Introducing the 1st AI-Native Sales Execution Methodology w/Jim Dickie

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Hello and welcome to another edition of Close Mode, the Enterprise Sales Show. I'm Brian Dietmire, CEO of Close Strong and today I am here with one of the nicest, smartest guys that I know, Jim Dicke, who is currently a research fellow at Sales Mastery. He's a sales transformation analyst. Uh, if you don't know Jim and you want a stat about selling, Jim's the guy. And he'll have a story to go along with each one of those stats as well. He was also the former co founder of CSO Insights. Jim, welcome back to the show.

Speaker A: Thanks Brian. Glad to be here.

Speaker B: So today we're talking about the evolution of sales methodology and we're introducing the first AI native sales execution methodology which is a closed, strong product. So you and I Jim, we've spent a great deal of time chatting about evolution of selling and the need to evolve how we enable uh, salespeople. And today we're going to uh, dive deep into sales methodology and, and what we're bringing to market to deliver a solution that matches the reality of today's market. So here's, here's my first question for you. I'm looking at it, it's a rather long one. So American companies spend 26 billion a year sales, uh, methodology training events. I've interviewed 65 sales revenue and enablement leads as I was building out this solution. All of them had made that investment, they pulled that lever of sales methodology training and all of them to a person were not pleased. And this blew me away. I put this up on LinkedIn a couple weeks ago. All of them said look, we're not qualifying, we're not multi threading, we're not doing a good job of competitive insight, we're doing crap discovery and we're not selling solutions, we're reacting to customers and order fulfilling. So why with all this money and all this time going into training for how to do those things to a person, all 65 of these execs said we're failing the basics still.

Speaker A: Well I think Brent, let's even stop. Start off by just focusing on the fact that we've been spending billions of dollars on um, not just training, we've been spending it on CRM, we've been spending it on content, we're spending it on a whole lot of things for salespeople. And you mentioned that we've been doing a longitudinal study on sales for over 30 years. And let me just share with you one stat. So uh, of the 70 metrics we gather, one of the things we always Say is what's the outcome of forecast deals? So this is forecast. This is not all the deals that go in the pipeline. These are the ones that you're at the end of the shoot, you sit there and say, hey, this is going to close in the next 30, 60, 90 days, whatever your forecast horizon is. What's the outcome?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And the outcome has never been over 50% in all the years we've done this. Now, this is a forecast, by the way, that we created.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And the odds of winning at the craps tables of Vegas are 49.3%. And so we're doing, like, worse than playing craps.

Speaker B: So flip a coin.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think that's the thing that people need to understand is this can't continue. You know, something's fundamentally wrong. And, uh, I think one of the things that's wrong is the way that we've been approaching sales is, you know, we'll have the sales kickoff meeting. We'll. We'll plan some training events for that. We'll bring everybody together. We roll out and say, okay, here's what we want you to do. So we want you to call. Hi. We want you to differentiate. We want you to create a sense of urgency. We want you to sell value and avoid discounting. And you go, great. But then, you know, the reps leave there and say, okay, I now know what to do. Well, I probably already knew what to do when I got to the sales kickoff meeting. But then we get back and they come back and they say, okay, how do I do that? And the how is left up to the sales manager.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Because they're supposed to go in and coach.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And that's great. But what we've asked again, sales managers, how do you spend your time? They come back and they say, well, I spent about 20% of my time coaching. Well, if I've got indirect reports an hour per week per person. And by the way, half of that's probably just saying, you know, what's the status on the GE deal? And so they're just reiterating stuff that's probably already in CRM. That's not coaching.

Speaker B: No, it's auditing.

Speaker A: That's up. It's talking.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Uh, so, you know, there's just really not this model that the model's kind of broken, is that we come up with what to do, but we're not really dealing with the how of selling and the how changes all the time. And I think that's one of the biggest issues that companies need to deal with.

