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The Advanced Selling Podcast
The 'Just Get Started' Guide to AI in Sales
00:21:54
In this episode, Bill and Bryan cut through the AI hype to deliver actionable advice for sales professionals just beginning their AI journey. The guys share real-world applications including prospect list generation, content creation, and sales call...
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome everybody to the Advanced Selling Podcast, the longest running sales training podcast in the history of podcast. My name is Brian Neal.
- [00:14]
B
My name is Bill Caskey.
- [00:15]
A
We are here every week for your listening enjoyment, to give you a little boost in your sales life for you long term, lifetime long listeners. 18 years plus. Happy New Year. Welcome back. We're glad you're here. We're recording this back in January of 2025, and if you're brand new, a lot of people do New Year's resolutions and they say, I'm gonna up my sales game. People say, I'm gonna start listening to podcasts. Then they Google sales podcast and then they come across the Advanced Selling podcast and they find us that way. So we're glad if you're new, you're here. You have about a thousand episodes to catch up on, but it shouldn't take long if you go two times speed.
- [00:50]
B
That's right. That's right. Yeah. I've talked to some people over the holidays that either emailed in or something and they said they were just starting and they were starting at the beginning. And I said, no, don't do that. Don't do that. Not because we were so bad at the beginning. I don't know if we were or not. We probably were, but it's just. Yeah, bring. Bring it. Because we're talking about things today differently than we talked about then. Would you agree?
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A
100.
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B
I mean, we're in a topic today about artificial intelligence. We never would have. Didn't know what that was more than three years ago.
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A
No, not in, not in 09. We wouldn't have been talking about AI and 09. If we would have been, we probably wouldn't be sitting here. He'd probably. That Nvidia guy. How do you miss that? Or is it Nvidia? How do you say that?
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B
Nvidia. Nvidia. Yeah.
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A
Yeah. He was ahead of his time, that guy.
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B
Yeah, it's. Well, you want to get into the.
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A
Topic, we'll do a little tell. Yeah, we're AI topic. But you said you had a little, little story you wanted to share.
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B
Yeah. You know how sometimes you talk a lot. I don't mean that as a slight, but. And I talk a lot and we do podcasts, we do training, we. And sometimes things slip out of your mouth and right when they're slipping out, it's like you can't stop them and you say something that's really dumb. Like you try to be funny and it wasn't. I mean, I was at. I had that Experience. The other day, I went to Hardee's. I'm not a. I'm not a fast food guy, but for some reason, some days, a Hardee's sausage biscuit sounds good. I haven't had one for a year. I mean, literally, it's been a year. Yeah, well, I stopped it. It was 11 o'clock. And so as I pulled up, I realized there was all. The lunch menu was up and the breakfast was not. And I said, oh. I said, are you still serving breakfast? And she goes, no, sir. We stopped at 10 o'clock and I said, oh, God. Well, I'm going to leave then. I'm just going to leave. I'm going to leave and I don't want anything. And I thought, did she really need to know that? I mean, sort of an implied don't chase me.
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A
Exactly.
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B
Call me that Sausage biscuit.
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A
She calls her manager. She's like, hey, boss, there's a guy in the driveway who's threatening to leave. He's threatening to leave because it's past 10 o'clock. We're not serving sausage biscuits. He just told me. What do you want me to say? Well, I'm gonna leave that. I'll show you Hardee's.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Have they. Has the stock dropped? Have they gone out of business?
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B
But there's been some minions following me around and I think it's the Hardy menu.
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A
Oh, that's funny. I love Hardee's and I haven't been to Hardy Year, I can't tell you. It's my favorite of so good. It's like a little hidden gym, but people don't. You know, it's not kind of top of everybody's list.
- [03:29]
B
It's not. They don't do any. I don't ever see them advertised. Of course, maybe I'm not there. Ideal customer, but. But the good thing about that experience was I. I hadn't even made it to the end of the driveway yet to get out of the Hardy's lot. And I thought, oh, this is a podcast topic.
