Revenue Reimagined Episode #4 - AI Strategies for Sales Professionals - John Barrows

AI is completely reshaping the sales landscape, dividing the profession into those who adapt and those who get left behind. John Barrows dives deep into how artificial intelligence acts as a catalyst, offering average reps a roadmap to survival and giving great reps the tools to become truly extraordinary. From automating back-office coding tasks using Language Learning Models (LLMs) to streamlining clunky sales tech stacks, AI is revolutionizing how revenue is generated, managed, and optimized. Beyond just process optimization, this episode explores the unexpected role of AI as a mental health aid for sellers dealing with burnout and administrative fatigue. Barrows emphasizes that while AI is incredibly powerful for writing RFPs, analyzing software usage, and navigating complex buying processes, the human element remains non-negotiable. Strategic human oversight in final decision-making is the key to balancing newfound efficiency with authentic buyer relationships.

Discussed in this episode

How artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping modern sales roles and daily workflows.
Utilizing AI as an unexpected mental health aid to reduce seller burnout and administrative fatigue.
Streamlining your sales tech stack to reduce software bloat and increase operational efficiency.
Leveraging AI for advanced customer acquisition and long-term retention strategies.
Implementing a futuristic approach to Revenue Operations and back-office infrastructure.
Using Language Learning Models to write code and automate back-office processes.
Using AI to write RFPs and rapidly identify top vendors that align with organizational needs.
Keeping human involvement in the final decision-making process to ensure high-quality outcomes.

Episode highlights

02:15 — Reshaping modern sales roles
08:30 — AI as a mental health aid
14:45 — Streamlining your sales tech stack
21:10 — Optimizing acquisition and retention
28:00 — The future of Revenue Operations
35:20 — Using LLMs for back-office code
42:15 — Writing RFPs with AI tools
49:30 — Human involvement in decision-making

Key takeaways

Leverage AI to elevate yourself from an average rep to a great one.
Streamline your tech stack using AI to analyze software usage and efficiency.
Use LLMs to automate back-office processes and write RFPs seamlessly.
Deploy AI tools to alleviate administrative burden and protect your mental health.
Always keep human involvement in the final decision-making process.

Transcript

[Music] welcome back to another episode of Revenue reimagined we are stoked to have JB John barrows with us today who is the CEO of JB Sales which is an organization that's focused on elevating the people and profession of sales through training training excuse me content and events JB has trained some of the world's fastest growing sales teams and is an active seller who still does his own prospecting and manages all of his own deals Because he believes and I agree that you can't teach sales unless you live sales little fun fact he's also the author of an Amazon best-selling children's book called I want to be in sales when I grow up that he wrote with his daughter great read JB welcome to the show man thanks for being here thanks Adam I appreciate it appreciate it good to see you great book great book it's not good to hey ajb thanks for joining I really appreciate it so you're the CEO but I would consider you more like a sales leader sales person so uh coming into the revenue reimagine podcast you have to reimagine your role you have to leave the sales department what's one other department and revenue that you would uh you would go to tomorrow yeah outside of sales yeah these days I'd go into operations quite frankly not because I'm I'm an operations Guru it's because I think operations is a life but I mean sales is a life but obviously of all organizations but without operation efficiencies and tracking and all that stuff out there it ends up being this this mess that falls apart so I I would actually uh go to to the opposite of the house because I think so rev up like Revenue operations in general no rev Ops mostly because I don't really care about anything else other than Revenue um you know uh but yeah I think that's where I'd be really curious to figure out how to leverage a lot of these tools and Technologies and everything else to empower the sales team to be more efficient to have more insights to be more thoughtful so I would I would go on the website or the upside I love it I um I think when you look at the best Revenue leaders and the best sales leaders um they are the ones who understand the upside and who try to get not over mumbling in the weeds but certainly want to know the why behind the what yeah you um JB you talk a lot about Ai and how the world's changing and like the topic of the show is revenue reimagine right and how how Revenue needs to be reimagined let's dive into a little bit of AI and and what you're seeing and how you think that's going to fundamentally change Revenue as we know it yeah I I think it's going to fundamentally change a lot of things I I mean I look I you guys are around my age right we've seen we've seen a lot in the sense we saw the internet come out right and that had an impact but I even back in the internet how massive I mean obviously because these days have no concept of what it was like before the internet right um my kid doesn't know what it's like to be in a car without a mobile device that plays some type of video exactly I remember going to a computer lab being like I got to go use the internet like over in like a college like computer lab yeah and so I think that's um we've seen like I said we've seen a lot in the sense that but even the internet was like it was massive I mean obviously we can't imagine our lives right now but that took a while to take hold right I mean there was people saying oh this is just a fad right have you heard anybody