In The Future of Sales Leadership Podcast, we talk about the challenges of Sales Leaders and how other seasoned Sales Leaders prepare for them.

In this week's episode, we welcome Piet Saegeman, who kickstarted his sales and marketing career at several innovative companies, such as Apple, Showpad and CHILI Publish. Now he specializes in strategic messaging. He’s helped over 100 CEOs, marketeers and sales leaders with finding the right story, in order to grow their business. He’s fascinated by the human brain and is a strong advocate for neuroscience.

In this episode, we talk about his fascination with the human brain and neuroscience, what makes a good sales leader and why a lot of sales tools aren't going to help you sell better.

Discover the whole episode now:

In The Future of Sales Leadership Podcast, we talk about the challenges of Sales Leaders and how other seasoned Sales Leaders prepare for them.

In this week's episode, we welcome Olivier Tytgat, founder of Outbound Catalyst, a company specializing in designing and implementing outbound sales strategies for tech companies. After starting his career in Romania evaluating go-to-market strategies, Olivier discovered his passion for sales and has since dedicated himself to helping scale-ups and tech companies optimize their outbound prospecting.

In this episode, we talk about how traditional icebreaker approaches have become ineffective, why successful outbound now requires deeper strategic thinking and how human expertise will remain crucial for sales success.

Discover the whole episode now:

While the AI hype remains strong, and tools such as ChatGPT and Copilot are rapidly gaining ground in sales teams, the question still remains is how and whether to deploy these tools in a business context.

One of the biggest mistakes a sales leader can make, is embracing AI without a clear strategy. They often don’t know how it can actually improve business processes. Instead of ensuring a lasting impact, these tools are often rolled out as ‘empty shells’. I can ensure you, this is a one-way ticket to failure.

For individual use, tools like ChatGPT and Copilot are a good fit. They can help with everyday tasks such as tweaking an e-mail, structuring a presentation, or quickly gathering information. Above all, these types of applications increase personal productivity: they enable sales reps to work faster and perform tasks more effectively.

"We're relying too much on individual knowledge"

But here lies the immediate limitation: the added value and impact of those tools become largely dependant on the skill of the user. A sales rep who knows how to formulate or ‘prompt’ a question well, will get better results than someone who is less skilled.

In a business context, this becomes a problem. When such tools are applied at scale, the output remains dependent on individual expertise, producing inconsistent and unreliable results. While just too many companies assume that the added value of tools like ChatGPT and Copilot for personal use bring, also apply when deployed company-wide. That's a fallacy.‍

Hallucinations galore

Take your sales department for example. It's tempting to use ChatGPT for questions such as: “What's going on in customer X's industry?” The answer generated is often useful, but insufficient to provide the in-depth insights you need as a salesperson.

This leaves us with three major problems. First, the question itself is inconsistent: salesperson A formulates his question differently than salesperson B, leading to divergent results. This lack of uniformity undermines the scalability of the process.

^{"When there's no uniformity, it won't be scaleable"}

Second, how do you know if the information generated is accurate and up-to-date? Inaccurate or outdated data can lead to hallucinations - incorrect or irrelevant information, which can hurt your business. Without direct access to correct data, this remains uncertain.

Third, these interactions are often stand-alone queries, without any integration with broader business processes. Only with information about which offerings are important and which products the customer has worked with in the past will you solve a use case.‍

Specialized models for specific processes

Companies looking to address complex business challenges should look for end-to-end AI solutions that go beyond simple chat interfaces. An effective AI tool in a business context should do more than just providing answers: it should help automate entire processes. This is why uman provides that end-to-end solution, and is more than just an AI assistant. Those often will only solve part of the problem. 

The reasoning capabilities of modern AI models have become significantly more powerful over the past year. These models can process data in multiple steps and draw logical conclusions in a coherent manner, reducing the risk of hallucinations - as long as the input data is correct and complete.‍

Data quality is key

Here lies the crux of the problem for many companies: the quality of their data. The idea that AI models need to be trained with massive amounts of data is now outdated. Modern AI models are so sophisticated that they can work effectively with minimal amounts of data. A small data set, such as a brief description of a product or service, can be enough to generate valuable insights.

But if we want those models to succeed, the inputted data must be accurate and current. Companies should provide a robust data governance system to ensure that changes, such as price adjustments, are made correctly and in a timely manner.

Only by having these fundamentals in place can AI be more than just hype and provide sustainable impact. Only then, it will provide tangible results for your sales team.

