General Episode Description:In Part 2 of this conversation, Jared Zelman, Founder and CEO of Othello AI, explores what happens when AI moves beyond helping individual sellers and begins transforming entire sales organizations.Jared shares his perspective on the future of sales management, explaining how AI can handle repetitive coaching, call analysis, and execution consistency while allowing managers to focus on higher-value leadership activities. The conversation examines how AI-powered coaching systems are changing the role of frontline managers and why sales leaders must rethink how they develop and scale teams.The discussion also dives into Jared’s founder-led go-to-market journey. From cold-emailing executives, investors, and industry leaders to building relationships with some of the most influential business figures in the world, Jared explains how disciplined outreach, persistence, and deep personalization helped accelerate Othello’s growth from startup to seven-figure ARR.The episode concludes with practical lessons for founders, CROs, and sales leaders on scaling efficiently, shortening sales cycles, achieving product-market fit, and balancing the art and science of selling in an increasingly AI-driven world.  What You’ll Learn:• The Future of Sales Management: How AI changes the role of frontline sales leaders.• AI-Augmented Coaching: Moving from repetitive coaching activities to strategic leadership.• Founder-Led Sales at Scale: How deliberate outreach can build customers, investors, and mentor networks.• Product-Market Fit First: Why founders should focus on learning and validation before scaling teams.• The Art and Science of Selling: Understanding what AI can teach and what remains uniquely human.Key Topics:• Managing AI-augmented sales organizations• The future role of sales managers• AI-powered diagnostics and coaching• CRM automation and systems of record• Salesforce versus next-generation CRM experiences• MEDDPICC automation and sales process intelligence• Sales velocity as a growth metric• Founder-led go-to-market strategies• Building relationships through cold outreach• Howard Schultz and executive networking stories• Product-market fit versus revenue growth• Shortening sales cycles• Why founders should delay hiring sales teams too early• The science versus art of selling• Human trust and relationship-building in sales• Scaling enterprise SaaS companiesGuest Spotlight: Jared ZelmanJared Zelman is the Founder and CEO of Othello AI, a real-time AI sales coaching platform designed to improve sales execution before, during, and after customer conversations. Prior to Othello, Jared founded Cicero, an AI-powered celebrity avatar platform. Through Othello, he is helping organizations scale elite sales behaviors while preserving the human elements of trust, empathy, and relationship-building that drive long-term success.  Resources & Mentions:• Othello AI• Salesforce• HubSpot• Notion• MEDDPICC• Howard Schultz• Steve Ballmer• Sam Altman• Paul Graham• Dale Carnegie• Costco• Lenovo• Science of Scaling by Mark Roberts• Entrepreneur.comKey Takeaway:AI can automate coaching, surface insights, and improve execution consistency, but it cannot replace the human side of selling. The organizations that win will combine AI-driven discipline with authentic relationships, strong leadership, and a relentless focus on understanding customers.🎧 Listen now and subscribe to Selling Intelligence for more conversations on AI, sales leadership, revenue growth, founder-led scaling, and the future of enterprise sales.KK Anderson

Okay, so you are, and we're gonna wrap up the second topic here with this question. You're reporting 10 to 15% win rates improvement, 8 to 10% reduction in sales cycle length, which is huge. ⁓ a lot of AI tools are making, some some pretty large claims like that. so like generally speaking, just w help us understand a little bit, like what what are you measuring over what time period?Jared Zelman

Crazy.KK Anderson

how was work to some of your success?Jared Zelman

Yeah.These are like guess depends, because ⁓ like some of these numbers are pointing time numbers, some of these are ⁓ like over a period of time. so if it's a period of time, these are like over a course of twelve months. what's unique is these are all for large enterprise, these are for Fortune one hundreds. When you see AI companies quoting crazy growth or performance metrics, it's because they're selling to a two person business in YC. in other words, bullcrap.Right. ⁓ these are metrics that are proven at some of the biggest companies in ⁓ multi-sectors. that said, the bar for the expectation the expectation of buyers these days is kind of ridiculous. frankly, if you're a sales tool and you're affecting win rates and you're not improving them by over 10%, that you're a failure.our minimum is like fifteen, we're aiming for like twenty five, thirty in some cases. Yeah, I mean w the buy the buyers are just so damn pro snickety these days. People's standards have gone through the roof.KK Anderson

