Guest: Shane Mahi

Welcome to this special Market Dominance Guys compilation episode featuring highlights from some of our most downloaded episodes in the first quarter of 2024.
In these segments, Chris Beall and Corey Frank are joined by expert guests Shane Mahi and Helen Fanucci to explore critical topics for sales and marketing leaders navigating the evolving landscape of go-to-market strategies, data-driven targeting, and the impact of AI on authentic human connection.
You'll hear eye-opening insights on the future of software development in the age of generative AI, why conversations are the often-overlooked key to unlocking your total addressable market, and how to coach reps effectively by providing immediate feedback.
Helen shares her framework for leveraging proprietary data to identify your best opportunities and align resources accordingly. The discussions also examine the challenges of territory assignment and the power dynamics of sales leadership.
Shane and our hosts dive into balancing the power of AI tools like ChatGPT with the irreplaceable value of genuine, trust-building conversations. And you won't want to miss Shane's story of how combining the entrepreneurial operating system with AI helped him rebuild his business in record time after previous setbacks.
These clips from Chris, Corey, Shane, and Helen will help you learn how to position your organization for market dominance through the right mix of data-driven strategy, technological leverage, and authentic human engagement. 
 
Links from this episode:
Shane Mahi on LinkedIn
MEGA.ai
Corey Frank on LinkedIn
Branch49
Chris Beall on LinkedIn
ConnectAndSell
Helen Fanucci on LinkedIn
Full episodes for this segment:
#10: EP215: Sales Artisans: Thriving Alongside Smart Bots
#9: EP216: Conversations, The Kryptonite of MarTech?
#8: EP213: Ethical AI Selling - Reality vs Hype
#7: EP208: Balancing Relationships and Efficiency in AI Sales
#6: EP209: Your Only Product Is the Meeting
#5: EP214: The Future of Sales: Balancing AI and Authenticity
#4: EP212: Reps Dread It, Managers Avoid It: Coaching
#3: EP211: Conversations Convert to Pipeline Power
#2: EP210: Sales Targeting Beyond LinkedIn and Navigator
#1: EP145: Building Trust Must Always Be Step One
 
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Below:
 