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This article was first published in DataNews.

Today, we're officially launching Autopilot. After months of user research and trying out different formats, we're finally ready to upgrade your uman experience. Thanks to Autopilot, uman will save you even more valuable time and show you insights you might otherwise have missed. 

In this 10 minute walkthrough, our CEO Charles tells you everything you need to know about this feature and shows you how it works (don't sweat it, it's actually reeeeeaaallly simple).

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TL;DR kinda person? 

Don't worry, let us give you the fast track version. In this quick guide we'll go over the most important steps of the Autopilot update. 

If you want to generate sales assets, you'll notice a big difference with the previous version of uman. Now, uman will do more of the work for you, saving you time, while still giving you the insights and information you need.

When you go to your uman environment, you'll notice our sales AI now looks like this:

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You can start by entering the name of the company you're meeting with. Uman will automatically make some smart suggestions, based on your previous entries, your client database and more. In this fictional case, we're an IT services company, having our first meeting with Umicore. You can select one of uman's suggestions, or add a new company. Then, click on 'Select Your Audience'.

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After you've gone to the audience stage, uman will make some smart suggestions, again based on different sources of data. 

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Then, you'll be able to select your prospects, either through the suggestions of uman, or by typing in the name(s) of the prospects yourself. After that, you can go to the next stage by clicking 'Add notes'. 

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In the notes stage, you'll be able to add notes, or read previous notes you or your colleagues have written. Since this is our first meeting in this example, we don't have any notes yet. Click on 'Select Assets' to go to the next stage. 

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That brings us to the last stage in the new Autopilot setting. Here you can select which assets uman should generate. You can either do so by scrolling through the entire template library, or make a selection based on deal stage, asset type or source. If you've added custom templates, you'll find them under your company name. (In this example, you see the name uman two times, since that is our company name of course). Click on 'Generate Assets' to make the magic happen!

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The next few minutes, uman does the research to make sure it builds the best sales assets for you, based on both internal and external data. This process may take a few minutes - our little timer keeps track!

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After uman is done, you can check out the assets in the uman app - yup, you no longer need to download them! On the right, you'll see all the assets you generated. If you're not satisfied with the output, the 'RegenerateThanks to the 'Export' button in the bottom right corner, you can still download them locally or upload them to your Google Drive or OneDrive. 

And that's it! Why not try the Autopilot update out right now?

A lot of different trends are putting tremendous pressure on consultancies' margins and growth. Covid, macroeconomics (war, inflation), the war for talent, the increasing demand for consultancy services, the changing demand and behaviour of customers,...

Growing consultancies are faced with the challenge of staying successful in a highly competitive market. To meet this challenge, they have adopted a focused approach to knowledge management and sharing.

Here are several reasons why this approach is critical to their success:

1. Knowledge and expertise are the core assets of professional services companies and must be managed effectively and shared across the organization. According to Deloitte's Global Human Capital Trends study, 75% of surveyed organizations recognized the importance of creating and preserving knowledge in their success over the next 12 to 18 months.
2. Clients prefer firms that can demonstrate their expertise and references, making it imperative that commercial teams have early access to internal expertise in the sales process.
3. Operational and delivery efficiency are improved when consultants and delivery teams can reuse best practices, reducing the impact on margins, deadlines, delivery schedules, and budgets.
4. Innovation is a key aspect of success in the consulting industry, and new trends and technologies must be quickly and efficiently disseminated throughout the organization.
5. Talent retention is improved by providing new employees with access to procedural and operational information as well as a deeper understanding of the organization's references and expertise.
6. In the war for talent, making sure employees can work efficiently and reuse best practices enhances their work and attracts the right talent, helping to build a strong employer brand.

In conclusion, growing consultancies that adopt a focused approach to knowledge management and sharing will be better equipped to stay successful and meet the challenges of a rapidly evolving market.

Contact uman now to get a demonstration of the AI assistant that needs to be part of your solution stack.

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In The Future of Sales Leadership Podcast, we talk about the challenges of Sales Leaders and how other seasoned Sales Leaders prepare for them.

In this week's episode, we welcome Erwin Roels, who started his career in sales over 25 years ago, having worked for several companies in IT and Telecom, such as Cheops and Verizon.

Today, he’s one of the partners at Business Markers, where he coaches sales teams and entrepreneurs to grow their business and create new business acquisition.

In this episode, we talk about how to implement result-driven strategies, why sales needs to be a little bit naive and how you can win the trust of your customer.

Discover the whole episode now:

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