Empowering Sales Success with AI Insights

Mike Groenevald, the Vice President of Global Sales at Everstage, takes center stage as we explore the exciting intersection of AI and sales. Known for his strategic insights, Mike reveals how Everstage is reimagining its role as a CPQ company to better serve its conservative customer base. Our discussion uncovers the transformative potential of AI, particularly in automating manual sales tasks like quote and proposal creation. By harnessing tools such as Slack and Teams to extract valuable information from CRM systems and call recordings, Everstage is empowering its sales teams to escape the administrative grind and focus on strategic activities that drive results.

Our conversation also ventures into the broader landscape of sales enablement, emphasizing AI's role in not just speeding up processes, but enriching them for more meaningful customer interactions. Mike's insights illustrate how AI is shifting the focus from merely saving time to maximizing the effectiveness of sales efforts, including transforming one-on-one coaching into scalable learning tools. We wrap up with a deep dive into the strategic use of CRM systems, where personal notes and alerts act as vital safeguards against information overload. Join us for this thought-provoking episode as we uncover AI's game-changing impact on sales success and the ongoing journey to refine these innovative strategies.

(00:05) AI in CPQ for Sales Growth

(08:54) Leveraging AI for Sales Enablement

(19:33) Maximizing CRM Notes for Sales Success

(00:05) AI in CPQ for Sales Growth

This chapter features a conversation with Mike, the Vice President of Global Sales at Everstage, where we explore the intersection of sales performance management and the company's recent pivot towards becoming a CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) company. We discuss the conservative nature of Everstage's customer base and the cautious approach towards AI adoption, highlighting the potential of AI in automating manual tasks to enhance efficiency. I talk with Mike about how AI can significantly streamline the process of creating quotes and proposals, making it more accurate and less time-consuming. Mike shares insights into Everstage's innovative use of AI to automate the proposal creation process by integrating tools like Slack and Teams to gather information from CRM systems and call recordings, thus reducing administrative tasks for sales teams and allowing them to focus on more strategic activities.

(08:54) Leveraging AI for Sales Enablement

This chapter focuses on enhancing productivity through the strategic use of AI in sales processes. I share my perspective on how AI can not only speed up tasks like pre-call preparation but also enrich them, enabling deeper discovery during calls and more personalized interactions with customers. The conversation highlights the importance of using AI to improve the quality of work rather than merely increasing efficiency. We discuss how AI can transform one-on-one coaching sessions into scalable learning tools by recording and converting these sessions into easily accessible battle cards. This approach is aimed at improving win rates by focusing on better customer interactions and more impactful coaching. We explore how these methods relate to driving ROI in sales enablement, emphasizing the shift from time-saving to maximizing the effectiveness of sales efforts.

(19:33) Maximizing CRM Notes for Sales Success

This chapter explores the strategic use of CRM systems, emphasizing the importance of personal notes and alerts to streamline processes and maintain focus on key opportunities. We discuss the value of setting up "tripwires" to manage information overload and ensure that critical details, like competitor insights and pricing, don't go unnoticed. This approach allows for timely interventions, such as revisiting calls where follow-ups are lacking. Through

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:05

Welcome back everyone. My name is Seth Mars, and I'm hosting the Innovative Revenue Leader podcast. And today I have the honor of having Mike on. And Mike and I worked together a uh several different times when he joined Everstage, but Mike has 15 years in sales and he's worked his way up as a sales leader in companies like Bright Edge, Verb, and now he's the vice president of Global Sales for a very fast-growing sales performance management company, which is turning now, as he'll talk to a little bit into a CPQ company as well. So providing more services at Everstage. So Mike and I got to know each other when he started there, and we've crossed paths a lot. He's somebody that I've always been really impressed with, how we engage with customers, how we work with them. It's it's a very unique culture. And and Mike, it may be something that we talk to that you bring to sales on how you engage that I've really always always been impressed with. So thanks, thanks for joining and uh welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08