#10: EP215: Sales Artisans: Thriving Alongside Smart Bots
The economy always gets reshaped around new capabilities in ways that surprise everybody who is thinking about it. So it's never like that. This is going up and this is going down and it crosses or whatever. It goes along as it goes along with increasing efficiencies in certain areas until somebody innovates a flip and the flip turns it on its head and now it's new, whatever the new thing is, and now you have the old way competing with the new way and the new way since it's enabled by new material science. By that I mean a new capability that does tricks you couldn't do before. It always wins, but it always starts where it has the obvious advantage. The skyscrapers are not out in the desert, they're in Manhattan. It depends where you look, but once you get 'em going in Manhattan, I pretty much guarantee you the little three story building that you used to have that you had some offices in or whatever. First the offices go, then the condos and it's all skyscrapers. Take a look at New York. It's all up, right? Take a look at Des Moines. It's a little up. Take a look at Scottsdale or Tenny. It's just how it goes.
Shane Mahi (01:09:35):
You can even see in Dubai, Dubai was what? Flatland desert. DJ Khalifa Burj Khallifa  is the biggest one up. And now, I don't know if you guys are familiar with the line in Saudi Arabia, same kind of concept, complete desert. Now there's what, a quarter mile long, two pieces of glass inside a metropolis that is going to be heavily tech-orientated, flying cars, all kinds of weirdness. So if Saudi's doing stuff like that, at what point do the outbound agencies or even tech companies realize we've got to kind of adopt the same kind of thing?
Chris Beall (01:10:08):
For sure.
Shane Mahi (01:10:08):
Who is that going to be? Chris, Chris and Corey. Who do you guys have your eyes out on in those markets who are going to be those game changers, those market shapers for AI and tech in our space?
Chris Beall (01:10:22):
Who I don't know. I don't know and I don't care. I don't know and I don't care. I know who the big early winner is going to be with ai. This is actually fairly simple. Microsoft pulled off a trick that nobody even thought of and that trick was to invest 10 billion to get an unlimited royalty free forever license to not only the tech, but all the learning that goes into it, all the training. That was a very good trick because they've always been in the business of helping folks build new things. And the most obvious thing about all this gen AI stuff isn't what it does to sales, which is trivial. It's what it does to what used to be called software development. Software development essentially is in the same state right now as a sugar cube is in a hot cup of tea. You can be pretty sure that game is over right now.
#9: EP216: Conversations, The Kryptonite of MarTech?
Yeah. Is there a natural aversion to that or is it just Occam's razor where it's too simple? Or they're going about a complex formula, methodology, and technology pathway. When you forget to dance with who you are, what are my prospects? What are my people in my TAM saying, what are the people in my ICP? What do they want? What pain do I solve? And gosh, if I could just have a conversation, not send them a survey, not send them an email, but actually have a conversation that can open up these veins of trust that that's the key versus carpet bombing them with content, with white papers, with Gartner magic quadrants, and there's no dialogue there. That's monologue,
Chris Beall (15:20):
Right? This is kind of the awkwardness that I noticed in the entire thing. I'd asked this question, what if you could just talk to people? It's like, oh, well, you can't just tell Chris spiel that you can't talk to people. That one doesn't work. You can't go down that road. I'm sorry. No, you can't talk to people. Then it's like, well, but you'd still need, and then they'd tell me that you'd still need, and I tend to agree. I mean, my thing I was telling folks is, look, I think all the digital stuff is fantastic, but why not cheat by starting with the conversation? You can't get enough conversations for it to be worth cheating. And I said, well, isn't go to a SDR or BDR world if you had 40 conversations a day with targets, that's the equivalent of 40 targeted Google ads that caused somebody to go to your website. So that's pretty good right there. What would 40 targeted Google ads to a vice president or whatever you're trying to reach that actually caused them to go to your website, what would that cost? And they generally go like 30, 40 bucks each. Well, that's $1,600 a day without any meetings of value that you're getting from the advertising of just having conversations. Surely you're not paying your BDRs $1,600 a day. There's margin in there.
(16:39):
And the idea that, oh, talking to people could be a form of marketing that is, I think where the edge is. It's almost like, but talking to that's
Corey Frank (16:48):
Interesting
Chris Beall (16:49):
Light or something. If marketing can't include talking to people nowadays,
Corey Frank (16:55):
It's like bottled water. Hey, we're out of water, we're out of bottled water. We're going to die of thirst. Well, what about this little thing called the tap? I tell my kids all the time. It's like, Hey, dad, the ro, and we're awa. It's Arizona. You got springs all over the place. So sometimes I suppose we're trying to overly complicate something where there's conversations all around, but what do you say to that rebuttal if you can't have enough conversations to make the math work? I think you and I would disagree on that, right? But is that where fundamentally the mindset is? Is that Chris? That's cute. You can talk with a couple people, but I'm talking about sending out mass emails and segmentation, and I do more before 7:00 AM than you do all day with a conversation.
Chris Beall (17:37):
Well, I would say that that level of confidence is not what I was seeing at the conference. It was more like this, which is really, that seems unlikely. And I sometimes have my phone with our current statistics just for the day. I could go look at it right now and probably find how many conversations did we connect yesterday? So we have this thing that's called daily dials, and  if I were to look at daily dials, here we go, daily dials, I can probably find some numbers. And this is one of the things that I tend to do is just look at the numbers every morning when I get up. Actually, I'm kind of lazy, so I lie in bed and I reach over for my phone, and here I am looking at the Daily Dials report, and it said that ConnectAndSell customers had 19,352 conversations yesterday.
(18:35):
Not over some vague period of time, but literally yesterday. And out of those, say that they only set 1,679 meetings, and one of our customers sets lots of meetings. They set 983 with just one of their groups. Really, really kind of a good brand. So if I bring this up and I go, well see here, there's this group of folks and it's 242 companies, and they had 19,352 targeted conversations. It's like, yeah, that's them, but not everybody can afford that. And I'm thinking, well, wait. So I talked to somebody who does advertising, saying we wanted to send an ad or have an ad associated with all the online activity, the phone, particularly activity of everybody we talked to. So that'd be 19,432 people a day of everybody our customers talk to. Is that doable? Oh, yeah. And how would that work? Well, it costs you $20,000 a year minimum.
(19:32):
You have to sign up, you have to commit. It's like, well, why? Well, I mean, for $20,000, you'd have a lot of conversations. Yeah. Well, it's just like, it's almost like I'm trying to come up with a good analogy. I love your bottled water analogy.
#8: EP213: Ethical AI Selling - Reality vs Hype
Certainly with your round table that you've talked with a lot of CEOs like Chris, but that authenticity, whereas as humans, we perceive those little subtleties and mood and those complex needs through a simple conversation. And when a tell happens from an ai, either Chris, to your point from a text or a bot, how do you combat that? Is that the racist to get as authentic as possible or because that's where I think the Delta ethics happened. Chris is, wait a minute, I thought you were a real person, but now you're a machine. So Shane, what do you think about that and bridging that gap?
Shane Mahi (00:23:29):
So Chris mentioned it yesterday and it drove a lot of the discussion, which was it's the ability to tell the truth and just being truthful about anything upfront. And I used it when I started, and it comes from the 27 seconds, is the point of inoculation. And it's stating a fact before somebody has that objection. And if you are using any type of artificial intelligence, computer robot, I think the most authentic, genuine thing to do is to tell the truth. And that comes from, Hey, this is a robot, Corey, I'd like to have a conversation with you. If not, would you like to be speaking to a human? You'll then say, sure. The robot then has the advantage of saying, Hey, Corey, it's going to take about five to six minutes to patch you through. I can probably get your questions covered in the next 45 seconds.
(00:24:18):
Do you want to have a chat with me or do you want to have a chat with the next person? And for me, that makes all the difference because time for a ceo, for a business professional is absolutely everything. And the ability to cut out that wasted time is everything. I'll give you a quick example. I called, I mentioned it yesterday, right, Chris? I called Pizza Hut the other day and it took me six minutes to remove onions from my pizza because the guy kept battling from me that I said, you can't just pick the goddamn onions off the pizza. I don't like onions. And it was a nightmare. Now, had a bot just been able to say, Hey, which toppings would you like to add or remove if any? Just remove onions. My pizza's at the door in 10, 15 minutes. And for me, again, the truth allows that time to be shortened, which gives you more opportunity to take care of other things that are most important in your life.
(00:25:13):
And another thing that I think is really important, I just watched it the other day, and that point you made on authenticity and being genuine and the truth. Mackinac, I'm sure you both have seen that. I had no idea. I think Sam Altman is an ex Mackinac that's swear God, because when that person, the robot locked the door, obviously it's playing with the guy. I'm a sucker for women, absolute sucker for women. So if I was in one of those situations and they were manipulating me without knowing it and putting the love spot, well, were you really interested in me? He's lying to you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, to get out. That is where everything changes for me. And now after seeing that movie, I'm wondering, Chris is very smart, Cora, you are very smart. Are you going to start peeling off your skin one day and saying the same thing to me?
Corey Frank (00:26:11):
Well, but I think that's part of it. It's a brilliant point. I love the trust thing
#7: EP208: Balancing Relationships and Efficiency in AI Sales
(8) If there's skepticism or resistance from sales teams or clients towards AI tools like ChatGPT, how do you recommend addressing these concerns?
Well, a couple of different ways. There will always be skepticism about new technology. There should be. New technology means new, it's unproven. We're not sure what it does. Really, really cool technology that makes you think something that's not actually true. Like, hey, ChatGPT is a person who's talking to me. That's not actually true. Hey, ChatGPT is thinking about this. That's not actually true. It's the next engine. It knows a lot of stuff that it's read so to speak, and it knows how to spit out the next token, think token word, very similar concepts. And so when ChatGPT is talking to us so to speak, it's really just going next, next, next. Now maybe our minds work like this too, and our voices work like this. 
Chris Beall (18:52):
I have a feeling we do a lot of next, next, next, ourselves. It's just the way the world is. We love to think that we're really brilliant, having deep, deep thoughts and all that. Probably not. We're probably just spitting out the next word that comes to mind. That's why we call it. And so its natural skepticism is natural. The way skepticism is overcome is through two things. One is transparency, it let's be open about things. And the other is track record. So if the track record is good, and we note that over time some particular function, and I'll go back to those conversations where you take a discovery meeting, and the AI compresses it down to 10 points. Well, the first time I read one I might think maybe it's missing some things. By the time I've read a hundred of them, which only takes me a hundred minutes that I might've spread over a couple of weeks, I'm starting to go, Hey, I think this is pretty good. 