wow.Mark Petruzzi

Beautiful. All right, let us move from topic two to topic three. Topic three is from rep consistency to overall CRO intelligence and how that impacts the overall management of an AI augmented team. And the first question I have on that is once your technology is levered across a team.What what changes for the manager? Because if the AI is handling execution consistency, prompting the right questions, catching objective handling in real time, the manager's job needs to change as well. So what does a great sales manager do differently when they have a productive and effective AI layer between them and the team?Jared Zelman

So we try to do three things in a closed up cycle. So we try to diagon it's kind of similar to like a I'll use like doctors as an analogy. We try to diagnose what's working, what's not working. So pretty much diagnosing what happens in sales calls, that stink. We then report that right back to the ⁓ to the managers and we give them a prescription. We'll actually give managers direct suggestions on what they should be doing differently to coach their team. Specifics, because managers they need specifics, they have a lot of other stuff going on.We will then actually implement that prescription. We'll then create the cure, hopefully, and reinforce those best practices in every single call. Right? And that system goes on, it's a close-up system. The way the manager job changes though is threefold. They now don't need to do all the diagnostics, they don't need to listen to 300 call recordings to identify the trends and what's working and what's not working.They don't even need to then draw the conclusions to how to fix that. Right? They can always be a human diluent director, but they don't have to do it from scratch anymore because of Thela's helping. Most significantly, they don't need to reinforce that training. They don't need to actually be sitting there coaching reps every single day, every single day. I mean, sorry, every single week. Because Thelo is doing that for them. So it's it's threefold. it's interesting. It's a point solution in that it's focused on sales calls.but it's doing every single part of that cycle such that the manager's job is similar, but it's not menial anymore. There is very little repetition in the manager's job when they have effectively an AI agent that is doing their journey work for them.KK Anderson

I would think that, as someone who has managed sales teams for many years, I find myself saying the same things, and as a sales coach, right, with our clients, I find myself saying the same thing to this, over and over again, like a broken record. And ⁓ it could be really interesting if you have to take away some of the fundamental that some of the repetitive stuff, like you said, it could be really interesting how those how thatvalue of that coaching conversation would change. So ⁓ and I'm curious to get your take on this as we're evolving. Like what do you see the future of of CRM? Right? We know every salesperson, hates logging CRM. I had this conversation with the CRO just today, like, our CRM is a mess. And it's it but it's still the crux of everything. I imagine that what you're what you'reJared Zelman

Yeah.KK Anderson

the notes you're pulling and the insights you're pulling on these calls are are feeding into CRM. Like what do you see the future of of CRM? Is it gonna be more in the background? Is it gonna be a big part of of the future?Jared Zelman

I think a system of record in general will always be a very important part of the future. It's also a good data layer which you need then to use AI on top of. ⁓ so it will always exist. I do think it'll look different. I will think it is good. I do think it will be one of the l last things to change though, and evolve. ⁓ I just like one prediction is ⁓ like look at Notion. I don't know if you guys have have you guys used Notion before? Great. we started to use Notion as our CRM. We use Salesforce and Notion. Kind of for different things.KK Anderson

No.Yeah, yeah.Mark Petruzzi

Do.Jared Zelman

Notion, although you cannot do 95% of the stuff you can do Salesforce, and you can do Salesforce with, ⁓ the 5% that you do have overlap is the most important 5%, which is like the standard, CRM part. ⁓ and it's so goddamn easy. Like, there's gotta be a way to have like notion level experience, but with the level of like complexity that you can have like a CRM today, like maneuver with. Like, I think thatKK Anderson