Yeah, no, thanks for having me. Thanks for the kind words, man. I uh I definitely reciprocate them back. I think you're one of the best minds in the space. And um, you know, when I uh when you asked me to kind of come on, um, I was like, I hope I hopefully I can live up to uh to set. Um so I'm excited to jump in, man.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24

Man, no, no doubt, no doubt you will. Um, so okay, so we'll we'll we'll jump in. So you're in sales performance management, but I'd like you to just caveat that because of the pivot that you guys have made recently. You serve a pretty conservative customer base. And and I think going into CPQ, as you'll talk about, is is also a different one. So what is also a conservative base. So when I evaluated this customer is when I would ask, you know, how are you using AI? There wasn't much use of AI. Most of them were still staying away. So the the report that that we're going where we talked through what CROs need to do to drive growth with AI, we talked about five different cell A activities that can reduce this 5%. When you think about these conservative users, which one of those five areas do you think would most resonate with them?

SPEAKER_00: 2:18

Yeah, so I think about the conservative part of it, like it's so true, man. Uh, and and I'm sure it's like this, you know, I think selling what we sell and being the SBM space, like it crosses all these different industries and verticals. Um, and everybody for the most part has different, you know, maybe risk thresholds, but they're all kind of concerned about the same things, uh, you know, at the end of the day, and and you're spot on with them being conservative for sure. Um and I think from an AI standpoint, it's kind of like making sure that data doesn't go rogue. Um, you know, that's all protected. And I think that there's a um for those conservative folks, a lot of it is like automating manual tasks still. Um I certainly think there's more to it. Um, but you know, you you uh obviously there's a lot of value that AI can bring about automating manual tasks. And so, you know, one of the things that stood out about your report was um, you know, you mentioned we started a CPQ. It it uh certainly uh it was top of mind about creating quotes and proposals. You know what I mean? If you think about that process, it's such a pivotal process of every single business, right? You know, are we charging the right amount? Are we getting the right margins? Um you know, and and are these things uh a good representation of our business in general? Um it's really easy, you know, to have the wrong uh product skew in a quote, um, you know, have the wrong address uh, you know, on things, and then it just looks sloppy. Um and with conservative buyers, that doesn't really play, right? Uh you might only get one kind of crack at it. And so um we've seen that be a big problem, as well as just time consuming, right? So it's like an accuracy issue, it's a time consuming issue, and it's not really a revenue driving task, right? It's more of kind of an administrative task at its core. And so, you know, one of the things that that we built, um, and I think it's one of the benefits of being a little bit newer of a player in a space in today's day and age is that you can kind of have AI be a foundation of what you're doing, right? Um, which is really cool. Um, and so you know, one of the things that that we do is like when you go to create a proposal, um, you know, we can go into Slack, we can go into Teams, tell our Slack bot, hey, I need to create a proposal for X customer. What it'll then do, it's gonna go out and it's gonna crawl your CRM, right? So it's gonna understand you know who, where, what, but it's also crawling gong calls and call recordings, right? What product SKUs were discussed, what quantities of those product SKUs were discussed, what uh length of contract was discussed, um, and essentially is getting you to a point where the framework is built. Are you gonna come in and maybe tweak some things? Yeah, right, but it's literally taking all that manual process of selecting the SKUs and filling out the person's information, so on and so forth. You just ask a question, it provides you a document, and then you're kind of fine-tuning, sending off for approvals much quicker than what you'd be doing uh otherwise, right? So that's kind of one example.

SPEAKER_01: 5:11

So let me let me dig a little deeper on that because that's really interesting. Because what you're saying right now, if I understood it right, is I'm a seller, I just had a great conversation with a customer. The customer said, Hey, can you give me a proposal? And then you would go into Everstage, click a button, and say, I want to create a proposal for X customer. And the way you're building the system is I don't do any configuration initially. The system goes back and looks at all the phone calls, any data that's basically connected to your CRM or the tools that are feeding into your CRM, and it brings back kind of a draft proposal based on everything it knows today.

SPEAKER_00: 5:49

Exactly. And I'd even go one step further. There's also like a deal room component too, right? So, you know, uh, is there also the call recording or what materials do we have in our, you know, our content management system that we also want to throw in there? It's also like, you know, essentially leveraging that sort of uh intelligence to create kind of the whole experience, right? Not just a proposal to deal room too.

