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

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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, 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 bestselling 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. Good to see you.

Great book. Great book.

So you're the CEO, but I would consider you more like a sales leader, a salesperson. So coming into the Revenue Reimagine podcast, you have to reimagine your role. You have to leave the sales department. What's one other department in revenue that you would go to tomorrow?

Yeah, outside of sales, these days I'd go into operations, quite frankly. Not because I'm an operations guru, but because I think operations is life—I mean, sales is life—but obviously in all organizations. But without operational efficiencies and tracking and all that stuff, it ends up being this mess that falls apart. So I would actually go to the opposite end of the house because I think—Revenue Operations. Like revenue ops, mostly because I don't really care about anything else other than revenue. 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 go on the upside. I love it.

I think when you look at the best revenue leaders and the best sales leaders, 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, JB, you talk a lot about AI and how the world's changing. The topic of the show is Revenue Reimagined, right? How revenue needs to be reimagined. Let's dive into a little bit of AI and what you're seeing and how you think that's going to fundamentally change revenue as we know it.

Yeah, I think it's going to fundamentally change a lot of things. I mean, look, you guys are around my age, right? We've seen a lot in the sense that we saw the internet come out, and that had an impact. But even back in the internet days, how massive—I mean, obviously these days we have no concept of what it was like before the internet, right? 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've got to go use the internet over in a college computer lab." Yeah. And so I think that—we've seen a lot in the sense that—but even the internet 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 were people saying, "Oh, this is just a fad," right? Have you heard anybody say that ChatGPT is a fad? No. AI is a fad? No. Everybody is now scared to death about how fast this is going. I mean, even the Elon Musks of the world are saying, "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, I talk 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 that you need something, all right? So you've identified the pain, the problem. Now you've got to go find a few vendors 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 twelve months out, bare minimum, of having any major 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 me what you think or know nine months, twelve 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 things are moving so fast right now that it's almost impossible to keep up. But do you think it's six-month increments? Do you think it's annually, twelve-month increments? Because I feel like we're accelerating. So if I go back to, like, 2020, and I'm like, forget about COVID, right, but we were still moving at a decent pace. You could deal with the change. Now it's like three, six months. Like things are changing so rapidly. That's a completely different world now.

Don't get me wrong, fundamentals don't change. And so one of the things I'm seeing with AI is there's a lot of noise about how much more efficient you can be and how you can 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 that we are—I think we're in a daily iteration at this point—because I'm seeing tools where I'm like, "Holy crap, that's awesome," and then next week I'm like, "Okay, that's irrelevant. This is awesome," right? But 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 is there are two options organizations have right now, and you're seeing it. 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 legacy systems, right? And so, I think AI is going to be good because it can look at that legacy system and actually make improvements based on it. But the AI-native stuff that's going to come out these days is going to kick the crap out of most of the legacy systems. And so that's why I'm recommending to all of my clients: 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.

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 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'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 that great at it. But guess what? These kids who are coming out of school and are AI-native, 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 stuff out there, okay?—and then you set the parameters. You give them 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 going to, you know, a night out or something like that, whatever—but by doing that, what you're doing is you're structuring the education component of it and the application component so that reps aren't just doing it on their own, 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. 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 massive world of, "Holy crap, where are we going right now with AI?" So there's so much to unpack there. Yeah, do you think, JB, that we're going to see, like—so we have a Chief Revenue Officer, like a VP of Sales, like we have all that—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 it's going to fall under RevOps in the short term, right, because it's going to be looked at as a tool comparable to some of the other ones. So I think RevOps 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 going to need an AI strategist, 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 a derivation of their LLM, right? Everyone's going to have their own LLM. I mean, hell, 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 that's a given. So if you build your own LLM or have a consortium that you can build on top of an LLM like a sales revenue LLM, then you're going to start getting some super efficiencies.

As we start testing it, like, hey, tell me what the average deal size is over the last two and a half years in EMEA, right? And it's just going to come back with an answer for you versus, okay, let's go pull a report for RevOps. And like, oh, your data's missing. Or, you know, we don't have the right data. You have a lot of nulls. Salesforce is crapping out. That stuff's happening now. And so just imagine as the models get better, it's just going to get much more. It's going to exponentially 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 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 stuff.

Yeah, tell me about it.