- [03:44]
A
We got it. We got him right there. Did you look in your rear view mirror? Were they. Were they chasing you? Don't leave. Don't leave. Come back. We'll make you a biscuit. I'm sorry. We still have a couple left that you can have. Mine. I was saving them for later, for my break, but you can have it.
- [04:01]
B
Bill, obviously upset.
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A
Don't leave. You got him.
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B
You showed Hardies out of here.
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A
You showed them. Okay, I'm just going to tell you something. I'M I'm just so, you know, I want you to know I'm leaving. I love that. That's really funny. Been there, done that. Oh, gosh.
- [04:20]
B
You can tell us a story about how something slipped out of your mouth.
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A
There's a lot.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Oh, there's so many. Let's see. So we're going to talk about AI and you know, Bill and I, we always try to avoid the cliche topics because you're like, oh, everybody's gonna talk about AI. Everyone's written a book on AI until such point where it becomes woven into the fabric of what we do. And I am under the belief at this point that AI is, whether you know it or not, woven into the fabric of what, how we're gonna live our life, the world. And it's only going to continue fast. And so if you're a salesperson, today's episode is not about the debate of whether it's going to take our jobs and all that baloney. This is a tactical if. Okay, you're sitting here listening to us say this and you're going, I don't even have chat, GPT or one of the AIs on my. I don't have an app. I've never even logged in. Yeah, this is going to be a what to do episode for AI in our opinions. Bill, where are you on the spectrum? You're a user?
- [05:22]
B
Yeah, I'm an A. On the AI spectrum. I'm probably at a. Yeah, no, I think the way you teed it up is good. And it's, it's one of those topics that, that everybody has such a. A varied perspective on. I was on a call the other day with a. A lady. She. It was in a group call and she was, she sold AI. I mean, she was selling AI. I don't know how you sell AI to companies, but there's systems. And she was, she was a really sharp lady. And one of the guys on the call said something about how he uses AI and she said, really? I never knew you could do that. And so even the experts, I think, are not necessarily. It's not like one of those things that you got to build the groundwork. Then you go here, then you go here, and by the time you get here, you don't need any help from anybody else. It's so patchy. You might be at a high level, but you still don't know what's going, going on underneath that. And so I think the way you teed that up is good. Don't worry about whether you're a scholar in AI or a newbie. It could be that you hear something today that you haven't thought about.
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A
That's it. I think that's it. So, so let's get started. A couple of easy, quick things. I know. I think you use a different. So I use Chat GPT and there's a free version and then there's a premium version. The premium version is less 1995amonth, I think. So I just upgraded to the premium version over the holiday break. I was using the free version to practice with.
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B
Well, that's good. That's a big, that's a big step. Well, $20 a month.
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A
Here's the thing, though. I do think it is because what, and I'm not like bragging here, but I'm committing money. Yeah. I'm, you know when you commit money, all of a sudden and, and it's your money, you're like, okay, I'm going to make this work. It's just like people that have LinkedIn, regular LinkedIn Premium. Well, if you pay for LinkedIn Premium yourself, I think you're more apt to try to get some out of it. Or you just are. You just, you know, set money on fire.
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B
So what's the saying? Those who pay, pay attention.
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A
Yeah. Yeah.
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B
And if you pay, Even if it's 20 bucks a month, I've got all my clients on the 20. I use Claude, which is a. Yeah, I'm platform agnostic. I don't care what it's, it's, you know, they're all going to be similar. But I agree, that would just get the sketch of 20. You can always cancel it. Right.
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A
Exactly. Now, why do you use Claude over Chat GPT?
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B
I use it because I find it to be better at the written word and outlining content, videos, podcasts, writing articles. I have a thought in my brain and I put it out there. Plus, I just got started on Claude too. So I think rather than dipping into 17 different ones, I, I, I committed that, no, I'm going to learn this and Anthropic. Amazon has a lot of money in Anthropic, who owns Claude? And I think you're going to hear a lot more about Anthropic in the next year or so. So I just hooked my wagon to that.
