How AI Is Redefining Sales Leadership & Culture | Rob Beattie | The Brainiac Blueprint Podcast
- Acy Rodriguez
- 5 days ago
- 33 min read
In this episode of The Brainiac Blueprint Podcast, we sit down with Rob Beattie, a veteran sales leader with over two decades of experience leading teams and shaping sales culture, to explore how AI is transforming sales, leadership, and human connection.
From redefining productivity with AI to building resilient teams and servant leadership, Rob shares timeless lessons on how to lead through change. He reminds us that AI should be a co-pilot, not a replacement, and that true sales success starts with empathy, process, and purpose.
Full transcript below.
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⏱ In this episode, we discuss:
00:00 | Intro
01:06 | Meet Rob Beattie
02:50 | AI as a challenge and opportunity
06:00| How leaders can adapt to change
10:45 | The “social hour” habit for continuous learning
13:25 | Building process-driven sales teams
15:00 | Servant leadership and culture-building
20:45| Why ownership and accountability matter
26:00| Empowering people to try, fail, and learn
31:00 | Teaching AI to think better through prompting
35:00| Maintaining human connection in the AI era
38:30| How AI is changing the sales process
43:00| What Rob looks for in a high-performing organization
47:00| Rapid Fire: Lessons, wins, and life moments
🔗 Rob Beattie
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Episode Full Transcript:
Kyle: All right, welcome back, everyone, to another episode of the Brainiac Blueprint, where I’m joined by our esteemed guest to discuss the intersection of AI and how it impacts real-world business today. I am your host, Kyle Lambert, founder of Left Brain AI and Action Hero Marketing. Today’s episode is going to be very sales-focused, as we have a lifelong sales leader joining us today. With that being said, today’s Brainiac is Rob Beattie. Welcome to the show, Rob.
Rob: Kyle, thanks. It’s really great to be here this morning.
Kyle: I appreciate this. You’re taking some time and some flexibility with the scheduling here. So yeah, like I mentioned, I know you’re a sales guy. You have a lot of experience. So tell us a little bit about what you’ve been doing in your career, what your resume looks like. And I know, again, we’ve talked, you have a little bit of a change going on right now. Yeah, absolutely.
Rob: Yeah, that resume is long. It’s one of those things where I’m like, yeah, I can take you through a lot of stuff. But suffice it to say, I’ve been in sales leadership for over 20 years, and it’s been an interesting journey. I always say my first sales job-
First professional sales job. My first job was delivering the internet door to door. I had a paper route when I was a kid, but my first real sales job, I went in and they were arguing whether or not salespeople should be given email. Would that even be something that people would communicate with?
And so from that to where we are today, where tools, GPT-style tools help craft and create messaging and help people become more efficient, it’s just been fascinating to see that journey. But anyway.
I was with a company called Thomson Reuters for 15 years, and then I went to a medical software company called ModMed just over almost five years ago. I recently transitioned from ModMed. And so I’m on a journey at this point in my career of just trying to figure out, hey, what do I want to do?
I’ve been chasing that number for so long. And as I shared with you, the funniest thing for me was on day two of this sabbatical, I just found myself in the kitchen, walking in circles. I’m like, man, where’s my number? What do I have to do? Who do I have to call? What’s happening? What’s happening? What’s happening?
And so kind of getting through that little bit of disorientation, now that it’s been about a month, I’m starting to hone in on what are the types of things I like to do. Is it that I enjoy the leadership aspect of what I’ve been doing? How do I want to display that for the next phase of my career, whatever that looks like?
I’m having some fun getting some things done around the house. And we’ll actually talk about this in a minute when we talk about some AI stuff. But I found my notes from the first AI in sales conference, which was, I think, seven years ago, hosted by what was at the time the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals. So I’ll dig in a little bit about what people thought back then versus today.
Kyle: Well, that’s great. Thank you, Rob. It sounds like you need to get yourself a dog or -
Rob: I have a dog that I’m willing to sell. I did not spend this much time with that dog. And I’m like, hey, dog daycare is good for you.
Kyle: It’s funny how that changes when you’re spending all day every day with them.
Rob: Exactly. I have definitely enjoyed my ride-share, on-demand, free job for my two children. So that’s been a lot of fun.
Kyle: There you go. Fun stuff. Fun stuff. I know you’re a sports guy in Michigan. Are you following the Tigers now?
Rob: Yeah, they actually won a game yesterday. We’re recording this on October 1st. So as of this moment, still alive in the playoffs, excited to see what they can do. But by the time they get to another game, I think pitching may be either me, you, somebody from the audience here, because it’s been a little bit challenging.
My other team, lifelong Red Sox fan as well, which I know is a weird dichotomy, but whatever. And so both of those teams being in the playoffs, it’s kind of exciting. We’ll see what happens.
Kyle: Could be an interesting clash at some point.
