S1:Ep78 How to Consistently Attract High-Quality B2B Leads with AI: Innovation in Action

In this power-packed episode, we explore How to Consistently Attract High-Quality B2B Leads with AI, together with my fantastic guest from Toronto, Canada - Rob Provenzano.

Rob is International Best Selling Author/Speaker/Mentor/Fractional CMO, who knows how to drive over 300% YoY Growth by using AI-powered Systems, scaling High-Ticket Companies from 7 to 8 and 9 Figures.

Selected Industries/Companies Rob worked with 👇

🧾 ACCOUNTING: Deloite, E&Y, KPMG, PWC
💰 BANKING: BMO, RBC, TD
⚕️ HEALTHCARE
🏛️ INSURANCE: AIG, Cigna, Clarica, Manulife, Sunlife
🖨️ PRINTING/PUBLISHING: Quebecor, MacLean Hunter, Transcontinental
🛍️ RETAIL: D'allards, Harry Rozen, Marks and Spencer, Roots
🗣️ SPEAKERS: Robert Allen, Joel Bauer, Les Brown, Wayne Dyer, Tony Robbins, Brian Tracy
💻 TECHNOLOGY: AT&T, AVAYA, CISCO, IBM, NCR

🔑 Key Topics We Cover:

• AI’s impact on B2B lead generation and the new opportunities it creates for businesses
• Most effective AI techniques and tools for attracting high-quality B2B leads in practice
• Real-world case studies where AI boosted both lead quality and volume
• Key challenges in AI integration and how to successfully overcome them
• Role of data quality and segmentation in driving AI-powered lead generation
• AI in lead nurturing and conversion across the buyer journey
• Emerging AI trends set to reshape the future of B2B marketing and sales
• Strategic advice for business leaders on consistently attracting top B2B leads with AI

🎧 Don’t miss this powerful conversation with Rob Provenzano - unlock the secrets to AI-driven success!

🔗 Listen now and take your business to the next level!

📈 Connect with Rob Provenzano on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rprovenzano/

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Digital Transformation and AI
• 1:52 Rob's Journey from IT to Marketing
• 7:18 AI's Role in B2B Lead Generation
• 13:35 Market Research and Lead Quality
• 17:32 Converting Leads to Sales Opportunities
• 22:27 AI-Powered Outreach Success Story
• 30:14 Common Challenges With AI Implementation
• 36:20 Data Quality and Target Market Definition
• 42:09 Enhancing the Lead Nurturing Process
• 47:46 Future Trends in AI Lead Generation

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hello and welcome to Digital Transformation and AI for Humans with your host, Amy. In this podcast, we delve into how technology intersects with leadership, innovation and, most importantly, the human spirit. Each episode features visionary leaders who understand that at the heart of success is the human touch nurturing a winning mindset, fostering emotional intelligence and building resilient teams. I'm excited to dive into innovation in action and explore how to consistently attract high-quality B2B leads with AI, together with my amazing guest from Toronto, Canada, Rob Provenzano. Rob is an international best-selling author, speaker, mentor, fractional CMO, who knows how to drive growth by using AI-powered systems, scaling businesses from seven to eight and nine figures. Welcome, Rob, I'm so happy to have you here today. It's such a pleasure to have this conversation.

Speaker 2: 1:02

Thanks for having me. I'm excited too, to have this conversation. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1: 1:06

I'm excited, too Amazing. Let's start the conversation and transform not just our technologies but our ways of thinking and leading. Interested in connecting or collaborating? You can find more information in the description below. Subscribe and stay tuned for more episodes. I'd also love to invite you to get your copy of AI Leadership Compass Unlocking Business Growth and Innovation the definitive guide for leaders and business owners to adapt and thrive in the age of AI and digital transformation. Find the Amazon link in the description below. Rob, let's get down to business. I would like to hear more about your story, about your journey, about your experience.

Speaker 2: 1:52

Great. Yeah, I'd love to share that with you. And, as always, I do like to explain to people. Awesome Rob, that's not an ego thing. I was actually given that name by a company. I used to run Totally Awesome Events where I was awesome Rob and my partner was Awesome Bob, and we just became known as that over the years. So I stick with it because a lot of people don't know my last name or can't pronounce my last name, but they do know Awesome Rob.

Speaker 2: 2:20

So my background is it's interesting. I grew up in the advertising industry and then I went to school for computer science ironically, ai, which is not the AI of today, because that was 35 years ago when I was in school. I know I don't look that old, but from there I kind of got into office automation. And how do you put in systems that make things more efficient? How do you make them better? How do we innovate what we've been doing for years in a way that doesn't totally disrupt the entire culture although there's minor disruptions and how do you use the technology and the innovation to scale people? So that's where I really started, went from there.

