Eps 8.0 Design Flow - The AI Hive in Action with SDR Preview - with wrap up

Here we look at how the Hyvara.ai Hive can help the SDR prep for his/her call with the AE - review the conversation - not be on the call with the SDR but listening and then questioning the SDR - to help save time with the AE.   We also wrap this session with our overview and industry challenges to help guide the design team 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Um how are you doing on time? I just want to make sure you're okay. I'm good. I'm good. I have a few more minutes. So before we shall we let's do a role play as if um you're the you're the AI agent here and or maybe uh you you were the SDR in the earlier cycle, right? Right. So so let's have an SDR talk to the agent. I'm the agent and and let's do that same scenario and we'll try we'll try to convince the SDR that they need to capture more information and they need to go back to um their customer and get this type of information before we can move forward.

SPEAKER_02 0:42

Awesome. So I'm the SDR talking to the agent, right?

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Yeah, just like we did with the sales rep, but it it'll be more controlled. Got it. All right, I'm ready when you are.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

All right. So uh hey agent. Um hey, my uh my name's Johnny and I just talked to this customer. So excited. Uh they're Johnny's trucking. Um uh and they manage, you know, uh they're trying to manage the amount of goods in their trailer, they're a logistics company. Uh, and you know, they have like six or seven depots. Uh I think they're only US based. Um, don't really know, but they they're trying to manage the amount of goods in the trailer. Like that's why they came to our website and kind of were interested us in the first place. Um and I talked to this guy named Kevin, who's like their lead IT guy. Um so he's a technical guy. Um he's not really worried about like the you know, the the budget and all that kind of stuff. We'll have to get somebody else later to kind of bring that, you know, kind of to to uh to that to us. Um but they do know about some of our other partners, uh some of the other companies that we're working with. They partner with uh Snyder. Um they told me that uh like their uh budget, they just want to keep it low. Uh and time-wise, um, you know, they want to move pretty quickly. Uh and I offered them a demo. I think that's gonna be awesome. They are excited about that. They told me that they want they don't want it to be canned, they want it to be, you know, like a custom demo uh based on their business and these moving parts. They do long haul and short haul. That's probably important to know. Uh, for like, and they sub for people like FedEx um uh and things like that. Uh, but they were excited about our forever good product uh and our platform. Um so I just wanted to make sure that we can we can take care of that, right? Um yeah, what do you think?

SPEAKER_00 2:21

Well, yeah, Johnny's trucking I just checked them out um online. They do have seven major depots across the country. They have about a thousand um uh trailers on the road at any given time. They conduct long and chart haul type of opportunities. In fact, it looks like some of their big customers that they work with are companies like Home Depot and also FedEx. Um, they also have relationships with what appears to be Snyder organization. Looks like they do some work with them. Yeah, I don't know if you're aware of it or not, but we we actually have some business with Snyder. So wow, that's awesome. Yeah, on the surface, it sounds like a really good opportunity. Let me go, let me just go, if you could, and we'll jump into a couple questions if you don't mind before we move forward to the sales rep. Please do. Yeah, so um the person you were speaking to, uh John, or was it Johnny? Uh Kevin. Kevin. Yeah, sorry. The the AI agent will know that, by the way. That's right. That's right. That's right. There's a great example of why the AI agent is important. I did that on purpose. No, I didn't. Uh so it sounds like Kevin is in the technical department, which obviously he'd be first to know about the technology being used in the organization. Have you identified what they use today?

SPEAKER_02 3:34

Uh no, that's a good question. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:37

Yep. Well, uh, what I'm gonna do for you is I'm gonna build out a list of questions if we don't have the answers. So you can, and I'll put them in a way where you can ask the client these questions to put as we move forward. Uh also stack rank them as to what the priority questions are gonna be uh in order to move forward to the next level. How's that sound to you?

SPEAKER_02 3:54

Wow, that's awesome. Nobody's ever done that for me, uh, you know, as an SDR. And you know, one day I want to make sure I'm, you know, I'd love to be an AE or you know, something like that. I feel like this this might help me, you know, grow my career as well. This is awesome.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Absolutely. And I've taken a look at your track record in C in the CRM tool, and you've done a lot of business for the company. So I think you're doing really well. So let's just carry on through the conversation. So you're speaking to the technology person, you don't know what technology they use today. Do you know what they like or don't like about the technology? Probably not seeing you don't know what they what they do. So we're gonna want to know a little bit more about the technology. Now, as you know, the company um set, you know, our company works off B Manter, which is budget, method, authority, need, time, and risk. And these are all great questions, but a lot of these questions are not asked up front. Um, so let me ask you a few more. The basic, simple ones for me and the company wants to focus in on the why buy anything, why buy now, and why buy us. Can you give me a little bit of narrative as to why they want to buy now?