Rob: Yeah, that would be amazing to me.
Kyle: Yeah. Well, cool. I could talk sports all day. So before we go down that rabbit hole, we’ll transition back into AI here. And you mentioned you went to that conference seven years ago. So lots of stuff for us to jump into.
But as you know, I like to have all of our guests finish the prompt, “I think AI is.” So if you could set that foundation for us, that’d be great.
Rob: Yeah, I think AI is a challenge. I think it’s a challenge in a couple of different ways. For people like myself that have worked a certain way for a certain length of time, it’s very disruptive. It can be a value add, but at times chasing your tail on how do you utilize it can send you down rabbit holes that just don’t effectively use it.
I think it’s a challenge to how businesses function. I think it’s a challenge to determine what is AI and what does it mean to certain aspects of sales, marketing, just how do people work on a day-to-day basis. It can, in a lot of ways, outthink a person, but at the same time, how does the challenge of losing what people fear, which is the human connection side of it too.
So when you threw me that prompt, I gave it a lot of thought. And like I said, I think the word to me is challenge.
Kyle: I like that. I like that. Challenge has an emotional response.
Rob: Exactly.
Kyle: It can make you nervous and anxious, and it can make you excited.
So I’m curious how you approach challenges and change. What is your mindset, and how do you make sure that you’re not just doing things for the sake of doing it and that it’s actually the appropriate thing for you?
Rob: Well, in this career, I’ve had multiples of different types of things that have come along that have been “game changers.” There was a time where this concept of social selling, where you connect with people on LinkedIn and utilize Facebook and all that, all the different types of tools there.
Even going back to using email for the first time, I remember when people were nervous about that. And then we went to a spot where I think people over-indexed on digital communication and lost the ability to just pick up the phone and call.
For me, I actually think a habit of study is important. Making time to look at what something might do and how it would impact what you do, what your team does, and how it might impact your customer base or your prospect base.
So back to that social selling phase we went through, I actually put an hour on my calendar at one point. I just called it the social hour. That hour was dedicated time to go out and do research on tools, process, thought leadership, whatever it might be. I’ve really kept that. I still call it the social hour, but it transitioned to AI.
The other thing it did for me was protect some time where if I had a vendor that reached out and said, “Hey, I’ve got this new tool, I want to show it to you,” I always knew I had an hour I could put aside for that. Oftentimes, while I wasn’t in the market to buy something, inspiration comes from what other people are doing with something.
Kyle: 100%.
Do you have an example? Something that happened maybe years ago from that hour that still holds true today?
Rob: Well, there was one specific sales tool that I’ve used multiple times now into great effect, and I’ll name them. It’s something called Consensus, which is a video display tool. It does short, recorded, on-demand demos.
Having been in software sales for the better part of the last 20 years, the ability to demonstrate your stuff to somebody is huge. I talked to them at a conference. They had a lot of interesting ideas. Took a demo. It took about three years before I got the organization to actually do it.
But it inspired me into how do you leverage an interactive piece early on in your sales process that enables a salesperson to know what somebody might be interested in. Because at the end of the day in sales, one of the greatest challenges is that people are typically already doing something that you’re trying to disrupt.
People don’t wake up in the morning and say, “I need to disrupt myself today.” They have a difficult time transitioning to something new. So I’ve always tried to find ways to get people inspired, get them thinking.
If I can engage them for a minute, I want to have a process by which I can do that. Consensus is one of those tools. Ongoing phone calls today, generating content that’s engaging and thought-provoking, often using a GPT tool to check myself on what I think would work. That’s been and continues to be one of those things that started with one idea and became a broader process.
Kyle: That’s great stuff. I want to dive in a little bit to that process a little bit more from the aspect of the sales guy, right? So you’re going into a sales pitch or a discovery call or whatever it may be. And I think that this is such an important thing to talk about. And maybe it’s just me being in my own little window here as an entrepreneur. I’m a lifelong marketer. Sales is something that I’ve had to learn to help grow my business. And I think that as soon as you call something sales, this anxiety comes in.
Someone like me, again, I’m not experienced with it. So I’m curious as to what lesson you can impart on me or any people that are in my position as to how you process things out. Because I think when you have that, you don’t want to be rigid, right? You’ve got to be able to adapt and everything. But how you process things into your sales pitch and your follow-up - you mentioned it took three years to get your organization to adapt something - and there are long sales cycles, right? Whether it’s internally or externally. So I’m curious how you approach that to make sure that you are being maximally effective from a sales perspective.
Rob: Yeah. We could probably do a series of podcasts on what is sales.
Kyle: Dial it down into one sentence now?
Rob: Yeah, exactly. I’ll do that right now. I think sales is helping people change. It’s helping people transform.
Typically, when people think of the sales process, the vision you immediately get is the used car, “Hey buddy, I got a deal for you today” type of thing. And I don’t really look at that as real sales. That’s just a transactional piece. Really helping somebody change is what sales is about.