Speaker 2: 3:07

I worked with a lot of accounting firms to do corporate recovery for some of their clients, putting in accounting systems, whatnot. Then I worked my way up in the IT world. I was a director at a Fortune 500 company. Subprime issue hit. A lot of us got laid off because we were heavily invested in subprime mortgages. So from there I got career coaching and they said you know, you might be in the wrong profession. Uh well, that's great to tell me after 20 years of doing this. But thank you. They said you need to be working more with people, more directly with people, helping people, understanding people.

Speaker 2: 3:47

And somehow I got into marketing. I got into event marketing. I did a lot with holistic healthcare, helping health practitioners market their services, because they don't learn any of that in school. And then eventually I was doing events and I had built a system for filling events. We called it the event filling funnel because we weren't that creative back then. And after I put, what did? I? Put 1,400 people in a room in four days. People went okay, that's incredible, we need that. And so I did a lot of work with those kinds of people speakers, coaches, people like that and eventually got tired of all the travel and being in all these cities and never actually seeing anything. So I had a friend of mine who owned a marketing company. He said, hey, can you fill sales calendars? I thought, well, it's just another event. So yeah, let's try. I joined him. He was doing about 250,000 a year. I've been stuck there for about five years, couldn't move forward. Three years later we're doing $15 million a year and expanding around the world. So it works.

Speaker 1: 5:00

Amazing, absolutely amazing, and it clearly works. It works. Thank you so much for sharing your story At all Really impressive and inspiring. And what a journey.

Speaker 2: 5:14

Yeah, I've been. You know, over 500 clients went through that company and most of them never left. We learned a lot about business around the world. We learned a lot about innovation, what works, what doesn't work, how quickly you can do it, how quickly you can't do it, and it kind of brings us to where we are today, I guess.

Speaker 1: 5:33

That's very important actually also to pay attention to how quickly you can do it, because a lot of people expect miracles same day and there are so many stories around it and not all of them are true stories. So a lot of people get that situation where somebody is misleading them, and when somebody is misleading them, they just expect something unreal and get disappointed and probably drop off before they should and before they give it a chance.

Speaker 2: 6:11

Yeah, you know, you see that all the time or at least I do anyway on Facebook or LinkedIn, where you know I'll get a message from someone and they'll be like I'm an AI expert. Oh, how long have you been doing it? Six months, okay, yeah exactly and it'll respond and say unless you've been doing this 10 years, I don't consider you an expert. They're like like still in public school 10 years ago.

Speaker 1: 6:42

Yeah, that's kind of my point, rob how do you see AI transforming the B2B lead generation landscape, speaking about AI and months versus years, and what key opportunities does it open up for businesses today?

Speaker 2: 6:58

Absolutely, and you know I always, when people ask me similar questions, I like to go back and say you know, we were doing this before AI. So just because you have AI doesn't mean you're going to be able to do this, and that's the first myth I have to sort of get out of their heads. It's like you can't just buy AI and turn it on and go, okay, make it millions. It took us a long time to figure out the process in the first place. You know, AI accelerates the process and, in particular, where we focus a lot of AI attention is the market research. So understanding exactly who we're talking to, why we're talking to them, who their competitors are, different competitive landscapes, what's coming up in the future, the different issues with geographical dynamics and different countries and cultures. And so, before we even start with the outreach, we've done all that research. And when I say you know research, depending on the client, we can have 250 pages of research before we even start marketing. And, uh, you know, like companies like I shouldn't mention their names cause I like to sue people, but you know the big companies that do market research and charge you a 50, 60, $70,000 a year. Yeah, we, we can do better research in a matter of days than than they do, charging you that kind of money and taking months. And and they should be able to do it because the information's on the internet. But they have not really figured out how to train their AIs properly to go and do that research. So that's the big first step.

Speaker 2: 8:34

Once we've got that information and we know exactly who we're looking for, we also know where to find them. So we know what they're looking for, we know where to find them, we know how to reach them, we know the content they prefer. We've scripted the content they prefer, whether it's video or whether it's email or just direct messaging. Then we do the outreach, but only to the people that are the ideal target market. So that's where, right off the bat, we're just getting better quality leads to begin with, and then we put them into a system that converts them from marketing qualified to sales qualified appointments, and that's really where all the AI comes together. So it's like it's a complete system. It's like you can't just do one piece. All those three pieces work together, and so when you're having sales calls with these people, I often get asked well, what's the difference between a marketing qualified lead and a sales qualified lead.

Speaker 2: 9:31

So a marketing qualified lead would say I'd like information. A sales qualified lead says I have enough. How do I buy? So when you're talking to them in a sales call, you might close 10% of the marketing qualified leads. You should close at least 80% of the sales qualified leads. That's a huge difference.

Speaker 1: 9:51

Luckily.

