Sales is dead and salespeople killed it — Kevin "KD" Dorsey on AI and what's next

Kevin "KD" Dorsey argues that traditional outbound sales tactics have ruined the profession by turning it into a mass-marketing exercise. He stresses the need to return to one-to-one selling and heavily emphasizes the foundational role of psychology in understanding how consumers actually make buying decisions. KD believes that combining psychology, foundational business acumen, and artificial intelligence is the blueprint for future revenue leaders. He shares his journey of building his own custom Large Language Model (LLM) loaded with his playbooks, coaching, and context, effectively replicating himself to stay ahead of the AI curve. KD warns against relying entirely on Product-Led Growth (PLG) because users are rarely the economic buyers and initial bad experiences can permanently ruin a brand's reputation. Finally, KD predicts the rise of "Customer-Led Growth," where buyers want to talk directly to existing users rather than salespeople who don't actually use the product. He advocates for bringing referenceable customers into the sales cycle much earlier to validate the "how" of the product, thereby shortening the sales cycle and building trust instantly.

Discussed in this episode

• How marketing backgrounds give sales leaders a distinct edge in understanding consumer psychology and funnel dynamics.
• Why overusing automated outreach cadences ruined sales by treating one-to-one communication like mass outbound marketing.
• The critical educational trifecta for future revenue professionals: psychology, business foundations, and AI.
• The inherent flaws of Product-Led Growth (PLG), including high abandonment rates and the disconnect between users and economic buyers.
• How AI will shift revenue intelligence from reactive dashboard risk alerts to proactive, natural-language query systems.
• KD's process of building a personal LLM using his own training context and prompt engineering to replicate his leadership abilities.
• The inevitable transition toward Customer-Led Growth, where buyers talk directly to existing users instead of traditional salespeople.
• Why holding the line on pricing ignores core consumer psychology that dictates buyers inherently desire discounts.

Episode highlights

1. 0:00 — Why KD is replacing himself with AI
2. 1:30 — Choosing marketing skills over traditional sales
3. 3:45 — How automated cadences ruined sales outreach
4. 5:30 — The new education: Psych, Business, and AI
5. 8:00 — Integrating psychology into SDR onboarding
6. 9:45 — PLG challenges and user abandonment rates
7. 13:20 — Building a custom AI LLM with context
8. 17:15 — The rise of Customer-Led Growth (CLG)

Key takeaways

• Sales ruined outreach by turning one-to-one communication into mass marketing blasts.
• Future revenue leaders must master psychology, business basics, and artificial intelligence.
• PLG fails when products aren't intuitive and users aren't the economic buyers.
• Context and recorded materials are the secret to building highly effective custom LLMs.
• Bring customers into the sales process early because buyers want to talk to users.

Transcript

Like no no like, I've I've yet to talk to another revenue leader, you know, and this will sound ridiculous, that is like even halfway to where I am on this stuff. Both in terms of what it can do now, but also understanding where this is going. Like I I have, you know, fully convinced myself that I am irreplaceable in the next four to five years. And so if anyone is going to replace me, it's going to be me.

That's the mindset that I'm taking. Welcome back to another episode of the Revenue Reimagined podcast. We are stoked to have the one and only. I'm going to use the real name for the first time ever, Kevin, KD, Dorse.

SVP of Sales and Partnerships at Bench Accounting, host of the Live Better, Sell Better podcast. A friend, mentor, and probably the go-to expert I think of when I think of all things leadership. KD, welcome to the show, man. Right, I'm I'm excited, you know, just ready for it.

It's been a minute since, you know, I've had you on, we get to talk through it, so let's rock. Yeah, let's do this. I love. Welcome to Thanks for me here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's jump right into it. We're all busy. We're all getting ready to do a couple trips here.

So, we're about to reimagine revenue for you. Uh you can't be in sales anymore. What's one other go-to market revenue function or go-to market function that you would take besides revenue or besides sales? Marketing.