If you think of it instead of “I’m trying to sell somebody something” and it’s more like “I’m helping them evolve and change into something greater,” that gives you a little bit more oomph for the passion that you might have for it.
And again, in a sales process, if you find yourself talking about you and what you do all the time, that’s probably not what you’re trying to accomplish. What you’re trying to accomplish is helping somebody see how you actually help them.
Right? Like that’s sort of the goal at the end of the day. And I’m sure you, as an entrepreneur, you’re not like, “Hey, I’m just here to get some money from you.” You’re actually there to help them change and evolve this process, do something better today than they were doing yesterday.
And to me, if you can take that approach and engage people in that way, I think you have a much better chance of getting the outcome which you want, which is a sale, but really getting the outcome that you want for them, which is an evolution or a change.
Kyle: I have a really hard time believing people don’t want to just sit here and listen to me talk about myself for an hour.
Rob: Yeah, exactly. There was a guy that once - you pick up these things over the years - I was at a conference and this guy was talking about slide decks and he was calling them “wee wee slides.” And that made me giggle. I’m like, “Wee wee slides?” And he’s like, “Yeah, all the slides are about us, and all we’re doing is wee wee-ing all over ourselves and our opportunity to sell.” And I was like, “It’s genius, man.” And so that’s always stuck with me.
When I look at a slide deck that somebody has, a pitch deck, when the first six slides are about you and setting up you, I’m like, “Dude, if you’re doing that, you’re trying to create a transactional relationship, and that’s not what you really want.”
I want trust. A conversation to me is far more valuable than me talking. Like you said, you have a hard time believing that, as a joke, people just want to hear you talk about yourself. Nobody wants that.
I always say, if you met somebody for the first time and they spent the first half hour talking about themselves, you’d be like, “I do not ever want to see this person again.”
Kyle: You can see their eyes just glaze over.
Rob: It’s miserable.
Kyle: You can see that moment of them just falling asleep or typing on the side or something like that. Absolutely.
Cool. So there’s another question I wanted to jump in, just in terms of your experience. And this is kind of a three-pronged question, but it’s the same question. You obviously are a sales leader. You have managed teams. You have built teams. So I’m curious, from your perspective, what does a high-performing sales leader look like? What does a high-performing sales team look like? And what does a high-performing salesperson or SDR look like?
Rob: Yeah. So kind of three different roles or components of roles and organizations. How do you delineate that and what is success to you?
Rob: Yeah, so great question. I would say I will start with the sales leadership because I think that a high-performing sales leader casts a shadow. An organization that is successful serves the other two greatly, right?
So I believe that a great sales leader has a servant leader mentality. And that’s an easy thing to say, and people say it all the time, but it’s really important. When you look at an organization, how do you serve the organization and the team? I’m a big believer in establishing culture, in establishing a cadence of how do you work with people - how do I show up day to day and what do we do?
I find that when you do that, you provide structure. You provide structure - that game plan, that playbook that people can actually operate in, either as an individual contributor or, as in my last couple of jobs, as a leader of leaders, trying to grow and develop the best possible managers that I could.
I actually have a great sense of pride right now in that the month after I left ModMed, the team had a really great month without me. And I’m like, that’s awesome. That makes me so happy because it tells me that the people I helped grow and teach and give a process to were able to function and do those things day in and day out without somebody having to make them do that.
There are a couple of things within that that I think are super important. Like I said, developing that culture. I also say people get a lot further with a good idea in a t-shirt than they do with just a good idea. So helping people change that rhythm of communication, however you do it.
In the remote world, that’s two-dimensional conversations, three-dimensional when you can, Slack messages, emails, whatever it is - just that connection, that constant communication.
One of the things that I found myself doing in this transition - and I spent the majority of those 15 years at Thomson in an office with a large team standing or sitting in front of me. We could have a meeting where there were 150 people standing up at their desks and we’re just talking.
At ModMed, it was always a remote situation for myself. We would do some things in headquarters in person, but other things were done remotely. And when you’re face to face, you can just walk over to somebody’s desk and be like, “Hey, how you doing today? What’s going on?”
When you’re remote, that genuine human caring you still have to have. So I would try very hard a couple of times a week to just ring out to somebody on Slack who’s not expecting me to say anything to them. Just be like, “Hey, noticed you had a good week this week. What was going on? What happened?”
Or if I saw somebody struggling a little bit, like, “Hey John, I see you’re struggling right now. What are you thinking, man? Let’s get on a call. Let’s talk about it.” Being proactive, I think, is one of the most important things a sales leader can do.
So what does a high-performing salesperson look like? Right, that was the second thing that you asked.
Kyle: Yeah. Team or SDR.
Rob: Yeah. Team. I think they’re very similar. People focus so much today on metrics. They look at how many phone calls did you make, how many emails did you send. This concept of “if I do things enough times, something good will happen” is somewhat true. I do believe there is a foundational effort piece that has to happen.