Speaker 2: 9:52

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 9:54

Impressive. And that difference it creates, exactly that leap between where they are and where they could be.

Speaker 2: 10:05

What do you know? Yeah, well, in a couple of ways. So to do a sales call takes a while, and if your average sales call is an hour and you're dealing 40 a week or no nobody does 40 a week that's crazy.

Speaker 1: 10:22

So 30 a week.

Speaker 2: 10:24

That's a burial. So it's like okay, so there's 30 hours, but you only close, you know, 20%. You're kind of like okay, versus, you may do less actual calls in the beginning with our system, but you're closing so much more you save your time and close about 400% more revenue, exactly. So, right off the bat, you're winning.

Speaker 1: 10:50

Definitely.

Speaker 2: 10:52

Yeah, and we don't just make up those numbers, those are actual stats. So we know if you're only growing 300% a year, that's sort of the minimum you should be doing with this system. We've had clients like you know. You go back to irrational because we use their own systems. That's how we pioneered them. So if you go from 250,000 a year to 15 million in three years, it's more than 300%.

Speaker 1: 11:17

It's definitely much more than that.

Speaker 2: 11:20

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 11:21

What are the most effective AI techniques and tools currently being used to attract high quality B2B leads, and how do they operate in real world scenarios? What is your experience around it?

Speaker 2: 11:35

Yeah. So again, it's like a lot of the AI tools can be great if you give them the right information, and that's where we always say you start with the research, Because you can do automated outreach. But if you're reaching out to the wrong people, it's not going to work. Or if you're giving them the wrong message it's not going to work, it doesn't matter how automated it is. We used to have a saying in the systems world if you automate a bad process, you get a bad process that runs fast.

Speaker 1: 12:05

Excellent, you are more busy with it as well.

Speaker 2: 12:09

Absolutely so. So, yeah, the first step get get clear on who you're reaching. Then, once you've got that, then you design your outreach systems to only target those people. Put the right message in front of them and, with the solution we use, we'll say, okay, this is the target market and they'll say, okay, so they're on LinkedIn. Primarily. The best time to reach them is nine o'clock on a Tuesday or four o'clock on a Thursday. This is the kind of message they want. This is their biggest pain point. If you solve this for them, they will buy Boom.

Speaker 2: 12:45

Now you do your outreach.

Speaker 1: 12:49

Data is everything. It depends on when you understand what you are doing, so you are putting your effort in the right place.

Speaker 2: 13:00

Yeah, and that's the difference, I guess, between us and a lot of lead generation company, and I've talked to a lot of these guys and they're saying well, let me show you how my system works, okay, so, so we're going to do this outreach on LinkedIn. You have to tell us who to reach. Oh, okay, what if I'm wrong? Well, you told us, so that's who we're reaching. Okay, that's your first problem. Second problem is you got a hold of them. They agreed to meet. Are they qualified? I don't know what if they're not qualified? We got you the lead.

Speaker 1: 13:36

You know, it can go even worse. From my experience, they might bring you somebody who wants to sell something to you instead.

Speaker 2: 13:41

Oh, that happens all the time. Yeah, we used to call it in the seminar industry. Can they fog a mirror, which means are they alive? Yeah, great, they're a lead. No, well, they're really not. You don't want the most. It's more a question of not inviting the wrong people than it is just getting the right people. You know, if you know what I mean. It's like those people that are not really interested and just want to talk to you. They're wasting your time. You can't help them. They're not going to buy, and if your goal really is to help people and your products or services, do you're actually depriving people you could help? Because you're dealing with all these other people? You can't.

Speaker 1: 14:25

Exactly, and it's so demotivating as well, because when you have that type of pipeline, it's just draining you.

Speaker 2: 14:34

Yeah, I'd rather have five calls with people that are interested than a hundred calls with people that aren't? It just whispered some name. You're not alone I know, and so many CEOs have said we want more leads. No, you don't. You want better quality leads. That's what you want.

Speaker 1: 14:56

Totally, rob. Can you share a real-world example or case study where AI significantly boosted both the quality and volume of B2B leads for a company? Because what you just shared with us it sounds amazing, but I want the proof. I want real life examples.

Speaker 2: 15:20

Yeah, so so I'm again. We all use it, we use our own system, so I'm going to give you one of mine. I did an outreach last week and I was very hyper-targeted. I knew exactly what I wanted, who I wanted. I used the AI to define the message, including the connection request message, then the follow-up message. So that was all AI driven. And then I launched it on Tuesday and I said here's 100 people I want you to reach out to. Bang bang, bang, bang bang. So I'm just over 72 acceptances now on 100 messages.

Speaker 1: 15:59

Is it LinkedIn?

