147. Ingram Micro President on Why Intelligence Beats Instinct w/ Sanjib Sahoo

Speaker A: Welcome, my lovely people, to yet another fabulous episode of the B2B Sales Trends Podcast. A lot of companies have invested heavily in data, AI digital transformation over the last few years. Your organization probably was one of them. But very few have actually figured out how to turn those investments into better, uh, commercial results and outcomes. So what does that actually look like in practice? And what can we learn? How do you use intelligence to identify better opportunities, improve win rates, and create more profitable growth? That is the burning question. On, um, the B2B Sales Trends Podcast, we give you a sneak peek into the strategies of the world's best CROs and go to market leaders, the systems and the playbooks they are using so you don't have to figure it out the hard way. So if you're interested in increasing win rates, shorten sales cycles, and and learn from the best in B2B selling, this is the podcast for you. Today we are exploring how data, AI and intelligence can help organizations create better revenue outcomes. I'm particularly pleased about, uh, my guest joining me today is Sanjeev Sahu. He's the president of Global Platform Group, Enterprise Strategy, Growth and Operating Results at Ingram Micro. Sanjeev, welcome to the B2B Sales Trends Podcast.

Speaker B: Thank you, Harry. It's a pleasure to be here. And I'm really looking forward, uh, to chatting to you today.

Speaker A: Fabulous. Sanjeev, you spent your career leading technology, digital transformation and platform businesses at a massive scale. Now, before we get into today's topic, tell us a little bit about your role and what your responsibility is today.

Speaker B: Absolutely, Harry. I've spent a lot of time, most of my career at the intersection of technology, business models, transformation and growth. Right. Today at Ingram Micro, I lead the Global Platform Group as we become a platform company. So if you look at xvantage, the platform that fuels our transformation as we become that operating system of the technology ecosystem. I lead all things of platform, platform strategy, and also part of the executive leadership team working closely with our CEO to drive the transformation that makes Ingram Micro a platform company.

Speaker A: Love it. I appreciate the introduction. Now, let's talk a little bit about, uh, the beginning of this conversation about the revenue issue that so many organizations have. You know, every organization wants to grow faster, right? But more pipeline doesn't always necessarily translate into more revenue. What do companies get wrong?

Speaker B: Absolutely. So generally, when you see a pipeline or growth in revenue, it's not about the volume of the pipeline. It's also about the quality of the pipeline. It's not the lack of the opportunity, but knowing that which opportunities matter. Too many times we actually fill in the pipeline with opportunities and do not measure the conversion rate, do not measure how do you use data and intelligence to fill that pipeline so that we can actually grow profitable business. And generally it boils to a significant problem of our industry. In any B2B, many times we run our business more on instinct than intelligence. And what happens, your instinct tells you that this is an opportunity and you put it in the pipeline. And then a lot of the times we spend a lot of time to focus on how do we drive that to more revenue. But if we use intelligence more than instinct, use data, use what is available to you, then I think we can have a much better pipeline that can manage. And if you have a better pipeline, you can forecast better, you can actually understand the health of your business better, and you can actually go far from that.

Speaker A: You know, it's interesting, uh, I always joke about the fact that salespeople tend to live in the land of hope, right? I hope that this opportunity comes through and that opportunity, and I've got all these things in place and I am sure this will go. One of the challenges that sales teams have is really deciding where to focus their time and energy on, in my opinion. How do you identify which opportunities are actually worth pursuing? You mentioned intelligence, you mentioned data. Uh, what tips do you have for the audience here in terms of how do you assess which opportunities are worth pursuing?

Speaker B: I think the most important thing is if you look at a sales perspective in any business, our customers leave clues. The way they interact with us, the way they engage with us, what they have bought historically, what insights they need. And too many times we actually do. Intuition based selling versus intelligence based selling. The question is not who should I call today? The question is, which customer can benefit from a conversation today? And you go from selling products to driving an outcome jointly with your customers. If you focus on selling to your customer, customer will go away and you lose revenue. But you focus on your customer and understand the problems, the pains, and how we can become a partner, a consultant, a growth vehicle for them. Then you can actually drive revenue. So my suggestion is, first of all, take intuition out, focus data, use AI data, intelligence to actually drive that intelligence. Understand what does your customers need? What is their biggest problem? Do not ask about, um, can I sell you this? Change the conversation to tell me what's your problem today? How can we make you win? How can we drive outcome? Take those Intels and then use intelligence and data to understand where you see the opportunity to win together versus intuition. Filling pipeline, selling Products. So I'm trying to make a customer, uh, uh, a sales team from order taker to an order maker. And that's an important transition. And from order taker to order maker requires a sales team to come prepared with inside data opportunities, have a productive conversation. That's where I see the opportunity.