But to me, that high-performing person is putting process ahead of outcomes. Something they can repeat. Something that is part of how they function, part of their DNA. That’s super important, especially for SDRs.
For SDRs, there’s the old analogy - how do you make it to Antarctica? Do you go 20 miles a day, or do you go 40 miles when it’s nice and five miles when it’s bad? I’m always like, 20 miles a day is what you always want to do. Regardless of what you do, go do this.
I think setting yourself up to be that kind of person is important. You’ve got to be thoughtful. Again, it can’t be about me. It’s got to be about you. I have to be thinking in those terms.
I would encourage my team very strongly to prompt around metrics that matter to the prospect. What does success look like for my prospect? And in today’s world, AI will feed you back some really good answers and insights.
In the case of a doctor’s practice, a metric that matters is patient visits. Cool. Don’t talk about how you make patient visits happen more frequently. Talk about what that patient visit looks like to that person, then transition into, “Hey, what if you could do that more frequently?”
There are some foundational sales skills that I think still matter. Those are super important. And then as an organization, everybody understanding what they’re supposed to be doing, feeling appreciated for it, but also knowing their role. We used to talk about playing your position, and I think that’s really important.
A high-performing person also takes extreme ownership. It’s a book by Jocko Willink. A lot of people have read it. They take responsibility for the fact that whatever happens in my world is me.
If I’m a sales rep and I don’t have enough leads, that’s my fault. It’s not the SDR. It’s not marketing. It’s not my manager. It’s me. What am I going to do about it? What’s my plan to affect it?
If I’m an SDR and I’m not booking enough meetings, that’s on me. Is it my messaging? I’ve got to do something different. And you can do that if you have a process and a system by which you approach that. It’s much easier to nuance and change up your game than it is to just say, “I don’t know what I’m going to do today, so I guess I’m going to call some people.”
I think back to - I had a new sales rep. This was a long time ago. I had a new sales rep, and we had a position where our sales team at the time, your territory was created by your own effort. So if I called somebody every 30 days, they were mine to work and I would continue to prospect them. And if they took some action online, I’d get that lead. But I had to be in touch with these people every 30 days.
And I just remember this one rep. I’m like, “Hey, so what’s your plan today?” She says, “Well, I’m out of people to call, so I’m just looking up people named with my name and I’m calling because I think that would be fun.” And I’m like, something’s broken here. I am not providing that person the right playbook and process for how to be successful.
I’m letting it just go too much. I’m not doing enough to get into it. And that person ended up being a very successful sales rep. She was super young at the time. But that’s just one of those things you remember - how do you fit into that process?
So anyway, pretty long-winded answer, but you can see it’s a lot about culture. It’s a lot about process. It’s a lot about that playbook idea of, if I know what I want you to do within the framework of that, you can go and do it.
And as you said, I’m a sports guy. One of the things I always enjoyed reading was books by coaches because I found that the coaching of salespeople and the coaching of a football team or a baseball team was often very similar. I have somebody I’m trying to put into a game where the goal of the game is to win - AKA hit your bookings number.
I hate the San Francisco 49ers. I grew up as a Cowboys fan in the ’80s. I transitioned to the Lions because the Lions actually started being on TV and I could watch them. And Bill Walsh was a longtime, very successful coach of the 49ers. He wrote a great book called The Score Takes Care of Itself. And the concept is, if you do the detail things and the process things correctly, at the end of the day, you’ll get the outcome you want.
I’ve always very much subscribed to that philosophy.
Kyle: I couldn’t agree more. There are so many good tidbits there, a lot of great things to consider. I agree - I’m a sports guy too. There are so many ways that it translates into business.
On a previous episode, I said I would love to have a week just in the Eagles locker room and hear the way they talk - the words they use, the process they have. That’s how an organization should be run.
Rob: Totally.
Kyle: If you’re taking care of the little things and the details, to Coach Walsh’s point, the score is going to be handled.
Rob: I’ve been blessed with a lot of really great leaders in my day and a lot of people I would consider mentors. But the best one I ever had is a guy named Clint Alexander. He’s the head football coach of a very high-performing high school football team and has been a really great friend of mine for a long time.
When it came to leadership development and how you lead people, my conversations with him had as much or more value than conversations with executive coaches and sales VPs, because the mindset needed to win those games and get young people to perform isn’t truly that different.
When you’re talking, especially in sales, about teams like SDR teams, the difference in age between an 18-year-old and a 22-year-old SDR isn’t that different. So gaining that insight and knowledge matters.
I always tell people, when you seek mentors and coaches, seek them in different places than necessarily your industry. If you’re developing as a sales leader, cool - find somebody that leads people in a different area. You may be inspired by something they’re doing. It gets you away from that homogeneous look at numbers management.