Speaker B: Yep. And you know, another thing, Jim, that you and I have talked about is when we talk about sort of traditional or what I would call legacy methodology, you know, the two day events that you roll out. Um, uh, you and I had a discussion the other day about we need to think about that definition of methodology in a more broad way. Right. Most of us think it's the ip, Right. It's the content that you get in the workshop that's the methodology. But it's really broader than that. What's your take on when we think about methodology, what are all the stages of it?

Speaker A: I think that really there are six things that kind of strike us that need to be part of an overall sales methodology. One is the intellectual property itself. There are a lot of good, uh, basic frameworks for how to go out and sell that are out there that have been proven and I think they still hold the test of time. But the key thing on it is we don't live in a one size fits all world. And so we've got to take that methodology and we've got to first off, uh, customize it to our company.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: Because when you sit there and say, well, I want you to go out and differentiate yourself in the marketplace. Well, what's my differentiation? For one company could be their product. For another company, it could be their service. For third company, it could be their price. For fourth company, it could be their alliances with other partners. I mean, so you've got to come in and customize this thing to each individual company. And so somebody's got to do that work. Then there's the delivery mechanism. You know, we've, we've for years relied on training salespeople. So again, you know, okay, let's bring in everybody to the sales kickoff meeting and for three days we're going to go through training courses on this new stuff. Well, there's been tons of studies published that just said, you know, classroom training is great as long as you immediately go out and start to apply what you learned. Because if you don't apply it immediately, you fall off in terms of retention of what the skills and tactics that you were given. So I think we've got to deal with that. Then we've got to sit there and say, okay, how do we apply this methodology to this specific deal? Yes, because, uh, there's a sell cycle involved. But the sell cycle is there for one reason. It's there to support the buy cycle and each customer is going to be buying different ways. So I've got to then customize the. You Know, the application of this thing to this unique customer. And so therefore, I'm again going back to what we already talked about, you know, coaching and having my sales manager or something or somebody, you know, come in and kind of help me modify this thing and go through and say, are we doing the right thing? Isn't it working? And then the last thing is we live in a frail ecosystem, so the way that we were selling last week may not work this week. So how do we constantly adapt how we're selling? So I think there are six aspects and we're just focused on one. Hey, we delivered a methodology, we had a class, and that's part of it, but it's definitely not all. I think that's why things are failing.

Speaker B: Yeah, I love that definition because I do think that most of us think it's the ip. And again, the IP is not bad and the IP is actually not the problem. It's all the customization and the pull through. When you mentioned customers, I realize in the last year, as we're rolling out this new solution that we think of customization in terms of scopes. What is the rep selling, who are they competing against, what vertical are they in, and is it a new or renewal? Most of the customers we're working with now have 20 scopes. And if you go back to the legacy approach to methodology, and we're going to talk about how we use AI to do that today, but with legacy methodology, what I see and what I did in my past methodology company is do kind of the one size fits all. It wasn't dialed into what am I selling, who am I competing against? You know, is it newer renewal that, like, how do you sell in that situation? And I think, uh, many of these methodologies you and I discussed the other day, that it's been 20 years maybe since a new methodology, a brand new methodology has come out and they were all built in a time where the world was different and the technology that exists today wasn't there. Right. So all those six steps you talk about, uh, to me reflect what was happening 20 years ago.

Speaker A: Exactly. And the world is changing dramatically and AI is driving that change.

Speaker B: Yeah, the other thing you talked about was, you know, applying it to the deal. And I not only ran a methodology company, I was also an independent consultant for another methodology company. And what that meant was you fill in the form at the end of the training class, right? There's a skill acquisition piece for, for a day and a half and then you fill in the blank form, which, which to me it's the answers that go into the form is where the brilliance is and the reps are zero. Basing every deal based on that. And again, that's something that's existed forever. There's not been an alternative to the typical sales training events. I think that's why people still pull the lever. They get a little lift out of it, but the design is just old. And then you also mentioned, uh, the static nature of them too. The world's changing quickly. It sounds cliche, but how do you update that? So I have another question for you. I've noticed lately that a lot of the legacy methodology companies are kind of trying to retrofit. They're trying to bring in AI. Right. So they're trying to retrofit with some third party AI. What, what do you see as is that the right solution? Are there problems with that?