Speaker A: You know, I think it's really interesting what you said, because what are you referring to? Really requires a certain culture to be implemented in the sales teams. Uh, right. It's this idea of if we can help our customers achieve their outcomes, we really don't have a seat at the table anymore. Right. Um, but that really requires a change in mindset, a change in skill set. And you lead a big organization, which also means I need to scale this throughout my organization as well. What challenges do you see with coming with the scaling piece of that mindset and skill set throughout the entire organization?

Speaker B: Um, if you look at Ingram Micro, a Fortune 100 company operating in more than 50 countries, touching almost 90% of the world's population, 160,000 more B2B customers supporting 1500 big technology brands in the business for more than 45 years. Right. If you look at that scale, how do you scale conversation? You cannot scale and talk to every single customer all the time. And too many times we feel this conversation and driving outcome is more about how much we talk to our customers. Interesting. In the world of AI, that relationship fabric has changed and it has changed to be more intelligence driven. If we provide intelligence to our customers for them to win, then we win credibility, we win stickiness. That's the new relationship. If we cannot drive an insight that is not important for our customers, so what we have to drive is a culture of intelligence. A uh, culture of insight more than intuition or update based culture. You don't ask your employees about an update. In every sales meeting or every meeting, ask for an insight. Where do you see how can we help our customers then? As you learn from those insights, you use your data and AI to train them. Such a way you move from being transaction partners to your customers to become strategic and value partners to drive more outcomes. And your intelligence that you drive can do that. For example, instead of waiting for your customers to come and buy from you, if you can be proactive and using intelligence to push them, recommendations, opportunities, bundling opportunities, giving them what is happening and educate them, I think that makes them to grow their business, then automatically you will actually get business coming to you. And the main reason and this doesn't work is too many times our mindset stops us to drive such a culture. We think AI as uh, a scary tool that can take our jobs. But the most important thing about AI is not the AI algorithm or the technology. It's the culture of curiosity that drives to ask questions to make us more intelligent in a better mindset which creates creativity in solutioning for our customers. And then curiosity and creativity will drive collaboration where you can get a seat at the table and with your customers to figure out how you can jointly win either by talking to large customers or using the AI to push intel for your mid size or small customers to win and show them, hey, they are important because you have a $50 billion company investing in AI and data to give you insights and intelligence to grow for it. And that's relationship. It's not just talking more and more

Speaker A: companies as you just alluded to, um, have access to much more data, more data than ever before. Right. Why do so few of them turn that data into meaningful commercial results? Because you've just highlighted the problem. What do you think or why do you think that organizations are not taking advantage of that intelligence? What are they doing wrong?

Speaker B: I think too many times we look at data as a factual basis to prove and make some decisions. But you do not use data in a way that can constantly work with humans to make incrementally better. Right? So less than 5% of the data is useful in an enterprise, even in a uh, small window. But how do you look at the data and interact with it in a way that drives decision making? You have to turn data into intelligence. And if you do not turn data into intelligence, you do not drive an insight based curious culture to drive outcomes. The challenge is that data makes you run the business, intelligence makes you grow the business, data makes you work in the business, intelligence makes you work on the business, which means intelligence makes you grow, intelligence makes you partner with your customers. And the challenge for that is to collect data in a uh, way which connects all the dots. In enterprise is a struggle. In large enterprises, data is fragmented, it's in different systems. Everybody gets their view of the data for a function or what they do. But how do you interconnect data to drive intelligence is a big challenge. It requires system defragmentation, cleaning up, uh, putting data in a common data lake, driving intelligence using AI models, it's a lot of infrastructure to do. So that's what happens, that we take some data and some intuition and some gut feeling and try to do what we do. However, using data also, Harry, is a mindset challenge, right? You give the same Data to two different salespeople. Some will use it to fill their quotas, some will use it to drive growth with their partners. That's called customer centricity. And customer centricity cannot be taught. Mindset cannot be taught. You don't read a book for how to drive a better mindset. What is important is same data with two different people. One can use it and curious to drive growth, other can use it to actually run the business. That is the difference. So it's two challenges. One, the systematic and complex challenges to aggregate data uh, meaningfully across the enterprise to drive intel to integrate external internal data. Secondly, use AI factory processes journeys to drive intelligence out of data which is more integrated intelligence across the enterprise, not just siloed intelligence. The third is how do you actually create a culture or uh, mindset that you can turn data into intelligence which can drive customers centricity and growth. I think those are the main challenges where you see the problems right now.