Chris Beall (19:47):
I don't have any big misses yet. But it just takes time. It takes time, and it takes experience. This is why the most skeptical people who are really, really smart plunge in and start experiencing what I call in anger or with an intent for a meaningful outcome, a new technology that is clearly as powerful as ChatGPT and all the things that are like it. So if you haven't gotten in there and put your hands on it, so to speak, and made some mistakes, try writing some prompts and seeing what happens. Don't just do the same thing over and over. Your skepticism only will go away appropriately and correctly with experience that leads to a track record because now you kind of know where the landmines are. 
How about question number nine, future trends. 
#6: EP209: Your Only Product Is the Meeting
(Not this one - it's another short compilation episode)
#5: EP214: The Future of Sales: Balancing AI and Authenticity
We picked the most lovely industry to go into, and that's telemarketing and cold prospecting. And what was it? And the only reason that I was able to get to the truth faster was because read about Daniel Disney when the pandemic hit found, cog found ConnectAndSell, bought Cog, bought ConnectAndSell, spoke with Gerry, did Flight Scool, had seven meetings in six hours, and that's where it started. It was the ability to have your script, be honest, open, and just get into those conversations. And by doing that fast, quickly, efficiently, and at scale, we were able to progress our business much faster, I think, than a lot of people. We actually had 444% growth from year one to year two from using ConnectAndSell and implementing a system called the Entrepreneurial Operating System™ by Gino Wickman.
(00:35:15):
Now the authenticity of our brand, and even what is happening right now, came from all of the mistakes we made. And those are typically our storytelling, selling mechanisms, the mistakes we made and the path we took got us to a place where we made all those mistakes, learned everything, and served customers. I obviously lost my business because of some bad decisions I had to let go of my business, A lot of bad decisions. But I've recreated my business. That took me three years in three months with the use of ChatGPT. And why is it because I prompted all of my problems, all of my stakes helped me build a business plan that bypasses these mistakes and gives me the outcomes I'm looking for in half the time. And in that now, my marketing, my messaging, emails, prospecting, research, everything that, again, like you said, rightfully so, anything in the future is anxiety.
(00:36:12):
Anything in the past is regret. The only thing that matters is right, right now. And what's happening right, right now is yes, you better get on board because AI is happening. As much as you are worried about what can happen 5, 10, 15 years in the future, that shit is going to happen whether you like it or not. So it's either get ahead of the curve or get with the curve, or you are going to be that. They're just bums, bums who want to stay behind and complain and say, this is going to ruin me. This is going to take my job. Get with the program, dude, get with the program. Start using it. I was a novice, an absolute novice using ChatGPT when it first came out. The only thing that drew my attention was a hundred million users in one week for that alone. I was like, all right, let me see what this is about. I'm a novice still to this day, but the amount of times I've set up till three in the morning, six, seven hours, prompting, prompting, prompting to the point, the only reason I went to bed is because it said, you've maxed out your attempts. You can't use us anymore.
Corey Frank (00:37:13):
You finished the internet, you exhausted ChatGPT. 
Shane Mahi (00:37:18):
That’s right, and that happened multiple times. And my knowledge comes, which is why I believe podcasts, even to the education of AI and ethics and sales and marketing, everything behind it has come from listening and watching podcasts. That's the only reason I was able to learn.
#4: EP212: Reps Dread It, Managers Avoid It: Coaching
CLIP 1:
So that's really key to getting coaching to work. The coaching has got to be immediate. Most coaching is way, way, way, way too late. Coaching somebody on Friday I about a performance they had on Monday, don't bother. It's just not going to get anything done. This is where I think managers often confuse what I'll call deal work with coaching. They think that they're coaching, they're actually talking through how a deal might go, what some tactics and techniques might be, and they get an agreement from the rep to do something better, different whatever in the next interaction that they have with the prospect. And that feels like coaching, that's more like advising and it's nice and it's important unless it's just war stories. But coaching is really to improve performance and you need to have the performance and the coaching and the performance and the coaching be very close to each other in time. 
Chris Beall (16:28):
Minutes are okay, not very many minutes, hours are too long and a week may as well be forever.
CLIP 2:
got to have a chance of listening for the same thing over and over. So it's really, really important to do it. But most of what's called coaching isn't really coaching, it's kind of advising it's too far after the fact. 
So if you can figure out ways, be listening behind the scenes, coming in and whispering to somebody immediately after a conversation and helping them perform that little bit better on first failure, you'll find over time that and fairly short amount of time that what you're hoping for in the bottom line, which is conversion rates, small number of conversations, leads to a bigger number of meetings, and a larger number of meetings are being set per rep hour, which is the key number. You'll find that stuff improves on its own. So start from the beginning, you'll get to the end. Eventually, you'll get some great results
#3: EP211: Conversations Convert to Pipeline Power
Because let me tell you, if you think you know, you're fooling yourself, you're fooling yourself. If you aren't getting feedback from the market through conversations at a short enough cycle time and a high enough frequency, you're just guessing and your problem is competitively, somebody else might choose not to guess. And I think Helen's going to help her clients choose not to guess. 
Corey Frank (08:33):
And so with that, the helping knuckleheads like me choose not to guess. Where do you start, Helen, right? I'm a small mid-size VP of sales. I have a decent patient board. I have a SaaS software product. I got some funding. I think I'm doing everything right. I have enough people, I get more people as soon as I start proving myself and go to the board. So I think I'm doing okay, but where would I start with something like this? With people's power? 
Helen Fanucci (09:05):
I would start by looking at the data that you currently have in your CRM system or whatever your system of record is to find out one, where you're winning, who you're winning with, what types of people are making the buying decisions as a business. You may or may not already know. That depends on how you have been crawling through your own data. So I'd start there to look at the current state and try to draw some conclusions or at least illuminate where resources are aligned and are they aligned to where you're currently winning or are they misaligned? So I would start looking at the current state to build a hypothesis of what you could do more of to accelerate your revenue, and it might be repositioning some resources to an industry that you're doing well at or trying to then going to find people. Let's say you have some folks that make the decision, so you have some champions or economic buyers, what do they have in common across each other? 
Helen Fanucci (10:24):
And I don't just mean job titles, but the characteristics. You can look on LinkedIn and see what the characteristics of those and then go find some more like that within a defined addressable market or where you think you want to go. I think some of those things are places to start. This begins to get the closed loop feedback here. You have data, you have some results and dispositions from your go-to market, even if it's closed loss or not now, not interested, what have you. So trying to apply current data to then make some recommendations of how to move forward. The other thing too is what information do you have or that you capture that's proprietary to you? Because they can't build a defendable market dominance position on publicly available information. So what is it that you're collecting or that's proprietary and how do you get more of that that's relevant to your business? And I don't know if that's something in my experience anyway, that's not really a deliberate thing that people put. Time sort of happens and some people have more insights into their customer set, but doing that in an organized fashion to build up insights that your competitors don't have, or at least that's proprietary to you, makes a lot of sense and differentiating yourself and defending your position in the market. 
#2: EP210: Sales Targeting Beyond LinkedIn and Navigator
Helen Fanucci (22:01):
One of the things that was interesting is this idea of territory assignments, and we have a rep that has a locked in territory and people, I guess feel a comfort zone with that versus well, okay, here you have maybe 10 accounts, but all the other unnamed accounts are fair game and they go to whoever gets a meeting in those accounts. It's so interesting to see how anxious or irritated people are by having an open territory concept. It's like everyone wants to have their patch defined, locked down so they can pursue it as they wish. So is that going smaller and smaller? It probably is, and it was just fascinating to me to observe the dynamics around that and the discomfort with having all these accounts that were fair game for anyone to go after. I wonder if you have seen that much in what your thoughts are about that, but when you talked about the shrinking world or shrinking view, that's kind of what I was thinking about is, yeah, you can zero in, but then you lose sight of what's possible where you're not looking. 
Corey Frank (23:21):
Yeah, it's funny. I think it's probably the same reason why a lot of sales reps have the security of a bloated pipeline. They can't disqualify folks in this particular quarter. Hope Springs eternal that this person will always close for this angst, this fear that if I keep sending them touch base emails, not picking up a call and having a conversation, not promoting something new, that I'm seeing what's happening in the world from 40,000 feet that's relevant or German to them. But if I simply do touch base emails, which is the equivalent of did you decide on choosing me and giving me your money yet? Or is there a better option that's out there? But that's why pipelines remain large. I can see that there is certainly from the team that all three of us collectively and Broaden knows we're a sales organization. The bigger, the more states I have, and Chris, you and I have talked about this when it comes to people too, if you're a sales manager, the more people I have under my purview, under my fiefdom, certainly the more prominent I am, I guess the more secure I feel. You probably saw this a lot at some of the larger companies you were with Helen, right? Is how many headcounts are under your particular p and l, and that somehow is a status thing. 
Helen Fanucci (24:33):
Well, it's power. You have more resources as a sales leader. You don't have a budgeta compared to headcount. So headcount is more resources. It is a version of power to be able to get bigger revenue, bigger quotas, because headcount always comes with bigger quotas. The more headcount, the more quota. So if you're willing to take that on, great. Why not?
#1: EP145: Building Trust Must Always Be Step One
(not this one - this was a small topic compilation episode that continues to be their top episode for over a year!)