Speaker 2: 16:00

Yeah, on LinkedIn. Yep, sorry, yeah, on LinkedIn. So 72 people accepted the outreach out of a hundred and I just broke 40. I've got 40 meetings now with those people who are exactly who I want to talk to. They now know what I do because I sent them a video to tell them what I do. And now I've got over 40 meetings Amazing which does not fit in my calendar, but that's a good problem to have.

Speaker 1: 16:28

I'm so sorry for you.

Speaker 2: 16:32

Well, I'm not in sales, I'm the marketing guy.

Speaker 1: 16:35

There's a difference actually, actually, because some people in the beginning believe that it's almost the same oh, everybody believes it's the same until they realize now it's two.

Speaker 2: 16:46

It's two very different mindsets. I was talking to a sales guy yesterday from one of my outreaches and, uh, he totally understood, said we love getting on sales calls and talking to new people. I said I don't.

Speaker 2: 17:00

I would rather sit behind my computer and send out really cool videos that AI helped me create, and I don't want to talk to them until they're ready to buy. And he goes that's why you built this system. And I'm like that's exactly why I built this system, because I don't want to talk to them unless they're ready to buy. That's why you built this system.

Speaker 1: 17:16

I'm like that's exactly why I built this system because I don't want to talk to them unless they're ready to buy. That's so true, but that's the difference in the mindset and in the skill set and in the definition of what you want to achieve, because that's the definition of efficiency in itself.

Speaker 2: 17:34

Yeah, now it's interesting though. I talked to him he said oh, we love getting on calls and going, you know, toe-to-toe and seeing if we can convert people. And I said what do you think about cold calls? He goes oh, I hate cold calls. I'm like none of my clients make cold calls. I said what? How do you get people on? I said it's all automated None. How do you get people on? I said it's all automated. None of my clients make cold calls anymore. We've completely eliminated that. Then he was like tell me how I get this.

Speaker 1: 18:02

That's so practical. It's not the future anymore at all, and not even the present, because you have to use technologies and be smart enough to adopt them, and adopt them in the right way to avoid that inefficiency.

Speaker 2: 18:22

Yeah, Well. And then you know, like there's also an element I always bring up because people say well, do you have one of those fancy phones? I'm like, yeah, I do, you see, so people can call you. I say no, you mean no, no one has my phone number, I don't give it out. Why? Because you don't want to talk to people. You know sales guys love to give out their phone number. Try and get a CEO's phone number. Now. They don't want to give you their phone number, they don't want to talk to you. It's not that they don't want to know what you're doing, but it's like book an appointment so anybody can get ahold of me online. I just don't want you phoning me, especially now that we're, you know, geographically dislocated. You know somebody in Europe says hey, Rob, we should talk. I'm like, dude, it's three in the morning, I don't want to talk to you. So again it's. It's like okay, we've got technology, Now we need to learn how to use technology properly. And it's similar with AI. It's great, we've got it.

Speaker 1: 19:24

Now let's learn how to use it. I love this point. Let's pause here for a second. So what are the common challenges businesses face when integrating AI into their B2B lead generation strategies and how can they overcome these obstacles?

Speaker 2: 19:43

So the biggest challenge with AI in pretty much any implementation, but especially in lead gen or business communication, is it can do a lot of things very quickly. It can generate content quickly. Not enough people are actually spending time to review the content and say should we be sending that out? That's the first challenge. So now there's tons and tons of messages and I look at these messages and I get them every day and they're like hey, we can get you leads. I'm like did you actually check my profile to see what I do? No, so it's great that it can do things, but I think what's more important is it shouldn't just be a hey, we bought this tool, let's use it. It's okay, we bought this tool, let's learn how to use it. Let's figure out what it should be doing and how we should be using it properly. You know you've got a toolbox you need to pound a nail in and you pull out a wrench and go I can use it. Well, technically, yeah, but a hammer would be better versus okay, I've got this AI.

Speaker 2: 20:47

It can crank up great content really quickly. Okay, but if it's the wrong content, you're actually hurting yourself. You're getting a bad reputation because you're putting out information they don't want, they don't need, they're not interested in and there's no thought of. This should be part of a process. It's like a one and done, spray and pray, as we call it, versus hey, I've got a lead, now what do I do with it? So that's like where our system comes in. We go, well, we educate them and nurture them. Oh, you can do that well. Well, yeah, can I do it now? No, it's kind of late, I've already blown that lead, uh, so so that's that's the biggest challenge. It's. It needs to be thought of as a strategic project in the business plan rather than just I'm going to buy this and do it because I bought it, if you know what I mean, if that makes sense exactly this spray and pray approach.

Speaker 1: 21:51

It is terrifying and you know it takes so much effort, it takes so much energy and it takes so much energy and then people is connecting more and more technological solutions and different systems and make it more and more complex. It's really not needed and it is about clarity and understanding what you are doing, what you want to achieve and finding that simplest way forward.