Didn't even hesitate. Didn't even flinch on that. So, marketing is a lot. Any particular part of marketing?

Like would you do content? Would you do demand? Would you do perform like where where would you go marketing? Or just all of it?

You're the CMO. Now. I I'm CMO. I would go that route.

Like a lot of people don't know this in my background. If I weren't in sales, I'd be in marketing. In fact, a lot of my early learnings were from marketing, working with um one of the co-founders at Human Stagnation, Andy Mackinson, to see a world-class marketing leader. The first conferences I went to were marketing conferences.

The books I was reading were marketing conferences, and I think it helped shape who I am as a revenue leader. So no, marketing for sure because again, like if you think about creating demand and closing demand, like, okay, marketing's creating the demand. Sales is the closing of that demand, but it's psychology at its core, right? It's just that marketing, you're attracting the masses, and sales, you're selling to a person or individual.

Yeah, marketing for sure would be the other revenue organ I'd be in. Awesome. Go ahead, Adam. What are you going to ask?

I I I I have so much to ask. So, you said you started in marketing, and it was the marketing conferences. So, my my next question is then, why why sales? Why did you gravitate towards this side versus having all that great training and being around in in I'm going to use your words.

I think you said world-class marketer, which is not words I hear a lot. There's very few people I've heard described as like, holy shit, world-class sales leader, world-class marketer. What made you stray to this side versus straying to that side? So, I mean, really I just think about barrier of entry, right?

You don't need a degree in sales to get a job in sales. And so, at the time, right, I've shared this probably, right? I'm a I'm a college dropout. Now, I sold, I worked all the way through college and all of those things, but like if I was when I was leaving college, I couldn't go get a entry-level marketing position, cuz I didn't have a degree in it, right?

So, I was in sales because of the barrier of entry. But then when I started working with Andy, that's where like the real Cuz I never Funny enough, I never really had a strong sales leader for myself, right? It's been a lot of like self-taught, self-learning. So, working with Andy, um and Sean, you know, Kelly there as well, like he was a marketer.

He followed all the OGs, the Dan Kennedy's, the Evan Pagans, the Ryan Dyces, right? Like I like my bottom shelf down here is full of those guys, right? The traffic and conversion summits are what I was going to. Like So, that was really I was just a sales guy who was learning a lot about marketing.

But it was just the barrier of entry. Anyone This is why I got into sales. Contrary to what most people believe, I believe sales is the most secure job you can have. Because if you're good at it, you'll always find a job.

No matter what. And that was what pulled me in. I was like, look, even if I'm only okay at this, there's always sales jobs, no matter what. Even if it's commission only, knocking on doors, that I will never go without a job for the rest of my life, right?

And so, that's what got me into sales. But then, yeah, I've spent so much time on the marketing side of it to really hone the psychology, the attraction, the funnels, right? I was doing cadences long before people in sales were doing cadences. Long before Actually, hold on.

If I could find it, I've got one of my old sales binders. Ah, shoot. Like, I have one of my old sales binders where my sales cadence was fully mapped out page by page. Email one this day, voicemail this day, like like all of it.

And that came from marketing. Marketing's been doing cadences for decades. It just took sales too long to catch up. So, that was kind of my transition.

Yeah. But now now that sales had Sorry sorry Dale. Now that sales has cadences, and we could come back to this, they're being overused, and I would argue that they're ruining sales. Oh, they've ruined.

It is already past tense. It is already in the present tense. Because what they did is they became marketers. Yep.

One to many. We literally got away from the very thing that made us sales people, which was the one to one. A lot of the, you know, the people coming up in sales now don't even realize outreach, salesloft, all these tools, they didn't even have automation for the first four to five years. That wasn't what it was built to do.

They were not built to automate the emails. They were built to automate the sales process, right? Day one, day four, day 17. That all used to have to be in our heads or on notepads or whatever else, right?

Like that's what it was supposed to do. And then it turned into outbound marketing. And then we wonder why it doesn't work. And it has it has ruined.