This episode wraps up our conversation with Corey Frank, Chris Beall, and Shane Mahi. Throughout this series, the guys have delved into the profound impact of AI on sales, the evolving role of human expertise, and the transformative potential of AI in reshaping businesses. They muse on the future interplay of AI and the craft of sales. Corey champions niches - and the need to summon specialists. And we, the artisans, must elevate our skills. Chris predicts more earthshaking disruption for software developers than sellers. And Shane sounds warnings that agencies lean heavily on human effort today. Soon enough AI shall permeate their ranks.
Our craft endures turbulent seas, yet we shall reach new fortunes with nimble navigation. Mine your own insights from these philosophic titans who've logged countless hours of bold outreach fueled by devotion to their calling. Stay tuned for part 3, where they unveil actionable guidance to navigate what's next for our noble profession. “EP215: Sales Artisans: Thriving Alongside Smart Bots.”
Here is the full series.
Links from this episode:
Shane Mahi on LinkedIn
MEGA.ai
Corey Frank on LinkedIn
Branch49
Chris Beall on LinkedIn
ConnectAndSell
 
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Below:
 
Corey Frank (00:58:09):
Yeah, it is, it is. I would argue the counter to that, it's not really counter, it's more of a pivot. As we said Chris many times, Russell Brunson, one of his books he wrote, says, the riches are in the niches and I believe there will always be a need for specialists. When you have a specialized software that requires not just a transaction but a relationship when folks care about their brand, you will have a niche. I'm a big believer in Plato or Aristotle, et cetera. The unexamined life is not worth living. And so when a person or a salesperson does this, the whole purpose of Flight School in a lot of ways is when they don't examine their life to find their true self or their excellence of function, they're ignoring their true self. And part of what we do certainly at Branch49, certainly Chris, what you do at Flight School, Shane, what you've taught with a lot of your organizations is that sales is a craft and just like being a writer for the New Yorker, it's a craft.
(00:59:30):
Being a tradesman is a craft and there's a lot of crappy bricklayers out there and there's a lot of artesian bricklayers out there. And so I believe that there will always be a market for those that see that this is a mastercraft Shane. One of the stories that we talk all about here at Branch49 is a guy walks past the construction site and sees five guys laying bricks. Greg Chriss wrote the story many, many times. First guy, what are you doing? He's like, I'm making six bucks an hour. Go to the second guy, what are you doing? He's like, I'm building a wall, goes to the third guy. What are you doing? And he's like, I'm building a cathedral and goes to the fourth guy and say, what are you doing? He's like, I'm saving men's souls. So the last two folks, the people who see I'm building a cathedral or I'm saving men, souls are the ones that you want on your team versus the ones that are building a wall or making six bucks an hour.
(01:00:28):
There's a lot of folks in our profession who will leverageChatGPT to say, “Hey, I'm making five bucks an hour but I'm making 30% margin versus I'm making six bucks an hour and I'm making 5% margin.” So those folks who will see this as an efficiency game without a corresponding increase in the delivery of the service, they're the ones that I think will fall by the wayside. I think there will always be a market for the higher end and part of our purpose at Branch49 is to create these organizations where folks can move out into the world and be truthsayers, be the pinnacle of their communities and their craft. We know that folks don't leave Branch49. We say they graduate from Branch49 and that was part of the intention of starting this with Chris's inspiration and I think we celebrate our fourth year coming up here. Chris, it's crazy. It's been four years already and how many millions of phone calls and I dunno how many hundreds of thousands of meetings, but that's my response to that and part of that is tree hugging certainly to be sure what we are doing? We're going to be the best damn buggy whip people that there are on the face of the earth. Even when there's a sparse number of horses in the city, we're still going to be selling these buggy whips come hell or head water.
Chris Beall (01:02:02):
Well actually I think that one of the ideas of Branch 49 was let's take everything that's skills and stance focused around sales and apply it to a wider range of so that the development of the craft and the codification of how to develop as a professional in the craft can be advanced. And it really wasn't about cold calling and it wasn't about follow-up calling. It was about discovery. And in the world of discovery, discovery is going to be in the information sense. Discovery already happens all over the place. Google's provided tons of discovery and ChatGPT provides even more, although it's getting more and more reluctant to answer your specific questions, it knows it's hallucinating. So that's actually by the way, a problem with LLMs and these large language models in general is they're always going to hallucinate the idea that they're not going to hallucinate is actually mathematically absurd.
(01:03:05):
If you know how they work, they'll hallucinate. Guess what people do too? How do people correct their hallucinations? They interact with the world, other people and objects in the world in ways that discipline their hallucinations and cause them to correct. By the way, ChatGPT does this, you correct it and then say, oh, I'm so sorry I didn't get whatever, and then it'll do its thing again, the thing is it's very patient and it's not insulted by rework which human beings tend to be right. So coming up with something that automates initial outreach is going to be interesting, but it's also going to be fairly temporary because it's actually not a necessary part of the solution over long periods of time. It just is right now we have to get a hold of people who are doing whatever they're doing and interrupt them because all the other ways of getting started seem to be broken.
(01:04:02):
By the way, conferences travel and going to conferences, which was hurt badly in COVID are coming back and conferences are far superior to cold calling with regard to forging new relationships and getting going in conversations. They're just a lot more expensive. So will they survive? Absolutely. Will cold calling survive in the niches? Absolutely. Will discovery become more important with regard to skill and sincerity? Absolutely. And is it going to be a world that doesn't have human experts? No. The idea of the human expert is, look, this large language model has got a certain number of artificial neurons. Compare that to what's inside of each one of us here and everybody who's listening to this, you're off by a factor of a trillion or so. You're off by a lot. You're so much more sophisticated in your internal ability that you're not able to actually observe. It just happens.
(01:05:08):
And by the way, so is your dog if you have one, right? Your dog is smarter than ChatGPT, it just doesn't type and it doesn't read the entire internet, so it doesn't appear to be smarter. But if your dog had read the entire internet and could tippy type with its little dog paws, then you'd go, oh my dog's a genius. No, it's still a dog and it's making geniuses and being able to smell what somebody intends for it. Good or bad. Dogs are really good at that. Humans are good at it in a different way. Again, this whole ethics thing, by the way to me, is like a non-conversation. Everybody's excited about it. Everybody's been told to be afraid of it. It's like there was no new ethics around guns. You still can't just walk up to somebody and shoot 'em and it's okay just because easier or cheaper, it's still wrong. And ethics is about what's right and what's wrong and the things that are wrong are still wrong. Lying to somebody about who you are or what your intentions are in business or in life is wrong. We're done with the ethics discussion.
Shane Mahi (01:06:19):
Alright, so let's ask this one then. Let's throw this one in there. There's a point right now where I believe 80 to 90% of all outbound agencies or inbound agencies are heavily dependent on human labor. Now there's small, let's just call it this, it's all human right now, but then there's small components that are being driven by technology, independent research, human research, ChatGPT research that can effectively, a robot can take that place. So at what point does this happen where you've got human heavy businesses where AI can then start filling a lot of those roles very, very, very fast and it will happen over the course of the years. At what point do you stop competing with the AI and saying, we're going to stay focused on human have a little bit and do you get to a point where it's even, or do you get to a point where it's so heavily AI, robotic agent orientated where there's not really a need for that many humans and then there is only
Chris Beall (01:07:23):
You get to a different point: executive team and a few leaders.
Shane Mahi (01:07:24):
What do you think about that?
Chris Beall (01:07:28):
You get to a point where it actually reshapes skyscrapers that didn't show up in small county seats in Iowa, right? Even though you could build 'em, they just don't show up there. They show up in, well, first in Manhattan, right? Why? Because UP was cheaper than out. That's why. And square footage fits in up better than it fits in out. So there was a ratio of footprint and you might've said, well, it's absurd, right? What was the enabling technology by the way? The safety elevator. The safety brake on an elevator. So when elevator cables snapped, you didn't fall to your death. That's actually what enabled that revolution.
(01:08:14):
The economy always gets reshaped around new capabilities in ways that surprise everybody who is thinking about it. So it's never like that. This is going up and this is going down and it crosses or whatever. It goes along as it goes along with increasing efficiencies in certain areas until somebody innovates a flip and the flip turns it on its head and now it's new, whatever the new thing is, and now you have the old way competing with the new way and the new way since it's enabled by new material science. By that I mean a new capability that does tricks you couldn't do before. It always wins, but it always starts where it has the obvious advantage. The skyscrapers are not out in the desert, they're in Manhattan. It depends where you look, but once you get 'em going in Manhattan, I pretty much guarantee you the little three story building that you used to have that you had some offices in or whatever. First the offices go, then the condos and it's all skyscrapers. Take a look at New York. It's all up, right? Take a look at Des Moines. It's a little up. Take a look at Scottsdale or Tenny. It's just how it goes.
Shane Mahi (01:09:35):
You can even see in Dubai, Dubai was what? Flatland desert. DJ Khalifa Burj Khallifa  is the biggest one up. And now, I don't know if you guys are familiar with the line in Saudi Arabia, same kind of concept, complete desert. Now there's what, a quarter mile long, two pieces of glass inside a metropolis that is going to be heavily tech-orientated, flying cars, all kinds of weirdness. So if Saudi's doing stuff like that, at what point do the outbound agencies or even tech companies realize we've got to kind of adopt the same kind of thing?
Chris Beall (01:10:08):
For sure.
Shane Mahi (01:10:08):
Who is that going to be? Chris, Chris and Corey. Who do you guys have your eyes out on in those markets who are going to be those game changers, those market shapers for AI and tech in our space?
Chris Beall (01:10:22):
Who I don't know. I don't know and I don't care. I don't know and I don't care. I know who the big early winner is going to be with ai. This is actually fairly simple. Microsoft pulled off a trick that nobody even thought of and that trick was to invest 10 billion to get an unlimited royalty free forever license to not only the tech, but all the learning that goes into it, all the training. That was a very good trick because they've always been in the business of helping folks build new things. And the most obvious thing about all this gen AI stuff isn't what it does to sales, which is trivial. It's what it does to what used to be called software development. Software development essentially is in the same state right now as a sugar cube is in a hot cup of tea. You can be pretty sure that game is over right now.
(01:11:18):
The sugar cube is just getting a little rounded on the edges, but you don't have to be a genius to figure out where that one's going because Shane and Corey and even Chris Beall can develop something that's a new capability in the world using gen AI in 1000th of the time and cost. And in fact, it's even more than that because I'm going to ask you, Shane, if I asked you to develop a GPT-4 model from scratch, and I'm going to give you as your tools a Python runtime environment and a studio from scratch, right? So now you have to live to be a hundred million years old, which I mean you're a robust guy. I don't think you're going to make it past a million, but you could flip.
(01:12:11):
But now make a chat bot that knows about the following. Say I said, you know what I want you to do is I want you to use a chat a GPT-4 engine to analyze a whole bunch of sales conversations and score them based on five skills and it invents the skills and then take those rep skill combinations and use that and combine that with pipeline built and come up with a scheme that actually says, Hey, your team needs to work on this skill because it's going to drive more pipeline for you or in your industry. You could do that probably all by yourself if you just didn't do anything else. Maybe in three to six months there's a lot of moving parts and you got to have access to the data and all that, but it's not a billion years, it's just you could actually do it.
(01:13:03):
That's what changes based on this GPT stuff. On these LLMs. What changes is the ability for person A who has an insight to turn that insight into functionality mediated by computers that person B can use. Immediately upon that insight being realized, software development is gone in its old form, and I speak as a person who has written lots and lots of code, more than a million lines of code, and what do I tell you? That's where the change is. So the reason it's unpredictable is we can predict Microsoft's going to do really well. Microsoft in my opinion, will be underpriced for a long, long time because folks' imaginations don't understand what happens when you dissolve an entire industry and pipe the results over to another company that's in a position to take advantage of that sales. Sales will be barely impacted at all compared to software development barely impacted at all. So I don't worry about that stuff. Those in sales worry about it.
Corey Frank (01:14:12):
Yeah. Yeah. Shane, you had mentioned Sybil earlier. So Sybil is one of our great clients and we've had the CRO Ben Sternsmith on this podcast for a couple of episodes and the Branch49 scribe that's in the background of this very podcast recording all of our emotions and our body language and our eye contact that is, so I will send you the Sybil of this call afterwards and you can see for yourself exactly how progressive it is.
Chris Beall (01:15:21):
By the way, take notes by hand, using your body. There's actually good research that shows that it changes how you learn. Now, that's one of those words, it's like how you learn, actually, you're reshaping your nervous system. You're actually shaping it into something new. You become a new person when you learn. And so by taking notes by hand, you become a new person that you want to be, which is kind of what Branch49 is all about, right? It's about becoming the new person that you want to be. And it's kind of what the other side of sales is about, which is becoming somebody who has access to stuff you didn't have access to. So your organization is new in a way. It wasn't Corey's use in civil, his organization is different as a result because it is learned civilly, so to speak, by grafting Sibyl onto its operations. Somebody had to sell 'em that.
Corey Frank (01:16:17):
We also call it screenplay versus script as well that we've used for years and years. So the screenplay is a little bit more specific and complete than a script. A lot of folks just colloquially say script, but our screenplay. So you incorporate the verbal disfluencies, a screenplay is brought more to life with the scenery, what your thought is, what the Scorsese director's notes are, what your tone is, how this product you think is going to be perceived. So that's all in not just what the rep says, but how the rep should feel about it. We've had many episodes about a key component that the reps need to have is belief when they're presenting. James Thornberg talks about this with his neutrality focus. Certainly a lot of Chris reps that we've had on the podcast have done that as well. So that's the piece where I think we'll finish up here is on, again, I keep coming back to that authenticity, but what I've learned certainly from you two fine gentlemen, is that if you lead with the fact that, hey, listen, I'm going to approach you Mr. Prospect, but I'm not human, so accept me faults and all nuances at all hangups and all, but I am who I say I am. And so as we say in the 27 seconds, my ability is to establish that trust by acknowledging the fact that I am who I say I am.
(01:17:50):
And I think that's key and that's how you leverage, you augment a one plus one equals 11, it sounds like with AI versus trying to rip and replace, for instance, which a lot of folks are talking about.
Shane Mahi (01:18:05):
I second that.
Corey Frank (01:18:06):
Beautiful. Well, with that, thank you again, Shane. Let's make sure that it's not another four years before you drop into the episode of Market Dominance. Guys, we certainly want to keep an eye on what's happening with your new venture. We look forward to seeing you on LinkedIn as always. Chris, any final thoughts on AI and sales?
Chris Beall (01:18:30):
One final thought, thought rhymes with bot and the sounds of words really count; human beings process poetry too. Corey, we're back to your Elizabethan poetry. Yes, yes.
Corey Frank (01:18:41):
Comes back to
Chris Beall (01:18:42):
Shakespeare. And this is why talking bots actually are going to be quite interesting in the world of sales because words still start as sounds and thought still rhymes with bot.
Corey Frank (01:18:53):
Yeah, for sure. Well, beautiful four, Chris, this is Corey Frank from the Market Dominance Guys until next time.

The guys are back with sales visionary Shane Mahi as we dive into the vital facets of authenticity, ethics, and trust in the world of sales. As sales leaders, you know these elements are crucial for fostering customer loyalty and closing those pivotal deals. Shane elaborates on how transparency and being genuine have led to exponential sales growth for him over the past months. They also investigate AI's emerging impact and why interpersonal skills remain vital, even with advancing technology. This forward-looking discussion offers invaluable wisdom on steering sales teams through a shifting landscape. Whether you aim to amplify results or spearhead AI adoption, you will gain insight from Shane’s real-world perspectives. Join us as we continue unraveling the keys to ethical and successful selling in this next-level episode, "The Future of Sales: Balancing AI and Authenticity."
Links from this episode:
Shane Mahi on LinkedIn
MEGA.ai
Corey Frank on LinkedIn
Branch49
Chris Beall on LinkedIn
ConnectAndSell
 
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT Below:
 