Speaker 2: 22:16

One example I use with some people. They'll say why don't you have a TikTok account? I'll say, well, because I'm in my mid-50s and so are most of my contacts and clients. They don't want to see TikTok. Why would I use it? Oh, we can do this, they can do this. I don't care, my target market is not on TikTok. My target market, pretty much, is on LinkedIn. That's where I'm going to be. So just because a tool can do something doesn't mean it's a good tool for you.

Speaker 1: 22:46

That's so true. Yeah. How important is data quality and segmentation in driving effective AI-powered B2B lead generation, and what best practices would you recommend?

Speaker 2: 22:59

You know I would say this is huge. And I was just having this conversation with a client the other day and he said maybe we should expand the parameters of the search and I said, no, maybe you should shrink them Once again. The same thing Maybe we're missing people. You know they could be, you know, like everyone's my client. No, they're not. So when I look at data, I look at it probably a little differently, having an IT background, I don't want everybody, I want the smallest data set I can possibly find to target market them. And uh, you know I. I said you know I. I said you know, like, if you could tell me I only want women who are 45 to 55 divorced, living in this city. I said I can target them. That's easy and that's that's where it gets to like when we do a lot of our stuff that we do, it's b2b, but it's b2b.

Speaker 2: 23:51

Selling high ticket items to you know um, to companies that use a consultative sales approach, selling high ticket items to you know um, to companies that use a consultative sales approach, selling high ticket. That is our ideal target market. Or now we can also do B2C selling high ticket items. So, like dentists, um, like the lifetime value of a client for a dentist is 20 grand.

Speaker 2: 24:13

That's a lot of money, but that's different marketing than a B2B company, because you're using things like you know search engine optimization, especially local search engine optimization because they're brick and mortar, whereas most tech companies nowadays you can be anywhere in the world, they don't it doesn't make a difference. So the more precisely you can refine and define that data, the better we can do with marketing campaigns. Even if we've got to run 20 different marketing campaigns, it doesn't matter anymore. With technology you can do that, it's easy. What you don't want to do is try and paint everybody with the same brush. They're all the same? No, they're not. And they will not respond to generic marketing anymore. They want personalized, they want customized, and you need to be able to analyze that data in order to do that.

Speaker 1: 25:07

Exactly, I totally agree. Thank you, Because you know I'm a data person.

Speaker 2: 25:16

I know you have a data background.

Speaker 1: 25:18

It's a piece of my experience and I relate to every word I hear from you. I know how much people don't have this perspective and they're committing certain mistakes they could easily avoid by simply shifting the perspective and choosing another approach.

Speaker 2: 25:41

Yeah, you're sort of. One of the other big gotchas in this industry is the people doing the marketing tend to forget they are not the ideal target market. So they'll say, well, I don't like those colors, yeah, but you're not the market.

Speaker 1: 26:00

It's not for you, right.

Speaker 2: 26:02

Yeah, yeah, that's what we used to get all the time, you know, in the marketing agency. And they'd say, yeah, you know, it's very masculine. I said have you looked at the data? Have you looked at the clients? 90% are men in this industry. Yes, it should look masculine Another big one. And people didn't believe this when I first told them about this. So I said you know, if you're doing a consultation call, if it's for a woman, it's a roadmap, if it's for a man, it's a blueprint. You say why? I said good, men won't follow maps.

Speaker 1: 26:40

I love this.

Speaker 2: 26:41

And they're like, seriously, I went, yeah, men don't follow maps. It's that simple. Men like blueprints, women like maps, market it that way. And they're like dude, our audience doubled. I'm like, yes, it did, Because you used the right wording.

Speaker 1: 26:58

Can you give another example of that difference?

Speaker 2: 27:01

Yeah, so that was well, that was what I use a lot, so I know that one, but it's so the different analogies you use. So, men are into cars. Although they won't follow maps, they're into cars. So if you're using an analogy with a man, use a car analogy With a woman. Sometimes they go. I have no idea what you're saying. Okay, don't use that with women. Find out who the type of woman is you're talking to. You know, years ago not so much anymore, but it's like you know anything that had to do with child raising, men didn't get it. And when we go, oh, yeah, totally, I run into that all the time. And you know one of the things we used to use in our marketing for and we were targeting specifically women at the time. So we said, okay, women, you've raised your kids. Yeah, you've raised your husband. Yeah, you're now looking for something for you. Yeah, great, we have something for you. And then we go.

Speaker 1: 28:01

More relatable right.

Speaker 2: 28:04

Yeah, that's because your wife raised you Word out.

Speaker 1: 28:09

I love that approach yeah.