It has ruined sales because unfortunately there's no coming back from it. There's no like, okay, well now I want to do one to one. It's too late because that inbox is so destroyed. It doesn't even matter anymore, right?

So then it proves people's points. Well, no, I did personalized emails, and it didn't work. So then they stop doing it, they go back to blasting, and here we are. So, Kitty, kids going into school.

What what part of education should they be going towards now to get the next jobs in revenue? Like forget about sales. Like what type of education, where should they be looking? Um, what should be what should their track be to become revenue leaders, revenue experts, etc.?

So, if I could combine it, it would be a combination of psychology, business, and AI. So, I firmly believe AI is going to change so much of what we do, and it's going to be the people learning it that can actually apply it. One of the flaws I've seen in SAS for the longest time is so many products are built by product people and not actually built by the users. If more VPs and CROs knew how to program, there'd be way better tools out there.

Mm. Way better because we actually know how we use it and what we look for. So, if I were coming up in the revenue game right now, I'd be kind always a base of psychology, no matter what. How people make decisions, how people buy, what triggers the emotions, all of that.

That's your foundation, it doesn't matter what you're doing, building products, building teams, building companies, psychology. Understand the foundations of business, right? You don't need to go to business school, but understand the foundations of business, how finances work, everything there. But then learn like this is what I'm spending my time on even right now.

Like I'm in the game, and I'm learning how to do no code, right? I'm learning everything I can around large language models and Pinecone and LangChain and all these tools to figure out like, okay, this is what's coming. I have literally mapped out on one page what it is I do as a leader. I've mapped it out, and I've already looked like, okay, AI can get automated.

Like of this stuff that I do what can I automate? Mhm. Yeah. So it it it's funny because and I know you do some stuff with John Barros, um specifically around AI.

We had him on, I don't know, five, six, seven episodes, um ago. And he was saying arguably the same thing. Map out what you do, and arguably work to replace yourself as much as you can with the repetitive task or the questions that you get asked over and over again. And then use yourself and the psychology for the things that you as the human are needed for.

I I love it. I don't think there's enough emphasis on psychology. I think that we've started to hear a lot more about this, you know, on LinkedIn or from respected sales leaders. When you're working with, you know, either new sellers that are AEs or new BDRs, how do you get them to learn and understand the importance of psychology?

Because it's not as simple as, hey, go read a psych book. Well, so here how I do it, I have a hour and a half long training module built into my onboarding that's called the psychology of sales and influence, where it's breaking down Keldini's work, it's breaking down Calenda's work, it's breaking down biology. So like it's built into my onboarding, first of all. So like that's first.

Then the second is when we are talking through scripting, we are almost always connecting it back to what psychological trigger is this based off of. Why are we doing this? Which one of the laws can we connect this back to? Which one of the methods can we connect this back to?

So it's ingrained in a lot of what we are teaching as well. It's never just like, here's the script. It's like, all right, like here's the script. Now let's break down why we're using this tone from a psychological layer.

Now let's break down what a layered question is and how that applies to psychology. Let's use what a justifier is and that's one of the laws from Keldini around consistent like So, it's weaved in through everything that um I'm trying to do with my teams and companies I work with. But again, it's a full module. It's like the second module people go through to set the foundation for how to sell.

Yeah, and it's interesting, most people don't talk about psychology or like the like because most people think only about their product, their feature, their functionality. When I talk to a lot of sales reps or even founders and leaders, you got to put yourself in the buyer's shoes. Like what are they thinking about? What's the value that they're going to derive when your product or feature becomes in their in their everyday use?

And I think there's a lot of companies or start-up tech companies going through this PLG motion now, right? They're like, well, we can't we can't get on top of funnel, so we're going to do this PLG motion. Talk a little bit about the challenges with that PLG motion versus like a true enterprise type sale, because a lot of enterprise tech is going towards a PLG motion. Yeah.