SPEAKER_01: 6:11

Okay, so Everstage had the deal room as well, that's a part of this. Yeah, part of CPQ, yeah. Interesting. So yeah, that's a so that pulls everything together. That's a good use of what you're seeing with some of the Jan AI stuff today. And then the the salesperson then adds, deletes, updates, formalizes everything, and then pushes it through. That's really, really, really interesting. It seems like also that the I mean the the AI use cases for sales performance management are much lower in in terms of like the the difficulty or or the willingness to accept just because accuracy is so critically important. But it seems like going into CPQ that opens up a whole level of opportunity with AI because I don't like in that example you just gave, I don't have to be perfect. All I'm doing is try to get you 50% of the way there, so you don't have to go look through your notes. You don't have to go do all that stuff, you just kind of open it up and I've got a draft. It may not be perfect, but it gets me there, has all of the different details, and all I need to do is maybe correct, update, add, delete.

SPEAKER_00: 7:15

Still have the manual check before it goes to a customer, which is the other important part, like you brought up, you know, in the SBN space, calculations being so important and accuracy being so important. It's kind of removing that barrier of risk, you know, to a certain extent. So, you know, we'd like to think that that it's on the right path, um, where it still gives a protect per protection for the conservative, you know, sort of of user, um, but also provides a lot of value too, right? Um, and people like, right? Um, so so yeah, totally uh totally a thing.

SPEAKER_01: 7:46

Cool, cool, very cool. So before we before we started this, you and I were chatting, and and one of the things that you said is your team has been using the CPQ product for about a year, you said?

SPEAKER_00: 7:58

Yeah, yeah, over a year at this point, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 8:00

Okay, so like one of the things that that comes up with this is it sounds like that's that that should be creating some capacity within your teams. And one of the things that I always see when you create that capacity is in a lot of cases, companies just leave it to their sales reps to figure out what to do with that capacity. And that could be a great sales rep, makes good use of it and drives revenue. And in another situation, they kind of just take a little bit more time off. Um and the the company doesn't necessarily have control over that. For you, it sounds like you generated some capacity by pulling this in. Once you got it working, I'm sure at some points it was a little bit of hard work because you were you were helping develop with with your technical team. But when you started to get that capacity, how how did you redeploy those those pieces of like extra time back to the seller?

SPEAKER_00: 8:51

Yeah, so I think um, you know, one, I I kind of want to speak about this at a little bit more of a higher level because I'm I'm just so passionate about it. So like the it really kind of grinds my gears that we've gotten to a point, especially with prep, you know, I think about like on-call prep, I think about better productivity when you know when I think about this this scenario where it kind of more is tailored to a seller in general than it is the CPQ in this particular instance. But um the nature of it is is that like you could become more efficient, but if I'm getting the same activity volume out, then like what are we really doing, right? You're talking about taking the time off. Like it it doesn't make sense, right? Um, and so what I've really kind of focused on with my teams are like how can this not make you quicker? How can this actually like make you better, right? So like one of the examples is prep, pre-call prep, right? I think there's probably majority of organizations are using AI, it's gonna help you prep a lot quicker. But is it helping you go deeper, not just in your prep, but also during calls, right? In discovery, can I actually go deeper in discovery? Can I have the customer feel the benefit of the efficiency that I've just experienced? Right. Another blocking tackling thing is like tie backs, you know, is what I call taking information that a prospect shares with you, providing value, specifically tying it back to what they had shared, right? Are you opening up more brain power to have more capacity to really tailor and go deep in a presentation around how this is actually impactful for you? Right. And so um how you actually action that is also there's a level of AI that that I think is really important. And so when you think about coaching, right? I'm sitting in a one-on-one, you know, and I really try to, it doesn't happen all the time for sure. Um, but you really try to at least like once a month, like have like a hardcore, you know, here's a call recording, here's some like black and white, you know, coaching around how we could have gone deeper, how we could have done those tiebacks, using real life examples, right? Um, and it's very personal to that individual. Um, but what I found, and this is probably about like eight months ago, um, where I wasn't really like being a force multiplier in those moments. Like those are very one-to-one sort of moments, and like a lot of those situations apply across the entire team, but like I'm not able to kind of multiply that. And so I then put another layer of AI on top of it where I'll record those one-on-ones, uh, turn them into battle cards very quickly, very easily, share the snippets of the call recording and give us a sample of what the scenario actually was, use case was, industry, persona, size of customer, you know, problem area, you know, competitor that we were competing against, so on and so forth. Throw all that into a catalog and then apply alerts to the team when those things have happened. So that way, when say that coaching moment comes up again with somebody else, I already have some materials as well. We still might have that discussion, but now I'm force multiplying, but there's also some homework that you can do to get better and better on your own, right? And so that's really where I personally kind of leverage it, seeing it, and like if I can take that and have it be five percent more capacity, awesome, right? Uh hopefully it's more than that, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01: 12:05