Give me an example.Jared Zelman

Like like here, like with Notion you can just copy and paste like a ton of content into. Like in Notion, you can even speak into it or like type into like a you can query it and it will then take that plain text query and create a database or input like content ⁓ into a database for you. Like in Salesforce, you can't even press enter and skip into a different field. You have to manually move your mouse or do a keyboard shortcut.KK Anderson

Yeah.Jared Zelman

Like that's insane. Like you need to like off in three times to get into Salesforce. We counted. We had to take on average nine clicks to actually make something happen in Salesforce to like actually start getting value. Like that's nuts. Nine clicks to get value? Are you kidding me? Like I have to off in to my CRM every 35 minutes. Nuts. ⁓ I digress.KK Anderson

Mark, are you listening?Yeah.Yeah. That's so interesting.Yeah. And so does it like how does how does ⁓ using a platform and a tool, a data layer like Othello Othelio, am I saying it wrong? Othello, Othello. How does that like how does that help the serum? Does it help with with forecast accuracy or pipeline or cleanliness orJared Zelman

No, a fellow, a fellow. Spam.Mark Petruzzi

Hello.Jared Zelman

Yeah, w we automatically sync notes into the CRM for you. We haveunlimited custom field mapping, unlimited custom objects. we're not trying to reinvent the wheel. I'll put that like put that out there. We are not changing your CRM forever, but we are reducing CRM note taking time by like eighty percent. Like I'll give you an example.KK Anderson

Yeah.Jared Zelman

We have a customer that's on a call, they're a medpic shop. Othello will automatically listen to the conversation, identify if MedPIC was achieved, the specific notes for each acron letter in the acronym, and we'll sync that into custom MedPIC fields in Salesforce for you, or HubSpot for that matter. That's great. Like that's a great next step, but like the future of CRM will be different entirely, I think. Like I would much rather in five years time my sales horse be completely like call it redesigned to look and feel like notion.KK Anderson

It really is.Yeah.Mark Petruzzi

Yeah,I'm with you on that one, Jared. ⁓ so we've seen a lot of AI tools adopted by individual reps. They'll they run off, they see something, they bring it in, and interestingly, many of those get abandoned a few months later because the overall workflow change was too high. Wasn't really, it was there was a shiny object that attracted them, notSomebody doing a real evaluation of what that product can do for the overall productivity of the team. So what does successful Othello adoption actually look like inside a sales organization? And what does the CRO or sales leader need to do structurally to get the team to use it consistently enough that the data really does become meaningful?Jared Zelman

So I like to we we actually have we're in a temporary office right now, but in our in our primary office in Israel we have a sign that says, You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. ⁓ words to live by when you're building tools for salespeople.Salespeople like me are not necessarily the most excited when it comes to new tools, especially when they're kind of being given to you by management. So it has to be super easy to use. Othello ⁓ is not there's no website, it's a desktop app. Automatically turns on when a call starts and starts listening. You don't have to click anything. There is no like look you how I said like Salesforce would click like eight times to actually interact with the product? Othello tr genuinely like zero clicks. Like you don't have to click anything.Mark Petruzzi

For sure.Jared Zelman

for it to be on and used in calls. So all the managers would need to do Mark is just download it onto their computers. And then Othello does the rest. You just need to read. Like I'm sure every seller in America is hopefully highly literate. All they need to do is be able to read the poppers of their screen.KK Anderson

Well, they better be if they're ⁓ the ⁓ core of our GDP here, our five million APs. ⁓ Okay, that's right. Okay, let's move on to our fourth topic. And this is the one that I've been most excited to dig into you with dig into with you. ⁓ and that's around the founders go to market playbook. And you have gone from zero to one million ARR in six months, which is awesome. Congratulations.Mark Petruzzi

Beautiful. All right.Jared Zelman

Yeah, it's ⁓ you know, the backbone of America. Yeah.KK Anderson

And so you tell the story, and I saw your write-up in entrepreneur.com about how you built Othello's early investor base through cold email, right? That you would email the CEO of Costco, the CEO of Lenovo, Howard Schultz. Like what walk us through that process that you followed. what you're describing is really contrary to what is prevalent out there right now, which is a lot of spray and prey, which has created so much noise and⁓ made it so much harder for our backbone of America to be able to sell successfully. So like tell us tell us about that. It's tell us about the discipline, the research, the kind of just tell us about your approach.Jared Zelman