Well, I think, you know, Jeb Blount said this so well in his book Fanatical Prospecting. I've used it ever since, right? Where I try to take an and approach, not an or approach. Like, I think it should be PLG and sales lead, right?

PLG and enterprise, right? Because the challenge with PLG is you can't control who's coming in, so you lose control over the funnel. As much as we love to think our products are intuitive, there's a reason why T-shirts have tags that say don't eat it. Like, okay?

Like, we gotta remember this first. I keep telling that, I don't need t-shirts, but Do not use the iron in the bath. Like, okay? So, as intuitive as we think these products are, they're not.

So, what happens, again, pulling back into psychology, is people remember the first, they remember the last. And so, if I land into a product, and I don't feel good immediately. Like, immediately I'm confused or immediately I'm not sure what to do. My impression of that product is now not positive, and I don't come back.

Talk to any PLG company, the abandonment rate is massive. Right? It's absolutely massive. Products get people get in, they're like, um and that guided tour doesn't do anything, right?

So, you lose control over it. But worse than losing control, is you have people getting into a product and not having a great experience, and now they've labeled it that way. Yep. That's very hard to come back from.

Whereas like, oh, no, yeah, I I no, I tried, I tried revenue imagine. It just, uh, it just didn't work. It was confusing. They never paid for it, they never actually used it, but that was their experience.

So, that is a struggle. And then what a lot of them are running into is when you have PLG, generally speaking, you are targeting users. Which is great. But the users are not the buyers.

And so, that gap still remains where now it's like, all right, I got a bunch of whatever. SDRs getting some data. But they're not buying. They're not buying.

I mean, Scratchpad and Dooly are the perfect examples of that. And listen, I'm not trash talking. I think they're both good products, but that the whole motion was PLG, and get the SDRs, and get them using it, and that's great until they have to connect it to Salesforce, and someone's like, nope, not gonna do that. Mhm.

I'm I'm in one of their cycles sales cycles right now. Right? They're like, hey, Katie, like you we got all like these users, like, are you gonna sign up? I was like, for what?

I just Like, you know, I got hit up with like a message of like, hey, like it's end of the quarter, like what can we do to get this across the line? I was like, I literally don't know what you're talking about. I there's there's nothing I can do right now to get this across the line. My team uses it, apparently.

I've never been onboarded in it, I've never been trained on it, I've never personally used it. Way to go for PLG. Right? Because again, the whole point of PLG and where, you know, people are I think getting it misconstrued is you can really only do PLG if your product on its own can deliver the value someone's looking for.

Right? So like if I go sign up for Canva right now, I'm gonna get some value out of it. I can very quickly figure out how to build a LinkedIn banner. Okay?

I can get value right away. Miro. I can go in, I can build a Miro board and share that with other people. I can immediately get some value out of it.

There's a lot of companies that like you can't get value from the product that quickly or that easily. What do you do with it? So that's that's my take on PLG. I think it is I think you have to.

I think you have to have a way for people to experience your product, right? In order to want to even raise their hand anymore. Because we're also we're gonna get to a stage here where like building your own internal tools back to AI is gonna be so easy. What what's PLG doing, right?

Is like, man, like I need a tool that will tell me which deals are at risk because of XYZ factors build, and you've got autonomous agents that can build it off your own data. I don't even need to go PLG anymore. So so let's let's let's double click on that. So I as you know, worked for a company that did revenue intelligence.

I'm a big fan of some of the tools out there, um, you know, like Clary, and I think outreach has some cool stuff, so does salesloft. We'll we'll be agnostic here. But you just hit on something, right? You have these startups that are building these companies on, how do you identify deals at risk?

How do you know, you know, what's your likelihood of, you know, closing this deal? With the advent of LLMs and arguably anyone being able to create their own LLM based on their own data. What does that mean for these startups that come into existence for the sole purpose of, well, KD, you know, uh, is is the deal gonna are you gonna sign this quarter because all your reps are using our product to tell you that their deals aren't gonna close? Ever feel like keeping your CRM updated with call notes is a nightmare?