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A
But I like it.
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B
I don't wear Claude T shirts around. I mean, I'm not that committed to the brand.
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A
I think we should. Did you sidebar when you were young, did you call them dirt clods or clogs?
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B
How do you spell That I don't know. I used to think it was clogs.
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A
Clogged. I always thought it was Claude. I was probably wrong. I've never. I. My kids don't know that word we used when we were kids, though. We go to construction side. We. So, oh, we're gonna tell our buddies with dirt clots. And if you're our age, you're laughing. If you're young, like, what are they talking about? But anyone who's, you know, 40 and above, they know dirt.
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B
I remember there was a guy locally named Jim Engeldau. He just died.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Now nursery. And he just moved into my neighborhood and there was a lot of construction. I remember the first time we ever went out to play, he pelted me with this. Oh, my God. I was. I ran home crying. I don't know. Oh, and I forgiv him, but I did.
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A
But he's passed. That's good for you. Sorry, a little digression there. But I think one of the first lesson you're hearing from me and Bill is there's Chat GPT. There's Claude. There are others.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You know, pick a brand and, and stick with it. Like Bill's doing Claude, I'm doing Chat GPT. There's no right and wrong in those. No. It is good, though, to stay in one versus dabble. Like you said, Bill, I don't think dabbling in 17 is a good idea at this point.
- [09:36]
B
So here's. Here's my first, my first recommendation. If you're just getting into this, I would. There's a lot of YouTube videos, a lot on AI. Again, if you're a Claude user or Chad GPT, go down that path, Go down that trail and just watch all you can. Have it in front of you when you're watching these videos, have it open and give it some prompts and, you know, practice and just play. You have to play with it. Or if you're just trying to read about it, it's. It's. If you want to learn how to build a studio, you build a studio. You don't read about building a studio. At some point you have to build it. You have to buy something and have to paint and all that. So I think it's the same thing here. Just devote time to playing around with these tools.
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A
See, there's a good thing to have a little. A little time, a little chat GPT time block that I'm guessing most of our listeners don't have on their calendar. If you're listening to this, you're like, yeah, I don't have that. Well, after today's episode, you should do, Even if it's 20 or 30, good coffee shop stuff, like when you're taking a break or over lunch.
- [10:38]
B
There's a lot of good podcasts, too. There's a lot of good podcasts on AI. Some of them are very technical. I might recommend Michael Stelzner. He does one called AI Explored, and he takes it from a. A very practical standpoint about what are the prompts and how. What can you use it for? And that's really the essence is what's the use case? At some point, you don't need to learn it if there's no use case for it. So you have to decide how am I going to use it? Which we can talk about a little bit today.
- [11:06]
A
Yes. And Bill mentioned prompts. And, you know, you talk about generically, like learning to prompt is. Is one of the tricks. But before that, a thing that I've just. And I don't know if this is good or bad or not is there's. It's like a 1A and a 1B. 1A is. I think of chat GPT as A. As a friend of mine who can do just about anything and knows just about everything, but they're a friend of mine and they'll do favors for me and they don't charge me for it, and they'll do anything I ask and they'll say when they can, they can't. What they can and can't do. So I first think of it that way so that I show up in that mode and I just talk to it. It sounds weird and I don't know if this is good or bad. And I praise it a lot. And again, I've not done any research, but I'm like, this is really awesome. Thanks for all your help. And it talks to you back. And, you know, I know it's a computer, but it appreciates that, you know, thanks for your trust. And it's just common sense to me says, you know, that's a great way to be. And then don't be afraid. It can't. You can't. This is a 1B. You can't hurt its feelings either. And so you, you just, like, hone it, people. You've got to get out of this. I think I first approach it like it was Google. Like a search engine.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And so I'd be like, best restaurants in Manhattan in Google. Instead, it's my buddy. I'm like, hey, man, I'm taking my wife on A staycation to New York City. We love to stay like around mid Manhattan, midtown there by Central Park. We like off the beaten path sort of things. Can you come up with just a list of places we should go that, you know, local New Yorkers go to Upper west side. And that's what you say to it?