Well, here's an example. So I used to work in the IT services space, right? That was my first company. And there's a product out there called Caseya. Caseya is a network monitoring tool, right? 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. ChatGPT, I want you to analyze our entire network infrastructure to look for: A, redundancies; B, adoption; and C, overlap and redundancies, which is redundant. And then I want you to figure out which software we can get rid of immediately. And based on our 12 to 24-month growth plan, I want you to tell me which software I now need moving forward.

Okay, cool. We've identified the need for X 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, the last mile, which I think is what humans will ultimately end up being, is 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. I'm going to make that call. But 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 going to put some cadence or credence to you as a person when you come in and do the interview, that type of stuff. 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.

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 it? That happens everywhere though, like especially with the price. 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, that's the part that's scary, right? Is like, once we take that human element of the buying process out of the equation, I think sales reps are good. We're going to have to figure out something else to sell. Let's put it that way.

Or is any job safe? Like, is there any job that's truly safe from AI?

I mean, 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 for now.

Yeah, until the product builds itself.

Well, look, I think all jobs are safe, Adam. I think the question is: what people in those jobs are safe? And I've said this before, and I've said it since 2017 when I saw the first artificial intelligence email that freaked me the hell out because it was better than I could have written it. It was faster than I could. And this was 2017.

2017.

And I've been preaching death of the average sales rep. It's not death of the sales rep. It's death of the average sales rep. I think AI is going to make good sales reps great. Great sales reps incredibly good and valuable. And I think that's going to do it across the board in every industry. That's why SDRs—I'm really worried for SDRs right now. I do not think front-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 at like thousands of them because they're going to be able to hit us all at the same time. And ultimately, if I get an email that 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, no.

I mean, let's—I think I shared this with you, Adam. I might have shared this with you. But there's Gartner data that came out that talked about, and they averaged out Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials. It was B2B buyers. And they asked them about what do they want from an experience from a sales standpoint? And on average, 43 percent of people want a rep-free experience. They do not want a sales rep involved. And that's not including Gen Z. You've got to only imagine where that number is going to go when Gen Z starts to become that.

That doesn't surprise me at all. Like, 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, everyone, like, I'm a huge Tesla fanboy. 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? 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 there. 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? And later, I was like, yeah, you know, 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?

And he was like, 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 just... yeah. I go, so why do I—I mean, no disrespect here.

"What value do you bring to this equation?" And he was dead honest with me. He's like, "Not much, John. I'm just here to make sure that you get the right thing." I was like, "Oh my God." So, Adam, that's the bad news 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 wanted a rep-free experience, there was a 23 percent higher regret rate with what they thought. Interesting. So when they didn't have a sales rep involved, they regretted it 23 percent of the time more, which 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 templated emails and BANT questions and droning through crappy demos. That's not what a sales rep is.

So let's talk about that because you're right. Let's agree to never say BANT again because anyone who uses BANT should be fired. But to your point, how do reps differentiate themselves? How do you make sure you go from being good and being replaced to being that great rep where AI handles the first time but we really need you at the end? What is that differentiator?

I think it's diving in with both feet to this stuff and figuring out how you can use ChatGPT and tools like it to augment and supplement whatever your sales process is, so that the human factor is maximized. Let me put it this way: Sales Loft or Salesforce came out with a report on the state of sales recently, and we've all heard the data before about reps only spending either 27 or 37 percent of the time actually selling. Right? And if you look at the chart, they break down like nine percent doing this, 12 percent 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. Account research, data input, note-taking, site preparation—all these different things. AI can solve those things.

So I think the best reps are systematically looking at their entire sales process and then saying, "Okay, I can't forget the fundamentals." That's what I'm a little worried about personally—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. Because of my 74 sales stages—yeah, it's slightly over-introduced—but also the growth factor. I mean, especially in the tech and SaaS industry: grow at all costs. Who cares if a 60-button seat is better than a zero-button seat? Who gives a... let's go, go, go, go. Here's technology. Go, go, go, go. Now it's coming to roost.

And I hate to say this because I'll probably offend some people. Actually, I don't hate to say it. I will offend some people: if you started in sales after 2010, 2011—let's say 2010, 2011—it hasn't been that hard. It really hasn't. You were able to get away with mass blasting emails, setting up demo calls with people who barely have a pulse, asking dumb questions. And then throwing a massive discount to get the deal. That's what sales has been.

And I think when we go back to what you were talking about—like fundamentals—no matter whether it's you're right from 2011 or now or what's going to go forward, the people that are going to differentiate themselves are going back to the fundamentals.