You're not alone. Most sales leaders would rate their CRM hygiene a four out of ten. Badly maintained CRMs lead to inaccurate data, missed opportunities, and a messy sales pipeline. Not ideal, right?

Introducing Attention, your sales reps' personal Iron Man suit. It transforms CRM upkeep, automating it with AI, and freeing your reps to sell, not enter data. Attention fills your CRM with a single click, drafts custom follow-ups, and gives real-time assistance. Isn't it time your CRM worked for you?

Ready to upgrade your sales? Visit www.attention.tech.

No, like, and that's that's where I if people just don't understand, I think what is happening, not coming, what's already happening. Absolutely. A lot of those tools, right? Their value was information.

Well, now information is accessible. So, you're gonna have to find another value prop, right? Which is like in my opinion is going to go from reactive to proactive. So, as opposed to like this deal is at risk, it's like, do these things to ensure it doesn't fall into that, right?

So, it's starting to get to a proactive element. But, I mean, I I've quite literally already replicated myself. I have built my own LLM. I have it completely.

You can ask it more than any single question, and it'll answer. I've uploaded all of my trainings, all of my content, all of my recordings, everything in there, all of my playbooks, it's there, okay? So, like when it comes to internal data, similarly, it's like cuz and this is what, you know, all leaders and I'm I'm working on a little something something on this too right now with Jake Dunlap, which will be exciting, where it's like, the questions that we ask We just And that is who I meant, not John Barros. So I apologize.

I know it's all good. Cuz well Barros and I have talked about this though, too. Like Barros, I think Barros is doing it. Yeah.

gets it like he and I have talked about this. He's doing some cool shit, too. Where it's like, I just want my questions answered. Right?

Like right now, I want to know what happened to the 414 leads from September that did not get out of the SAL stage. I want to know how many touches did they get? Who touched them? What emails were they sent?

Right now, I have to go to the different tools to find that. I want to be able to ask that, and not ask my managers that. So, I ask my managers that, it's like, oh, let me go find out for you. Right.

No. They're going to they're they then have to take time from closing business and driving revenue to answer your question that you can answer with a key stroke. Yeah. So, that that's where I think this ends up, right?

It's like the data's already existed. All of these tools, all they've done is make it easy to see, manipulate, and interpret the data. But once you can connect something to your own data set, I don't need another dashboard. I just need my questions answered.

That's what I need, right? And so, back to what I was saying at the beginning, this is why I wish more revenue leaders or whatever else, even marketers knew how to build tools because we would build it differently than how a lot of these tools are built because we are users. How does a VP use Outreach, Salesloft, Groove? It's very different than how, right?

The thing I've I've sat on both of their companies like customer advisory boards, by the way, and I've made the same suggestions to both of them. And quite a few of the things that I've asked for never came to fruition because they were from a VP's lens, a CRO's lens, not from a user's lens. They wouldn't go and figured out how can we automate some shit. I'm like, that's not what I needed.

It's not what this not what I needed. Yeah, it's funny, I grew up um, I originally was a coder in in college, and then I actually went into sales engineering, and I think like some of the best sales people that I've known are sales engineers that can actually talk business talk, talk value because they understand the bits and bites behind it, and they can generate that value on top of like talking technical. Plus, if you're technical and you're sitting in a technical conversation, you don't necessarily need to say you're technical, but you can gather data from that sales call or that conversation that you would never ever know. I I know many sales people, oh, I'm not technical.

Go watch some YouTube videos, go like I've done model-driven development back, you know, back in the day, probably five, six, seven years ago, building your own apps. Like you realize how much you actually could you could give a better product experience for people. So I I love that. I love that feedback.

It's a different lens. I mean, even like when you and I are on sales calls, like we were on one today, you look at things differently because of that background that you have with product. I'm certainly not a product person, but like KD, I get what you're saying. Like I've used so many products as a revenue leader where I'm like, like like this wasn't designed for me to use at all.