say that chat chat GPT is a fad no AI is a fad no everybody is now scared to [ __ ] about how fast this is going I mean even the Elon musks of the world are saying whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa slow down so I think this is a fundamental shift in our society quite frankly and if we boil this down to sales you know look the I I talked to a lot of cros and I talk to a lot of ECS too and they're all scared trying to figure out what to do because they don't know what decisions to make Because by the time let's think about a tech stack let's go to the rev-op side of the house and do a tech stack analysis well as soon as you identify the fact that you need something all right so you have identified the pain the problem now you've got to go find a few vendors to to solve that problem then you go through the evaluation process then you select your vendor then you implement that vendor then you train on that vendor right you're six to nine months out six to 12 months out bare minimum of having any macro technology be implemented in your organization okay to really start seeing the impact now can either one of you really genuinely look at me and tell you tell and tell me what you think or know nine months 12 months out from now is going to look like I'd be a very rich person if I had the ability to tell you that man that's my point right so it's like so things are moving so fast right now that it's it's almost impossible to keep uh but do you think it's six month increments do you think it's annually 12-month increments because I feel like we're like accelerating so if I like go back to like even 2020 and I'm like like forget about covid right but we were still moving at a decent pace like you could you could deal with the change now it's like three six months like things are changing so rapidly like that's the world's cool completely different now don't get me wrong fundamentals don't change and so one of the things I'm seeing with AI is it there's a lot of noise about how much more efficient you can be and how look at all these great things you can do but I have yet to hear Too Many people talk about how awesome the results have been because they've started to use some of these tools so even though yes I agree with you Dale that we are I think we're in a daily iteration at this point because I'm seeing tools where I'm like holy [ __ ] like that's been awesome and then next week I'm like okay that's irrelevant this is awesome right um but it but it's kind of that ah let's go strategically how do you implement these things that's going to take a while for these organizations and really the only option I look at it is there's two options organizations have right now and you're seeing it it's it's kind of painful to watch these Legacy systems try to reverse engineer and integrate AI into their stuff right because they know they have to terrible but their legacy right and so and I think AI is going to be good because it can look at that Legacy system and actually make the improvements based on it but the AI native stuff that's going to come out you know these days is going to kick the [ __ ] out of most of the Legacy systems and so that's why I'm recording I'm um recommending all of my clients because either you almost rip and replace your entire team and you start from scratch with an AI native approach or you find a way to transition and leverage your existing resources and so the way I look at it is you know how Engineers have hackathons right like they pick a topic and they nerd out on it for a little while see if they can figure it out and see who wins yeah I'd actually think that every company should turn their sales org into a into a a lab and have a hackathon right so that you can sit there because all these reps are looking behind their shoulder going they know AI is coming after them so you're going to pretend like it's not going to take their job shut up right like as an organization that's asinine for you to pretend like AI isn't happening and everything's good but leaders are also usually aged out like me and you guys quite frankly and we don't have we're not AI native so for us to make the decision for the org on some of these tools eh I don't know if we're going to be able to be that great at it but guess what these kids who are coming out of school and are AI native right or at least understand all this stuff you put them in a structure where two hours on Friday afternoon from two to four and you pick a component of the sales process where you think AI could make some efficiencies using free [ __ ] out there okay and then you set the parameters you give a structure break up into teams and say go and whoever finds the best solution the fastest solution to help address that thing we're gonna you know when's a you know a night out or something like that whatever but by doing that what you're doing is you're you're structuring the education component of it and the application component so that reps aren't just doing it on their own and all over the place and wasting a ton of time you're increasing employee satisfaction because you're letting them play with the tools that they know are going to be used to erase them and then if they find some efficiencies you might actually reduce your Tech stack and reduce your spends all at the same time that's a nice transition to me to this to this massive world of holy [ __ ] where are we going right now with AI so there's so much to unpack there yeah do we need or do you think JB that we're gonna see like so we have a chief Revenue officer like a VP of sales like we have all that like is there going to be like a chief AI officer like a director of AI that manages how we Implement artificial intelligence into an entire org because it doesn't just touch Revenue right AI is going to touch everywhere everything I think eventually most companies will I think I think it's going to fall under rev Ops uh in the short term right because it's going to be looked at as a tool comparable