Speaker A: The one thing that we haven't spoken about, which is fascinating by the way, your insights uh, and thought leadership on this. The one thing that we haven't spoken about. So okay, great, you have data, you have obviously more intelligence. You may have the mindset to do it, you may have a culture that implemented it. The behaviors and the skills of how sellers now driving through the sales process and have these conversations and articulating uh, these outcomes. Is that the piece that is missing to all of this or is this now outdated and with, in this day and age not relevant anymore?

Speaker B: No, it is important. If you look at it, technology is changing all the time and how do you keep yourself updated and knowledgeable to have a conversation with your uh, sales team, uh customers and too many times I feel we make simple things complex. I think the job of a ah, salesperson or anybody will be to make complex things simple and understand the problems in a simple way and articulate solutioning. We have to move from selling to solutioning and to, to get into solutioning you need to get your concepts clear. And to get your concepts clear you have to be curious. And to be curious you have to ask the question. The main thing is ask a question and you use AI and data to ask the question. If you look at any AI model today, if you look at vibe coding, it is as good as, as you ask the question. If you do not ask the question, you do not get the right answers. So let's do an example. Harry. In our world, right? In Ingram Micro's world, so today a lot of our growth uh, is Coming through AI, you know, which we call it IDA Intelligent Digital Assistant. And the conversion rates, those are much higher. And it's one of our vehicles that is driving top line today with uh, a great profile, margin profile. And how do we do that? So what we do is we have used our data, we use all the code data, we fed it to our algorithms and we stack rank opportunities based on the criteria our sales team are setting. Either it's revenue margin category and then they go and follow up on those opportunities and shorten the sales cycle and we are seeing much more engaged conversation. Think about if you are buying for a car, somebody has the algorithm and AI to figure out what kind of car you need and, and an offer for you and you can have a much better conversion rate. Now how do you drive that intelligence? It only drives intelligence because our sales team is using, we call it sales briefing agent our agentic platforms to understand and brief what the customer wants. Then look at the quote, have a conversation, do uh, that. So my point is it boils down to simple basics about asking the question being solutioning approach, not selling. Because you're not selling SKUs or products anymore, you are actually solutioning and selling outcome which Nikor solutioning. Keep in mind Harry, your expertise can become a commodity in AI world today. You can use all algorithm systems but your experience cannot be replaced by AI. The experience that I sit with you Harry, as a customer to have a conversation or, or understand your problems, to really give you a solution to your problems and not fulfill your orders. And uh, apart from that's very important, that requires a mindset about problem solving, curiosity. So it boils down to all to that mindset which is data and mindset combined together.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, I think you're spot on. Um, I think um, the behaviors and skills attached to everything that's on offer for us now in the B2B selling world, um, we just have to be really, really good at this. We just have to be really good at taking all the data, all the intelligence pilot together, use it to my advantage. It changes a lot of things. It changes how I do the discovery, for example, it changes uh, really how we engage with our customers. But essentially the skills and behaviors that we need to be able to do that really well, they're still the same.

Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. Data doesn't change behavior. All it puts you is have a better behavior. The skills of problem solving, solutioning never changed. Today AI and intelligence gives you much more fuel to the engine to have you solutioning better.

Speaker A: Now as customers or as consumers Should I rather say not Customers, we've all become very used to and accustomed to experiences that are personalized, experiences that are easy for me. They're intuitive, they're super, super smart and easy to implement. What lessons should B2B organizations take from that consumer approach?