Speaker A: Uh, I think there are because you know, Everybody talks about AI, but I actually managed my first AI projects in the 80s.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And I was using algorithms from the 50s which by the way are still valid. Yeah. But we were at that point in time just kind of scratching the surface on what could you do with this? I remember speaking to comdex, I did a presentation on what is artificial intelligence and why should I care. And I think we're still struggling today that when you take a look at chat GPT and here's a powerful, powerful tool, game changer in all marketplaces. What's the most common thing people are using it for? Proofreading and editing documents.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Come on. So I think the biggest problem right now is you've got methodology companies who are not technologists and you really got to blend the two together to really understand because otherwise you're going to be driving a Ferrari down the autobahn in Germany at uh, 30 miles an hour. And that's not what it was made for. You're supposed to be driving at 150 miles an hour.

Speaker B: Ah, absolutely. And that's why when I talk about that we are the first AI native built methodology and we call it a sales execution methodology. That it's not a bolt on, it's not something for methodology that was developed in the 80s. It's purpose built. In uh, fact we can't execute ours without using AI because it's purpose built. But I know you had some questions for me about that, so I'm going to throw it back to you at this point.

Speaker A: Well, before we get into what you were just starting to talk about, um, I co founded two software companies in my life and Arthur Rock who was one of the lead visionaries in the venture capital space, was an investor in one of those. Arthur was the first investor in intel, was an early investor in Apple. And he was really great at asking really probing questions. Uh, one question he would always ask is he sit downs? And, and when I say, hey, I got an idea for a new software company, he'd go, great. What's your motivation?

Speaker B: Right?

Speaker A: You know, what's your motivation for solving this specific problem? Why is this problem worth solving? And why is your approach the unique way that you want to do it? So I'm going to ask you what's your motivation for trying to take a look at, you know, building a, you know, a first native sales application methodology around precision guided selling.

Speaker B: So uh, m. Some of our listeners know that I ran and still have Think Inc. Which is a negotiation methodology company, right. And customers still love it and buy it, but there's a better way. And one of the reasons I've realized there's a better way is that one of our customers asked us to coach a billion dollars in renewals in the pipe. And we've been rolling out workshops all over the world for this Fortune 10 company and we coach these billion dollars in deals. And I just realized, wow, like this had major league impact. Jim and Brian working on a $5 million renewal for two or three Zoom sessions or even some in person sessions that was brutal to scale. Way more effective than running the workshops. Brutal to scale. I think we were billing that at 10k a day. So we are touching the top 1% of the sales force and the top 5% of the deals. And so part of my motivation was there has got to be a better way to uh, completely redefine methodology and sales training. And so that was one of my goals was how do we scale? How do we completely redefine this from events of 20 people sitting in a room to 1 to 124 7, 365 at scale for about the same price as training events. And so that, that was one push. And uh, you had mentioned to me, I don't know, about a year ago we were talking about something, uh, I will talk a lot about strategy to tactics connection. I believe that sales training should be about how do you execute your strategy one deal at a time, not how do you sell, which is kind of generic methodology. And you mentioned something to me. A company comes up with a new initiative, a new product. They announce it at sko and then on Monday everybody goes back and sells the same thing and the customers are still ordering the same thing. And it struck me, that was at least a couple years ago you said that to me. And that was a motivation too. It's like, how do we get that behavior change at the deal level at each stage of the sales cycle? If we're trying to make a switch to sell something new, how do we do that? Right, so I'll give you a quick example. I know folks and me, I like examples. We were working with a telecom company that was primarily a contract manufacturer and they wanted to move upstream into both integrated design and manufacturing solutions. So they did what you said. They announced at SKO and people went back and customers were still ordering contract manufacturing from them because that's what they knew. Sellers were still selling it because that was their comfort zone. And the question is, how do you drill that strategy? Whether it's new or existing? Uh, how should we be qualifying to sell this new solution? Who should we be talking to? What new KPIs can we impact? What kind of discovery should we be doing? What does our competitive analysis look like with this new solution in here? How should we be configuring solutions and presenting them to customers? That's what you said to me two years ago. But we need to get into the how. That's what AI Native sales execution methodology is all about, is to say what is your strategy and how does it. We call it. Actually you helped with this name, precision guided selling precision at each sales stage. What do we have to be doing differently? What data do we need to execute this part of our strategy?