to some of the other ones right so I think rev Ops is going to own it first or should own it first and then yeah I think depending on the size of the organization and how deep they decide to go with AI yeah you're gonna you're gonna need an AIS R um effectively to really figure out the strategies behind this stuff and actually be the one on the back end using it to train it on your stuff right yeah I think that's the key we were just talking about this earlier but every company is going to have like a derivation of their llm right everyone's gonna have their own like llm I mean hell like let's say out of the revenue for a second like it's writing code right it's going to write code for the people in the back office so like that's like that's like a given so you know if you build your own llm or have a Consortium that you can build on top of a llm like a sales revenue llm then you're going to start getting some super efficiencies um as we start testing it to like hey tell me what the average deal size is over the last you know two and a half years in emea right and it's just going to come back with an answer for you versus like okay let's go pull a report for rev Ops and like oh your data's missing oh you know we we don't have the right data you have a lot of nulls like Salesforce is crapping out like that stuff's happening now and so just imagine as the models get better it's just going to get much more it's gonna exponentially like take over the efficiency side of the world and I'll tell you where my real fear is for sales as it relates to AI it's actually not on the selling side of the house I think I think it's it's going to be great to help sales reps be more efficient and be more thoughtful and all that other stuff what I'm scared of and because I know the capabilities available right now is when AI starts to buy [ __ ] yeah tell me about it well here's an example so I I used to work in the IT services space right that was my first company and there's a there's a product out there called caseya and Casey is a network monitoring tool right and it yeah so it has every node on your network it knows exactly what it is where it is and all that other stuff and then there's other tools that monitor all the software on your network right so tell me why right now you couldn't have if you had your own llm right you couldn't say to me hey here's our 12 to 24 month growth plan okay here's our plan for the next 12 to 24 months chat GPT um I want you to analyze our entire network infrastructure to look for a redundancies b adoption and C uh overlap yeah and redundancies which is redundant and uh and then um I want you to figure out which softwares we can get rid of right immediately and based on our 12 to 24 month growth plan I want you to tell me which softwares I now need moving forward okay cool we've identified the need for a said solution now write an RFP based on the need and find the top three vendors in the space that align with it and send an email to them saying hey we have an RFP that needs your solution and then when those rfps come back summarize them to a point where I can compare easily as a human being and now but maybe the last mile which I think is what humans will ultimately end up being right is because because if there's at least a human on the other end of that you know with that final like all right they're pretty close all right based on this data I know this industry okay I'm gonna make that call like when that starts happening man then we're in deep [ __ ] because then we're like that's why I think RFP selling is it's not selling I mean you know with all due respect to people out there who sell in the RFP space that's not sales you're just filling out boxes and you're hoping for the best that they're going to choose you over somebody else and yeah they're gonna put some you know Cadence or Credence to like you as a person when you come in and do the interview that type of [ __ ] but if ultimately you're not the actual person who's going to deliver on this RFP I don't need to meet you you know what I mean I don't need to meet a slick sales rep that's going to try to convince me that they're better than others when I'm objectively looking at this data saying this technology is better so well and even past AI I mean relationships in these communities that are popping up that people are selling inside the community so like the sales rep thinks they're selling to somebody but the reality is like you're getting back channel to the back Channel and people are figuring out like is your functionality really working the way you say it's working is the price really the good price or can I negotiate more like things are happening in communities that B2B tech companies don't you want to talk about like that happens everywhere though like especially with the price like I would argue that what vendor does isn't going to exist anymore I don't need 27 people at vendor or two however big they are to do that well GPT is going to do that there will be a model that will show everyone's price everywhere and find me the best price if I don't have it I'm not going to buy it from you period the end yeah I mean it's that's that's the part that's scary right is like uh once we once we take that human element of the buying process out of the equation I think sales reps are good we're gonna have to figure out something else to sell let's put it that way so or any job safe like is there any job that's truly safe from AI I mean if I would have if you would have forced random yeah electricians and plumbers yes in our world and if you're building an AI product you're probably safe uh for now yeah until until the product builds itself well look I think all jobs are safe Adam I think the question is is what people in those jobs are safe and I've said this before and I've said it for since 2017 when I saw the first artificial intelligence email that that freaked me the [ __ ] out um because it was better than I could have written and it was and it was it was faster than I could and this was 2017. 