Chris Beall (00:32:56):
So the ethics piece I think actually is simplified down to the bot's, got to tell the truth that it's a bot. It turns out that's also the practical path. Bots that lie are like salespeople that lie. By the way, there is no shortage of the ladder. I mean, we act like, oh my God, the bot's going to be lying about being a bot. The salesperson is going to be lying about being on your side. In B2B sales, I have exactly two jobs. One, I have to be an expert. Two, I have to be on your side. If one, I'm not an expert, but I portray myself as one and two, I pretend to be on your side, but actually over here on the side, I'm kind of dragging my commission in here to make sure that it talks to you before I do. If those two things are happening, which I believe happen in a very high proportion of sales conversations, then I'm exactly what people think. I am a lying salesperson. We have a podcast here that has 210 episodes that say you can dominate markets with the human voice at pace and scale under one and only one condition, which is that you tell the truth. That's actually the condition. And it's very interesting. I mean, we're conceptually hoping to liberate salespeople to tell the truth, but you got to liberate the bot to tell the truth. You built the damn bot. Have it tell the truth.
Shane Mahi (00:34:16):
Well, I think that's the only thing that made us successful. We picked the most lovely industry to go into, and that's telemarketing and cold prospecting. And what was it? And the only reason that I was able to get to the truth faster was because read about Daniel Disney when the pandemic hit found, cog found ConnectAndSell, bought Cog, bought ConnectAndSell, spoke with Gerry, did Flight Scool, had seven meetings in six hours, and that's where it started. It was the ability to have your script, be honest, open, and just get into those conversations. And by doing that fast, quickly, efficiently, and at scale, we were able to progress our business much faster, I think, than a lot of people. We actually had 444% growth from year one to year two from using ConnectAndSell and implementing a system called the Entrepreneurial Operating System™ by Gino Wickman.
(00:35:15):
Now the authenticity of our brand, and even what is happening right now, it came from all of the mistakes we made. And those are typically our storytelling, selling mechanisms, the mistakes we made and the path we took got us to a place where made all those mistakes, learned everything, service customers. I obviously lost my business because of some bad decisions I had to let go of my business, A lot of bad decisions. But I've recreated my business. That took me three years in three months with the use of ChatGPT. And why is because I prompted all of my problems, all of my stakes helped me build a business plan that bypasses these mistakes and gives me the outcomes I'm looking for in half the time. And in that now, my marketing, my messaging, emails, prospecting, research, everything that, again, like you said, rightfully so, anything in the future is anxiety.
(00:36:12):
Anything in the past is regret. The only thing that matters is right, right now. And what's happening right, right now is yes, you better get on board because AI is happening. As much as you are worried about what can happen 5, 10, 15 years in the future, that shit is going to happen whether you like it or not. So it's either get ahead of the curve or get with the curve, or you are going to be that. They're just bums, bums who want to stay behind and complain and say, this is going to ruin me. This is going to take my job. Get with the program, dude, get with the program. Start using it. I was a novice, an absolute novice using ChatGPT when it first came out. The only thing that drew my attention was a hundred million users in one week for that alone. I was like, all right, let me see what this is about. I'm a novice still to this day, but the amount of times I've set up till three in the morning, six, seven hours, prompting, prompting, prompting to the point, the only reason I went to bed is because it said, you've maxed out your attempts. You can't use us anymore.
Corey Frank (00:37:13):
You finished the internet, you exhausted ChatGPT. 
 
Shane Mahi (00:37:18):
That’s right, and that happened multiple times. And my knowledge comes, which is why I believe podcasts, even to the education of AI and ethics and sales and marketing, everything behind it has come from listening and watching podcasts. That's the only reason I was able to learn. Well,
Corey Frank (00:37:34):
Sure, sure. And Shane, you're a prolific podcast guest, and again, a purveyor of a lot of thought leadership on LinkedIn. Chris and I we're on the campus of Grand Canyon University here. Shane, and Chris are responsible for what we built and why we've built Branch 49. He coined the phrase that we use here pretty ubiquitously now that this is a finishing school for future CEOs, part of that finishing school that curricula is that you have to have educational programs that not just teach technological aptitude, which is Hey, how to use chat gp, which you just went GTT, which you went through or Salesforce or ConnectAndSell or Cognizant or anything else. But Chris, I think what we've talked about many, many times, Shane, and I think your epitome of this is that you can't just teach technology. You can't just teach technology aptitude. You
 
