AI will only replace the bad salespeople

No, I appreciate you for having me. I know we've been this has been in the works for for a good while, so it's good to to to finally be able to do this.

Absolutely. So obviously I co-founded an agency called Terran Connect. we're essentially a business development slash gener lead generation business for anyone at startup level into SME and also more increasingly recently more global enterprises in in general. So what I do is really come in and what we do as an organization is we come in and we build that sort of lead generation infrastructure. Typically a lot of startups I have, I mean I've worked with people like startups that basically have no personnel but the founder. But even when w when a startup's managed to scale a lot of the time, it hasn't really put that parameter in place, that infrastructure to constantly generate leads. So often they're relying on referrals, existing networks, to be able to to to basically open new doors. So we basically come in and fix that. and leave an inch infrastructure behind that you can then rinse repeat into generating more leads.

Absolutely. I have almost like a philosophical sort of you know summary to what we do is which we we sell attention. So with a lot of agencies they'll say you know, you know, we're selling leads, but what does a lead actually mean? so I like to say we sell attention. So specifically with decision makers, high level execs, etcetera. So what's made us a little bit different is we don't focus on generating leads with, you know, your jender or your a sort of mid-tier manager, we really try to go for anyone up the chain of command as much as possible. that's that's really what we're what we like to do. And we also have a another business called ProfileWave where that's we we we've co-founded it as a joint venture with an AI lab and essentially we've plugged buying intent into our lead generation efforts as well. So once we start these campaigns, we We we kind of already know who to chase for because 'cause we've got inbuilt buying intent, what angle we should use, what companies have have recently made announcements that could be related to the product, et cetera. So that's allowed us to really just have a unique proposition in the marketplace.

The answer is yes and no. It's one of those where it will replace the salespeople that are not great. Typically the more inexperienced salespeople, the mid tier to low level sort of STR will disappear. in terms of volume anyway. When before an organization series certainly a series A may have ten twenty SDRs, now it will have a really good five, for for obviously reasons I'll go into in a minute. so it will never replace salespeople, but it'll definitely reduce the amount of salespeople you need, and it'll make the the world beaters even better. That's that's what that's what's g what's going to happen. My in my opinion anyway, maybe you disagree.

I it's it's a sort of the concept of signal and noise. I think a lot of the f part of our w what we do a lot of the time, especially with the more unexp inexperienced founders, is that we spend just kind of like the first month coaching them into that founder mindset. I've seen more startups that I can count where the founder is constantly more focused on his website than he than he is speaking to customers. Focusing on the wrong thing. And then and then more increasingly it's like I've spoken to people who have spent weeks and weeks on on end you know, building agents for this, this and that, but there's actually no progress as the week goes on. So it's really the founders, if I'm being a hundred percent honest. one of the things that people forget, for example, about PayPal, it's it was basically a GPS tool before it was a payment system for pilots. It was voted one of the worst ideas. of that year. However, because you had a world class team, you were they were able to basically pivot quickly and move into something that the market did deem to have value. So no one really knows whether their product and service will succeed. so that you can't really control. What you can control is your actions of how much you get done every day. so I think one of the reasons why tech startups don't move as fast as they should and others seem to be at a billion of revenue. in a few years, it's just the intensity of the founders half the time. Sometimes I it's I I I find it's more the founder than it is actually the idea a lot of the time, to be a hundred percent honest. 'Cause I see people with amazing ideas, ship founder.