Speaker 2: 28:12

Well, you know another example, so I'm probably going on too long here. But we used to train platform closers. So people who spoke from stage, women would typically outsell men and people. Why, Said, because women don't necessarily trust the man speaking man just thinks a woman's attractive and he'll buy just because. And then, whereas the woman will actually listen to what the woman has to say. And now we looked at stats on cruise ships and if they put a female in front of the crowd, she always outsold the man. Same with platform closing Every time women outsold.

Speaker 1: 28:49

Thank you so much for sharing. I love that conclusion.

Speaker 2: 28:55

It was, I remember training Will Bauer. He said this is the way it works and he kind of went you know, now that you think about it, I'd look at my stats from events and go every time Women without all the men from Sage Absolutely.

Speaker 1: 29:12

Rob, in what ways can AI enhance the lead nurturing process from initial engagement to conversion for B2B companies?

Speaker 2: 29:21

This is a great question because this is kind of the core of our system. You know, it's great to do the research. It's actually imperative to do the research. The lead gen almost anybody can do lead gen not as well as others but lead gen is not that hard once you know what you're looking for and where to find them. But now to take them from a marketing qualified lead where they said I want more information to they want to buy, we use video sales funnels.

Speaker 2: 29:49

So we do the research and we say, okay, what are their biggest pain points? And everyone goes, oh yeah, no, that's cool. I said, now here's where we enhance it even more as we iterate it. What are the biggest pain points that they want solved that they're willing to pay for right now? Now hit them with that video and if you've got the right, you'll click it and everything is a soft close. There's no hard closes in this. So we say, well, so here's your problem. Here's why you're listening to me. Here's the solution. Here's somebody we've helped through this. If you'd like some help with that, click the button below, fill in a short survey, book an appointment. We'll see what we can do for you or how we can help you. And that converts like crazy because we've identified their, we know their pain points. We did the research. We're now telling them how to solve their pain, how we can help them. People we've done it for. Would you like some help with that?

Speaker 1: 30:50

Would you like some help with that? Totally, and I see so many salespeople and appointment setters and it's unecological, overwhelming and deconcentrating and you know, then you just will withdraw yourself from all those conversations which probably could do something for you if they wouldn't be so pushy, so forceful and so unecological per definition, yeah.

Speaker 2: 31:23

Well, part of the challenge with that is a lot of these VAs that set appointments. They get paid on commission, so their goal is to book that appointment, whether you're the right person for the appointment or not. And they keep going and going and going and I get hit up with them all the time. It's like hey, do you need leads? No, look at my profile, see what I do for a living. I do not need leads. No, but you do, we could help you. You haven't even saw what we do yet and I'm like okay, that's eight messages Go away, I don't want to talk to you.

Speaker 1: 32:01

And imagine how they waste their own resources.

Speaker 2: 32:05

Absolutely. So people say well, how does your AI compare to that? I said it's a simple message hey, do you have this problem? We have this solution. Are you interested? And if you're not, okay, but, but. But. But shouldn't you push and get the opponent? I went no, no Cause. If they're not convinced, we have a solution for them that they want. We don't want to talk to them.

Speaker 2: 32:31

It's not like there's a shortage of leads out there. There's seven and something billion people on the planet. How many, how many? And here's where I go back to people all the time and say how many sales do you need a month? And if, if they're high ticket, like 10,000 or more, I said, okay, so 10 sales is an extra million dollars a year. Yeah, 10 sales a month is an extra million dollars a year. Yeah, 10 sales a month is an extra million dollars a year. Yeah, so why are you pounding all these people to death? You only need 20 appointments at most, because if you don't close, at least 50, you need sales training. They're like yeah, I really only need 10 sales a month. Yeah, that's it. So how many leads do you need?

Speaker 1: 33:16

not everybody you're chasing no, exactly, and it becomes so much more harmonious and balanced and the process is more enjoyable on both ends, and the results are speaking for themselves, of course. Yeah, so it is such a huge difference, listening to this interview, this conversation, to finally learn something and change their approach and become more impactful, more efficient and actually persuade people in a different way, without being forceful.

Speaker 2: 34:06

Well, you know, ironically so a lot of times we'll say to VAs you know, ironically so a lot of times we'll say to VAs listen, I hate to tell you this, we don't need you anymore. This does everything you do. Why don't you go out and retrain yourself on AI, on how to do these things? Because your job is not going to exist in the future. So start now. No one's going away. How can you add value?

Speaker 1: 34:32

Value. That's the key word and that's the secret sauce of everything, because if you are not generating value, you are not going to generate results. Specifically, we can talk about long-term sustainable development, and that's what everybody would like to have right.

Speaker 2: 34:52

Yeah, absolutely Like, even if you look at agencies, what we were doing at Irrational and we had crazy growth. But there was, I think, 37 employees. We do more, we do it better, we do it faster. We now have five.