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B
That's right.
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A
Versus list of restaurants in Manhattan? Because then you're going to get all the yelps, all this, you know, blah, blah, blah.
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B
So it's totally agree. You have to treat it like a virtual, like a virtual assistant, a human being. And if you're going to give it instructions, that virtual assistant needs to know exactly what you want. Because if you just say, hey, go write an email for me, the virtual assistant, I'm going to know on what, for what, who's it for. So you've got to instruct the platform to be as a virtual assistant and the instruction has to mirror that. I agree with you. Sometimes I'll get on and say, you know, I'm thinking about launching a XYZ product. I want to talk to you a little bit and have you asked me some questions on how should I be thinking about it? And before you know it, you got dialogue. And before you know it you're starting to think, okay, well should I, should I tell it that, you know, and they're like, wait a minute, it's a machine. Or if it goes down the wrong path, you can say, no, no, no, that's not what I was thinking. And Claude always comes back, says, oh, okay, sorry, I got it now. And they redirect and yes, it's bizarre. So how are you using it? What, what is a use case that you have found?
- [13:58]
A
Yeah, so I've got two projects rolling right now. One's a little more complex, one's simpler, but still it's working. Oh, I will say too. And I've got one client where the, you know, it's a software engineering firm. I really don't do any sales work there. It's more about customer experience work. Very, very intelligent people. There's a person in the building with a PhD in AI machine learning. So I get to like geek out with them a little bit. But there's apparently now I'm going to get in trouble for this because like you screwed that up, Neil. But the way I describe it, there's this element of the language model where it goes into this black box or black hole or area where even the, the programmers don't know what it does. They can't trace it all the way back to know what AI is doing and what is going on. I'm noticing this is back to my. My first use case is it will work 24. 7 on your problem. It will constantly work on your problem. So it's not just when I'm open in the app. So I've given it a project to come up with a list of 500 ideal clients for me in a spreadsheet based on the criteria. And I loaded my ideal client profile in there and I want names, titles, email addresses, phone numbers, and I want it ranked in order of I most ideal to least. And I want 500 of them. It's been about six days.
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B
It.
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A
I go and talk to it. It says, okay, I'm working. I go, how's it going? Like, good. I'm up to about 150. And I said, make sure the data is really clean and thorough. Do all the digging you can find to get the real stuff. And then it's been. So it just said I. It said I should be done today. Point is, you can give it an ideal client, a contact list. You don't have to do research to go. You don't have to buy it from a list company and get it for what you want. If you're an outside salesperson, tell them, okay, I live in Indianapolis and I cover Fort Wayne, Indiana, South Bend and Lafayette. Make an efficient route for me with ideal clients like this. Find the names, phone numbers, people, and give me the LinkedIn link. That's another field to all these people. And just ask it, and it'll just keep working and it keeps working and working and working.
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B
So that's fascinating. Good use. That's a really good use.
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A
Yeah.