Yeah, and I think back to what you're saying: take your gloves off, get a little bit dirty. You can't be successful without getting dirty. It's like get in the garden and start getting your hands dirty, figuring out what's working and what's not working—both from education on the ChatGPT side. I always think about Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000-hour rule. You gotta get in there and play around with it. But then use it, get the data, and then change the approach somehow.

Yeah, and just learn how to use it. The best analogy I have here is, remember the movie Hidden Figures? You seen it?

Oh man, you got to see that movie. It's awesome. It's about us going to the moon the first time we went to the moon, okay? And what was great about that movie was there was this whole group of women—these Black women—called computers. They were literally called computers, and they were way in the back section of NASA, away from the main thing. This was back when racism was still alive and well.

What happened was the leader of that group one day was walking in the main office and she walked by this massive room with this huge IBM mainframe that just got delivered. A massive machine, one of the first of these things. NASA spent millions of dollars on this thing. This woman who was the head of the computers looked at that thing and said, "Oh, that's going to replace my entire team." She knew it. So she had two choices. One choice was to go back and tell her team, "Hey, I just saw what they're investing in. We got to get better. We got to be smarter, we got to do better math, we got to get better because we're going to beat that thing." But the other choice—which she made—was she picked up the manual and started learning it. She figured out how to turn it on, how to maintain it, everything else. Then what did she do? She went back and taught her whole team how to do it. So now when they turned the switch on for this mainframe, even the IBM people—because they had no idea what to do with it—she did. She and her team went from being completely replaceable to straight-up indispensable. NASA couldn't get rid of them because they were the only ones that could figure out how to use this machine.

So that's what I think: if you're scared of ChatGPT, you're going to get replaced by ChatGPT. Period. You need to dive in. My favorite answer to somebody like, "Well, John, how do I get started with ChatGPT?" is go ask ChatGPT. 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 ChatGPT—how should I be using you?" Then just go dialogue and do a Q&A with it. And you'll find some answers are dumb. I don't want to do that. But oh, that's kind of interesting—how would I do that? Just go down and treat it like a person. I've actually gone back to ChatGPT 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 ChatGPT and you're my consultant, dude, you missed the mark here. I don't like what you did with that. Redo it. Because they're trying to replicate you, Adam. They're trying to replicate your voice. And the beauty of that, Adam, is you can actually talk to ChatGPT 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. That was a dumb comment. Stop writing that stuff, you idiot." You could take out your frustrations about it.

My partner—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. It learns your language. It learns how you do things. So we gotta train it for us. That's part of this back-and-forth thing. We're training it.

It's funny—I find when I ask it please and thank you, I get better answers. I don't know if maybe it's just mental, 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. You talk a lot about it, and I think especially with AI, it's affecting people's mental health as well. Where does mental health come in, especially as it ties to AI? And how do—

We protect it. When it comes to the profession, I actually think it's going to be—I think if I'm optimistic, which I try to be, I think there's so many good things that AI can do in that world. So I actually think that AI is going to cure cancer in the not so distant future. I actually think AI is going to help us solve climate change. I think it's going to be a significant help when it comes to mental health.

I'll use an example. My daughter has Snapchat. Okay, she's 12. She has Snapchat, and there's a little 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 many issues, but she's a 12-year-old girl, right? So I mean, issues of balance. So if you think about it, 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 you could get picked on at school because you're not the cool kid or whatever. Well, now that kid can go home and open up Snapchat and have an AI conversation with a super empathetic, sympathetic voice that is going to be there for her. Now, it scares me that all of a sudden this is her best friend type of thing, and it's not. Again, she learns to manage it. But I think that's where, you know, for instance, mental health wise, there's a massive mental health app where you can get a therapist at any time. I don't remember what it was called. Better Help or something. Anyway, I remember signing up for it myself personally, and the first two experiences were just not really good. 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've got to keep testing. Like, I don't sync with this person. This person doesn't get me. So that's why most people don't go because after the first or second one, they're like, forget this. All these people are just douchebags.

So AI now, though, is going to be your mental health coach. They can help you. And let's connect the dots here with Internet of Things. You've got an Apple Watch that manages your heart rate and 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, an AI bot comes up and says, "Hey, Adam, it seems like you're pretty stressed right now. Is everything okay?" And you're like, "Actually, no, I'm freaking out right now." And the AI says, "Okay, calm down. It's okay. Here are some things to think about. You're a good person. Remember, you have strong values. Remember this. You know, you're instantly connected to your therapist at all times."