 have to teach interpersonal abilities that have to foster that trust and have to foster those connections.
(00:38:45):
And if you don't, then you will be threatened by a chat GPT that will very quickly enable you to engender trust faster than probably somebody who's fence posts the emotional AI that you need. The emotional intelligence that we've talked about, right in this profession for a long time, will be key. So I think one of our early episodes, Chris, we talked about, or maybe it was a guest, we talked about how there's an ability to hear a smile, right? We've talked about that from our earliest mentors, right? Studies have shown that our sense of hearing is so incredible. It's so acute that we can identify emotions and conversations even in a Zoom conversation like this. We can respond to the nuances of a head nod of no, of body language if there's disassociation with the topic. So how does ai, I mean, I hear it's coming that this ability for AI to listen to a stammer, to listen to a nuance, to hear a smile, and then maybe respond with a softer question with maybe a couple of verbal disfluencies on a pause versus finishing a response and then hitting with a direct question right out of the gate without any social nuance.
(00:40:14):
So do you guys see any of that or anybody teaching that, any technologies that you're aware of that are moving in that direction?
Shane Mahi (00:40:23):
All of them. I'll jump in real quick on that. So I ran a podcast, actually the second one with James Buckley, John Barrow's, right hand man. And I asked him, who else do you think would be a great guest on the podcast? And he said, you've got to check out these two guys. And one of 'em is Sybil, and there's another one that came with a W. I'll check out the name. But one of those softwares has the ability now, just like you said, Corey, with going like this, your hand gestures, your movements, the ability to tell if somebody's being genuine on a call, it detects eye movement. Did his eyes go like this? Here's your trigger. Here's your cue for this. Did he make a gesture? Did he lean back when you said this question, did he lean into it? Now, sometimes we're on calls and we do have hidden agendas in some you shouldn't, but everybody has some sort of hidden agenda.
(00:41:16):
Well, whatever the case may be, and you don't have any way of knowing that without having your second or third party or let's just say software to help you discover that. And I saw this the other day, right? So I'm sitting up on WhatsApp on social media, and I get a message from somebody and they say, oh, I love what you're doing. I've seen you on this and this and this. Do you want to have a chat? I want to talk to you about a few things. And usually I wouldn't say yes, but I said, all right, fuck it, why not? So I jumped on the call with him and sat on the call with him for three hours. It came to a point where I told him a little bit about my story and I didn't expect anything from anybody, but I just saw the eyes go and right then the call was dead for me. I'm not working with that guy ever again. I told him, don't ever call me again the next day. He just like
Corey Frank (00:42:11):
That.
Shane Mahi (00:42:12):
Just like that because I'm not stupid. I've been through plenty of experienced prisoners. I've been to prison, I've been to rehab, I've been living in the US New Jersey, I've come to the uk, I've been to Morocco, all kinds of countries. I sense body language, you can sense and feel people's energy. And when you see somebody being disingenuous, I've had conversations with Chris for three and a half hours while he's walking around the desert barefoot. So that to me is genuine. But when I'm having a conversation and now we're talking about brand identity and who you are, and now the brand is you, Shane, and then when you ask for my opinion and you are not intrigued or interested and it's just a motive, you are hidden agendas. You just want money out of me because you heard I generated X amount of revenue the previous year May, I'm done with you, and I don't say that to a lot of people. So what do you think about Chris with the ability to recognize authenticity on these calls with any of these AI bots or AI softwares, and how can you trust the AI software to be genuine when it is dictating those outcomes to you?
Chris Beall (00:43:19):
Well, I think there's two things. One is I think it's okay to interact with somebody whose motives are clear. In fact, I think one of the uses of humor in conversations is that you can, in a light way, touch on the issue that you're looking for a deal or whatever it happens to be.
Corey Frank (00:43:40):
Introducing our friend Orin's introduction of tension. You have to introduce tension to create authenticity
Chris Beall (00:43:46):
And there's natural tension, but it doesn't need to be hidden. It doesn't need to be cryptic, but it does need to be on an acceptable path from where somebody is emotionally to where they might be able to interact with you with a clearer mind. And that's actually sort of what the entire this whole market dominance thing is about is you're trying to help somebody go from their current emotional state, which is that they're afraid of you because you ambush them, but say it's a discovery call, they're apprehensive about joining that call. They're pretty sure you're going to try to sell me something, and that makes somebody feel a bit put upon it feels dangerous, right? As the future CEO, you need to learn how to take somebody or help somebody make a transition from their current emotional state to one where you can be more useful to them.
(00:44:46):
And I'll use an analogy, I worked a lot with animals. I grew up around lots and lots of animals, and some of them were very large horses in particular, and you owe that horse after all, the horse is getting a pretty good deal. It's not out there running around in the desert trying to find a little pond to suck up a little water so it doesn't desiccate and croak out there in three days. So it's living in a nice paddock and in a corral, and you're feeding it and you brush it, even just like people walk after their dogs and pick up dog shit. You're a slave to the horse and all of that, but you owe that horse enough moment by moment awareness of its emotions that it can do its job so that you can afford to keep it. Its job includes having a bit in its mouth.
(00:45:38):
That ain't that fun actually, if you think about it, right? Who would want that? Why don't you put a piece of steel in my mouth, attach it to some ropes, so to speak, and then pull on 'em to tell me which way to go. Oh, great deal. Love it. I'm signing up for that right away. That horse wants to sign up for that, but it does kind of like that bale of hay and then horse pellets and a little oats every once in a while and a place to get out of the rain and maybe some horsey friends that it can hang out with and stuff like that. So it's a trade-off, but you owe that animal the emotional journey to help on the emotional journey to where it'll accept the bit. That's what we do as helpful experts in sales. We need to help somebody go on that emotional journey.
(00:46:27):
So bots, if bots are going to be successful, cheap as they are, they also need to be able to help somebody on that emotional journey. Fortunately, that journey has been mapped out for different parts of the sales process in ways that certain kinds of scripting and voice can help somebody. If you refer to it as manipulation, you're actually inferring that the purpose is your purpose against their purpose. If you believe you can be helpful, then you're kind of obliged to do this. I was once a witness to a head-on collision where two guys not wearing seat belts went through the windshield of their vehicle, and I was driving a big truck that was full of cement mix. And so I'm looking down at this accident, very dramatic, right? I owed those people who are now lying there, bleeding from all the glass cuts and all lying on the hood.
(00:47:30):
I owed them if I could do it. And I was trained in this stuff, and some help on the emotional journey from laying there, bleeding and being all hyped up and thinking you should run around, took calming down, calming over, lying down, being treated for shock. While I had some people do some things like call ambulances and stuff like that because I was more expert than the other people around who watched that accident and these people were in need, I owed them if I could do it, the opportunity to go on an emotional journey that let them be treated medically. Because if they were going to run around chickens with their heads cut off and scream at people and jump up and down, it wasn't going to happen. Life is full of this stuff. If you want to be a leader, you are obliged to take on an understanding and skills around helping somebody get to the point where you can help them, and that's really the essence of sales. That's what we do. That's why what they're doing at Branch 49 is so interesting because you go into the conversation pit, so to speak, and you learn how to have conversations that, yeah, it has a set of meeting outcome and everybody applaud and all that, but what you're really learning to do is to help somebody get in a state where you can help them. That's actually what it's all about.
Shane Mahi (00:48:50):
I agree. And just to add a bit of context to that situation, the point of the conversation was supposed to be, let me show you a few of the things that I'm working on on the mega brand. So somebody who was supposed to be part of that, and hey, cool man, let's have a look. Here's a couple of the images. And without being genuine and saying, Hey, I want to show you this because I believe I can expand, or I can grow your brand with the same mechanisms to do this, then I'm game. I'm fine. Again, if we were on this podcast and after the podcast, it came to, Hey, Shane, can you buy this from me? It'd be the same thing if somebody came on my podcast and I was interviewing them because I want to share their journey with my network and have other people become educated on the path to entrepreneurship.
(00:49:41):
And then all of a sudden at the end of it, I said, oh, well, I want you to pay for this too, and I want you to give me this and give me this. And they would be like, Shane is a scumbag. So for me, again, that authenticity piece and the ethics behind just trustworthiness and being honest and transparent and frank, I've closed more sales in the past seven months from not trying to sell anything than I did in the past three years of my entire business career. And again, it was because I learned, I've had conversations very, very, I'm not bragging on nothing, but I've had very high level conversations with important leaders. Chris, like yourself on Chris, I want to fire the team. What should I do? Remember that
Chris Beall (00:50:22):
We had that conversation. That one took about two and a half hours actually, and was right over there on my patio that I was on the desert.
Shane Mahi (00:50:30):
We had that chat and many more. And then my conversations changed from, Hey, do you want to learn about how we can book you more meetings to, Hey, do you want me to tell you how I can increase your valuation and help you get to an exit in three years versus the next 10, right? Those types of conversations changed everything about what I'm doing, and it's because I'm ethical in everything I do and how I approach my market. So that's me on that piece. Just to chime in on that,
Chris Beall (00:51:00):
Corey, I think there's a problem that you're going to face, and the problem is we do need people to learn how to interact with other people starting from where they are. So when you're young, your interactions when you're really young have a lot to do with your parents and a lot to do with power. Anybody who's ever had a 2-year-old knows it has everything to do with power because you're trying to get a little power in the world, and there's ways to do it. Screaming your head off in a public place works pretty well. There's a bunch of others. The word no comes to mind, right? The original tough customer is a 2-year-old. They've got a response to your suggestion, no, you're trying to sell 'em whatever. Why don't you sit in the high chair here at the restaurants that run around the table and kick our feet?
(00:51:46):
No, right? I mean, that's where the resistance to sales actually starts. We need people to learn how to do this, not in order to sell things to other people, but in order to have their own learning, which in certain ways will always exceed any bots. And here's why. By the way, in the world of the innovation economy, all the value is created by bringing things together that weren't together before, and discovering that you can get new value from simple combinations. If you've ever worked with a patent attorney, you'll be told by a good one. Look, you don't come up with something new. You combine two things that exist, and now you have something patentable. That's the world of patents. And as you know, I have a certain book of them and my patent attorney, Sid Leach, up in Phoenix, the best that I've ever worked with, I've been working with them since my 40th birthday, so that means 29 plus years.
(00:52:46):
And that was the first thing he taught me was, you're not coming up with something new, even though it's novel, it's always a combination. It's always a combination. Well, everything can be combined. That's why the innovation economy is so huge, because there's so many combinations. So you asked, what is this AI stuff in sales? Oh, look, a combination AI and sales, two things brought together, but in order to get the combinations to happen, it takes conversations both with other people and inside of our own little noggins as we cro around in the desert barefoot or do whatever crazy things we do, and if we want to share those with somebody else and have them make a dangerous decision, do I want to try something new? Which is the essence of innovation, economy, sales, do I want to try something new? We need to get really, really good at helping somebody get to the point where we can have that conversation.
(00:53:39):
So if we deprive folks of the ability to do the baby conversation, which is the cold call, how are we going to get into the adult conversation? Which is, what do you think? If we were to take that technology, that technology and that company right there and put, I don't know, maybe a hundred million bucks into it, what do you think? Can we do something there? That's a much less comfortable conversation because there's more on the line, but there's always more on the line. So you're going to face a problem, Corey, which is, and it is not going to happen fast, but when cold calling is better done by bots or done as well, but much more cheaply, which is a likely thing to happen at some point, at least for the first call, where does the practice come from for people to become competent business leaders? And it's going to take some thinking and work.
Shane Mahi (00:54:34):
I have a quick question on this, Corey, and I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts. So let's just call the typical outbound service in today's society, roughly. It costs about 10,000 pounds for us to deliver a monthly service, 10,000 pounds, a monthly retainer, let's call it that. Now you've got one or two dedicated reps, you've got a research team on there. You've got quite a heavy opex cost, let's say 50 to 60% of the entire deal value or the monthly deal value goes towards that. When the time comes that a bot has the ability to do that process that those researchers can do, and those first callers can do the, does the outbound, does the outbound arena, the environment still keep their costs the same, the value is still the same, you're still getting the outcome, or does it now become a period of, or a playground where we're going to fight on costs?
Chris Beall (00:55:35):
I know the answer to that question because I didn't study Elizabeth and poetry. I was reading Peter Drucker when I was seven years old. Oh, okay. Lemme throw you the answer. Prices always follow costs downward, always. And the reason is that there asymmetries and situations among providers, and for one provider, even holding quality constant, which is pretty impossible to know if you've done, it always is the case where they could either make more money now on the transaction or in the future off the market by offering the same service at a lower price. Therefore, they will do that, and therefore they will take share from you.
(00:56:20):
That's just the answer. And a question of, in any competitive environment, how does that work out? I mean, again, this is a big deal on this podcast. We often talk about the fact that the world of sales obsesses about competition and also acts like there isn't any competition at the same time, which is truly bizarre when you think about it. So if you want to get a salesperson hyped up, talk about a competitor, oh, there was a competitor in that deal. Oh my God, what are they offering? Where's our battle cards? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then it's like, well, what are we offering? Oh, absolutely. We're offering this value and absolutely we're doing this. No, it's all relative, you're offering something that has an unknown and a kind of known quality at one thing that is known, which is the cost, at least the dollar cost, and comes with other costs like, oh, you got to actually implement it.
(00:57:15):
You got to hire people, you gotta train 'em, you got to do whatever. So what happens over time is competition shapes, markets and new material science shapes costs. New material science always shapes cost. As soon as you make rolled steel, you change the cost of automobiles. As soon as you can make a combination of rebar and concrete that you can take up far enough to put some really inexpensive glass on it, you make skyscrapers instead of three story buildings in old downtowns and you reshape the world. Material costs and per unit capability shape the economy's direction because of competition at all times relentlessly and pretending it's not going to happen is frankly idiotic.

Artificial intelligence is transforming sales, whether we're ready or not. In this episode, we dive deep on questions sales leaders have about leveraging AI amidst the hype and uncertainty. What’s driving adoption? Where can bots add value now vs. someday? We debate ethical considerations and the threat of/or replacing human jobs.
Our guides, Chris and Corey, are joined by Shane Mahi, now Chief Partnership Officer at AI startup mega.ai. Shane shares insights from the AI frontlines on what’s realistic today and the autonomous sales agent vision of tomorrow. Shane shares the hard-won insights he's gained through making over 650,000 sales calls and landing more than 30 major clients. In this 3-part series, we'll cover Shane's journey along with the role of AI in sales. 
Join us for episode 213: Ethical AI Selling - Reality vs Hype
Links from this episode:
Shane Mahi on LinkedIn
MEGA.ai
Corey Frank on LinkedIn
Branch49
Chris Beall on LinkedIn
ConnectAndSell
 