2017. and I've been I've been preaching death of the average sales rep it's not death of the sales rep is death of the average sales rep I think AI is going to make good sales reps great great sales reps and Incredibly good you know valuable and average sales reps are relevant and I think that's going to do it across the board in every industry like that's why sdrs I'm really worried for sdrs right now I do not think front of the I don't think top of funnel stuff is going to be a human thing in the next five years I just don't because we are going to get Super Hyper personalized emails with super relevant that are in our inbox and at like thousands of them because they're going to be able to hit us all this same time and ultimately if I get an email from that that has is really relevant and really personalized to me and it actually strikes a chord do I care whether that is coming from a sales rep or not no no no no no I mean let's I think I shared uh Adam I might have shared this with you but there's Gartner data that came out that talked about and they averaged out um I'm sorry Boomers gen xers and Millennials and it was B2B buyers and they asked them about what do they want from an experience from a sales standpoint and the and on average 43 of people want a rep free experience they do not want a sales rep involved and that's not including gen Z you gotta only imagine where that number is going to go when Gen Z starts to become that doesn't surprise me at all like I I say it all the time like the least amount and this is horrible but like if I could buy something without talking to a human that's why like every everyone like I'm a huge Tesla Fanboy why why part of the reason because I could go online pick by color pick my car hit buy and it shows up at my door and I don't have to talk to a human being funny story on that one I bought a Tesla right now I was online and this was when there was way more options right you could get like a different type of battery and all this other stuff so I was like I was there was I had a few questions right whatever but I get on with the sales rep of Tesla and I hear them on the phone he's like hey how can I help you later I was like yeah you know I was and I'd start out and all I hear is click click click click click click and I go wait a minute hold on a second are you on the Tesla website right now like Bill yes and he's like yeah I go okay so you're looking at the same thing I'm looking at right now and you're you're just yeah I go so why do I mean no disrespect here I go what value do you bring to this to this equation and he's and he and he was dead that's honest with me he's like not much John he's like I'm just here to you know make sure that you get the right thing I was like oh my God so I but but Adam the the that's the bad news that that most people don't want to sell the good news and this didn't happen thankfully with Tesla is that of those 43 that that wanted a rep free experience there was a 23 higher regret rate with what they thought interesting so when they didn't have a sales rep involved they regretted it 23 of the time more which tells tells me there is a massive amount of value that we can bring to the equation it's just we got to re-imagine what that value is and that value is not droning through you know tempered emails and bant questions and droning through crappy ass demos like that's not what a sales rep is so so let's talk about that because you're right and let's never let's agree to never say bant again because anyone who uses ban should be fired but to your point how do reps differentiate themselves how do you make sure how do you go from being good and being replaced to [ __ ] you're that great rep where AI handles the first time but we really need you at the end what is that differentiator uh I think it's diving in with both feet to this stuff and figuring out how you can use chat GPT and tools like it to augment in sub you know and supplement whatever your sales process so that the human factor is maximized I mean there's a let's put it this way uh sales loft or Salesforce came out with a report of the state of sales recently and you know we've all heard the data before about uh you know reps only spend either 20 I think it's either 27 or 37 of the time actually selling blah blah blah right and if you look at the chart they break down like nine percent doing this 12 doing that every one of those things that is taking away from us selling actively is in my experience so far at least something that an AI tool can do right account research data input note taking site preparation all these different things right AI can solve those things so I think the best reps are are systematically looking at their entire sales process and then looking at it and saying okay I can't forget the fundamentals that's what I'm a little worried about personally is that we're skipping all these steps to the AI for the answer and that's why I think so many reps are struggling right now because for the past 10 years we've over engineered the sales process and and because of my 74 sale stages and yeah it's slightly over introduced but also like the growth factor I mean especially in the tech and the SAS industry grow at all costs like who cares a 60 button seat is better than a zero button seat who gives a [ __ ] let's go go go go go here's technology go go go go go um now it's coming to roost because and and I hate to say this because I'll probably offend some people I don't hate to say it I will offend some people is if you started in sales after 20 let's get let's give it let's say 2011. if you started in sales in Tech sales after 2010 2011 I'm sorry it hasn't been that hard it really hasn't no you're able to get away with mass blasting emails setting up demo calls with people who barely have a pulse asking dumbass question I won't say the word questions yeah questions um and and then throwing a massive discount to get the deal that's