Speaker A: Let's get into just a little bit more, Brian, because you've talked about that. But when you get into what do you mean by AI native sales execution methodology, what does that mean to you and what should other sales executives be thinking about?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, native I kind of touched on quickly earlier. Ours is purpose built. We've got some methodology, we've got a book that supports it, but the book is only given to our clients because it's useless out there in the field because the book is supported by AI. Right. So it was purpose built. Like this whole thing was purpose built together to encompass all what you talked about before. What's the underlying methodology, how are we going to customize it, how are we going to deliver it, how are we going to coach it and reinforce it and how are we going to update it? It was built ground up, leveraging current technology. So you know when to. So that's AI Native. When we talk about sales execution again, it's back to that, that, that how are we executing our sales, that's what we should be teaching reps how to do. And it's cool because I think one of the things I wrote in the precision guided selling book is hey you as a rep, your job now is executing company strategy one deal at a time. I think that's a pretty cool job, right? And that's, that's what AI native sales execution methodology is all about. Is as your strategy shifting as the marketplace is, are we feeding this at each stage of a deal to a rep? Are uh, we giving them the data and the insight and the guidance that they need, they need to compete.

Speaker A: So

Speaker B: the AI guides reps, uh, there's essentially sort of no training with this approach. It goes immediately to deal application, right? Say okay, welcome, log in, let's go to this opportunity, let's qualify, right? And let's continue to go through this. And it's available, you know, 24, 7, 365. And the question I've been talking to some potential customers about is look, you can spend 1500 bucks ahead, you uh, know 150 grand on rolling out two day events or you can have 24, 7 to 365 support uh, for every rep on every sales stage for the next year for about the same investment. And so that, that to me that's the starkest way Jim, to think about the difference between rolling out legacy events and having this sustained scalable solution. That's one to one and completely in context.

Speaker A: Brian, you had asked me to talk about what I thought uh, the components ought to be for successful implementations of projects. I came up with six things for you. Let's go back and revisit how you stack up against those things. Because you've talked about the fact you've got a methodology, but where did it come from? What kind of testing has it been under over the last couple decades that you've been rolling it out?

Speaker B: We've had for others who work in startups. And Jim, this should sound familiar to you, we have had an argument here for a year about whether or not we are a methodology. And quite frankly my team, my team and I think even you to a degree were saying yes you are. And I was the one pushing back and I finally realized we are. So we've prior to founding this company for 20 years, we coach deals in 47 countries and we know what a fact based approach for at each stage of the deal cycle from qualify to close, what data do we need to continue to nudge this deal forward and include and increase our close rate so it's really our uh, methodology, if you want to call it that is process steps, at what stages, what data and insight do we need to compete and how are we going to use that with this customer and is it connected to our overall strategy? And so this precision guided selling, it is a methodology that encompasses all those moving parts you talked about and it can be used as a standalone or if somebody else is using a classic methodology, uh, and their team is licensed to use it, uh, our guidance can even reinforce that and pull it through.

Speaker A: Got it. So I understand that. But what is your approach in terms, how are you different in terms of customizing that methodology to each individual customer that you're going to be working with going forward?