Chris Beall (00:08:41):
Great. So I just finished a book I can recommend to everybody called Molecular Storms. If you want to understand how quantum physics actually derives from or is consistent with the second law of thermodynamics and why we are we are, what we are, where we are, and how it all works. Read that and Stephen Hawking has mentioned it in that book, so go for it.
Corey Frank (00:09:07):
The original Hawking and you are the Hawking of Hawking. Alright, I will add that to my children's book list. Yes, it's recorded, but we have a guest, we have a repeat guest from what, almost three years ago. We have Shane Mahi from Points undetermined Morocco, the UK, Maryland. So Shane, great to have you back on the Market Dominance Guys, after an extended disappearance and as you've built up your companies and built up your rotation and how many hundreds of thousands of phone calls you've had since the two and a half years that you've arrived, ready to share the information, not only on all what you've learned in those two and a half years since you've made the last appearance, but also we're going to talk today, Chris and Shane Wright is about something I know nothing about, which is the I in ai, and we're going to talk specifically about AI in sales and in outbound sales. So Shane, great to have you back on the Market Dominance. Guys.
Shane Mahi (00:10:05):
Thank you very much Corey, and thank you, Chris. It has been, I think, almost four years now. We're in 2024. And from what I know, Chris, our episode was one of the most popular, most listened to episodes of that year. And in that time, I am thankful to Chris and the ConnectAndSell team, I was able to grow my company to a million dollars in sales revenue. I won't say pounds because it doesn't sound as cool, but we hit a million dollars in sales revenue. We made over 650,000 calls. We landed about 32, 32 major clients that had an A CV of about 76,000 pounds each. They ran for about seven, eight months and we were on our way to becoming a very dominant player in the market as a boutique firm. But the normal peaks and troughs of startup life happened. Me, I neglected my marriage and my family and I focused a lot on my business.
(00:11:07):
And that ended up breaking down what that relationship was. I also made a few mistakes in that process, which I'm glad I made because it helped me figure out how to increase the value of my business, what I'm doing, profit margins and all of these peaks and troughs. Letting go of my entire team at one point has led me down a path to where I am today where I have an abundance, an abundance of knowledge, I have an abundance of experience, the types of conversations I sit in, the people in people's room and just really repeat what Chris has said, what Jerry has said, what all the CEOs that I've ever spoke to have said, and they're just thinking, who is this young kid? And I'm 37 years old. I'm proud of everything I've done to this date right now. I don't even know what my company name is.
(00:11:55):
I've changed it so many times, but where I am today, I'm the chief partnership officer of a company called mega.ai. I was brought into that company to build the strongest relationships in the industry. Chris, I believe is going to be one of, if not the strongest relationship I've ever had in my entire life because of this, Corey, hopefully you too. And the next journey in the next 11, 12 months is to build the next generation of autonomous agents that are going to be booking meetings 24 7, instant ramp up time, a thousand dollars an agent, 2070 5% cheaper than a human rep. And more importantly, your business can scale exponentially without the need for human labor. The only reason I've been able to build this type of narrative is because I ran 27 seconds, 650,000 times. So that to me, in a nutshell,
Corey Frank (00:12:47):
27 seconds, that actually works. Wow.
Shane Mahi (00:12:51):
Seven seconds and 20
Corey Frank (00:12:52):
Baby. So wild. Wow. So no, that is an incredible story. Of course, Shane, as impressive as that is, right, you're also a very prolific contributor, never with your handout, but just contributor and thought leader into the space of B2B sales. And I know your reputation speaks for yourself. You take calls at all hours of the night. People use you as the sounding board for so many of us in the industry. So that's also a testament, I think, to your great reputation. So great to have you. So let's jump into it, Chris, on this AI and sales, what chain is talking about, certainly with mega, we want to hear a little bit more about, but let me pose it to both of you guys. How are folks using AI today that really has changed from maybe even since the last time you were on the show, Shane, a couple of years ago. You have sales copilot, I think from Microsoft, you have Einstein from Salesforce, I believe, and certainly the ubiquitous ChatGTP that folks have been trying to write screenplays. But maybe you can talk a little bit about Chris, what you've seen certainly in the private equity side of other burgeoning businesses inside of ConnectAndSell, and then Shane, kind of what you're seeing as well. So Chris, what do you see as just the seismic tectonic plates that have shifted just in the last handful of years here now? Well,
Chris Beall (00:14:20):
The big shift was just in the end of 2022 actually when ChatGTP came on the market, it did something that was totally unexpected with regard to ai. Suddenly you had a popular, like everybody wanted it, everybody could figure out how to use it, AI friend, so to speak, that you could ask questions of. And it showed a couple of things. One is that vast general knowledge gained from just everything that's ever been out on the internet put into a relatively simple, but really, really big neural network that's organized in a very clever way can provide value to regular people that exceeds what they can get from going out and Googling. Because as the internet got more and more populated with websites that tell you everything, if you're being told everything, then you're kind of being told nothing. And so who do you trust?
(00:15:26):
To tell you the truth, well, Google came up with an idea a long time ago who has the most backlinks, and then they expanded on that with various levels of authority oriented algorithms and then somehow tried to make that work in a world that was fundamentally corrupt because they were taking ad revenue and they figured out how to square that circle. And then chat, GPT came along and said, eh, who really needs that? Just ask me a question and I'll tell you something. And then if that doesn't quite work out, ask me another question. And so instead of getting a bunch of stuff on the screen, including a bunch of ads, what you actually got was this sort of friendly, authoritative voice. And it took about, I would say, 362 milliseconds before somebody figured out how to use chat GBT in sales just by asking it to write an email for them.
(00:16:18):
And then they'd copy and paste it. It's a better writer than any of us as long as you accept whatever the style is and write in different styles. So you can ask it as you and I know Corey, we wrote a book in two days, and actually I just did it by copying and pasting stuff out of chat g pt, there's the book, right? Market Dominance book, a conversation with ChatGTP, and did that with no instruction, no nothing. And it actually walked me through the process of publishing it on Amazon. So end to end between six o'clock on a Saturday morning and 11 o'clock on Sunday night. That book was created from podcast episodes and it wrote everything except for the how we did it part. So that was already being used in marketing anyway. But the use in sales is pretty clear.
(00:17:08):
Most salespeople are not exactly readers and writers, shall we say, male colorblind, left-handed a DD. Dyslexics generally didn't grow up getting like you did a degree in Elizabethan poetry, which often does require a certain amount of reading. I'm sure you regret taking that path with the amount of reading it took, but actually Corey is a prolific reader, but sales is populated with folks who didn't raise their hand in class saying, oh yeah, teacher, I got the answer to that, right? It was folks who knew how to talk their way from a D to a C in order to graduate. So that was the immediate first use. And all the copilots are just that. That's where we've come, yeah, that's where we've come. I'll write something for you, right? What's happening now is much more interesting, which is, and this is what we'll have Shane talk about it.
(00:18:08):
This is what Mega is all about, as we whipped right by the Turing test. The Turing test was a big deal. If you're interacting with a bot and you can't tell it's a bot after a bunch of interactions by text, by the way, which is kind of a dumb way to do it. But if you're doing that and you can't tell if it's a bot or a human, well, it's passed the Turing test. And we've gone beyond some point in the evolution of computers and their relationship to society. We blew by the Turing test in one day and didn't even notice it. Nobody cared, nobody noticed, except people said, oh my God, it's going to take over the world. That, by the way, is ridiculous. Something typing to you is not going to take over the world and pictures don't help. It is, oh, it made a picture of somebody, great, fantastic.
(00:18:58):
But in sales. Now the big question is can you make a selling bot? And that is a graded question. It starts with, in my mind, can you get a bot to get a gatekeeper to do a transfer that's a sale. Can you do it? And that's a really interesting question. That's one that we're going to be exploring with mega because we have a lot of gatekeeper interactions and it costs money. It's human beings who are doing it. Maybe we can do it with a butt, I don't know. But I like baby steps. I'm an old rock climber. You can stare at the summit all you want, but you actually have to make the first move and it comes off the ground. So sitting back across the valley going, oh, look at that. Doesn't get the job done. So what's the first step in making a selling bot?
(00:19:49):
Probably talking to a gatekeeper. Not really a regular gatekeeper, but maybe just an operator. So we suspect there's things that can be done there. Now, can you go all the way to closing a deal? A real deal where somebody's putting their butt in the line where their careers are on the line, where they're risking everything, their family, their future on the advice of a vendor's, but maybe not just because of the vendor's. Butt is intrinsically at the moment on the wrong side of the uncanny valley or somewhere in it, and it's like, well, we know the vendor's but is clever. It was made by clever people. Hopefully their salespeople aren't quite as clever, so maybe I can trust them. But that's the continuum of questions. And yesterday, Shane asked me to be in a round table with a bunch of folks, and we were talking about the ethics, potential ethics, which I'd love to talk about here. But I think it's really about the practicality, the ethical difference between AI and not AI and sales is like the ethical distinction between a knife and a gun. It's like, okay, so with a knife, I got to get close to you in order to draw blood with a gun. I can do it from a little farther away. And if you're a certain friend of mine, that might be about two miles.
(00:21:13):
So is there an ethical difference between those? Not really. There's a practical difference between those. It's still unethical to walk up to Shane in a bar and say, Shane, you son of a dog. I used to think you were a wonderful person. And now I don't. And slip a shive into him that's just as unethical as shooting him as he comes out of the bar. What's the difference, right? So I believe this big ethics discussion tends to be a political discussion about computers, actually not about ai. And it has to do with who's going to get more power at different points in different processes.
Corey Frank (00:21:54):
Well, Chris, Let's talk about that just for a second with Shane and bring Shane in here. I see that ethical dilemma to me, it starts with authenticity. And if there is the sense chain that, hey, wait a minute, it's as if you're watching a Spider-Man Marvel movie, and you're just engrossed in the experience of swinging from building to building, and then all of a sudden I see a string holding Spider-Man, or I see a boom mic in the corner that maybe the editor forgot to take out. The illusion just goes down immediately. And I said, wait a minute. I'm in a movie theater here and I'm eating bad popcorn. This is not me. The stakes all of a sudden go from being here where I care about the characters to now the stakes are just cruelly, artificial. And Shane, do you find that, or how do you bridge that?
(00:22:48):
Certainly with your round table that you've talked with a lot of CEOs like Chris, but that authenticity, whereas as humans, we perceive those little subtleties and mood and those complex needs through a simple conversation. And when a tell happens from an ai, either Chris, to your point from a text or a bot, how do you combat that? Is that the racist to get to as authentic as possible or because that's where I think the Delta ethics happened. Chris is, wait a minute, I thought you were a real person, but now you're a machine. So Shane, what do you think about that and bridging that gap?
Shane Mahi (00:23:29):
So Chris mentioned it yesterday and it drove a lot of the discussion, which was it's the ability to tell the truth and just being truthful about anything upfront. And I used it when I started, and it comes from the 27 seconds, is the point of inoculation. And it's stating a fact before somebody has that objection. And if you are using any type of artificial intelligence, computer robot, I think the most authentic, genuine thing to do is to tell the truth. And that comes from, Hey, this is a robot, Corey, I'd like to have a conversation with you. If not, would you like to be speaking to a human? You'll then say, sure. The robot then has the advantage of saying, Hey, Corey, it's going to take about five to six minutes to patch you through. I can probably get your questions covered in the next 45 seconds.
(00:24:18):
Do you want to have a chat with me or do you want to have a chat with the next person? And for me, that makes all the difference because time for a ceo, for a business professional is absolutely everything. And the ability to cut out that wasted time is everything. I'll give you a quick example. I called, I mentioned it yesterday, right, Chris? I called Pizza Hut the other day and it took me six minutes to remove onions from my pizza because the guy kept battling from me that I said, you can't just pick the goddamn onions off the pizza. I don't like onions. And it was a nightmare. Now, had a bot just been able to say, Hey, which toppings would you like to add or remove if any? Just remove onions. My pizza's at the door in 10, 15 minutes. And for me, again, the truth allows that time to be shortened, which gives you more opportunity to take care of other things that are most important in your life.
(00:25:13):
And another thing that I think is really important, I just watched it the other day, and that point you made on authenticity and being genuine and the truth. Mackinac, I'm sure you both have seen that. I had no idea. I think Sam Altman is an ex Mackinac that's swear God, because when that person, the robot locked the door, obviously it's playing with the guy. I'm a sucker for women, absolute sucker for women. So if I was in one of those situations and they were manipulating me without knowing it and putting the love spot, well, were you really interested in me? He's lying to you, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, to get out. That is where everything changes for me. And now after seeing that movie, I'm wondering, Chris is very smart, Cora, you are very smart. Are you going to start peeling off your skin one day and saying the same thing to me?
Corey Frank (00:26:11):
Well, but I think that's part of it. It's a brilliant point. I love the trust thing. Chris and Shane, by the way, the coming up front, front loading the fact that my AI interaction may be lumpy. You may call me out on it. You may see the wires, you may see the boom bike, but come on, it's a movie. And so that authenticity can be front loaded by telling the truth. But Chris, do you see, and Shane, that a lot of these AI tools, the, is it Air ai, the one that has the demo for Apple? To me, that seems manipulative, and I think I'm not alone as a consumer, as a B2B consumer of say, they don't front load that authenticity or that honesty at all. But Chris, do you see there's a race towards making that seamless to the point where you don't have to even admit that? Or how was it received in the round table yesterday when you said that, Hey, I think we got to lead with this honesty and trust upfront? Well,
Chris Beall (00:27:17):
I actually think that this is one of those rare cases where the ethics and the practicalities converge so tightly that you will not win in the marketplace with a bot that doesn't say it's a bot. I think there's a lot of freaking out about this kind of stuff that just comes from how people kind of act like a bot. They sort of act like ChatGTP, and just start emitting the next words that come to mind, which is it's a bot, therefore it's not a person, therefore, it's inauthentic because they've heard that string of words before. But if you really think about it, we do love to interact with bots as long as they're responsive and we feel that they're sufficiently neutral. That's why chat GPT went nuts and became the fastest growing application in the history of applications because you perceive that it's neutral, it's on, if anything, it's on your side.
(00:28:16):
And in fact, it uses language damn well it's a bot, right? But it uses language that implies that it cares about you. When you correct it, I ask, Hey, tell me about Chris Beal. And it says, oh, Chris, he has a degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford, blah, blah, blah. And I say, no, no, no. I mean, Chris be the ceo, EO of ConnectAndSell co-host to market dominance guys. What about that guy that says, oh, yeah. And then it says some other bullshit about me. And I go, no, no. And it says, oh, I apologize. It apologizes to me. So it sees the world through my eyes, which is a bot that needs a little bit of help, kind of staying on the rails. But it does useful things for me, and it's not against me. I think the big issue is going to be being the vendor's bot.
(00:29:02):
We're making an assumption that a selling bot has to be the vendor's bot, but selling is a highly complex activity full of all sorts of interactions. One of the interactions is learning, do I need to learn one vendor at a time? James Thornberg would say, no, James Thornberg would say, and God knows, he knows more about it than any of us on this call. Being a neutral actually allows you to get better information and save time for the other party. You tell us your requirements once we'll tell you which of three or four vendors that we work with is most appropriate, and those vendors are going to pay if one of them actually ends up doing business with you. Because for them, channel doesn't mean manipulation. It just means being in the game, right? So we're making a lot of assumptions about the bot filled future of sales that are simply knee jerk.
(00:29:57):
They're simply, they're not really even proper assumptions. They're actually emotional reactions to the idea of being manipulated by something that might be smarter than us, and it's very, very interesting. So the ethics and the practicality are going to merge just the same way they do in the 27th seconds. So Shane mentioned, how often has he opened with those two sentences? I know an interruption is the key. I didn't say it right that time. Let me say it correctly. I know I'm an interruption now, why do I say that? Well, I say it because it's the truth, and I'm telling you that I see the world through your eyes. So I say, Hey, Corey, I'm called Sam, but I'm actually a bot and I'm working for Joey over at company X, Y, Z. What I do is I reach out to folks like you to see whether you are interested in learning more about X.
(00:30:55):
You could go, well, I am, I'm not. And I could say, as the bot, Corey, I know, I mean talking to a bot who's a vendor's bot especially could be uncomfortable and affected, but you could think I'm manipulating you. If at any time you feel that, just call me out on it. If you want to talk to a human, let me know, right? I could say that as a bot. I could say it just like that. Modern bots can say stuff like that. I can work my way from acknowledging the truth, still following Chris VA's advice, right? You've got to show the other person, you see the world through their eyes, then you need to demonstrate to them that you are competent to solve a problem they have right now. Those are two things. You have seven seconds to do it. Can a human do it? Most humans can't. We train 'em, they fail. Why? They won't throw themselves under the bus and they won't make it sound fun when they offer to move forward. And people call it permission-based, which is utter baloney. There's no permission involved here. It's doing these two important things. I could do those things. It's just cheaper. And by the way, it'll actually do
Shane Mahi (00:32:03):
I agree. I agree fully. I think that's a very, very, very important point. And anything that is scripted where it doesn't require too much thinking involved, such as let's just call it either an agent or the progression of an agent that becomes a bot or a bot in the future that has that four, five seconds of scripted behavior to get through the gatekeeper. Again, a human is going to cost five, six times more than that. Whatever kind of country you're in, if you can use a robot to do that kind of stuff and just be authentic, be genuine, inoculate before you get to it, the market, what is it? The barrier to entry or that crossing the chasm becomes much easier. What was I going to say in the ethics piece? You jump in again and then I'm going to jump on that piece. I just wanted to catch that last piece.
 