Speaker B: I call it a Sunday to Monday problem. Let's say we're in a Sunday, we are watching, maybe in a football game, like a soccer game. And uh, I go to my app and I'm super hungry. So I ordered some pizza, french fries, extra spicy ketchup. And I can track seven minutes. It will come. I track the order, comes to my home, I'm done. Amazing. And no, uh, it's all good. Then I come to a B2B world. Well, I put an order. I'm waiting to get a quote back or a price back or it takes a long time. How do you blend the B2C experience into B2B? How do you blend a Sunday experience when you come to work on Monday? So I call it Sunday to Monday. Make every day a fun day. You know, how do you actually really blend? That's the lesson we should learn. Like how do we serve our customers in a way that we get served on a day to day basis? How do you blend that experience back into our business to be better? Because at the end of the day, experience matters. We think AI is all about automation. Automation and expertise can become a commodity, but experience doesn't. Why do we like the app? It's personalized. It knows what I like. I quickly add and gives me recommendations. I'm um, done. Imagine if we bring this to the selling process. Do I need to talk to somebody for two hours to explain what I need? I get all the recommendations, I know what is available. Boom, it's done. That's the newer relationship. Now obviously not everything can be done that way. We can have big customers. But how do you create that personalized experience in a way that drives ease of use for our customers? So learn from B2C lessons to bring B2B. Give an example, Harry. Uh, we have built Xvantage platform and one of the things was to create that B2C experience in B2B. So when you log in, getting a personalized experience for our partners, making sure you can configure your widgets in a way, making sure you get updates and insights to you, making sure you can do transactions without going to multiple different marketplaces and all create a single pane of glass. It all creates an ease of use in a way that makes the experience better. So creating a, uh, B2C experience B2B is not easy. But if it's one lesson that we can learn is how do you replicate that ease of use today? And it's not impossible. You know, sometimes people are buying large transactions, sometimes they buy planes on a website. It's all your mindset. You know, like too many times we think, okay, we can just need to go and process and communication, data and experience. And uh, AI makes us that experience so much better. So that's what I would say we should learn how we bring to our businesses to make that experience so much more like B2C every day. So B2C to B2B. That's my new mantra.

Speaker A: Love it, love it. So let's say an organization is adapting that and starts operating that way. What changes for them?

Speaker B: It first changes that in an organization you have too many processes. That takes time consuming manual work. Because B2B is complex, right? Sales cycles are longer. Billing, invoicing, purchasing complicated processes. The more you take ease of the dues, you first create a sense of question, I would say fear in employees about is there change? Is something changing what we have done for so many years? There is uncertainty that does that. So that is the biggest issue where you start creating experience. It is misunderstood as automation. And automation creates a message of replacement versus reimagination. The one thing that we have to understand with AI is replacement creates fear, reimagination creates opportunity. When you start automating processes, you're automating because you want to create a better experience for your customers. But if you do not message it right, it will look like you're automating jobs, jobs and creating fear versus freeing up time so that you can create a better experience for your partners. That belief has to be there in your organization. That is a big challenge because too many times AI is misunderstood as automating jobs, right? Everywhere you see that and when sales is generally a relationship driven business where you actually talk and all the more you automate, it creates fear about, okay, what's the role of a salesperson then? So the idea is focus on cognitive behavior, solutioning outcome versus automating the back end. If that message is not really well understood, it can be detrimental to organization. So what I would say Harry, is compassion. The art of storytelling, making the vision rallied by your employees. Showing them what is possible is extremely important because driving change is very hard. And this is the biggest barrier to create a B2C experience in B2B.

Speaker A: Do you agree with, um, you were talking about change and Sometimes change is hard. Right. Um, I've uh, read something recently where they said uh, it's one thing to change because when you go in through change, you're always sort of chasing after an event that already has happened. And if you change your mind around the fact that let's transform something and make others change and chase that transformation and we are at ah, the helm of the thought leadership here. That's what it really takes. What's your take on that? Out of curiosity.