Take my feedback. When you talk about so, you you struck a nerve with me with something. You said you already have your own LLM, you you have like a we'll we'll call it KD in a box, if you will. How hard is that for people to create?

Because I think a lot of people are going to want to do that, and I do truly believe, I won't even say that's the way of the future. We're we're here. It's just how quickly people are going to do it. Is that a 40-hour learning, a 10-hour learning?

Like what's involved for someone to be able to do this the right way and replicate themselves? So, it depends on how good you want it to be. The level that the three of us would want it to be. Okay.

So, the level So, there's there's two parts of it. There's the building of it, and there's the prompting of it, right? So, the what it took me to learn it's probably about three-ish months of like, you know, like before hours, after hours of like, but I was learning how it worked, how all of it connected. And then I found tools that could speed it up.

Yep. But I understood how it was doing things and how content had to be put into it to make it legible and readable and all of those things. So, then when I started to build it, there are tools, funny enough, that use AI to help you build your own AI things, right? So, now you know how to do it the right way.

What's happening is people are, you know, they're trying it. They load it up into some of these tools, and they load it up, and they try to connect to chat GBT and they wonder why it doesn't go very well. There's a lot of training of it that you need to do. That was about, you know, going If I was like if I was not not working nine jobs and everything else, I could probably learn it in like two to three weeks, right?

But it was, you know, three months. Like this is this is what I do for fun, right? This is I I've posted about this a while back. I've pulled back on LinkedIn posting because of this.

Yep. Because if I'm going to spend even 30 additional minutes in a day, I'm going to direct it here. What's that value proposition, right? Like I'm gonna spend 30 days on posting and commenting, or I'm gonna spend 30 days on learning how to do AI and LLM, like, you know.

I I'm blessed to be in a situation now where like growth of reach doesn't matter to me. And also, funny enough, it comes full circle. Everyone wants to build brands so things become passive. I've built my brand so I can be sniper, right?

I don't I don't If I want to generate revenue, I reach out to people directly. I don't make a post about it and say, hey, like, I'm going to reach out to 10 VPs and say, yo, I've got this thing. Do you want it? right?

So, now the building of it, right? There's tools that can do it. But then there's the prompts that you really have to fine tune because people write a prompt saying like, oh, like how do I close this deal? All right, well, no, right?

Like you have to feed it way more. And so that's where Jake and I have been spending a lot of time too, is building those prompt libraries out and everything around it. So, you know, it's you you got to learn this. I I'm just I am shocked.

Well, no, I'm not. I think that's Don't be shocked. Don't I was gonna say, I'm I'm not about the amount of people that don't take time to learn this. I'm not shocked at all.

No no no like, I've I've yet to talk to another revenue leader, you know, and this will sound ridiculous, that is like even halfway to where I am on this stuff. Both in terms of what it can do now, but also understanding where this is going. Like I I have, you know, fully convinced myself that I am irreplaceable in the next four to five years. And so if anyone is going to replace me, it's going to be me.

That's the mindset that I'm taking. And if it doesn't happen, then it doesn't happen, but I'm like I would dude, I've mapped it all out and I go, shoot, right? Imagine like leadership that actually catered to the individual learning preferences of the reps, and didn't have emotional biases, and actually did remember to check in and could recognize, and could listen to all of their calls and give them feedback on it and connect it to their goals and create customized comp plans that speak to the individual like, Yeah. Yep.

It's it's unlimited. There's two other things I want to say like, uh the prompt engineering is super interesting because it goes back to fundamentals of sales. Ask better questions, get better answers. Same thing on the prompt engineering.

Like you ask it crap questions, you're going to get crap answers. And so, people that are trying to do this, they don't understand that they have to ask really good questions. The second thing that I think you have above a lot of other people that would go out to try to do this is you have good content to start with. Like you've writ you've spent so much time, like if you talk about how much time you've spent to learn this, how much additional time have you spent building documents, building writing content, you know, I I uh I knew one of your reps from from one of your last companies, and like he just said like KD knew how to do everything to a T.