Speaker 1: 35:08

That's undoubtedly the advantage of using AI. And then don't tell me that nobody's going to be fired.

Speaker 2: 35:16

Well, yeah, there's the okay. Now go retrain yourself, because I've said to people it's like you know what we need right now. We need somebody who can do a really nice graphic design. They go well, I don't do that. You might want to go learn. I said use the AI, do the research on what are the jobs of the future. Go retrain yourself now so we can employ you again, because we don't need appointment centers.

Speaker 1: 35:40

Exactly that's really important to stay up to date with the development, speaking about reshaping, adjusting and matching the latest trends. So, with rapid advancements in AI, what emerging trends do you foresee that could reshape the future of B2B lead generation?

Speaker 2: 36:05

That's a great question and honestly, it's a little hard to answer, just because of how fast AI is developing. Like when we built our market research system, it took about six months. But what we can do now, versus even six months ago, is completely different. So it used to take days for us to put all those prompts into AI. Well, now they've got deep research and we're like we can do this in about four hours.

Speaker 2: 36:40

Video. When we were doing these videos at Irrational Marketing, you flew into Toronto. We trained you for a week, you shot video in our studio and then we edited it all, launched you. Then it was you can't go to Toronto anymore, you can't leave your house because of COVID. Now what? So we, we do interviews like this and use those videos. Now we don't even need that. We're just going to take the script, put it into AI, take a picture of you, take a voice recording. Ai is now going to create your video for you. You don't even have to do it. So to say, where is it going to be in six months? Well, who knows?

Speaker 1: 37:22

But I'm thinking about it. It's so true. We can't even predict what is going to happen in six months, or it's going to be better quality video.

Speaker 2: 37:33

It's going to be better quality research, like I, I. I saw this was a demo somebody was doing. They did an entire 45 minute movie completely in ai, and my wife and I watched it and she went it's just a video. I went there's no people in that video, that's's all computer generated. No, I said, yeah, watch when they move. Their hair doesn't move properly. I said that was the only tell. I said that's completely video generated by AI. I said so if it's doing that.

Speaker 2: 38:06

Now here's the challenge too. So it can do presentation, it can do that, it can do research. It doesn't always get the research right, it doesn't get the content right, so it still needs people who understand enough about the actual subject matter to say, no, that's not right, try again. Or you know no, that information, I don't think that information is correct. Where did you get that from? And they'd cite a source and it'd be like oh, it's that site where anybody can go in and post an opinion, kind of thing. Reddit, reddit, exactly, they go. Yeah, I got this from Reddit. I'm like, oh, that doesn't mean it's right.

Speaker 2: 38:43

So what I see, though, as time goes on, that's going to get better and better. The information is going to get more and more accurate, like I know now. So if you have a Dun Bradstreet subscription, you can say go reference Dun Bradstreet, here's my login credentials. Well, it's like the information is just getting better and better and better and it will continue to get better and better. What's going to be needed is people to say this is the goal of the business. Here's what we're trying to do. Here's what the lifestyle we want to create for ourselves and for our families and our employees. Ai is very good at efficiency. It's not very good at quality, if you know what I mean. Like it's not going to create a nice workplace, it's going to create vicious problems yes, it has different objectives, right absolutely, and what's important to you might not be what's important to somebody else.

Speaker 2: 39:46

and you know it, the ai may never get that. It might it, it might not. We don't know Right now it doesn't get it. How do I accomplish this 80-hour project this week? And they're like well, don't sleep. Okay, not a good answer.

Speaker 1: 40:00

Exactly. But speaking about this as well, I can't help myself but asking what do you think about singularity?

Speaker 2: 40:10

You know, I have sort of two minds of it. I have the way out there mind and then I have the practical. Will it happen? And I got to tell you. There are days working with AI where I sit there and I'll say okay, this is a 20 lesson program. I want you to read what we've done before and rewrite it and update it for the 20 lessons. It'll come back with 14 lessons. I'll say where are the rest? I just removed them. Well, why? Oh, it's more efficient. I didn't tell you to remove them. In fact, I told you never to remove anything unless I explicitly told you to, and it just does what it wants sometimes. So when that will come, I don't know. Hopefully we're smart enough to recognize it and put in some limitations. But yeah, no, it's getting smarter and smarter. Like every week something new is coming out and it's not always following what you tell it to do, which is a little concerning for me.

Speaker 1: 41:15

I feel exactly the same. And this hockey stick, it is obvious. So it's developing so fast that we can't even embrace with our way of percepting things and processes how fast it is changing our reality as well. So I agree with you. I love this conversation. Unfortunately, it is about time to wrap it up, so my last question if you had to offer one piece of strategic advice for business leaders looking to leverage AI for consistently attracting high quality B2B leads, what would that be?