Kyle: That’s great advice. It’s so easy to stay in your lane and just iterate there, when a completely different perspective might create a much larger performance impact.
So I want to jump back into culture a little bit here and kind of tie this into AI. I think culture is so important. I’ve worked at five different agencies prior to starting Action Hero and Left Brain, and I have very clear flashbacks of culture for each one of them and how I felt each day working there.
I think one of the biggest things is putting in that culture of being able to be genuine, work with each other, grow, and know your role. But I think an important aspect is the availability or the permission to fail.
Rob: Absolutely.
Kyle: That’s one of the best ways to learn - to screw up. So I’m curious how you build that into your culture and allow people to try new things like AI. Because AI is something you can overuse or over-rely on, but you almost have to fail to figure that out sometimes.
Rob: So I think the people that have worked under my organizations before would say one of the things they liked about me was that I empowered them to make their own decisions.
I’m a big believer that if I tell you to do something, you have to overcome me telling you first, and then go do it. You’re trying to meet my way because you think there’s some agenda I have. If it’s your idea first, it’s a lot easier to implement. One of the secrets of great leadership is to have an idea and give it to somebody else so it becomes their idea.
When people are doing that, I think having that sit-down conversation of, “Hey, what’s something new you’re trying?” and checking in with them - what’s working, what’s not - matters. If it’s high risk, check in frequently. If it’s low risk, take the time you need.
As they’re setting it up, I think it’s important to ask, “How will you know this has been successful?” Get them thinking about that. When you interview for jobs, one of the best questions is, “In six months, if I’m in this role, what does success look like to you?”
Kyle: I love that question.
Rob: I reverse that when I’m interviewing people. Give me a future state. How do you know this actually works? I’ve seen people run down rabbit holes where two days in, they had one success and suddenly it’s the greatest idea in the world, and everybody’s doing it - and it turns out they just got lucky.
So you give people space, but also parameters for what a positive outcome looks like. People change better with small change than large change. If you come in and say, “Here are 27 things you need to do,” they won’t do any of them. If you give someone one thing to do, that’s great.
There’s another piece that ties back to culture. A long time ago, I took a SPIN Selling workshop through Huthwaite. SPIN is a book from 1988, one of the seminal works on asking questions in the sales process. People think of spin as a negative word now, but it stands for Situation, Problem, Implication, Needs-payoff.
One of the things they talked about was role play. Role play is super important. But the problem is, at the end, people say, “Here are nine things you should do better.” That never works.
So at the end of role play - and I use this in one-on-ones and coaching - I ask, “What’s one thing you thought you did well?” or “What’s one thing that will happen that’s good from what you’re about to try?” Cool. “What’s one thing you’re worried about or could do better?” Awesome. Do that one thing.
Most humans already know when something wasn’t perfect or what a better outcome could be. Let them start there. That’s how you empower a change mindset.
Back to AI - when we started using it, a couple of leaders on my team leaned into it. What they discovered was that it takes time to teach prompts to get meaningful outcomes. The biggest learning was, “I can’t just put something in and expect it to be perfect. I need to teach the machine.”
When they did that, the machine gave them better output - something faster and more usable. That change management piece made them significantly better at leveraging GPT to get the outcomes they wanted. If they hadn’t thought that way, they probably would’ve given up and said, “This isn’t doing anything for me. Let’s move on.”
Kyle: Smart man, Rob. That’s what I tell every single person that I talk to that wants to start dabbling into AI. I say ChatGPT or Gemini or whatever your tool of choice is is a great way to start figuring it out. Learn how to prompt. This is not a Google search. You need to interact with it and tell it what your outcome is, what its role is, that kind of stuff. So that is such a smart way to be thinking about it.
Rob: Yeah. Well, it was funny. I have a couple of teenagers, and my little son wanted to do a sleepover at his friend’s house. They were trying to figure out how to sell the mom on a sleepover, and they put it into ChatGPT, and it didn’t work. And so my son was like, “Ah, this thing doesn’t know what it’s doing.”
And I’m like, “Dude, you’ve got to teach it.” You have to be like, “Okay, how do I convince a mom to have a sleepover when it’s last minute?” And it was funny to watch him because his prompts have gotten better.
And I know now when he’s trying to get something from me when he’s actually gone through GPT to try it out.
Kyle: That’s when you know it has the long dash.
Rob: Exactly. I’m right, like, “Hmm.”
Yeah. I’m like, “Why do you need to spend another hundred dollars on Clash Royale? You bought everything.” But that also tells you the stuff’s here to stay.
When you have - if you’re a leader today or have aspirations of becoming a leader - you better understand this. Because that next generation coming into the workforce over the next ten years grew up with it. They’re going to be familiar with it. They’re going to expect to be able to use that tool.
And they’re also going to have a very different human experience than what you might have had. Like I said, my first job was delivering newspapers.