Speaker B: Yep. To me this is one of the most exciting parts and it's one of the breakthroughs that we had. I had mentioned earlier that part of the trick with customizations is scope. A, uh, rep's working on this solution against this competitor in this vertical and it's either new or renewal. There's almost no way to customize methodology and then deliver that to people in a classroom to give them the guidance they need on the how. And we had a dream. There's two parts to our solution. One is the strategy center, which is the brain of the guide, and then the second is the closed plan, which is, you know, where, where the brain speaks to the rep and guides them. We had a dream, uh, 18 months ago that the strategy center would create itself. I could say, I'm my, my client at, at close Strong is GE Healthcare and I could put that into the brain and the brain would build out data that tracks with every stage of the sales cycle. We were doing that manually. It took us about six weeks. We build about uh, 20,000 for the average customer to build out one or two scopes. The AI can now build out 20, 30 scopes in 15, 20 minutes. So that's one way in which it's different. It's the level of customization, multiple scopes. We just did this for one of our first clients and we ran, excuse me, we ran the data by four cross functional execs, deal desk people, products people, you know, sales leads, and they rated the data 87% accurate before we ever spoke to a human right to get it done. And then, then what we did is we interviewed some of those key execs like the deal desk and product and pricing and sales lead and talk to them about their frustrations. You know, what's wrong, what's coming in, you know, why are these deals in bad shape. What would make them be in better shape? We record those interviews, have AI summarize it, and then drop that into the prompt for their guide. And we just, this is again to me the most exciting part of what we do. And we started out building this close plan thing and then the tail wagged the dog and the strategy center took on a life of its own. So it's already, you know, laden with prompts, really good prompts. But now I interviewed Jim Dicke, who's the deal desk guy at this company. You tell me what your frustrations are, what you want to see more of, less of, same of. I summarize that I drop it into the prompt for your unique instance. So when a reps getting around to the business of configuring solution in commercial terms, it's being guided how Jim Dicke would guide them. And we, we demoed this, we interviewed this customer and we started with our AI data, then we interviewed the customer, he dropped in the prompt and we had the guide produce a solution and commercial terms configuration. And it was, it was so cool. This exec said, you just scaled the hell out of me, right? Yes. Everything I want reps doing and a lot of the things that are not happening are now happening. And you know what, you want to change that tomorrow? It's no problem. I'm going to interview you, I'm going to summarize it, I'm going to drop it into the prompt. So I hope we did the same with, with the, the one lead who was really high on discovery. It's like who should we be talking to, what should we be talking to them about? This is a company that, that is in manufacturing business and there's a lot of engineering data and he gave us, uh, we should be talking to these production managers about these specific engineering specs and all that went into the prompt. So when, when the, when the guide is bringing discovery questions back to the rep, it's reflecting, right? When you're talking to this person, you've got to get to this KPI. So I hope that helps. I mean it's completely different than the sort of soft approach to light, light overarching customization. And it's drilled down precisely to what am I selling, who am I competing against, what vertical, etc.

Speaker A: You know, you take a look at AI and you see clearly this could be a profound aid to help salespeople in terms of, you know, giving that 7 by 24 coaching type of capability. Uh, but I'm just kind of curious is how is Your delivery of this solution going to be different than sitting there and saying, we're going to, hey, it's a kickoff me and we're going to cover. Everything is, you know, this is like, it sounds like this could be delivered every single day on every single deal. So what's that look like to you?

Speaker B: Yeah, I'd mentioned earlier that it's like as we've completely tried to redefine this whole notion of sales training and think of sales methodology at the base of this, that there's really. We bypassed the skill acquisition phase. We go directly, you know, uh, okay, the rep is going to do about two and a half hours of online modules to get a sense of, of what this methodology is. What is PGS precision Guided Selling based on? Uh, how does the technology work? You know, get them ready. But that's more of a kind of a soft intro. The moment they log in, they are asked, what are you selling? Who are you competing against? What vertical are you selling in? Is it new or renewal? And then all the data in the strategy center pulls into the guide's brain for that deal. And we start with, with qualify, right to go. Okay, here's, here's what this, this is the part I'd mention a lot of methodology. You're filling out blank forms. It's the answers that go into the forms that are helpful. The rep is not taught how to qualify. It's saying, okay, for this kind of a deal, here are the six qualifiers and those are weighted kind of most to least important. And you shouldn't even go after this thing. You know, it'll give them a score, but based on actual qualification criteria, then it will, uh, kind of de risk the deal it'll look at. Is it qualified? Am I talking to the right people about the right things? Can I compete? And based on what the reps clicking and the answers they're giving to the data we're providing them, it's giving them kind of a risk score for this deal and then giving them the specific actions against specific stakeholders, down to the specific discovery that they need to be doing to de risk this deal and raise the probability of winning.

