Bill Gusmano on AI, Critical Thinking, and Keeping the Human Edge

Foreign. Welcome to the Enabling Buying Podcast. I'm your host, Paul Kirch, and I'm grateful you're here. Enabling Buying is brought to you by klaviyo.com, your all in one sales enablement platform. When I look at communication today, there seems to be such a focus on can we save time, how do we cut corners? Can we automate? This means we're often leaning into AI. This means that even sales messages sometimes are cold and impersonal. They're disconnecting with the buyer instead of engaging. See, buyers make decisions based off of emotion, fear, trust. What areas of their business are they struggling in? Can we keep the doors open? These are the things that are keeping them up at night. And often salespeople are talking about the features and benefits and the things we get excited about within our own organizations. That disconnect is creating a real problem, especially when we try and bring AI into the mix. So our guest today is going to help us focus on a better approach. Our guest is Bill Guzmano, co founder and CEO of the Motivated Mind Group. Now, Bill brings more than 25 years of experience in sales enablement, go to market strategy, channel development, and enterprise technology consulting. He's worked with major organizations including companies like Hewlett Packard, Amazon, Amazon Web Services, Broadcom, and firms like Cisco. Over his career, Bill has led sales strategy, alliance management, and professional service initiatives while delivering more than 150 workshops focused on sales enablement, partner growth, and profitability frameworks. Today, he's helping companies rethink how they train, educate, and empower sales teams in the age of AI. Join me in welcoming Bill Gizmano to Enabling Buying Podcast. Bill, welcome to the Enabling Buying Podcast. Great to see you. Oh, great to see you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, you and I have had some really good conversations and I'm excited to have you on today. You know, in a world that is obsessed with automation, you know, I think that a lot of people are kind of losing that human edge. And I think your company, the Motivated Mind Group, you guys are doing some really interesting things. You're leveraging AI, you're leveraging creativity. But one of the things I think that you said is important to you is that we keep that human connection in the process. So talk a little bit about that, what that means to you today. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we're heavily into AI. I'd say we probably are in the more than double digits, somewhere in the 20 something range. With the number of AI tools we use that's grown over the past three years. What we do as an agency, we're connecting with people. We're trying to drive engagement, whether it's a learning a class, something that's online or even face to face or virtual. We've always been looking for tools or ways to engage with individuals. And the AI tools allow us then to develop, whether it's an animation or something that's intriguing or drives some quick content or different imagery, it allows us to do that much more efficiently with our clients. However, if we just ask AI for something generic, give me a particular image, we still need the designer, the consultant, the instructional designer behind that to make sure that that interaction is going to drive an outcome that we're looking for. Right. We can only expect so much out of AI. It's going to give us back what we asked for, but it doesn't understand the full context and it doesn't understand that human connection. Potentially it may help if we explain it a bit further, but definitely that human component is really what makes the two of it work, the two components together. Arguably. I think that a lot of people are losing their ability for critical thinking because they lean into AI. AI is a great tool, can be a great resource, but sometimes we're leaning into it too much. So what is the danger of replacing thinking with automation? Because I think that is something that we're seeing some people losing that ability to come up with problem solving on their own. Yeah, it is amazing. And you know, they're getting pressured by the organizations, I think the industry in general and the environment. We have a few clients that we're being told they're being mandated 80, 90% of their work product. They want to see, they want to make sure it's gone through AI. Now, I get it, you're trying to force change and force a behavior change, but I feel like you're missing the critical thinking component. You're devaluing the human component and connection, the critical thinking, the problem solving components that are really crucial to driving a better product. And that's why you're seeing these articles come out with all this stuff about Workslop. Right. It's not necessarily sloppy, it's just not great products. Because you're missing the human component. Absolutely. And I think there is definitely a trade off. And when we find. First time we spoke, you said something that really stuck with me. You said that digital marketing is education. You said enablement and marketing are both really education. And we think about the sales side of things where a lot of people are leaning, they're trying to figure out how can we