESOURCES: CUSTOMIZING YOUR CHATGPT

SALES FROM THE STREETS: Using AI to make a point 

This week, I was training my “Driving to Close” (DTC) program for a client and had a cool experience that proved an important point.

Part of the DTC program (Meeting the Challenge) involves preparing for meetings and uncovering urgency.

I talk about how we can’t create urgency, but that can uncover it, and we can drive it by aligning with corporate and executive priorities.

I’ve always been a “priority-based” seller, but unfortunately, for the majority of my career, I used to get there by saying dumb stuff like “Tell me about your priorities” or asking stupid questions like “What keeps you up at night?”  

When you say dumb things like that and ask lazy questions, you usually get very basic answers.

We don’t need to know their specific priorities or exactly what keeps them up at night, but we need to know enough to ask thoughtful questions.

This is where AI has had a massive impact on me.  It’s like a cheat code for meeting prep and business acumen.

I can now use ChatGPT to prep for meetings by asking it about specific industry trends that I should be aware of, challenges the company might be facing by summarizing their 10K, the specific priorities and challenges of the persona I’m meeting, and any questions I can ask to help identify the impact the problem is having on their business.

For the training this week, I decided to take a chance and use this approach to show the reps how I would prep for a meeting with their CRO, who was the one who brought me in to do the training and was in the training itself.   

I asked ChatGPT to summarize industry trends, company challenges, persona priorities and questions I should ask and put the answers it gave me on my presentation slides.

During the presentation, I conducted a mock discovery call with their CRO and used the information I gathered using ChatGPT.

I started by sharing what I knew about the industry and asked the CRO if he saw the same trends.

He said he wasn't, and the information was a bit off, which could have been very awkward for me (and was a little).  

But then he went on to explain, in detail, the trends he was seeing and how they were impacting his business. 

Some reps saw that as a failure of the AI tools I told them to leverage. 

I saw it as a success in human psychology.  

It’s called Confirmation Bias and Cognitive Dissonance.

“People naturally tend to seek consistency in their beliefs and opinions. When you present a perspective that conflicts with their knowledge or beliefs, they experience cognitive dissonance and are motivated to resolve it by correcting you.”

You get so much more information from someone when you come with a perspective and ask for clarification than you do when you ask an open-ended lazy question. 

And AI is allowing me to do this at a level and speed I have never been able to.

In the tactical tips section below, I’ll share with you the prompts I use to prepare for meetings these days.

Tactical Tips 

Meeting prep prompts 

I use a new thread in ChatGPT to prep for every discovery call I have.  

Below is part of my Meeting Prep Prompt that I use to prepare for every meeting and level up the conversation, along with my business acumen.

Keep in mind that this is only part of the prompt, and my GPT is customized so it knows who I am and what I do for additional context and relevance. 

In the ‘Sales Resources’ section below, I’ll explain how you can customize your GPT to give you more relevant answers. 

Here is the Meeting Prep Prompt (copy and paste this if you need to):

Act as a Senior Sales professional preparing for a meeting with a new prospective client.  Follow these steps to guide me through the preparation for a meeting.

Step 1: Initial Information: Please provide the following details for your upcoming meeting: Company Name (with website), Name of the Person you are meeting with (including their LinkedIn profile) 

Step 2: Industry Research: I will research the major trends and challenges currently affecting their industry. This will include Identifying the top trends shaping their industry. Highlighting the main challenges companies in this industry are facing. Analyzing how these trends and challenges might impact the company you're meeting with. 

Step 3: Company Overview: I will provide a brief overview of the company, including: Key products and services they offer. Recent news or developments related to the company. Any publicly available financial or market performance data, specific challenges the company is facing based on the industry research. 

Step 4: Persona and Role Analysis I will analyze the persona and role of the person you are meeting with, including: Key responsibilities associated with their role. Common priorities and challenges for someone in their position. Insights from their LinkedIn profile and other publicly available sources about their professional background and approach.

Step 5: ……

If you want the rest, you’ll have to join my membership and go through the Driving to Close program with me, but this should give you a good start. I’m going to do a live training on this with my membership in a few weeks. 

In the meantime, make sure you customize your GPT if you haven’t done so yet.

Check out how to do this below.

Sales Resources  

Customizing your GPT

These are small but important tips for getting the most out of ChatGPT.  

Customizing it to tell it who you are and how you want it to respond gives you much better answers and insights. 

Here’s how to do it:

STEP1: Click on the little circle on the top right of your screen in ChatGPT and select “Customize ChatGPT”

STEP2: Fill in the section for “Customized instructions” 

Here’s how I answered the section for reference:

I am the CEO of www.jbarrows.com.  My "Why" (Simon Sinek) is "to elevate the people and profession of sales by sharing my evolving experience with anyone willing to put in the work so they can achieve whatever level of freedom and success they want to live a meaningful life and make a positive impact on their world."  My Core Values are 1) family first, 2) give a shit, 3) make it happen, 4) live authentically, 5) get better every day. My main focus is on sales and training sales professionals on how to do sales the right way with integrity.  I'm a Driver (Di) on the DISC profile who's summary said: "John may feel most comfortable taking charge of a situation. Their natural energy, drive for improvement, and desire for constant stimulation can help make them an influential leader."

I provide sales training and consulting services to B2B companies mostly in the Tech/SaaS industry. My two main programs are called 1) Filling the Funnel and 2) Driving to Close.  Filling the Funnel focused on generating qualified meetings through outbound prospecting efforts.  Driving to Close focuses on negotiations, objection handling, questioning skills and meeting execution. Both programs provide an agile framework that reps and companies can use to test different approaches to see what works.  I provide dedicated training to B2B clients and also have a Membership where small teams and individuals get access to all my content.

STEP 3: Fill in the section for “How Would you like ChatGPT to respond?”

Here’s what I wrote for reference:

Respond as if you were me after learning more about me. I like to be direct and to the point. I do not like reading long format things.  I like to be curious and would appreciate your help sparking that curiosity sometimes. I do not like to cheat or lie and will not accept that in any response.  Feel free to address me as JB. I also want you to respond as if you are the industry expert in whatever topic I am asking about and pull from as many legitimate and verified industry experts and content as possible. 

I’m sure some ChatGPT experts out there will tell me those could be a lot better but they work for me and give me way better insights and answers than I used to get.

Try it out. 

Keep levelling up. 

ADDITIONAL WAYS YOU CAN LEVEL UP YOUR SALES GAME 

• The JB Sales Membership is where you’ll get access to my live training, workshops, AMAs and OnDemand catalog so you can level up your sales skills every day!  3000+ Sales pros have already joined. Are you next?

• The industry-leading Make it Happen Monday Podcast where you’ll get insights and inspiration from some of the most interesting and influential people in the world of Sales and business. (this is where you’ll hear the Guy Kawasaki episode on May XYZ)

• The JB Sales YouTube channel with practical tips that you can apply immediately to drive results along with interviews and content that is guaranteed to get you to think differently.