SPEAKER_02 4:49

Uh no, I just know that they want to move fast. Man, I should have asked to ask that.

SPEAKER_00 4:55

Yeah, we'll get to that. Um, and and what about um, you know, why buy anything at all?

SPEAKER_01 5:02

Oh, I don't know because I don't even know what they were using. Dang, that's a good question. I missed that one too. Oh man.

SPEAKER_00 5:07

Well, I don't think you missed it entirely. You you got some good information. You know that they're a trucking company, they're moving goods from point to point, and they want to make sure that those trucks are full to full capacity, so they're not wasting any money associated with that. We can make assumptions to what the challenges are based on what we know from our Schneider experience. And a lot of that tends to do with fuel cost, logistics of ensuring that trucks are full capacity, ensuring that uh anything that's moving across the roads are compliant uh with DOD um laws. Well, that's the Department of Defense. Uh, what would be DOT? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:40

DOT. DOT. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

Another side note, Agent will know that answer. That's right. You know, and there's a series of compliances that they make make sure. So we can make some assumptions, and I'll ensure that I put those assumptions in the list of questioning. So you come across uh sounding very intelligent to the client. How's that sound?

SPEAKER_02 6:00

That sounds awesome. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

Yeah. Um, and do we have any understanding of uh what what kind of money is they're looking to spend?

SPEAKER_02 6:09

Uh no, they just said they want to, you know, keep it low. Um, I did, yeah, I I gotta go to my AE, but the last time we had one of these, that you know, and and it seemed like this, it felt this way, they figured, you know, that this is probably gonna be 300 to 500k deal. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 6:26

But we didn't throw any numbers and no numbers were spoken, right? No, sir. No, no, no, no. That's fine. That's fine. We can make again some assumptions, but all these assumptions are gonna have to be qualified. So I think we're in great shape. I think the information you you've gotten so far is is acceptable. I think there's an opportunity, but we're just gonna have to further qualify. And the big ones for us are gonna be those three whys. Why buy anything, why buy now, and why buy us. I'm not so worried about the why buy us right now. I really want to know why buy now and why buy anything. And that really comes down to need in the B-Manter model. Um, we'll ask budget, but it sounds to me like your contact Kevin being in IT is probably not gonna know budget. So, what we might want to ask Kevin is who in the organization would control the budget and if he would be a sponsor for us to talk to. How's that sound?

SPEAKER_02 7:11

Oh, that sounds awesome. I didn't even think about that. But yeah, that's a bit and that's a really good way to frame or formulate that. I never thought about that. You're really helping me out a lot. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 7:20

No problem. And one of the other things you want to consider is I know you promised, uh, I think you said a three o'clock call. I saw an email, I saw no notes you put in the CRM tool. You were looking for a custom demo tomorrow at three o'clock. Is that fair? Yeah, that's gonna be awesome. Okay, well, we're probably gonna have to push that off, but we're gonna keep the meeting. We're just gonna alert Kevin not to invite anybody else to that meeting. And let's just have a conversation with Kevin again and let's have it a little bit more formulated. Now, to save face, because I know you're gonna be in a situation where, well, why are we not doing this meeting today? Yeah. We're we're gonna let him know that we want to make sure Kevin's most successful in this project. And to be able to do that, we're gonna need to capture more information so that way we're not going down the wrong path.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

Oh, wow. So, like just kind of do like another just a discovery session.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Correct. Yeah. So what we're gonna tell Kevin is that you went back to the business, and the business said, you know, we'd like to know a little bit more information to ensure that we're mapping to their critical issues, both technical and business issues. And, you know, with any organization, I'm sure even in their organization, since he's in IT, he's probably working with a lot of line of businesses. And very much like yourself and your technical team, they're probably want to know answers to questions, even in their daily operations. So I'm sure Kevin's not used to it. It's not a foreign thing to ask of in order to qualify a little bit further.

SPEAKER_02 8:38

Okay, that sounds good. You really think that's gonna work?