Yeah, I love it. So I actually think it's going to have a significant impact on people, and I hope that one day one of these companies that does people therapy offers a free AI tool based on their own LLM that is super empathetic and always positive but pragmatic, you know what I mean? Doesn't go off the rails or any of that stuff. But man, if that can happen, a lot of people are going to be able to—and we need that, right? Because the fact is, 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 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. But 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. 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 not that patient of a society, and we tend to pick out the incidents 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 going to 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 never hear about how awesome the Tesla self-driving car is and how it weaved around an accident. You always hear, "Oh, self-driving car smashed into somebody." And it's like, how many times does that happen versus how many Teslas are on the road right now? Like, how many accidents do people just have? My daughter came in, and one of her good friends just wrecked her car and totaled it, right? And it had nothing to do with self-driving.

Yeah, you know, my Tesla has alerted me and saved me more than it's harmed me.

Exactly. That's my only fear—that we're such a fractured society that it's going to do so much good, but when it does that one bit of harm a couple of times, people are going to say, "Wow, this is the worst thing ever." And you know, we'll get through that though.

So one of our missions at Revenue Reimagined is to give back to the audience, and John, you've been super gracious to give some to the audience. So please let them know.

Yeah, I appreciate the opportunity here, man. So I got a membership now where I deliver live training every single month on my core programs: Filling the Funnel and Driving to Close. This is all the training that companies like Salesforce, LinkedIn, Box, and Dropbox take. It includes workshops where I get my hands dirty with stuff like ChatGPT and tools to figure out what the hell's going on, and then my entire online catalog, AMAs, and everything else.

For individual members, it's $420 a year. So for $420 a year, you get access to all of it. For football teams, it's five grand. For larger teams, it's $25,000. But usually for individuals and for this crew here, I'll give 25 percent off. Just use the promo code "podcast." So if you go to jbarrows.com, then go on there—there's an individual link—and put coupon code "podcast," and you'll get 25 percent 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 going to go sign up myself, but I will not use the discount code podcast because as a fellow entrepreneur, I want to support you. But I love it.

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? "Move, get out the way."

I love it. As long as it's not "Living on a Prayer," we're good, right?

Okay, cool. If you had a crystal ball, what revenue strategy or trend do you think is going to take center stage in the next 12 to 18 months, other than AI?

Yeah, personalization at scale. There's—I used to roll my eyes at companies like SalesLoft and Outreach, and I'd be like, "Guys, please stop it," because just because you changed the name or title or industry doesn't make it personalized. I'm watching 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. 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 didn't dive into it all. So when you look at revenue generation, if you could only choose one moving forward—is your focus retention or acquisition? And why?

Well, you can't have retention without acquisition. I'm going with acquisition because I'm about growth. I'm not about acquisition at all costs and grow at all costs, but I am focused on acquisition because 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 percent. 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 RevOps leader. Is tomorrow morning what do you think...?

First thing I'm doing, I'm assessing every aspect of what I am. I am cutting out the fat of all my tech bloated overstack. I am looking at every single technology that we've invested over the past ten 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 they're using. They're using fifteen 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 thirty-seven different logins for different tools. This is just, come on. And ninety percent 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. You know, jbarrows.com—so the letter J, B, A, R, R, O, W, S dot com. That's where you're going to see everything. You'll see my background, my social channels, and all that stuff. If you want direct one-on-one coaching for free, you can hit me up on Instagram. 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 Snapchat or not TikTok as well, 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 thirty thousand limit, so please don't try to connect with me. I can't. You're done.

Yeah, you know, I asked LinkedIn this. I was like, why is thirty thousand the limit? And you know what their answer to me was? Well, we want to make it better than fifty thousand. Pretty much they said, well, we want to make sure that all your connections are meaningful. I'm like, thirty thousand? You have thirty thousand possible connections? I'm like, then make—if that's the case, then make the limit twenty-five. Like, not twenty-five thousand. Make it twenty-five, right? Or just take the stupid cap off. But whatever, we're here. But you can still follow me on LinkedIn, and you know, being connected actually doesn't mean anything because you can still email me. You can still follow content, everything else. So hit the bell.

Yeah, hit the bell. Yeah, hit me up anytime.

Awesome. JB, thanks so much.