Absolut, absolut, absolut. So pretty much any way I can. So the mass classical example is for example, I get it to actually give create my proposals for me. So once we discuss numbers, get commercials, sort of discussed on the call, I usually get it AI to automatically create my proposals for me as well and it has an inbuilt framework that uses every time. Before meetings, I've got an agent that sends me updates. as well on on on on what we can talk about and what these the several angles are. in joint venture with TDS AI labs based in Paris as well, we've created profile wave. So what that's able to do is basically send AI agents right into the web to identify basically buying signals. But we also have a huge data data lake that they feed off. Proprietary AI models as well. So what we're able to do is not only detect which companies could be in the market for a set proposition. Why they're in the market, what's the angle on the call? We can even do analysis on, okay, these three, four, free or four personas that we may identify as people we want to reach out to within this company to sell said product and fix such set pain point. What are they likely to respond to? Is it, are they, you know, is this a person that posts on LinkedIn every couple of days? Okay, they maybe LinkedIn's gonna be a viable option to connect with them. Is this person that may be active more on on email? is phone something that they've engaged with in the past. So we've got all these complex tools that we use internally to just allow us to just be a little bit better at our jobs because once you're doing sales is a game of inches. so I can gain a deal or lose a deal literally within seconds based on what I say. So again, if you give the right STR that level of information, they'll know exactly what to do with it.

So I sorry, I think I interrupted you for a second.

I don't know. I think that's a great question. so there's two sides of that. Yes, like I mentioned, a lot of the low level, more talentless SDRs that work less, less hardworking, etc., will be probably replaced. However, again, like you mentioned, especially when you're doing enterprise sales, you need someone to segregate an account. When the sales cycle is a little bit more complex, you're always going to need a human. but I'll just give you an example within that we built internally that will sort of help summarize my answer. We were working with a legal tech platform recently, and essentially what they built was an AI that could spot any contractual mistakes in a document, contracts mainly, but any high stakes document, even equity agreements, etc. So essentially their main ICP is law firms and lawyers that. spend hours and hours a week basically going through a contract ten times to see if there's any vulnerabilities in there. So this product's able to basically just automatically just spot any mistakes. Right. So we sent an A we created a voice agent, right? We gave it a name, we we essentially just unleashed it with a script that was already trialed and tested by humans. And within three days it booked three calls, right? And these were weak partners of law firms. And the and and and when you if I'll show you the the call after wish we could we we could obviously could show it on the on the episode itself, but essentially it overcomes four or five objections per call, send me an email. no, we already have something for this, etc. It overcame so much, and that was literally a voice agent that we built within a week. So once hearing that, we were like, wow. So again, I'm not expecting the AI voice agents to come in and replace every SDR. But rather than have 10, you're gonna have three. And and an another viable point is that the the AI STR for about 15% of the cost can do probably 5x the amount of calls. So it can cover way more ground in a day. That's 500 a day. And when the average SDR is gonna give you 80 to 100 a day. So in terms of the ground it's covering, it's it's it's it's it's huge. You can also speak any language. So if you

See if you wanted to get to speak Portuguese, Mandarin, German, whatever, and you've got again a German SDR behind behind that AI that can configure it, work with it, follow up on on on any sort of one conversations, it can do that. So that's what we've been doing. We've basically built this AI, it will book however many calls a week, and then you'll have fifteen conversations where it hasn't booked, where someone's asked for more information, another human call caller that's on obviously on a different level to the AI call caller can come in the loop and have multiple warm conversations to follow up that day. So that's how you can create a process where the voice AI empowers the really, really world class reps.

So I think there's differences in both. and it always boils on to people. the real, real difficulty in business, 'cause my my parents are entrepreneurs as well. So they they have a restaurant. so it's very different business than mine. But business lives and dies by the the people you can recruit. And the person you are, as well as I you grow into the demands of the business as a person, as a founder. I think that's very important, but recruitment. one hundred but whether it's an agency or SAS, doesn't matter. You could raise Series A, you could raise Series B, doesn't matter. If the right culture isn't in place to recruit the right people, ultimately that business will not go forward. And I've I've had to learn that the hard way myself.