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Absolutely. You know, in my experience with working with other STRs in the company, I would say 80% of the time going back to the client has uh resulted in a 10-month reduction in sales cycle. Um, blah, blah, blah, blah.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Oh, that's awesome. Fred's gonna love that because he's really down his number this year. So we're trying to get that, you know, trying to get him across the finish line too.

SPEAKER_00 9:01

So would you like me to put a summary together for Fred? Because I know you need to ensure that you're hitting your marks when it comes to making meetings, meeting goals. Happy to give Fred uh a little bit of an update as to where you are and what your next steps are. Would you like an email drafted for that? You can actually do do that. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 9:19

Oh my goodness, that's awesome. Yes, please. Awesome.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

So um here's what I'm gonna generate. Give me a few seconds and I will generate you a customized email to send to Fred, a series of questions to ask Kevin, uh, some data points that make you sound like you're an expert within the transportation industry. Uh, and you know, let's set up that call.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

Oh, you know, I hope it's not too much to ask, but I have one more thing. You know, every week I have a weekly roll-up that I kind of do for my leadership, um, where I kind of show them the things that in it, this is kind of how we're compensated in gold. Um, basic, you know, basically, you know, kind of give them a summation of our leads and kind of what I've done. Is that something that you can help me formulate as well so that I can roll that up to the business?

SPEAKER_00 10:00

Absolutely. I mean, I have access to your CRM, so I see all that information in your CM, but in my experience, CRM tools are not really filled with great information. Maybe what we should do and I was just do a separate session and talk about the end of your week. It's Thursday, it's Friday. So if you want, we can close this session. We'll open another one, and you can give me a a kind of a dump on uh maybe I don't use the word dump, but you can give me an overview. Maybe we'll use dump, you know, who knows, right, guys? I mean, at the end of the day, we're trying to make this real real as possible. Yeah, be real. That's right. Yeah, it's like, why don't you give me a data dump on um what your week looked like, and I can ask you some key questions. We'll limit it to an hour, and I can provide you a roll-up. In fact, if you'd like, I can give you certain risk levels like this is a great qualified opportunity, all the way down to this is not so much qualified, we need to qualify more.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

That would be amazing, fantastic.

unknown 10:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

My ask is that going forward, you just use me on a daily basis, and we don't have to worry about the Friday call, and I'll just automatically uh send you an email with an update.

SPEAKER_02 10:58

Did you just sell me on using you? Yes. I like it. I like it.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

That was awesome. Yeah, and obviously that can go on and on and on. Um but the benefits of that is the SDR is not alone. The SDR has a friend. The SDR has a coach and mentor. Too often the STRs are part of a team of 50 sitting in like Austin, Texas, or Salt Lake City, Utah, and they come in in the morning and they leave in the evening and they hate their life, and they have no coach and mentoring, and they get beaten up by sales reps all the time. So if we can be a little bit more courteous and curious and thought-provoking for the STR as a partner in crime instead of a military sort of agent, like, did you ask budget? Did you ask method? Did you ask need? That's that's not what we need to be personable here.

SPEAKER_02 11:48

That's right. No, 100%. And that's why I was asking, like, hey, you know, hey, can you do that for me? I never had anybody do that. You know, I never really realized I could do this, like, or you know, that I need to ask that. Like, it's really engaging for that SDR to understand. Because again, the other part is most of these kids are young. They're like college, right? Like, they don't know half this stuff, they don't have a wherewithal life just yet. They're still getting their feet under them, right? So, this right here exposes them to so much more, but also gives them context, like in terms of your responses. It's not just to your point asking a question, giving an answer. It's giving context as to why each of these questions matter, right? But also reaffirming that, you know, even when I said, Oh man, I missed that, you're like, Oh, you didn't miss it. You got some good information here, even though we all know it's like it could have been a hell of a lot better. However, you have something, right? We're gonna go off of what we have, right? We're gonna make some assumptions until we can't, and then we'll make some facts based on those, right? So it this is this is a beautiful evolution. I'm excited, dude.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

