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AI, Lead Gen, and the Human Advantage: Lessons from Our Sundance Retreat
We just got back from our first workshop style retreat in Sundance, Utah.
We brought ~30 members together for two days of deep work.
The focus: lead generation and deal management using AI native tools.
After two packed days, one insight kept coming back up.
AI handles the lower value tasks so humans can focus on the higher value work.
What Humans Do Best
The high value human tasks are things like being present on sales calls and building trust with prospects. It’s uncovering what actually matters to the buyer. It’s determining whether your solution can solve their problem. It’s showing up in person and cultivating real relationships.
The lower value tasks that AI handles well are things like taking notes and updating your CRM. It coaches reps between calls. It remembers what was said so you don’t have to. It suggests better questions to ask next time. It generates follow ups (with a human in the loop before hitting send).
Day 1: The Opportunity Standard
Day one focused on a sales methodology we call the Opportunity Standard. The core idea is simple: services are bought, not sold.
Buyers move through internal states before they act externally. Your job isn’t to convince them. Your job is to help them understand their own situation well enough to decide.
The methodology maps six buyer states that prospects move through. Here’s the overview:
- Triggered means something changed in their world. Maybe they missed a number, hit a deadline, or felt pressure from leadership. No trigger, no real opportunity.
- Oriented means they understand the problem. They can explain what’s happening, why it’s happening, and why it matters.
- Aligned means you both agree on the problem and what success looks like. The buyer can articulate this in their own words, not just nod along.
- Justified means the buyer can explain and defend the decision internally. They know what questions will come up and how to answer them.
- Committed means they’ve made a real decision to move forward, not just expressed interest.
- Activated means the decision is in motion with named actions, owners, and timing.
The key rule: skipping a state doesn’t speed things up. It creates friction later and delays decisions.
Why AI Makes This Better
Here’s where AI comes in. A lot of sales conversations move forward based on a sales person’s ‘gut feel.’ The rep thinks the deal is further along than it actually is.
AI meeting recordings change this dynamic. The transcript becomes evidence. You can analyze a call against the buyer states and identify gaps.
Did the buyer actually state a trigger in their own words? Did they articulate the problem, or did you fill in the blanks for them? Can they justify the decision internally?
AI scorecards surface these gaps without relying on the rep’s memory or optimism. It provides coaching insights based on facts, not feelings. Managers get visibility into deal health without having to sit on every call.
The rep workflow stays simple: record the call, execute the playbook, review the scorecard for coaching opportunities.
AI identifies the gaps using ‘conversational evidence,’ provides the coaching insights, and does the admin.
Day 2: Clay for Lead Gen
On day two, Clay joined us to run their first ever workshop for boutique professional services founders. This was a big deal. Chris Viglietta, Yash Tekriwal, and three team members walked us through the platform.
The focus was on signals, hyper segmentation, and hyper personalization. These are the three ingredients for effective outbound at scale.
Signals tell you when to reach out. The ‘Why now”. Hyper segmentation tells you who to reach out to. Hyper personalization tells you what to say that will actually resonate.
For boutique firms without massive marketing budgets, this combination is powerful. You’re not blasting generic emails to a giant list. You’re reaching the right people at the right time with the right message.
The In Person Component
After the retreat wrapped, a few of us hit the slopes at Sundance. This part mattered too.
You can build relationships in person that just can’t be replicated over Zoom or through AI. That was the whole point of the weekend. AI handles the tasks that don’t require presence. Humans focus on what only humans can do.
Trust isn’t built by automation. It’s built by showing up, asking good questions, and being genuinely curious about someone’s business.
The Takeaway
We’re all figuring out this AI thing together. The firms that will separate themselves are the ones that experiment; they try new tools, test new ideas, and build this new Ai “skill”.
They allow AI to be used for what Ai does best.
This allows us, humans, to double down on what we do best.
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