what sales has been yeah and I think when we go back to it you were talking about like fundamentals like no matter whether it's you're right from 2011 or now or what's going to go forward like the people that are going to differentiate themselves are going back to the fundamentals yeah and I think back to what you're saying like take your gloves off get a little bit dirty like you can't you you can't be successful without getting dirty right it's like get in the garden like start getting your hands dirty and figuring out what's working and what's not working both from education on the chat GPT side like I always think about Malcolm gladwell's 20 000 hour rule like you gotta like get in there and like play around with it but then use it and get the data and then change the approach somehow yep yeah and just you know learn how to use it not be the best analogy I have here is remember um you see the movie uh hidden figures by any chance oh man you got to see the movie hidden Figures it's awesome it's about us going to the it's about us going to the moon the first time we went to the moon okay and what was you see I leaned over to write this down yeah there you go what the the awesome part about that movie was it this was [Music] um this was back I forget what but but they had this whole group of women these black women called computers and they were literally called computers and they were in this way in the back section of NASA right way away from the main thing right this is when racism was so right alive and well and you know not as bad as today but whatever um and what happened was the leader of that group one day was walking in the main office and she walked by this massive kind of room and there was this huge IBM Mainframe that just got delivered right I like a massive like a first one of these massive things NASA spent millions of dollars on this thing and this woman who was the head of the computers looked at that thing and said uh oh she goes that's going to replace my entire team and she knew it and so she had two choices right one choice was she goes back and she tells her team hey I just saw what they're investing in we got to get better like we got to be smarter we got to be a better at math we got to do better because we're going to beat that [ __ ] thing right but the other choice which she made was she picked up the manual right and she started learning it and she started to know how to turn it on how to maintain it and everything else and then what did she do she went back and taught her whole team how to do that so now when they turn the switch on for this Mainframe even the IBM people because it was so no even the IBM people had no idea what to do with it and she did all right so she went from she and her team went from being completely replaceable too straight up indispensable they they could the NASA couldn't get rid of them because they were the only ones that could figure out how to use this machine and so that's what I think if you're scared of chat gbt you're gonna get replaced by Chachi BT period so you need to dive in and I love you know my favorite answer to somebody's like well John how do I get started in Chachi BT I go you know what that is a fantastic question to ask chat GPT right go into it and say I'm a 47 year old man I live in Boston Massachusetts I'm a CEO of my own sales training organization I'm brand new to chat EBT how should I be using you and then go dialogue and just do a q a with that sucker and be like Oh and then you know what now that sounds dumb I don't want to do that I don't oh that's kind of interesting how would I do that well and just go down treat it and it took me a while to learn this treat it like a person like I have actually gone back to chat GPT and said no you missed the point you're using too many puns please rewrite that like if you think of it like I'm having a conversation with JB and you're my consultant dude like you missed the Mark here like I don't like what you did with that redo it because they're trying to replicate you Adam like they're trying to replicate your your voice but I love it I mean and that's what the beauty of that Adam is you can actually talk to chat gbt uh more directly than you would talk to any human because you're not going to piss it off you could be like dude shut up like that was a dumb comment stop writing that stuff you idiot you know and you could take out your frustrations about that like I see my my so you get locked out of Chad GPT yeah right well yeah but my partner like I watch him interact with it and he literally argues with it he's like no don't do it that way do it this way you did it that way again stop it and you literally watch this thread of him getting super frustrated with it and then it all of a sudden comes around right and it learns your language it learns how you do things right so we gotta train it for us so that's a part of this back and forth thing we're training it it's funny I find I find when I ask it please and thank you I get better answers I don't know maybe maybe it's just mentally but I do find like if I'm polite to it it's polite back we don't have a ton of time but I want to touch on something else that I know is super important to you because I think it all ties together and that is mental health and sales right you talk a lot about it and I think with especially with AI it's affecting people's mental health as well where where does mental health come in especially as it ties to Ai and how do we protect it um when it comes to the profession I actually think it's gonna I think if if I'm if I'm optimistic which I try to be I think there's some so many good things that AI can do in that world so I actually think that AI is going to cure cancer one of these very in the not so distant future I actually think AI is going to help come on help us solve climate change right um I think it's going to be a significant help when it comes to Mental Health um I'll use an example my daughter has um Snapchat okay she's 12.