Yeah.Yeah, so and look, there's goods and there's there's positives and negatives to my approach when it comes to getting in touch with the you want to get in touch with, because that's what it is. It's not just sales, just getting in touch with the people you want to get in touch with. ⁓ the bad of my approach is that it's a very direct. and I don't it's not pushy, but I don't miss words when I reach out to somebody and I'm very willing to follow up repeatedly. The good thing, I mean, you could say those are also positives, depends how you look at it.Right. Like if I want to get in touch withFor example, like the CRO of Microsoft or something like that. I don't even know if they have a CRO, but the CRO of Meta who I want to buy my product, like I will hustle like a mother, right? Cold emailing, cold calling him, sending gifts to his his office, his freaking home, get custom, Golden State Warriors jerseys for his kids with their names on it, some shit like that, until he responds, right? So to me it is like high pressure, it's full court pressure, right, to follow the basketball ⁓ reference.A lot of people don't subscribe to that. They support more of like a hey, like if you build it, they will come type of methodology. I don't believe in that. I don't have time for that. So when I was starting ⁓ Cicero and Othello, I said, screw it. Let's reach out to the people. And if they find value, they'll invest. And it was that cycle, actually. And it wasn't just for investors, by the way. It was our initial customers, investors, but like primarily I did it purely for mentors and to learn.KK Anderson

So howYeah.Jared Zelman

Like I was doing this throughout college. I didn't have a company to invest in. I just did it because I actually wanted to learn from like Sam Altman. I didn't think they'd really answer. Then I figured out they do.KK Anderson

Who'syour who's your the most shocking person that responded to you? Tell tell me that story.Jared Zelman

Say Maltman is a shocking one. I don't know if he's shocking. He responds to a lot of stuff actually. He's he's he's a I suggest you reach out to him cold. He's like known for responding to cold contact. Steve Bomber was a cool one. He was aKK Anderson

Yeah.Jared Zelman

That I looked up to for a long time. Howard Schultz was a cool one. So Howard Schultz didn't respond to me. And then he cold called me. don't know what it's cold called. He called me a few times. So I remember I was on the way to class in college and I got kept on getting a call for this freaking like Seattle number. And I thought it was some salesman. So I answered like a kind of a jerk. I'm like, who is this? is this Jared? I go, no.KK Anderson

Yeah.Jared Zelman

And Igo wait, who is this? It was so it was hilarious. It was like the stupidest thing ever. It was Howard Schultz. And I was acting like an idiot. And he found that to be also pretty funny. ⁓ so I was saying Howard Schultz co called me. It's kind of the same. Yeah. Yeah.Mark Petruzzi

Ha ha.KK Anderson

my goodness, that's amazing. Yeah.Mark Petruzzi

And Jared,KK Anderson

I bet you wishMark Petruzzi

there'sKK Anderson

you had a fellow then to tell you exactly what to say.Jared Zelman

Yeah, I feel like I I don't know, sometimes like the innocence of being y young is enough to get these people to give you time of day.KK Anderson

Yeah.Mark Petruzzi

So Jared, there's definitely some irony here. ⁓ you are the founder of a company that teaches reps to sell better. And you grew your company by being an exceptional seller yourself. So how intentional was that and what did building a fellow teach you about the craft of selling that you just didn't know before you started?Jared Zelman