automate the process? How can we take some shortcuts to get people to respond? But I think there's some real challenges there. So when it comes to the education piece, what do you think most companies misunderstand about the pot potential and where they should really be focusing? Yeah, I think there's a couple things you said there that are really intriguing. For as long as I've been in sales, the corporations are trying to eliminate salespeople, or not eliminate salespeople, but eliminate the need for the sales engagement. If they could just have the customers better understand what great products they have, they wouldn't necessarily need salespeople to explain it or position it. So I think that's an engineering mindset or a corporate mindset of how to drive efficiencies. But the bottom line is it's a very necessary profession because many times people create products and then they try and figure out what the problem is that they're solving instead of saying, hey, what's the problem we're trying to solve? And then go make a product. It doesn't always work that way. So they're trying to figure out what square hole or round hole they're trying to fill. Then they need salespeople to position it, because you have to explain to the customer what's the benefit for them. And I think that's the big thing. I know I work mainly in the IT industry, and what you see there is they want to explain all of the things that are really important to the engineers that made the product, like speeds and feeds, they call it. So all what are the specs like? And this one does, you know, XYZ or this numeric power or fast or speed, and they forget to explain to the customer why the customer should care. You're speaking my language. You and I both are of the same mindset that buying decisions take place at an emotional level. And you know those things that you talked about, how they sometimes try and create a message around something they've created? Sometimes you get blinded by it. You fall in love with that. It's like, oh, these are the things we do that we solve. But that's not what people are really buying. You're selling to the logical brain when they're buying from an emotional perspective. So what do you think? From a creative perspective? Let's talk about that emotionality. Because AI does not do a very good job of understanding human emotion. That's very interesting. It does a much better job of speaking to the logical brain. So, but let's talk about that Human emotion and how that really impacts selling today. Absolutely. It's been incorporated into our class. We run a disc profile and there's many other personality profiles. One of senior consultant said it the best and he was one of my sales mentors growing up. He said, what is the golden rule of sales? Not the golden rule, right? The golden rule is to treat other people like you'd like to be treated. The golden rule of sales is treat everyone the way they want to be treated. So it's not about you, it's about them. And you have to keep that in mind. So I think if you use everything or put everything from a sales perspective in the frame of what is actually happening with the customer and what does the customer need to hear, what are they looking for and what would solve their problem, whether it be left brain or right brain. So I think we do a lot of those profiles on personalities because you might be selling to someone in operations or a CFO and they are very right brain oriented, necessarily right. Or maybe they are left brain. They're all different. So you have to read into that personality. So I love the golden rule of sales. Treat everyone. You said when we spoke last time you were talking about how mid market companies, they hire heads instead of capabilities, which is an interesting phrase. And you know, you think about the challenge out there in a lot of organizations, they're putting bodies in place and they're like, oh, we can train them on our process, train them on our language, but you know, they're not necessarily training them on what the market really is. Buying and CRMs, slide decks, inboxes. Sales teams don't need more scattered tools, they need alignment. Kilavia brings your sales playbook, AI coaching, training and goals together in one platform. For consultative B2B teams looking to close more deals with less confusion and greater consistency. Kilavia enabling buying in a world of selling. Visit klaviyo.com how would you say that companies are struggling from the enablement side? Are there some, some challenges that you're seeing that you go, gosh, these really need to get addressed? Yeah, it is a struggle, especially with the introduction of AI. Right. People are saying, well, should I hire a person, should I be implementing AI? Even if they don't even understand what that means, they're just saying maybe, shouldn't AI take care of that particular task or how do we figure that out? So I think everywhere from mid market to the enterprise, the enterprise has sort of made some decisions already about what they're going to do. But I think from a Mid market perspective, they're really missing. They really should be looking for that human component. The people that are going to be in high demand, I think, or at this point is those critical thinkers and problem solvers, someone that can take the information and