There you go. Um, and then you know, clearly, if we get those answers at tomorrow's three o'clock call, the follow-on call to the sales rep, first off, we're gonna notify the sales rep that this action is taking place. So it's a a preview to it, right? Yep. So once the SDR actually has that call with the SC with the sales rep Fred, that conversation's gonna be a lot easier to have. Fred's not gonna have to ask all the hard questions. Fred's gonna go, okay, you got me all this. Did you get this and this? I'm like, no. It's like, but we probably don't need that. That call should be pretty more of a qual, not a qualification call. It should be an agreement call. Okay, we all agree on this. What are the things we're not asking? What else do you think? Do you think this is legs? The agent tells us this is about a 20% uh chance of close. So maybe we should say no to this and and hold off. Let's do a test with the client, let's walk to the door and see if the client comes back and demands that we talk to them. Because if they demand we talk to them, then we have something to go with. Too often sales reps don't walk to the door. And walking to the door, and we and for everybody that's listening to this call or seeing this transcript, walking to the door means you as a sales rep, get up out of the room or on the conference call and say, you know what, guys, sounds like we're pretty far apart, which is fine. When you when we're a little closer, maybe we can get re-engaged, but at this point, our company is probably not going to bid on this opportunity or even you know work work through this opportunity. There's just not enough here yet. When you get to these elements, well, we're happy to talk to you. And then you walk out. Literally walk out of the room. And then and then then the and it's a sales tactic. Because then the person on the other side is like, oh shit, I have to report back to my boss that I'm making progress on this vendor assessment. Because that's what they're doing. They're doing a vendor assessment. And when they find out that this vendor is not going to participate because we don't have enough answers, I'm in trouble.

SPEAKER_02 14:35

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

So I like it. It's a great technique. A lot of reps don't do it because they don't want to lose an opportunity, even if it's that 20% chance of win. You mean you're telling me I've got a chance?

SPEAKER_02 14:47

That's right. That's right. That's how they look that's the outlook. The outlook is that massively different. Massively different. Dude, this is exciting.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

So this is a good good example. Um, Andre did a great job on this. And it's interesting, like you said earlier, after we do this role play and we think about our 30 years in this business, 25 years in this business, this is still going on today. This has not changed. And if anything, it's gotten worse, in my opinion, because the SE is no longer a sales engineer, they're brains on a stick. That's all they are. And they're not asking these questions anymore, but they're brought in just to be brains on a stick.

unknown 15:28

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

And there's no incentive for them. In some cases, by the way, team, a lot of subject matter experts are not comped on deal closure. And a lot of SEs now are not comped on deal closure, not even carrying quotas. Some are just carrying BDOs, which are business directive objectives, which is like a beauty contest. If you hit this gate, you get an extra $5,000. So there's no skin in the game. When no skin in the game, and you got a sales group that's not asking hard questions, then you have an SE who doesn't care about asking hard questions. Those questions are not being asked.

SPEAKER_02 15:58

That's right. That's right. For as much as, you know, I think that's the other side of it. For for so many years, we've seen people come at this challenge from multiple directions. They either come from, let's go get the smartest people and make them SEs, and then they go there and, you know, to your point, they're technical wizards, but they don't ask any questions, right? Because we all know that. Like I used to be that guy where it was like, just put me, you know, just put me behind closed doors, let me do my magic in the, you know, configuring this, that, and the other, doing this, that and the other. But please don't let me have to talk to people. And then, and so there are wizards behind that. But when you're doing a demo, you can't just flow. You have to have an engagement, right? You have to say, you know, as I'm walking through something, right? So, how do you do this part right here today? One of the things that we found that most people struggle with is this element. Do you all struggle with that same element? Oh, yeah, that's a that's yeah, that's a big one. Da-da-da. Side note, there's a key to our win. Next, and you keep going and you're probing. It's you're having a you're as Kevin likes to always say, you're telling a story, dude. The best SEs are the ones that know how to tell a story, even as they do something as complicated as a as a uh customized demo, right? You're always storytelling, even in discovery, right? That's the best way to engage and truly build a relationship with your customer, right? They give you it's the give get again, right? They give you something, you know, that's so you get something, and what you give back is the story with some answers, some summations, right? And some work that we're gonna do to kind of help you to the next level, right? That's the beauty of it. And so, you know, again, taking just a hardcore technical person and just saying you'll be perfect as the SE because we need a technical person, not the win. On the other side, you get people who are salesy and they come off as like the second tier salesperson. So now the customer's like, holy crap, we got not just one salesperson beating us up, we got a second, a millionaire. Like it's like that's that's a disaster too, right? And so it is the the beautiful symphony and blend of somebody who knows how to tell a story, but also understands the depth of technical, right? So yeah.