Speaker B: Change and transformation doesn't have a start sign or a stop sign. We have to think big and act small. You cannot say I'm going to change from today and start changing tomorrow. It doesn't work like that. It's a spirit, it's a DNA of an organization or a uh, employee. What it means is that too many times we resist change because of the fear of uncertainty, fear of failure. And we also go for perfection. And perfection is the biggest enemy for progress in today's organization. That's what organization are, ah, struggling. We have to be imperfectly perfect, not perfectly perfect, but we have to be a little more perfect every single day. And if you try to be creating a culture that is imperfectly perfect, then you eliminate the huge fear of failure. You create a culture that you can take incremental changes every day to go towards a vision and do that. You cannot start a project to change and you actually do not start a project to stop change. For example, today people go to ChatGPT or Cloud or even your new iPhone. You don't need a book to understand that. What do you do? You just play with it, work with it. It's your mind. The problem is that sometimes we feel change is happening to us, but we have to think about changes happening for us. How do you take change and obstacle to an opportunity and create a culture about you? Come to work and you get to learn, enjoy what you do and you change continuously and do that. And the last thing I'll say on that is there are three things that makes a difference. We have to get our employees engaged about our vision which creates purpose. So if there is a purpose of change, you will have employees change because you align on the purpose. And if you align on the purpose, you have to make employees passion be passionate because passion cannot be faked. You will change when you are passionate about the purpose, otherwise it will not change. Then you will get fearful. And if your passion and purpose intersect, then you will learn new skills and you drive change on your own. And if every employee can change their mindset and drive change on their own. You do not need a change management program to drive change because you are changing every day to creating a, uh, culture to focus on that 60% chance of success versus that 40% chance to fail. Focus on being perfectly perfect, focusing on going towards thinking big and act small and small failures are okay. And you calibrate. That is how we should approach changes.

Speaker A: Love your response. Um, the last question on every single podcast that I'm asking, Sanjeev, is always the same. What are the top three elite selling skills that people nowadays need to possess to really, uh, be elite in the field? What would that be?

Speaker B: Number one is curiosity. Is curious to stay up to date, Curious to drive the intelligence that you drive from your data intelligence and AI, and curious about the problems that your customers industry is having. That curiosity will drive creativity. But curiosity is a number one. Number two is problem solving. Sellers have to solve problems, not sell products. Sellers have to have problem solving opportunity because customers love problem solving. Customers buy from you because they have a need, and they have a need because they have a problem to solve. But if our sellers do not have that problem solving mindset, then they cannot match the left with the right. They cannot manage demand and supply. So problem solving is extremely important. The last thing I will say is that focusing on outcome, not focusing on just selling, you know, you have to focus on outcome. And driving shared outcomes and objectives with your partners is extremely important. Which drives to communication and which means that to become an outcome driver, Harry, you got to be a listener. So our sellers have to sell through their ears, not through their mouth all the time. A, uh, best salesperson listens to problems versus selling what they have. So we have to not just sell what we make. We have to sell what we make possible. And let me repeat, we do not have to sell what we make. We have to empower our customers to understand that what we can make possible, that's you get of the best sales team in the future.

Speaker A: Anything in my outro, what I'm going to say now, uh, will sound ridiculous compared to what you've just shared with the audience. Sanjeev, you've been an absolute superstar. I wish the world would have, uh, more leaders like yourself. Uh, we appreciate you coming on, uh, spending the time with us. Uh, and thank you for sharing that thought leadership with the audience. We appreciate it. Thank you.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Uh, thank you so much, Harry. Really appreciate the time today.

Speaker A: One of the things that stood out to me is this idea that we have to combine data, intelligence as well as the skills and behaviors to execute, uh, and come to the right outcomes for our customers. Now that of course is challenging, but we need to lead that change. We need to lead that transformation. And Sanjeev has shared so many cool things from the order taker to the order maker to Reimagination creates Opportunity My lovely people, I think there are a lot of fantastic learnings in this episode for you now, uh, if you are listening or watching. If you're looking for ways to improve win rates, increase revenue and identify where opportunities may get stuck in your sales process, take a look at the link below. Take our revenue, uh, accelerator to identify where you have improvement opportunities. If you found this discussion valuable, make sure you're following the show on YouTube so you don't miss any future episodes. My lovely people, until the next time, take care of yourself, your loved ones, and of course your B2B customers. Bye bye.