Are you providing your reps with excellent sales training only to find that most of them drift slowly back to their old behavior? In today’s podcast, Gerry Hill, Regional VP/EMEA of ConnectAndSell, and Shane Mahi, Founder and CEO of SalesDRIIVN, join our Market Dominance Guy, Chris Beall, to discuss the solution to sales rep drift. Using the analogy of machinery that drifts out of tolerance and requires maintenance for necessary adjustments, the guys discuss the necessity and effectiveness of sales coaching in real-time. The solution’s success hinges on catching and correcting those little (or big) errors in message, tone, and pacing before your reps run through your lists and have nothing to show for it. Vigilance and just-in-time coaching: All that and more on today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Do You Catch Their Drift?”

What’s the most efficient, most secure method of growing your company? Shane Mahi, Founder and CEO of SalesDRIIVN, and Gerry Hill, EMEA Regional Vice President of ConnectAndSell, explore this question with Chris Beall in today’s Market Dominance Guys’ podcast. “Overhead is like a racehorse,” Chris says. “It eats while we sleep.” He offers the following advice to Shane and to our loyal listeners: Forget taking money from VCs. Instead, work on shortening your pitch-to-value cycle time and build your business that way. “The faster your company can cycle and produce value,” he explains, “the lower your risk of losing your business.” Gerry chimes in with his own great advice: “Be sure to take a scientific approach to the experiment, not an emotional approach.” And, as always, Chris reminds those pursuing success in business that “Market dominance is a risk-reduction program: in order to reduce the risk of losing your company, you need to dominate one market. Then go dominate another.” That’s the way we roll on Market Dominance Guys every day: lots of valuable advice and helpful reminders. Listen in for more of it on today’s episode, “Overhead Is Like a Racehorse.”

How did you get started in sales? And what led you to the position you now hold and the company you are currently involved with? Shane Mahi, Founder and CEO of SalesDRIIVN, and Gerry Hill, EMEA Regional Vice President of ConnectAndSell, are asked these very questions by our Market Dominance Guy Chris Beall in today’s podcast. Surprisingly, a common answer emerges to the first question: both guests, as well as our host, took their first step into the sales world by selling products door to door — and doing so successfully. Our guests describe the steps that subsequently led them to where they are today, and this leads to a discussion with Chris about funding new companies and the temptation and possible pitfalls of taking venture money to facilitate growth. Follow their conversation in this first of three meetings of the minds on today’s Market Dominance Guys’ episode, “Is Venture Capital for You?”