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B
In your business prospect list. Yeah, for sure. That's great. Good. Yeah. Here's my, here's my use in Claude, they have what they call projects, and it might be like a custom GPT. I'm not sure what that is in chat, but a project is where if you do something on an ongoing basis, like, I like to write. I like to write content, whether it's articles for LinkedIn or whatever. And I give it this project. So I've got a LinkedIn article project and I give it exactly what I want it to do. Look, you know, take my concept that I give it to them. Take my concept and create 10 article titles. Pause, let me find. Let me select one I like. Once we do that, then we'll start writing the article and it writes the article and I've got my voice in there. So any article that Comes out. Sounds like I would have written it. It doesn't sound like a generic AI. You have to, you have to do a little prep, a little training, but that's how I do it. So the other day I was taking a walk and I, I had this concept of I wonder why this happens and this doesn't happen. And I just put it in and into my LinkedIn and it came up with an article that was specific to that situation. And it's a great way to get things out of your head onto paper so that you can decide, do I want to publish, do I want to record, do I want to present? Is it a webinar? I've got a whole project for webinars. I've got a concept. I put it in and it shoots out a webinar for me. So it, the, the idea is take something that you do on a frequent basis or that you like to do on a frequent basis, create a project or a custom GPT so that then you get a little help. You still have to tweak it, you still have to look at it, and things don't seem right. And sometimes the language is not right, but man, it's. It beats staring at a blank piece of paper.
- [18:07]
A
That's the trick. Those last two things were the. That's the gold. It's better than starting from scratch and you can edit anything. It gives you it. It's not going to be perfect. It just isn't. But boy, it sure is a lot easier to edit it than create it from nothing. You don't have to even be in the mood, you know.
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B
No, that's right. And it might be better, you know, it's. Well, it's not me. Well, it might be better than me based on the language model that it's, it's serving up. And I mean, what. Who's to think that I'm better at writing than all the best copywriters in the world?
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A
Right, Right, Right. So my last use case that I'll share today is for tactical preparation of a sales call. So really, really great for you if you're calling on any sort of like big company organization, whatever it is, it doesn't matter, is to just tell it what you're doing. So you would say. So like, I've got a sales call with the CEO of this company today or tomorrow at 11am I've had two calls with them. Go do research on the company and their industry specifically and tell me what are some of the hot buttons that I should address and then give me A list of questions that I should ask the CEO in a list of potential pitfalls or problems or something like that. It is frightening how good and quick this stuff comes back to you for prep. So in the old days, like, oh, we're prepping for a call, we got a one hour prep session for a call. Just let ChatGPT do all the prep for you. Then you're just scanning it. It's so much better that way. So prep is another one.
- [19:43]
B
And you've been using it long enough now. Not long, but long enough that you're starting to think, okay, well I could use it for this, I could use it for that. There's, I've got like 12 or 15 projects and there are things that we do on an ongoing basis. And what you'll find is the use cases will expand as you start to appreciate what it can do. I very seldom use Google anymore. Like I, I, you know, one of the things I'm doing is I do blood work every six months just to make sure. Kind of a blood panel, lipid panel. And now I'm just letting, letting Claude tell me, what do you see when you look at this? What do you see? Taking a picture of the screenshot, putting it in. And it, it look, looks at it. It says, here's what you need. You need to eat more fruits or more ice cream or whatever says that.
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A
More sausage biscuits at Hardies. I mean it does all the things.
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B
Right before 10 though.
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A
Go treat yourself.
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B
Yeah. Anyway, so we hope that has helped you to at least motivate you a little bit to go and spend some more time on the platforms.
- [20:42]
A
You just should just, just get going. It'll, you'll see once you get into it and you get comfortable, it is a, it's like all so many people complain like I need a sales assistant. I need, you have one. You don't need one anymore. You have a sales assistant. 20 bucks a month. There you go. Do so much for you.
- [20:57]
B
So, and, and as it gets more, the AI agent is the next thing. And that is at some point you may not even need to contact those customers that you have. It'll do it for you for sure. Yeah. Now that's when we start replacing human beings with this is, well, you could hire somebody for 60 grand a year to contact them, or you could have chat, GPT or some other agent do it and you might need to train it. And that's what I find that when I talk to people. It's hard to train these things. I mean it takes time. Not not for what. Maybe for what you're doing. I think that's a pretty straightforward thing, but if you're asking it to write in the voice, in your voice, it takes a little training, so. So you got to be willing to put in some elbow grease, some. Some upfront time. For sure.
- [21:44]
A
All right, that's it. See you next time.
- [21:46]
B
Cheers.
- [21:46]
A
By.