And so, that's like years of experience that you've written down, putting it in context that you're giving to the LLM. Yeah. Well, and that you said the magic who was the rep, by the way? Uh, Mike Galindo.

Galindo. Yeah. Hell yeah. Oh, all right.

He's the man. I I hired him at one of my jobs just because he was over with uh with you and Justin. Let's go. Let's go.

Um, so now so the the magic word there, right, is context. A lot of people don't have context, they don't have context. And so that's where with a lot of, you know, like, you know, I don't know, this is giving away secrets. People need to start recording things more, not writing them.

Because most playbooks are content with no context. Whereas the 97 hours of recorded trainings that I have have context where it's like, okay, I'm explaining things as I go through this, right? It's what Jake and I are helping companies do is like take, right, their content and give it context to build these types of things out, so it's actually real. So, that's the key.

You gotta have context to make it work and then pair that with good questions. That's that's the key. Yeah, these fake people writing fake frameworks to uh not give any context. Oh, don't even that's a very sore subject.

Everyone with their frameworks and their cookie cutter playbook for $11.99 that you just buy this and you're suddenly going to be able to build a go to market team. Let's not go there. Oh.

I think we all feel the same about this. KD, uh one of the big things that revenue reimagined is giving back to the community. Um, you've been grateful grateful enough to uh give back to our community. What what would you like to give to the community?

Or a person in the community? Yeah. So, since we since we touched on it, I will make the psychology of sales and influence available to your listeners. So, I'll I'll put a place to to host that.

It's about an hour and 15 minutes or or so. I will find a way to host that. You can send that out to to people and they can watch it. Wow.

That's amazing. Thank you so much. So, for those like like we don't pre-plan these gifts, so like the reaction you just got from me is real. Like that that's that's pretty darn awesome.

Adam needs it, because Adam needs it, so. Listen, I I'm not above saying like as good as I think I am, I'll be the first fucking one to go through that and watch it. And any one of our listeners, whether you're a CRO, founder, AE, or SDR, you're not smart if you don't take the time to take advantage of an offer like that. Um, because no having gone through some of KD's courses before, they're not things that are put together in five minutes to make a quick buck.

Like this isn't a like, hey, this might be good. I want to make $29.99. Like this is real effort that's gonna help you close business.

There we go. So, that that's my endorsement. All right, as we uh wind it down, can we do some rapid fire? Hit me.

Let's rock. All right, 10 10 words or less for these answers. What song would you say best describes your revenue strategy? Living on a prayer.

Now, kidding. Here we go. Here we go. I'm going to say I will.

I'll go here. I'll I'll say 99 Problems by Jay-Z. Oh, that's a good one. I like it.

I like it. That's a good one. That's a really good one. Um, if you had a crystal ball, what's one revenue training strategy that you predict will take center stage in the next 12 to 18 months?

Other than AI. Um, customer-led growth. Ooh, customer-led growth. Double-click on that.

I know, I know we're doing like. Expand a little bit on that. I know I know we're doing like, Yeah, what what what Give us a little context on it. Well, so we've been hinting at it a bit already, okay?

Buyers want to talk to buyers. They don't want to talk to sales people. Right? If you think about the evolution of sales, sales used to be about the what.

You didn't know what was out there unless you talked to a sales person. Right? You you literally didn't know what was out there. You didn't know what new products, new whatever.

You had to talk to a sales person. Sales person used to be about the what. Well, as the information got out there as the what, sales became about the the why. Okay, well here's the what we need, but like why should I work with you?

Right? Why should I use this tool? Right? There was an education element to it.

Well, now we've passed that bridge as well because all that is out there also with it's getting to the how. How do I actually use this tool to get the result that I want? 95% of sales people do not actually use the thing that they sell. So true.