Speaker 2: 41:57

I think, the one piece of advice that I do offer to clients. Now it's OK. You have two options. If you're going to use AI and it's going to become an integral part of your business and your marketing, you either need to learn how to use it properly or hire people that can. And I don't mean you need a full-time employee, but in most, most of the years ago I actually sorry, I did this as an event I created an event for CEOs to learn all about AI Full day, writing professors and the whole nine years. Nobody wanted to register. I said you all want to know about AI. They went no, we want AI, we don't want to know about AI, we don't want to have to do it. I went okay, that's important to know. So you know, if you are not prepared to bring in a team that can do it for you and you are not prepared to bring in a team that can do it for you and you're not prepared to do it yourself, you better be prepared to outsource it to somebody.

Speaker 1: 42:56

Somebody who knows.

Speaker 2: 42:57

Somebody who knows what's going on. Well, you know, I'll be the first to tell you. Okay, if it's marketing and business to business growth, I can help you. If you want to know how to do operations, I can't help you. But if you need that, you better find somebody that can, or you better be able to hire them, because it's going that way.

Speaker 1: 43:20

Exactly, I agree. Yeah, thank you so much. Oh, thank you. Then I just need to ask you this follow-up question Okay, the leaders, the top leaders, don't want to learn about it. How to engage them, because they are in charge for certain decisions and still need to learn, even if it's difficult, even if somebody else can learn and they can let somebody else implement everything and run that AI agenda but how to support them and give them enough information so that they can take informed, critical decisions.

Speaker 2: 44:08

It's actually a great question. We just ran into this recently as well. So the final decision makers, typically you know the CEO or CEO, coo, possibly even the CFO, the person championing it might not be any of those. So you need an internal champion in the company, because the CEO really doesn't want to know. They want to know what's done, they don't want to know how to do it, and as you get bigger and bigger, that's even more so. So a lot of the people that we've been partnering with lately are the head of sales or chief revenue officer, vp of sales, because they look at this and go, wow, we want the results, we'll drive it through the executive, whereas the executive will go, yeah, we want the results, but we want the results, we don't want to have to understand it Exactly. So it really helps to have a champion within the organization. Now, in some functions that's going to be your chief information officer, because they're going to say hey you want all this information, you want all these reports.

Speaker 2: 45:20

We can't compile all this, it's too much. We need help. That could be a champion, Even the CFO saying man, we've got so much data analyzed these days we can't do it alone. They might champion a piece. So it really depends on the application of the AI. So in our case marketing a lot of times it's the head of sales driving that. That's not necessarily a CEO, unless it's a smaller company where the CEO is also doing sales.

Speaker 1: 45:55

If it's a bigger company CEO doesn't want to know. They really don't. I love this and thank you so much for sharing this experience, because I recognize everything you just shared and those golden nuggets. They are increasingly valuable because it is crucial to understand how it works in the companies and who is in charge for what and how to implement it the right way and still keep that accountability for the choices, for the decisions, for the outcomes.

Speaker 2: 46:30

Yeah, and you know it's funny because that also came out of the AI, because we were saying, well, who are the decision makers? And you know, ceo, coo, cfo, and then suddenly it's like, who's going to get them to make that decision? Oh, that's a completely different question. Here's who's going to champion it. And like, oh, that's the people we need to be talking to, and not just talking to, but give them information they can give to their leaders to say, here's why we should be doing it. Well, if it comes from me, they're not going to read it. If it comes from their head of sales, they read it.

Speaker 1: 47:07

Exactly that's how the reality looks like. Rob, thank you so much for being here today, for sharing your insights, your experience. It's really amazing how you can support business owners and businesses and help them grow at such an incredible pace, at such an incredible pace and take the leap from seven figures to eight and nine figures in such a short period of time, doubling down on what really matters. So thank you so much for being with us today and sharing all that valuable information, and hopefully we just helped many listeners and viewers, avoiding certain mistakes and finding the shortest, the most efficient path forward.

Speaker 2: 48:01

You're very welcome and thank you for having me Again, even if people aren't looking to do business with me. The more information we get out there about what AI is, what it really is, what it can do, what it can't do, it helps everybody, so more than happy to help share wherever I can.

Speaker 1: 48:21

Amazing. I totally agree with you, thank you. Thank you for being here today.

Speaker 2: 48:26

Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1: 48:28

Thank you for joining us on Digital Transformation and AI for Humans. I'm Amy and it was enriching to share this time with you. Remember, the core of any transformation lies in our human nature how we think, feel and connect with others. It's about enhancing our emotional intelligence, embracing a winning mindset and leading with empathy and insight. Subscribe and stay tuned for more episodes where we uncover the latest trends in digital business and explore the human side of technology and leadership. Until next time, keep nurturing your mind, fostering your connections and leading with heart.