Trying to be.Art for science, again, let's touch back on that. when it comes to selling, the art aspect of it I think is sorta summarized by falling in love with the person you're speaking to and getting them to fall in love with you. I could speak on both of those two points for a long time, we'll put a pin in that. So that's the art of selling. That's something that comes very natural to me. I wouldn't say I'm a good seller, I would say I'm good at that. Or at least I was good at that.After founding Othello, I realized the entire science aspect of sales. You can't teach art, but you can teach science. So we focus on doing that. And I've learned ⁓ just through building Othello so much more about running a proper sales process, how to run say real discovery that is structured as opposed to just being super interested, which is great, but it's not enough. So I wouldn't say I was a master salesperson. I would I'm not today. I was art,Sales artist, perhaps. Now I try to be a whole lot more than that.Mark Petruzzi

what, Jared, you're you're kind of defining a little bit of of my journey in sales where and even in from the standpoint of of a couple books that I've written. The first book, Selling the Cloud, was all about the art of sales. And that's really where I wanted to go first in in my writing. However, the s second well, a little background, I was actually ⁓Jared Zelman

Okay.Mark Petruzzi

Talked into and maybe even manipulated into writing a book. I'll share that story with the audience and the and ⁓ you as well another time. But I wasn't someone who wanted to write a book, I guess is the first thing, until we released the first book, Selling the Cloud. And then I could not wait to get to the science of selling, because that's really, as you put it, that's where theThe impact comes from, it's kind of there's only so much you can do to make someone who's not comfortable doing what you just described, building a relationship with someone, falling in love with them, having them fall in love with you, want to do business with you. that's that's harder to teach, but the science is pretty easy to teach when you really get it into play.Jared Zelman

The yeah, we don't really try to teach you the art of sales. We try to teach you the science of sales. Like and that's the human element by the way. That's why I think humans will always be in sales, at least B2B sales. Is for the art aspect of it. The science you can replicate, the art you cannot.KK Anderson

Yeah.Yeah, that's really interesting. And ⁓ at when as you perfect the science, then it gives the confidence and the bandwidth and the room for the art to really shine.Jared Zelman

Look, in theory, every extremely as I said, like the art of sales, I think is falling in love with somebody and getting them to in love with you. There's a lot of lovely people out there that can't sell for their life. but they they're they'd probably be great at the art of sales. So we try to get them to be more ⁓ more aligned with the science and best practices of sales.KK Anderson

Yeah.Yeah.Okay. So you went from Cicero, the AI Celebrity Chatbot Company. That sounds interesting. AI Avatars of Celebrities. Okay. And then now to Othello, you you did a hard pivot as you were describing. and you did it from scratch and you got to a million ARR in six months. Like tell us like how you did that. How did you validate I mean I you you talked a little bit about the research, but tell us tell usJared Zelman

Yeah, AI AI Avatars are celebrities.KK Anderson

Give us all your secrets, Jared.Jared Zelman

⁓ so I can tell you about Cicero as well because I I mean we did a million there. it comes down toKK Anderson

Sure.Jared Zelman

Look, it really is a it's a function of sales cycle length, is what it is. Like if you want to get sciencey about it. you could build the world's greatest business, but if your sales cycle like twenty-four months, and sometimes the world's greatest businesses do have really long sales cycles, the nature of their business model, then ⁓ you can't grow that fast on paper. like a lot of the fastest growing companies in a burgeoning industry are consumer because the sales cycle is like one minute.But in our business model, it was it's it's like four months and we were able to get it down to like a month. ⁓ so we could really juice the hell out of sales velocity because sales cycle was only a month. Maybe this that's ex that's like the hard part, and people don't think about that.KK Anderson

And how'd you get it down to a high?Jared Zelman

⁓ we like really workshopped the shit out of our sales process. We broke down everything across every sales process we were in at that point and prior to that looked at every commonality and we just started cutting out nonsense and built very strict SOPs, like extremely strict SOPs. ⁓ and we were surprisingly able to reduce it from four to one, which yeah.KK Anderson

And aren't you gonna say that you useyour own platform?Jared Zelman

Yes, but s but our platform helps with sales cycle lengths. It does. ⁓ but a b a bigger driver, at least of our type of business when it comes to sales cycle length is actually the stuff that happens off calls. Right? It's ⁓ touch points with InfoSec. how quickly can you get the business decision maker to actually sign something? Like that alone, like like contracting is the longest part of our sales process, or at least it was. How can you juice that?KK Anderson