not just regurgitate it or perform a particular task, but understand what the outcome is going to be. How do I impact the organization with what I know? So that real critical thinking, but not only taking the critical thinking, applying it to a particular situation in which you maybe didn't give them guidance or the answer. Someone that can think critically enough in an ambiguous situation and say, hey, here's what I think we should do. Wouldn't it be fantastic to have some of your employees come back and make suggestions? How often does that happen? Right. If you were in a business development role for a company or a business leadership role in an organization, which I know you already are, but working for someone else, what would you do to prepare for this kind of shift in mindset? Because to me, that is a little bit of a shift in the way we've hired and the way we're training. Yeah, absolutely. The biggest thing for me is back to the application and practice. There's nothing like, again with the introduction, with all the devices and texting. I think some of our younger employees really have to practice human interaction. What is it like to face a challenge or rejection or a difficult question that you don't know the answer to? I think that's the biggest fear of many of the young employees. And for time it's been for salespeople, which is I'm afraid to ask the question because. Because I'm afraid of the second question. Right. Because if I ask you a little bit about your business and you tell me it may be something I have no clue about, and now I've got myself in trouble. And when you role play and practice, you get much more comfortable with saying, I don't know the answer to that, but I can go find out. We're going to get there because you've got a great product you guys have created. But before I go there, I do want to touch on something you just said. So, you know, I think every generation's had something that drove the previous generations crazy in their approach. But I think today it's harder than ever and there's some major dynamic shifts in the way the younger generations see life and business. And so I have a son, he's now 17, but when he was 15, I was driving him to school and there was something that we needed to address with one of the administrators at school. I needed to, to call her and take care of something. He goes, don't call her. That's rude. And I said, rude? I said, why would that be rude? He goes, you need to text her. And like, nobody calls anyone today. And I said, I said, bradley, I said, if I text her, I said, there's going to be some back and forth. There's going to be clarification. There's going to be all these things that I have to address to get to an answer. I said, if I call her, I can solve this in 15 seconds. He was so embarrassed. I called her. 15 seconds later I had it solved. But in that call, there was like two things she brought up that I would have never been able to address within an easy back and forth on text message. Right. That's why you call, that's why you pick up the phone. So I think there's this major shift in the way they see life. You know, they live with these devices in their hands. We, we do too, but. Yeah, but they don't know anything else. That's right. Remember the, you know, a time when, when, I mean, I grew up in a small town where there was party lines. That's right. We didn't have a party line, but we had neighbors that had party lines. You'd pick up the phone and you could listen to them on conversations like this. Yeah. So. Or multiple lines in your house. You could pick up your brother, sisters or parents call, all that. Yeah. And I think that, that, that again, back to the role play or. But just you're, you're right, you have to address the fact that their perception is different. They haven't even been exposed to certain things that we take for granted that we lived our entire life that way. Yeah. And I think, like I said, I think every generation's had it, but it's different today than I've ever seen. And one area where I think that there's going to be a massive need is interactive training. And the one thing that is really interesting about AI is there's capabilities now that just never existed before. I mean, there's always been sales training programs. I mean, you've got Sandler training, you've got, you know, medic, you've got all these other different sales methodologies that are leveraged through different organizations. Bant, you know, through the IBM days. Yep. But you're putting these people in place saying, okay, here's the methodology. Go sell. But now you showed me something before we had this call that blew me Away you, you've created an interactive AI tool that does role play training, but it does it on the fly, can create video interactions so you can actually have real scenarios created instantaneously. Talk about the development of that. I mean, obviously it's a brilliant idea, but what's been like building that? This is where I think the real core success or core advancement is going to happen because of AI, which is it democratizes some type of learning. Because in the past, you know, so why didn't those simulators exist? And I'm sure they do in a limited fashion, but the amount of programming to keep up with the changes that happen in the sales methodology and role