Can you imagine today if you walked out into your neighborhood and there was somebody walking along the street with a bag over their shoulder handing out newspapers? You’d think that person lost their mind. But that was literally a job I had to do every day - rain, shine, snow.
Kyle: You throw something on my lawn, you’re probably getting the cops called on you.
Rob: Exactly right. Exactly right. I’m super suspicious. I used to have to knock on people’s doors and be like, “Hey, I need to collect.” And they’re like, “Didn’t we already pay you?” And I’m like, “Maybe. I don’t know. I didn’t keep good records.”
Kyle: Oh my God. Amazing.
Yeah. So I think there’s an interesting tie-in here. We’ve talked a lot about culture and relationships and the human-to-human. I am forever going to be using “wee wee slides” now.
So I’m wondering how you make sure AI doesn’t take away that human connection. Because it’s so easy to start talking about you, or why your product is the greatest, or how you’re going to do XYZ for someone.
AI is great. The term I love to use is human empowerment. It empowers you to do more for less. But you don’t want to lose that connection. So is it as simple as using the right prompts and using it for deeper research, or are there more complicated ways you’re using it day to day?
Rob: Yeah.
I don’t know. I think for me, that’s sort of the next phase of understanding it. I think I have some ideas. I wouldn’t say I’ve put them into practice yet.
But one to me is, if you’re about to make an important sales call, one of the things we used to do was sit down and scope out and plan the whole sales call. Before you picked up the phone, what did you want to talk about? What were the outcomes?
I think using GPT-type tools to plan a sales call - what are some good questions I can ask a doctor or a pharmacist or a CPA around this aspect of their business - and then getting that back, but still being the person who actually calls and asks those questions.
The fear I have is that with tools like this, people become more and more digital. I actually think it needs to be an enhancement to what you do, not something that replaces what you do.
So my advice is: use it, but pick up the phone and call somebody.
Kyle: That, again, as a non-sales guy, that is something that I am really trying to force myself to do. I’m not a phone guy. I love my tech. I love my tools. But with being an entrepreneur and with being in AI, and even just this podcast, I’ve noticed how much I enjoy having this face to face with you and having a conversation, and just how much more impactful it is.
Rob: Yeah.
Kyle: How business is just better when it’s not a machine doing something or sending you a message or something like that.
Rob: Especially if whatever you’re selling is potentially a big change for somebody. Human beings prefer not to change. That’s just in our nature. And so having that trust factor is always really important.
I’ve had multiple sales from my teams over the years where the first person talking to them didn’t provide that stability and confidence that got somebody to say, “Yeah, we can do this.” And then a new voice came in and was like, “What are you so worried about? I’ve had five people do this, and this is how they’ve done it.” And people are like, “Oh, that’s all I needed to hear. I’m good to go.”
Sometimes that piece - it causes sweaty pits. It can make you nervous. It can get you going. But once you’re actually talking to people, people are people. You’ll find that you have the capability to just get it done.
Kyle: Whether you’re selling a product or a service, in some fashion you’re selling yourself too. There has to be trust. If someone is going to open up their wallet and ask for marketing services, they need to trust you as the person, trust the organization, trust the process, trust the server, all that stuff. But they also want to know there’s a person here they can speak to. If something goes wrong, they can call you. The relationship is still extremely important.
Amazing. So we have about ten minutes left here, Rob. I want to jump into a couple of things. And I know this is always such a tough question, so I’m sorry if I’m putting you on the spot. But I’m curious how you see sales evolving as AI evolves. The speed and acceleration of business and change is unfathomable at this point with these tools. Correct?
I’m curious how you see things changing with AI and all these tools from a sales or even a general business perspective.
Rob: Yeah. It’s a good question, and it is a challenging question. It’s hard because what you think it’s going to be is not always what it will be.
I referenced earlier that I went to an AI and sales conference seven years ago. I look back at those notes, and what was fascinating was what people were talking about then. They were saying AI was going to allow you to scrape the internet to figure out somebody’s personality and buying persona.
At the time, I was like, “Oh, that sounds kind of cool.” But now it does it, and it gives you the questions you should ask too. People had talked about that.
The other big one was AI making you far more productive as a salesperson. It’s going to automate tasks you had to complete. And that has happened. But I don’t necessarily look at that as AI. I just look at it as faster processing speed.
Some of those things have come true, but they’ve come true in different ways than people thought they would back then.
In 2019, I gave a presentation on what I called the 2025 sales rep. It was about what that person would need to be. One of them was AI-savvy. Another was being a team player. You had to be like a wolf pack - the leader of the pack, but you needed a pack of wolves to help you hunt.
I didn’t really think about AI as a member of that pack. That’s one of the evolutions that has to happen. If you have an SDR, a solutions engineer, other supporting elements, you have to list AI among them. Figure out how that’s a team member that helps you.