Speaker A: Gotcha. Uh, I guess the thing is, let's take it a little step further and talk about how do the reps then apply it to each individual deal. Is it going through and saying, okay, as we're progressing on this thing? I'm giving it some feedback, but it's giving me more advice all the way through the process. How's that work?

Speaker B: Yeah, and I kind of started Bleeding into some of that in my previous answer. But again it's 24. 7 on demand. Just in time versus just in case. And again 364 it's there. This isn't a two day event and we hope the coaches pull it through. The coaching's built into it. Frontline coaches are given deal summaries for every deal that's being guided. Right. So we can help them and I think we'll talk about that later. But yeah, what happens with the rep is again they come in, they log in, they click a few boxes saying this is what I'm selling, who I'm competing against, etc. And it starts from qualify to stakeholder engagement to our ability to compete to then discovery questions and an action plan and then coming back for solution configuration and then finally developing customer facing solutions. And at each phase, I mean some of these steps are taking 3-4m minutes because the data is being provided to the rep. They're not filling out forms, they're just clicking what's relevant. So it's uh, again it's real time, it's immediate, it's just in time and it's giving them data that's in alignment with the company strategy. Right. Aligned with everything. Sales stage. So I hope that that helps. It's a little bit different than spending two days in a class and spending most of your time doing skill acquisition and then filling out the form at the end of the class. We start immediately. The training is immediately. Let's qualify this opportunity based on these qualifiers that are custom for what you're selling.

Speaker A: So when you're getting into the coaching type of model, the technology AI can be coached by itself but you're also going to have your own sales manager as a coach. What's that blended coaching model look like?

Speaker B: Yeah, I was talking to a friend of mine, Gary, who's a uh, sales VP at a tech company and I showed him the deal summary. So after the rep is guided, a deal summary is provided to the frontline manager, a one pager. And Gary said holy blank. I could 3 to 5x the quality and quantity of my one on ones, you know, and I think I knew the answer but I was like tell me some more on that. And he said I spend, excuse me, I spend half of my one on one downloading the basic data on the deal and you're, you're handing me, is it qualified? Who am I talking to? You know, where are my holes? Have I done discovery? You know, uh, am I ready to compete? All that you're dropping all that in front of me. And his point was I can do a lot more and I can do a lot better because I can start deep. I'm starting at, you know, who knows, 20 or 30ft underground versus 10ft above ground saying okay, you know, let's begin with the basics. So, and I think that's, that's the big piece is that we're doing a lot of that guiding upfront. We know managers are not going to have time to do it now. There are some deals that need to be double clicked on and that's why we have a deal summary. You know, we know. And Jim, I think you've told me this, that 5% of a pipeline is being touched by a frontline sales manager today. Uh, you don't want every deal guided. You know, if this is your new sales training solution, you want people to be doing maybe if the what would happen if you had 50 to 60% of the pipe guided by the AI and then the top 10% of that push the deal summary to the frontline manager who then double coaches it. And so that's kind of the model and we've even got to onboard the managers to say how do you coach a deal that's been pre coached or pre guided in this way? Because it's, you know, all the basics are covered for you so you can now begin to get like crazy deep.

Speaker A: I think one of the things, you know, we've seen in the past is that uh, when you're trying to improve something over time, you've, you, we've been relying on people to do that. So we've been relying on managers to improve the sales process. We've been relying on programs to improve the CRM technology. AI can help improve itself.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: So how is precision guided selling reacting to what it learns in terms of, hey, we provided this guidance except this new little twist came up in the marketplace and here's the next, here's the more effective way to handle it next time. How does that evolve itself and what does that mean to the rep and to the manager?