plays, changes in the market every three months that are happening for your target clients. In order to create that simulation and to maintain it, you'd have to be a very large corporation and be willing to dedicate a lot of money to do that. So what AI is able to do now is we can give our frameworks that we teach in the classes, whether it's the medic framework or you said band. We can use those frameworks, we can use some rubric methodology in assessing those. So you can grade individuals. We can feed that intelligence into AI in sort of a. It's not a true small language model, but a small language model and back it by a larger language model like Cloud or ChatGPT or any of the other ones that people choose or homegrown. And now you can put that simulator and have it updated constantly because you're connected to AI. So it really democratizes it, makes it much more affordable to have that capability. And you're not spending hundreds of thousands of dollars maintaining the simulation. And now it can be really affordable and accessible. It's not the end all be all, I'd say, right. They're going to go through scenarios and you're still there. It's not 100% human interaction, but it's pretty darn good. It gets you at least to a point where they can practice in a safe space. Right. Because it's just AI. They can make mistakes and you can even coach around it. So I think it's a real good first step into getting someone used to having conversations and being put into uncomfortable situations. And that tool is affordable. Yeah. And I would argue that the one thing that most people hate in role playing is it's embarrassing. Right? I mean, who wants to be put in front of their peers in a awkward situation? And sometimes, you know, I mean, I've done role playing for years. I've been a facilitator I've also been on the. On the end of the rep going through it, and it is sometimes uncomfortable and awkward. But there's no better way than to learn real scenarios than role playing except going out in the field. Now you're creating something that somebody can do, not necessarily even in a group setting, they can do it at home, on their own. And it's like they're learning in a comfortable place before they have to be put in those awkward situations. I think it's wonderful. You know, I mean, there's a lot of, I guess, arguments against AI in terms of, you know, the sales process. AI now takes, it makes the personal impersonal. But what you're doing is you're no longer arguing against AI. You're arguing for AI to really enhance the human capability and really help enhance human thinking. And, I mean, I think from a sales perspective, that's pretty revolutionary. But I think it's just the tip of the iceberg, what's to come. I agree it's not a replacement. It's just a great tool to build off of what you already have. The funny thing is, too, we were talking about the new generation. Just the last few workshops that I've run live, when we've done role plays I've never had, this is something that's new. They really love the roleplays. Instead of being like, I don't think they've done them very often. Now that they're doing role plays, they're finding the benefits. And it's something they really haven't done. Had a live interaction, great feedback. They're learning mistakes. They learn, they can test well. What if I took this approach and it didn't work? Well, that's great. That's a safe environment. But what I've been really surprised is the younger generation when we put them through the workshops and do the role plays, they love them. It's probably the favorite part of the workshop, and that's not been the case in the past. It's a big difference. It is super engaging. I mean, the example you showed me with the ability to create supporting videos from the conversation, I mean, that's just like, it's the stuff we dreamed about and now it's here. So it's really neat to see it in practice. So you've got a book that's coming up. You want to talk about that? Yeah, sure. I think what inspired me at first was all of the, I'd say, concern over AI and how it's going to take over everything. And I'M not saying that it's not a good thing to put some guardrails around the things that we're not aware of. Right. We want to make sure there's regulations and that makes sense. But I want to reinforce the power of human thinking and the human brain and the way we approach things, and I want to reinforce it. And the book talks about that. I've seen about five big transitions from a technology perspective. Everything from client server to the Internet to cloud, and now AI and I walk through those and talk about how. How, yes, changes have been made to our roles and our responsibilities and our job. Excuse me, even our jobs. But the human edge, the human component in each of those has really been the differentiator, and it will continue to be, even with AI. Truly believe that. And what we need to focus on is not trying to fight AI, but embrace it. To really teach people about critical thinking and how to enhance the way they approach things, as we just discussed. And that's really the idea of the book. Is there a title yet? Is it? Yeah, Teaching People how to Think, which is a brilliant idea. You know, in a day and age where I do believe that critical thinking is becoming harder and harder for people to