Yeah, yeah. It's it's interesting the way that you're talking about it because it's different than I interpreted it to a certain degree. Like, I think capacity, like typical like analytics nerd, right? The the time I save you you had an hour, you did it in 50 minutes. But you're not really talking about that. You're saying, okay, I I gave you you you I took 10, 20 minutes off of your time, but I still want you to spend an hour. But my hypothesis is that you didn't do enough, you didn't put enough effort in building the depths during that hour. And instead of you spending more time doing it, I want you to to do more work before to get a lot of things set up in a way that the conversation is deeper. You're able to, you're able to use that time more wisely. So that's really interesting. And and I think the way that you would, if I understand it right, the way that you would see an impact in that is your win rates. So you may not give time back, and I may be working the same deals, but my win rates are going to go up because now I am actually delivering a better experience. I'm going more in depth with the product, I'm I'm better positioning things than I did before.

SPEAKER_00: 13:13

Yeah, 100%, right? You know, I think that there, I think there's a lot of mentality where it's like what you're talking about, it's like time efficiency, and what could I then be doing with that time? In the micro kind of uh, you know, moment that I'm explaining, it's call prep to better close rates, right? And so it doesn't necessarily mean like call prep means I can prep for more calls. Like it's like how can I do actually do that better in order to quit you know improve close rates? You know what I'm saying? One-on-one coaching moments, like how can I actually do those things better to get more output, right? Um and so it's uh uh uh it's not always about like can I do more? It's like can I maximize what I'm actually doing too, you know? Awesome.

SPEAKER_01: 13:56

Okay, yeah, that makes that really interesting. This kind of dovetails into the the final question that I that I had for you around around enablement. That's always been a tricky beast to understand where am I getting value from enablement. It's it's very hard to measure. Sounds like you've thought a lot about this and and and put a lot of work into trying to make that visible for your teams. When you think about driving ROI for enablement, like and like the adoption of training and what you want them to do, those things you were talking about before around how you're building this force multiplier of what good looks like. How do you think about that? Like what what what what do you do to understand whether the enablement you're giving your sales team is adding value or delivering an ROI?