That’s a big evolution - how does it become your sidecar, your co-pilot? How does it help you with communication and making things happen?
I think because of that, there’s a belief that it’s going to accelerate sales processes. But I actually think it’s going to slow them down in some ways, because buyers will become more familiar with the tools. They’ll leverage them to ask better, deeper questions.
As the thought engine behind these tools evolves, whether I’m prompting it or not, if ten people before me prompted something, now when I prompt it, I’m already getting a better response than the first person got.
It used to be buyer sophistication from research. Now you’re going to have buyer sophistication from AI. I don’t know how many buyers are doing it yet, but it’s going to happen. And as it does, you’ll have to evolve.
You’ll have to look at how you message, what you talk about, and what your true value proposition is.
I remember taking SPIN selling and being excited about it. I went into a meeting with a buyer at AAA of Michigan, a professional buyer. I started asking questions, and he goes, “Oh, you’re using SPIN selling. I just took a course. Let’s go.”
It made me realize he was being trained to match what I was being trained to do. I think that same thing will now happen within the machine.
That’s going to be one of those challenges. As it becomes more prevalent, how do you communicate your message in a way that reacts to what the machine may send?
Kyle: Interesting. Yeah, it’s an interesting concept thinking about it. Obviously AI is involved in all of our lives, and there’s always talk about humanoids and stuff like that. But it’s an interesting way to frame it, like it is a member of the team and is going to be supporting us, all of us. And how can we be more sophisticated while also answering the buyer’s questions and things like that. It’s very interesting.
Cool. So my last general question around that is, I know you’re transitioning and you’re looking for a new role. When you find that opportunity and you jump in, what is the first thing that you’re doing?
Rob: First thing I’m doing is the first thing I always do. Heads down, mouth shut, learning everything I can about the organization for the first 90 days, or 30 days, or whatever the timeframe looks like. I think that’s always really important.
But one of the things that will be part of that assessment is how they’re leveraging AI, if at all. What are the tools? What are the processes? All those things I talked about that I think are important, in my head I’m going to score an organization against them.
Culture - scale of one to ten. How important is it? What does it look like? Can you actually stab at it? Does somebody know what it is? Tools such as AI - scale of one to ten. How are they using them? What are they not using?
So I’m going to assess all of that and then say, okay, from there, what’s in place today that we can leverage quickly? What needs a major change? What needs a major change but also needs time to actually come into play?
I’ve learned a lot of lessons over the years of trying to move some things too fast. When you have a lot of experience, it’s often very easy to see what the problem is. But back to my earlier point - if I tell you what the problem is and you don’t agree, you’re not going to change in the way that eventually I need you to change.
Sometimes that takes time. It takes iterations. Sometimes it needs a full reset. You always want to give people a chance. You want people to have the opportunity to be successful. That’s how I approach that first step.
First month, first 90 days, whatever the timeframe looks like. You do some consulting. That’s sort of how you do it.
I’m honored and privileged to be married to an amazing woman who is an executive coach. One of the things I listen for on her calls is how she asks questions and tries to find out what people’s real problems are. Even though within two minutes she can clearly see that this person has this issue, this issue, and this issue - until they self-discover it or bring it to light, you can’t really affect positive change. I try to emulate that.
Kyle: That’s great. It makes me think of one of my dad’s famous sayings he would impart to my brother and me growing up: you were given two ears and one mouth for a reason.
Rob: Exactly.
Kyle: Ask the question and listen. Let them learn from it.
Rob: And the good news now is you have two brains. You’ve got your own and the one in the computer that can listen to you.
Kyle: Exactly.
Well, cool. We’ve reached the rapid-fire section here, Rob. I’ve got five real quick-hit questions for you. For your next venture, if you could pick any one company or organization you wanted to work for, what would it be?
Rob: Man, that’s a tough one. That’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about. I honestly don’t really know. I want to go to a place that has opportunity for change, maybe building something new or something that’s been challenged but has a foundation to build from.
Whatever it is, I’m excited to have something that gets that passion going every day when you show up and you’re like, “Let’s go. Let’s make this happen today.”
Kyle: Passion and energy - got to have it.
Rob: Yep.
Kyle: What is the most overhyped sales trend currently?
Rob: Ooh. In some ways… I actually think people mistake digital traffic for engagement. People look at digital engagement and lie to themselves about it.
I try to look at everything as a clue, not a defined piece of what’s happening. Someone might have done five things on your website, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re interested. They might’ve just gone through the site. You still have to dig in and ask questions. That’s probably one of the most overhyped things.
Kyle: There’s always assumptions that need to be made.
Rob: Exactly.
Kyle: Assumptions can help, but they can be dangerous at the same time.
Rob: Correct.
Kyle: What is the most memorable or your favorite pitch of your career?