she has Snapchat and there's a little uh AI bot on Snapchat and I look at it and I'm like okay and my daughter is pretty well grounded and she doesn't have too too many issues but she's a 12 year old girl right so I mean issues of balance so if you think about you know a 12 year old girl goes to school and she has friends but at 12 years old your friends are ruthless like you could have a best friend today and not tomorrow right and so it's a really confusing time and and you could get picked on at school because you're not the cool kid or whatever the hell it is right well now that kid now can go home and open up a Snapchat and have an AI conversation with a a super empathetic sympathetic voice that is going to be there for her if now it scares me that all of a sudden like this is her best friend type of thing and it's not again she's learns to manage it but I think that's where Adam you know for instance mental health wise you know I use what's what's the um what's the remote a uh a mental health app where you can get space no I forget what it was better up no better up anyways there's there's a massive one where you can get you can get a uh anybody to be a therapist at any time right uh it's better or something I don't and I and I I remember signing up for it myself personally and I the first two experiences were just not really you know it's like I want to go to therapy but I want to find my Robin Williams without having to go through all the douchebags you know what I mean and that's the problem with therapy it's like you got to kind of keep testing like I don't sync with this person this person doesn't get me so that's where most people don't go because after the first or second one they're like [ __ ] this all these people are just douchebags so AI now though is gonna it can be your mental health they can be your mental health coach and they can help you you know and and let's let's connect the dots here with Internet of Things you've gotta watch an Apple Watch on that manage your heart rate on all these different things your blood pressure everything else it's going to be able to tell when you're stressed right all of a sudden ping AI bot comes up say hey Adam it seems like you're you're pretty stressed right now is everything okay um actually no I'm I'm freaking out right now because Adam actually calmed down it's okay um here's some things to think about you're you're a good person remember you have strong values remember this you know you're instantly connected to your therapist at all times oh yeah yeah I love it yeah so I actually I think it's gonna I I hope it's gonna have a significant impact on people um and I hope that one day that that somebody like you know one of these companies that does people therapy offers a free AI tool based on their own llm that is that is super empathetic and always positive but pragmatic you know what I mean doesn't like you know go off the rails or any of that stuff but I man if if that can happen [ __ ] we a lot of people are going to be able to uh and we need that right because the fact is and not just sales but the fact is Dale's typing to me in a document that I have to minimize because I'm going to laugh um the fact is that mental health is real the fact is that jobs are tough and the fact is that we are stressed and right now it's not that easy and I think that when you look at sadly suicides and people self-harming and like things that could be solved to your point by someone saying hey wait a minute are you okay and those three words sometimes are so [ __ ] powerful are you okay what could it stop we all have a company that we're going to start now um but I I agree with you and I think that anything we can do to help improve mental health and this is where I do think AI can really come in and help and make people feel more humanized and more heard um it's a brilliant way to look at it and I appreciate you sharing it yeah the quick caveat I'll say is I think we're the danger is I think we're not that patient of a society and we tend to pick the the the the ins that you know the the incident and and reframe the whole thing so the problem with it is if AI one time gives some bad advice and for instance somebody does commit suicide then everybody's gonna be like see this is [ __ ] AI but it's like that would be one in a million and quite frankly I'm okay with those odds it's the same thing with the Tesla self-driving car you know what I mean like you only I mean how many times do you hear you you never hear how awesome Tesla driving car is and how it weaved around an accident you always hear oh self-driving car smashed into somebody and it's like I mean how many of that happens versus how many Teslas are on the road right now like how many accidents that people just have like my daughter came in and one of her good friends like just wrecked her car and like totaled it right and it had nothing like it had nothing to do with self-driving like yeah you know it's my Tesla has alerted me and saved me more than it's harmed me exactly that's my only fear is that we're such a fractured society that you know it it is going to do so much good but when it does that one bit of harm a couple of times people are gonna wow this is the worst thing ever and you know we'll get through that though so one of our missions