It's one of the greatest conflict of interests there actually are out there. They don't use it, and because they don't use it, they cannot speak like a user. So, I've dabbled in this already, where I've had customers on the demos, customers taking prospect calls. Because they are user, okay?

So, let's let's go full full circle here. Let's let's say, you know, outreach decides to bring me into the fold. How many more meetings do you think they could book if the call to action was, hey, do you want to speak to Kevin Dorsey, who's built four teams over 150 people using this product, and he'll show you his sequences, how he connects it, and how he generates pipeline? How many more meetings do you think they could set if that was the call to action?

And then I'm the one 100% and I'm through, I'm the one walking them through that demo in the product, and how I use it with no incentive if you close or not. I dabbled on this at PatientPop. I'm already starting to build that process here at Bench and like they and I've talked about this with other companies. That would just customer led.

And I have to say, I've done it as well, like in one of my companies, we did that as well. We brought the customer on early in the sales process. And it was so like I was like, we'll connect you guys, you guys have a conversation, we'll get back to you. Like, You don't even need to be on the call because it it's it's it is like how do you use it?

Why do you use it? What are you getting for value? Right. Customer led is where I think we go because then you're speaking to a user.

CFOs want to talk to CFOs. They don't want to talk to an SDR. They don't want to talk to an AE. They don't want to talk to an SE.

They don't want to talk like they want to talk to another CFO who's using your product. So, customer led is where I think it goes. And then eventually, I think it becomes mostly internal creation, where you can describe what it is you are dealing with and struggling with. And then whatever tools are out there then make building internal tools easier and faster will win.

Love that. Yeah. That's yeah. Absolutely.

So, I I think the answer might be the same. Um, when you look at go to market strategies that aren't taught enough but make a huge difference. Would you say it's customer-led growth, or is there something else you would say out there? I'd say it's one of the biggest ones, right?

Of like involving them way earlier, having more stories, pulling them in. Right? Like everyone knows people at the end want references. So, why would I wait till the end to pull in references?

Like I'm gonna try Let's shrink the time to close, right? Let's shrink that that time. Um, so that's definitely a big one that's not taught. But then I'll say the other is just like the actual psychology of decision-making, right?

Like consumer psychology. This is why I was getting so I just love it, I love it. Maybe y'all posted it, I don't care because I understand the things behind it when people get like fired up on discounts. Right?

They're like, don't discount. I'm like, you're stupid. So, continue on. Right?

Well, like, no, hold the line. That has nothing to do with consumer psychology. I don't care what you think about the selling psychology. Consumer psychology states discounts are needed.

Period. Like so, it's things like that where people don't teach how people buy. Even like the buying process, they don't teach how people buy. So, I wish that I cover some of that in the psychology course that people will get access to.

But like, that's another It's just not taught. Like what's the psychology behind this? How do people actually make decisions? If people knew that, they'd write better emails, they'd run better demos, they'd run better disco, they'd be better leaders, all of it.

I love that. Okay, last question. Earlier in the show, you said you would be the CMO, the head of marketing. It's tomorrow morning, you're getting your favorite morning beverage.

What's the first thing you do? Tomorrow morning, what am I doing? Yeah, as a marketer, as the CMO. Uh, nothing changes.

I'm sitting down. I'm saying my prayers. I'm doing my journaling. I'm doing my visualization.

I'm preparing myself for who I need to be that day. Then I step into the day. Nothing My my start of the day would be the exact same. Awesome.

That's best answer yet. Stay true to who you are no matter what the job is. KD, man, thank you so much for joining us. This is uh been long overdue.

It's been a pleasure. Where uh where can people find you? Plug time. Um, yeah, I mean they can find me on, you know, LinkedIn.

I am at the stupid connection requests, so you know, give me a follow there. Um, podcast is Live Better, Sell Better. And We we will link to that in the show notes. I've got a leadership program being released in the next month or so, called the Sales Leadership Accelerator, so be on the lookout for that.

Nice. Awesome. KD, thanks so much for joining us, man. Appreciate you.