Speaker B: So you make me think of something we're presenting to a potential investor who asked, well, you're training an LLM, you know, so how long before this thing has efficacy? How long before it learns enough to be really smart? And we said it's going to have efficacy on day one because it's got the company strategy in its brain for any uh, configuration of solution and competitor types you want to put in there. But it will then learn over time and we're at the point right now where a company, if a company has a strategy shift, we're going to interview that exec and we're going to drop it into the prompt. We're working on the tech right now for it to scan, for the strategy center to scan and say your competitor just introduced a new piece of software and that should change the way we do competitive analysis. Right. So that's phase two. But right now we can adjust pretty easily with shifts in customer strategy or market changes and just shift the brain of, of the guide a little bit so it's, we get it to react real time. I, I was speaking with a uh, an SVP at a uh, uh, supply chain management company who bought one of their biggest competitors in Europe. And there, there's only two or three players in this space. And, and he was saying this is great because we had a much smaller footprint than our closest competitor in Europe. Uh, uh, so that therefore gave us a much smaller global footprint and we lost a lot of deals. And I said okay, so you just acquired this company. How long before words are coming out of reps mouths to right to execute again? How do you qualify now that you've got an expanded footprint? Does that change the stakeholders you're talking to? KPIs you can impact how you configure solutions, how you compete against these other two. He said nine to 12 months. By the time marketing and you know this, you're nodding. It's like by the time marketing comes up with the decks and the talk tracks and then how much are people actually going to use it in a scenario like that? Uh, I would say 48 hours we could blend in how we should be selling across the entire sales process from qualify to close, given this change in our value proposition.

Speaker A: You're suggesting a lot of change here. And so I guess my last question for you Brian is this. There's evolutionary change and there's revolutionary change. And so companies have already invested in ways to, to sell. And so if they've already got a methodology, are you going to be a revolutionary thing that requires a lot of shakeup or is it evolutionary or is it kind of a combination of the two?

Speaker B: Yeah, it's, it's a really good question. And again one of, one of those arguments we've had internally. Right. A lot of discussion about it. And the reality is that some of our customers are using my methodology from Think Inc. So the, our guide when it comes to negotiation phase, our guide already has that information in its brain in the strategy center. So it will guide the rep according to those principles because the customer bought that training and they like it. And so in essence we're pulling it through. And that can be done for any upfront methodology. You know, again, the methodologies themselves aren't bad. The problem is they're not being pulled through. So anybody who's licensed, any rep who's licensed to use XYZ methodology, the guide can reinforce and use that language and help pull it through for our customers. I think PGS can stand alone by itself. But for folks who have made investments in some selling methodology and are struggling with pulling it through, we can add in all this custom contextualized data and pull that through at the same time.

Speaker A: Well, it's interesting because I think we've seen that what we've been doing the last 20, 30 years isn't generating the results we want. We're clearly going to have to be doing something different. So it'll be interesting to see how the market reacts to this because I think what you're talking about is what we need is we need to have a fundamental different way of uh, moving away from sales reps focusing on transactions, you know, things that are rapid, repetitive, routine to interactions which are complex, protracted value add. And we're going to have to support that a totally different way.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's it. I was just thinking, as you were saying, that I think the decision for a lot of sales enablement leads and a lot of and sales leads is which methodology should I choose? Right. And that's been the choice that's out there. I'm gonna pull the training, the sales training lever. My choice is which methodology. What we're bringing to market is you have an entirely different way now, an entirely different level, but within that sales training that again, it customizes differently, it delivers differently, it coaches differently, you know, it'll pull through your earlier investments. And this is, we're hoping this is, you know, a uh, revolutionary approach to say it's a new way to think about training your salespeople. And you again, you have that choice of two day events or you have that notion of 365, 24, 7 or every rep, every deal for almost precisely the same investment. And you know, the question is which one's going to yield more. And for me that answer is easy. Agree with you. All right, so Jim, I really appreciate you doing this and I appreciate, uh, for those who are listening, Jim and I have been talking about this subject for years and you know, we've just launched our MVP for both the strategy center and the rep facing close plan. And it's, it's come to fruition after a lot of years of dialogue. So, Jim M. I appreciate not only your time today, but your support over the years to kind of rethink what's broken and how do we, how do we bring something that's much more effective to market. So thank you.

Speaker A: My pleasure. It's clear day problem we're solving.