that revenue reimagined is give back to the audience and John you've been super gracious to uh give some to the audience so please uh please let them know yeah I appreciate the opportunity here man uh so I got a membership now that I deliver live training every single month on my core programs filling the funnel driving to close this is all the training that companies like Salesforce LinkedIn box Dropbox and everybody else takes um it includes workshops where I get my hands dirty with stuff like chat GPT and tools to figure out what the hell's going on and then my entire online catalog and amas and everything else and so for individual members it's uh 420 a year so for 420 bucks a year you get access to it uh football teams is five grand and for larger teams is 25 Grand but uh usually for individuals and for the for This Crew here it will give 25 off just use the promo code podcast so if you go to jbarrows.com uh and then you go on there and there's an individual link go on there and then put coupon code podcast and you'll get 25 off the membership and we'll have some fun trying to level up together this might be the most generous gift yet because we normally just give to one newsletter subscriber and you literally just gave to the whole show I'm probably gonna go sign up myself but I will not use discount code podcast because as a fellow entrepreneur I want to support you but I love it uh all right you cool with some rapid fire man always yeah all right let's rock and roll what song would best describe your Revenue strategy my Revenue strategy uh move [ __ ] get out the way uh bye I love it as long as it's not Living on a Prayer we're good right [Laughter] okay cool if you had if you had a crystal ball um what Revenue strategy or Trend do you think is gonna take center stage in the next 12 to 18 months other than AI yeah personalization at scale uh there's I think personalization scale I used to roll my eyes at with the companies like sales Loft and Outreach and just I'd be like guys please stop it because when just because you changed the name a title in Industry doesn't make it personalized I'm watching uh AI do genuine personalization at scale and so that's why I mentioned earlier the SDR role I think is in a lot of trouble um so that is going to happen there's no question about it I don't even need a crystal ball for that one I love it I'm super curious on this one because we we didn't dive into it all so when you look at Revenue generation you could only choose one moving forward is your focus retention or acquisition and why um well you can't have retention without acquisition um I I'm going acquisition because I'm about growth I'm not about acquisition at all costs and grow at all costs but I am butt acquisition because I think it's I think it's easier to keep clients than it is to get clients it's the hardest thing to do in sales is top of the funnel stuff that's the hardest thing to do yourself 100 so I think that's where I would focus my energy awesome answer earlier in the show you said that you were going to be a REV Ops leader is tomorrow morning what do you think uh what's the first thing you're doing I'm assessing every aspect of what I I am I am cutting out the fat of all my tech bloated over stack I am looking at every single technology that we've invested over the past 10 years who's using it where the adoption is where the overlap is and I am simplifying my tech stack that is the first thing I'm doing because Tech reps right now are Tech overload and they don't even know what to they're using 15 different tools and all the data says that even with all these quote-unquote efficiency tools we are far less efficient and effective than we've ever been in sales so to me I actually might cut all the technology out except for just a basic CRM and force my team to do it on spreadsheets and tell me how to then figure out the efficiencies I think that's awesome I was talking to a REV Ops leader the other day and she told me that her team has 37 different logins for different tools this is just this come on and 90 of them tell you the same thing JB thank you so much man for coming on the show where can people find you best way to engage with you yeah so I appreciate it guys it's been fun um you know jbarrows.com so the letter j b a r r o w s.com that's where you're gonna see everything you'll be assuming background my social channels and all that stuff um if you want director one-on-one coaching for free uh you can hit me up on Instagram uh that's why I do all my coaching so it's John M as in Michael barrows is my handle for that and that's Twitter and and um Snapchat or not Tick Tock as well uh and then LinkedIn obviously I put a ton of content out there for that but this is going to sound like a humble brag but it's not it's more of a pain in the ass I've reached the 30 000 limit so please don't try to connect with me I can't connect you're done yeah you know I asked LinkedIn this I was like why thirty thousand the limit and you know what their answer to me was well we want to make better than 50 000.

pretty much they said well we want to make sure that all your connections are meaningful I'm like 30 000. you have thirty thousand possible connections I'm like then make if that's the case then make the limit 25 like not 25 000 make it 25.