manage. Look, I write copy. I'm a copywriter, and I will tell you that I have to be very careful not to get lazy with copywriting. So I write my copy and then I might get feedback from AI and say, oh, yeah, okay, maybe I'll make some modifications here because it's really easy to go out and say, hey, write this. And then I. I might make some edits. But it's not the same type of critical thinking. Definitely. I think that's a very important piece now. Are you seeing that? Okay, so there's a lot of excitement, a lot of optimism, a lot of, you know, we can see, save money here, shortcuts here. Are you seeing maybe that there's going to be a shift back towards some traditional human thinking and that people are trying to find that balance? Yeah. And how quickly it boomerangs back, I think is still yet to be seen, because AI can actually, as you can see, even in the simulations that we created, AI can do a lot of what we used to do from a training perspective. But again, it's not going to ever touch that critical thinking component. We still need the instructional design in our classes to do that. Now, how quickly that comes back and people recognize that across the board, I think still has yet to be seen. I do still see that people are trying to just find a way to automate it and reduce cost at the moment. And that's probably the first step. Then you'll find the gaps that are associated with your enablement and training pretty quickly. Or you're going to be frustrated with AI and you probably shouldn't, you shouldn't be frustrated with AI. It's really your implementation of AI that's going to be giving you trouble. Yeah, I think that's, that's 100% it. Now in terms of selling, are you in your business? Where, where do you see the future for the motivated mind group? Are you going to be leaning heavily or into the role playing tools? Where do you see the biggest opportunity? Yeah, I go over it in the book. I think what has really emerged and it's kind of honing in what we've been teaching for the past 25 years, which is to think critically. So whatever the data is, it's always about that critical thinking. But the two things that have emerged are trust, because no one really trusts AI. You got to validate it and see where it is. And there's something about a human connection and a relationship that you develop. I'm not saying it's all relationship sales. You got to bring value, you got to develop. But there's some trust components and we believe in the trust equation, the trusted advisor, and they're a contributor to the book. And the other is around the application I discussed. There's a gentleman, Dr. Bill Daggett, he focuses on K12 and he developed a framework around rigor and relevance and said you can assess how well you can do. And I apply it to a salesperson in a commercial environment by putting yourself in an ambiguous situation, something you're not familiar with, and getting questions thrown at you that you don't know the answers to. And he evaluates the K through 12 folks on that, challenging them to see how rigorous do you know the content, how relevant can you put it into a particular situation? So take your knowledge and apply it. And so I think those are the two things that are emerging because knowledge is now infinite. Memorizing stuff and knowing the specs, anybody can access it, your customers can access it, your competitors can access it. So that is not going to differentiate you, but your relationships and building trust and being able to be very rigorous and relevant to your clients in any particular situation, showing that you have in depth, intimate knowledge of their business and who they are, are going to be the differentiators. And I'll tell you, I'll leave you with this. I mean, I think the human connection is still something that we can't live without. And how I met you. I first saw your profile picture on LinkedIn. I said, that's the friendliest profile picture I've ever seen. And I wanted to learn more. I read your profile and all of a sudden I'm like, oh, man, this guy could be great to meet. When we met, you know, I shared that and you told me you said your wife wasn't a fan of that picture. She thought it should be a more of a professional headshot. I'm like, that's the friendliest photo. That human connection that we build sometimes it's those little things, those little things that we take for granted. You know, sometimes polished like, you know, I think back to direct marketing. Dan Kennedy always said the direct marketing converted the most was the white postcard with black type on it. Not the color, full color. You know, really colorful postcards. Those go in the trash. Sometimes polished, sometimes overly produced. It backfires that human as human beings, we sometimes raw, unreal is sometimes what matters. And I think we need to hold on to that. So because my thank you so much for being here, man. This has been a great conversation. I know there's more to come. I'm looking forward to learning more about your tools. But how can people reach you? Oh, you get us off the website. The motivated mind group dot com. You look us up. We should have some ads around there. So that's the best way. All our contact information is is there the easy to get a hold of us. Beautiful. Bill Gizmano, thanks again for being on the enabling buying podcast.