Yeah.Mm. That takes forever. Yeah. Security.Mm-hmm.Jared Zelman

Yeah,I mean that's this is like sales. Like people try not to get into the science of it, right? But the speed at which you can close a deal is as important as your win rate in many cases.KK Anderson

Yeah.Mm-hmm.Mark Petruzzi

Excellent. So in general, Jared, you ⁓ especially after Cicero, you had lots of VCs that you could get to invest in your company. But yet you you did it a little more on the angels side, very famous angels nonetheless, people like Craig Jelinek and Howard Schultz as we described. But when itJared Zelman

How Howard SchultzHoward Schultz did an angel. He was a mentor. He did an angel. He missed the round program.Mark Petruzzi

Yep. Perfect. Cool. So having that, those relationships, ⁓ what's the one thing you would tell a founder in the audience who's at that pre product market fit stage and trying to figure out like what do they do? How do they if they're not a sales inclined individual, how when do they hire a sales leader and can you be a ⁓Jared Zelman

Never forget.KK Anderson

Ha ha ha.Mark Petruzzi

an inefficient founder selling sales organization for a period of time or to do you just need to make sure if you're not the sales leader that you bring one in right from the beginning.Jared Zelman

Yeah, I I I I strongly recommend against hiring for sales too early for thousands of reasons, many which are well documented already from people out smarter than me, like Paul Graham. ⁓ I think to determine when you want to hire a sales leader, it's funny, like people always say like hire the sales hire your first sales person like when you have not like no time on your hands but sales. That's actually misleading because it's very easy to fill your calendar with bullshit sales calls.It all comes down to reducing sales cycle to make it more efficient. I think you need to run that analysis on your sales process first, cut out all the fat. For example, if you're taking 30 meetings to close a deal, you need to understand if that's truly the minimum. I betcha it's not. And then once you have an efficient sales process, if you still have an absolutely full calendar, that's when you hire sales. Do not letFor example, like non-decision makers or like non-stakeholders waste your time. it'll convince you that you need to hire people because you're too busy, but you're not busy with anything meaningful, you're busy with time-wasting activities. So that's like the first trigger. Again, long way of answering pretty short questions. So I apologize, Mark, but it's important to get to the nuance.KK Anderson

Mm-hmm.Mark Petruzzi

No, it was a good one though.Jared Zelman

Also, and this is something that's I learned across all my businesses, is when you're launching a product for the first time, the objective is PMF, it's not sales, it's not product buyer fit, it's product market fit, which means post-sales defines success, but not actually the dollars in. ⁓ which means you want a short sales cycle, obviously, and you want a short time to value or renewal cycle. That's another way of graphing time to value. So you can determine PMF faster. ⁓ I highly recommend it before building a product that has a long experience cycle.You understand if you're really willing to take that risk. If it takes a year for you to prove value, you're at risk of investing a year in a product that will never have PMF, no matter how successful you are at executing. ⁓ that's one thing that you can control before you start a business. And I I implore you to think deeply about that if you're starting a business.KK Anderson

Jared, have you read ⁓ Mark Roberts' new book, Science of Scaling?Jared Zelman

I haven't I've been recommending that book a thousand times, I think, so I may just read it to start saying yes. Yeah.KK Anderson

It's so good. It's so it's sogood. Go on Amazon and get it. He ha he was on our podcast and a few months ago before the book released. But it's wonderful. We got to we got to do a pre read of it before it went to market. ⁓ but it talks a lot about product market fit and when to scale and yeah, it's really it's really great. Some good insight.Jared Zelman

He's great.I thinkyou need to have like made mistakes to learn this stuff. ⁓ and you almost have like need to have done it before. So that's like a good that's like a good like it's an underrated thing, like making mistakes. I would say like failure is super underrated. Yeah.KK Anderson

Yeah.yeah.experience. Yeah. It'sMark Petruzzi

huh.KK Anderson

whatit what makes it's what makes you stronger because when you come out the other side you're you've learned a lot of lessons. Okay.Jared Zelman