SPEAKER_00: 14:40

Oh man, so it's um I think that there's like micro moments that lead up to ROI. And that's really at least like for the example that I gave, where I really try to like focus that, right? Yeah, so you know, for example, um, you know, hey, say we're working on in this particular uh you know feature of the product against this particular competitor, these are the differentiators that we want to land. When we get this information from Discovery, this is how we're going to be tying it back, right? One of the cool things that AI has really done is like categorizing those things, then you can put scoring measures to those things. You can actually really start to uh you know see and and have a quantifiable improvement metrics on those little micro moments that ultimately lead to close rates, right? But if I were to skew those things and go just to close rates, like am I actually accomplishing what I know needs to get there, right? And so one of the things that I subscribe to is like situational coaching, right? There's like S1 test four if you're familiar with it. And so not only will we like this is what you know S4 kind of looks like, this is where you're at, mutual agreements to it. Um, this is what you need in order to kind of you know improve and get to to that S4. And here are some black and white examples of how we've actually done on call to get there, all categorized, right? All done without me having to do a ton of manual work, right? Do I get some help from from sales enablement and rebots for sure, right? Um, you know, but uh a lot of that work is is ultimately getting automated. Um, and I think in a lot of those instances, like we're you know, why it's an exciting time uh, you know, with AI in those instances, a lot of that was just uh it was interpretation both on the leader and on the rep, right? Like my interpretation is you're getting better, or my interpretation is that I'm getting better if I'm speaking as as the rep. But it's like, are those things aligned? Is that actually providing the output that we want? Is that getting the responses that we want? Maybe, maybe not, right? It's all interpretation, right? So uh it helps kind of make the the you know things a little bit more quantifiable. Um, and then you just stack those things up, right? You can go through your entire presentation on call, off-call, you know, what do things actually need to look like in order to you know get a deal in. And uh and then you're also focusing on on moments to get positive momentum, right? You know, it's one of the things that I'm super passionate about where it's like if I were to just strictly gauge my self-worth off of closed one, like you lose more deals than you win, right? So like you're it's really easy to be negative than it is positive, but yes, positive momentum, you know, when it rains it's poor, is is real, both positively and negatively. And so, you know, maybe I'm not seeing that end result quite yet, but I'm building positive juju by seeing these little micro moments improve, knowing that that big moment is going to come while I'm I'm keeping my you know my my mentality where it needs to be. You know what I mean? So feel really strongly about it.

SPEAKER_01: 17:42

Yeah, so you're looking, forget the when like here's the deal, and these are the moments that happen in a deal that matter, and I'm now using AI to say, go listen for X moment, Y moment, Z moment, and then tell me how that looks. And then if there's a good or bad, if it's a really good moment at a critical point, show it so we can share it and and and work with if it's a bad moment, give it to me so I could go help them. But then you can see what those moments look like and start understanding what a one deal looks like in those moments. So it must also give you some sort of like forewarning of whoa, that that that didn't go well. I need to intervene because we dropped the ball or we we didn't do well on this. This we need to do something to try to get this part better.

SPEAKER_00: 18:25

100%, 100%, man. So now taking it to like my level, right, the macro level a little bit, yeah, right. I think that there's a ton of these little trip wires that I try to set up for myself. Um, obviously, if you're just focusing on like call recording logic with your scorecard that you set to it, it can not be accurate 100% of the time, right? You know, one of the things that I always always laugh about in uh in in the ICM space in particular is like we have a competitor named exactly, right? Think about how often the word exactly is said. Spiff, right? You know, gets brought up. It doesn't have anything to do with the competitor, it just is is nomenclature that gets brought up. And so there's also these little micro moments uh of note-taking, right? Like, you know, I think that like how I try to set it up is you know, as as my job is to help people see what they're not seeing. You know, I'm talking about I was talking previously about like sales execution, but now talking about deal execution. That's really where my job like has to be, right? I have to maximize the the money that's coming in, right? So um, how can I help reps kind of you know see what's behind the corner, what's coming up? And so I've been really strategic where uh I always kind of laugh and I always make sure that that uh I acknowledge the fact that there are some notes in the CRM that are for me, right? Like I'm sorry, uh, you know, um there's ways that we can automate filling them out, you know, uh, but you know, there is for a reason. And so I can actually read, I can have the these alerts that I'm talking about, but I can also read the notes and then I'm having them fill out these particular notes because I can read the responses and now might need to double click into there, right? If I see this competitor and this is the pricing that we shared and there's no next meeting, boom, I need to go check out the end of that call, right? Um, you know what I mean? And so uh, you know, there's these little moments where you try to set up these little trip wires for yourself because you can't look at everything, you can't see everything. And so um something I'm always trying to improve too. I don't I don't think I'm uh an expert in that by any means, but try to improve.

SPEAKER_01: 20:26

Seems like you're doing a lot with it, though. Very cool. All right. Well, yeah, Mike, once again, thanks for thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. Great insight, and yeah, I uh look forward to talking to you again. Awesome, thanks, Dad.