Rob: You know, I think back to the first time that I found myself asking problem questions and not just talking about myself. Like the first time I really did that and that resonating with the prospect to a point where suddenly I wasn’t talking as much. Like I grew up at a time where I thought sales, you know, somebody told me I should get into sales because I can talk.
Kyle: Yeah.
Rob: And like you said, the two ears, one mouth. Once I learned that listening piece, so I very distinctly remember that first really good sale where somebody was like, yeah, man, I’ve got this problem, this problem, this problem. And I’m like, man, if you could fix those problems, what would that allow you to do? And they’re like, this, this, and this. And I’m like, cool, well, I have a way that we can do that. Do you want to talk about it? And they’re like, yeah, help me. And so suddenly when they’re parroting back to me the things that we do to help them, I knew I had them. It was a great, it was a great feeling.
Kyle: That’s awesome. Yeah. That’s it’s nice having that kind of aha moment. You truly feel it. What is your favorite sports moment of your life?
Rob: So as I said, I’m lifelong Red Sox fan. I was at the 2004 World Series when they beat the Cardinals to win the World Series for the first time in forever. That was a big one.
Kyle: The clinching game?
Rob: Yeah, I was at game four in St. Louis, which was a whole series of weird things to get me there, but that was pretty cool. So that’s a big one. Personally, my high school football team won the state championship. That was a big one. My college football team beat our rivals for the first time in 20 years to take home our little trophy, which nobody thought we would ever do again, which was pretty exciting. This was a long time ago. And then I got two kids who are in sports right now. And a lot of my favorite moments are actually coming from watching them do stuff. It’s amazing.
Kyle: I believe that. I believe that. What position were you in football?
Rob: I was an offensive lineman, primarily. I played a little defensive line. You played both ways, but I was a short tackle. Today’s world, I don’t even know if today’s world - my friends and I, I went to a Division III school, Kalamazoo College, not known as a football powerhouse, but my friends and I, who I still talk to all the time, we’d look at the team today and we’re like, our best athlete would be today’s worst athlete on that team. Like any player from the team today would have been by far the best player on our team. It’s just such a different evolution of how people approach sports than they did back in the late eighties.
Kyle: 100%. The tech, the science, everything.
Rob: It’s, it’s amazing. Yeah. Yeah.
Kyle: All right. Last one. What is the worst fashion trend you adopted in your life?
Rob: Oh, I had several pairs of Zubaz pants, so I don’t know. That one was pretty rough. I also had a phase of cut off football pants that we would wear as shorts, which as an offensive lineman may not have been a very, very good look. I was like, man, why was I single so much in college? I got a pretty good idea that maybe there was something to do with that fashion trend.
Kyle: Not the most flattering outfit. Yeah.
Rob: Incredible, incredible.
Kyle: Well, Rob, we’ve just reached the open forum kind of portion here. Is there anything that’s important to you or that you’re passionate about that maybe we didn’t get to discuss that you want to share with everybody?
Rob: No, I mean, I think, you know, the one thing, and I probably said it in some ways, but I always do try to tell people, hey, take things you’re trying to learn and do seriously. Approach it like it’s like you might have in school. So if you’re going to embark on how do I utilize AI, what are some things I can do to try to drive myself forward or whatever, take the time, be smart about it, seek out experts, read, that kind of stuff.
Again, I have a lot of things people have said over the years that stuck with me, wee-wee slides, all those different types of things. But one is, one of these motivational speakers I saw once at a conference was like, hey, peak performers take responsibility for their own learning. And I’m like, yeah, that is something that I think is super important.
I’ve been blessed by leading some great people on some great teams. I’ve won a couple of president’s clubs, all of which for which I sold zero dollars. The team sold all of it. And when I think about what made those teams successful, what made those people successful is that desire to just be better every day and take that responsibility for making themselves better.
Kyle: We talked about culture earlier and how I worked at a bunch of different agencies, and one that always stuck out, one of the values was “take it personally.”
Rob: Yeah, I love that.
Kyle: Yeah, and it rings true.
Rob: Absolutely.
Kyle: If it’s your own money or it’s your own job, whatever, and it is your own job, obviously.
Kyle: And that’s the right way to approach it. So that’s perfect. Well, Rob, thank you so much for joining today. Everybody can find Rob Beattie on LinkedIn. Is there anything else you want to plug? Anywhere else they could find you if they wanted to reach out or anything?
Rob: No, LinkedIn is by far the best place. Like if you’re interested in connecting, happy to connect. If I can help somebody in any way, boy, I sure love to do that. So yeah.
Rob: Kyle, I appreciate your time today. Thank you.
Kyle: Yeah. Thank you for imparting all of your sales experience and knowledge on us today. Thank you again for joining the Brainiac Blueprint. Rob, if you don’t mind, just take a look at the camera and say, “Stay brilliant, Brainiacs.”
Rob: Stay brilliant, Brainiacs.
Kyle: Cheers. Thanks, Rob.
Rob: Thanks, Kyle.
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