So I think the the positives are that obviously through venture capital, you can vastly again have resources to now recruit the best people. That that should be may you your main focus is now having the whether you've raised seed, a million dollars, five million, series A, series B, a founder's or or the leadership team's objective is how can we use this injection of cash to basically hire the best people? And that's what you've seen with the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic. and some of these a AI companies is they are raising and they are giving people ridiculous pay packages. There's a reason why, you know, they the the you know the chief a AI officer meta his startup was acquired for ten billion just to get him. You know what I mean? and there's CRO is now being offered ten million dollar pay packages because companies are realizing that there is no value you can put on truly world class people. so I would say venture capital, the main aspect is to be able to recruit the best people. and I'd say the other side of it is is no one's on understanding your cap table. definitely. A lot of founders don't realise how s how squeezed they're going to be when it comes to acquisition point, in terms of just liquidation preferences, the fact that, you know, your debt clays that gets cleared out first, and then it's the the V V C that gets paid. You actually usually get paid last. so I don't know if you've kept up with s some of the recent acquisitions, but you're seeing half a million half a billion dollar acquisitions where the founders cashing in on twenty million dollars out of that. Which again, I don't think anyone would complain, but twenty million out of on a on a half a billion dollar acquisitions seems that's enough like you didn't get the line of share in that for something that is your baby ultimately.

So there's there's two sides of it. W f within sales or within in general?

So from from a sales perspective, it won't replace closers. so account the account executive will not be replaced by AI. I don't see a world where AI avatars are completely or removing that human element away from sales. I also think like there's gonna be a real big market for corporate events. so I think events companies are gonna be killing it in the next five to ten years. Cause even Anthropic, they preach, you know, the fact that humans are are going to be replaced at every role but recently even posted about it on my LinkedIn they were paying almost half a million dollars for an event coordinator. So even Anthropic even Anthropic knows that it cannot and by the way Anthropic also hires SDRs which I which I find interesting which kind of like loops everything back into are SDRs going to be replaced. I think the company making or or supposedly replacing them wouldn't be hiring them if that was the case. but again pay package, hundred K for an STR, they're looking for the absolute best, not for stripelers. and again, it goes back to the beginning of the podcast when I said I I I don't I don't think AI will replace that innate p sort of desire humans have to connect with each other to really just like explore the world from a cultural perspective. Even the fact that you're from Prague, like I've got a million questions I want to ask you, just about how your day to day is what weather w the weather's like, what your experience has been over the last sort of ten years. so I I I don't think it will replace that anytime soon. I think there's people trying to attack that at the moment, but there's a real pushback towards being in a community again.

I think I think part of of of obviously myself, I could say yourself as well, we kind of live in this little bubble and this bubble culturally sort of i i is set in motion by Silicon Valley and us that I can say we're in this bubble, plus the the SF sort of business community. what I can say is that they don't take into account the average person a lot of the time. So like to us, AI agents may be so yesterday, right? So many companies have plugged AI agents in. It's so old, you almost get bored of listening to it. Someone like my mother, for example, who runs a restaurant, etc., I don't even think she knows where an AI agent is. You know what I mean? So that's I think that's the part when we talk about fast adoption, how fast things things will change, there isn't always that sort of understanding that the average person, it will take time for the average person to to just basically adapt themselves to this new to this new world. So things will change very rapidly within our bubble. say the business community, people who have startups, people who exchange, who people who are required to be at the front front of knowledge. However, I will still say some of these predictions you're seeing with are these people going to be replaced. Some are are they gonna be replaced

It doesn't take into account how behind most people are. I mean, I w I went to a business conference two years ago where people were asking me the questions, should I have a website? That was two years ago. So is that that's how far behind some people are. So we just need to basically take into account that things may not happen as fast as we anticipate it will, just because people within our model are are changing so quickly if that makes sense.

The best place would probably be LinkedIn. I I usually get a lot of content out there in regards to how AI resaping sales in general, general advice to start up founders in general as well. so yeah, LinkedIn at the Adi S and Sound would be a great place to find me. And feel free to reach out. you know, if any of your viewers have any questions as well. Nicholas has been an absolute wonderful conversation, thank you.

Amazing.