Yeah, you just wannamake sure you come out like yeah, still spry, but go ahead.KK Anderson

So so for our last few minutes together, we're gonna do our favorite section. ⁓ it's an audience favorite anyway. We call it rapid fire. And we've got a few questions and we'll ask them fast and give us kind of your in your first instinct and we'll go through it and I'll start. Jared, what's the first thing you've ever sold?Jared Zelman

ketchup sandwiches. Straight up, yes, honestly ketchup sandwiches, triple decker ketchup sandwiches.KK Anderson

Okay, I gotta hear about that.When you were a kid, ketchup sandwiches watched the neighbors at the swim meet? What?Jared Zelman

Yes.everywhere. ⁓ mainlyneighbors. ketchup sandwiches when I was like two years old. They were viral. And not in like the cool way, like viral isn't like viruses it's just very, dirty and I made them without washing my hands. Emphasis on gross. Yes. Emphasis on gross. For sure.Mark Petruzzi

So Jared, you really learned about gross margin really really early in there. I love that. You were you were just like I am notgonna over over ⁓ engineer this, that's for sure.Jared Zelman

They're actually delicious, by the way. I know that sounds terrible, but like, okay, you know what? I'm not even gonna I'm not gonna convince you. Trust me, if anybody some four two year old kid offers it to you in the street, give it a try. ⁓ sorry, that's not round of fire, but that's my answer. Sure. And like a lot more bread. Yeah.KK Anderson

It's just like a hot dog without a hot dog.Mark Petruzzi

Cool.All right. One one metric every CRO should add to their weekly dashboard that for most CROs is not there right now.Jared Zelman

Ooh, wow, I wanna think deeply about this one, actually. This is a fantastic question. You have to sue enough people and you build the best like weekly like deal agenda.I would I'm very much focused just the nature of our business on like sales velocity. ⁓ so it it it would be ⁓ leading indicators of sales velocity. And that's a that's business specific, but it would be a leading indicator of sales velocity. It could be something as simple as to touch on the InfoSec experience we were talking about earlier, KK. ⁓ the amount of times you had a touch point with an InfoSec contributor, or the amount of red lines you responded to in the course of a week. ⁓ that's something that like we we try we track that.KK Anderson

Interesting. Yeah.Okay, so Jared, who's the sales leader or founder that you admire and respect the most?Jared Zelman

Jesus Christ, these are crazy questions. I'm gonna offend a lot of people, depends on who I answer. if if all of my buddies watch this. Like I'll give you one, like ⁓KK Anderson

One of, one of.Jared Zelman

Like w we're doing we're doing work with Oder.com. ⁓ Kyle Norton, long before I started working with him, is like way long before, is a sales mentor of mine. Like he's a goat, so to speak. Dale Carnegie, when it comes to the art of sales, is a freaking legend. So I love Dale Carnegie. Though that'd say like those two are like opposite sides of the same spectrum.KK Anderson

Yeah.Good stuff.Mark Petruzzi

Beautiful. So ⁓ last rapid fire question. Hiff What's the biggest misconception CROs have about what real-time AAI coaching can and just cannot do?Jared Zelman

Well, the main thing is they don't know that it exists. so if they know it exists, ⁓ the conception misconception any of them would have is that it's ⁓ something it could become a crutch, right? Like if it's truly that good, why do we need salespeople at all? Why can't I just put like a the twenty-one year old kid in front of a camera to read off their screen?I think that conception is a misconception, because as we all discussed earlier, ⁓ you still need to have trust, you need to have empathy, it doesn't matter if you're using Othello or not, you can't replace the human element. So you can't you can't throw some random in front of a colleague's button perform well.KK Anderson

What you have shown us is that the best technology is built by founders who are great practitioners first, right? At the very skill that they are trying to scale. so if this episode, shifted how you are thinking about your rep performance or your AI coaching strategy, share it with your team, share it with your CEO, your VP of sales.We will put all of Jared's contact information and LinkedIn profile and link to his website in the show notes. We'll also reference the various books that we refer to in the in the episode. and you can find us at get-ags.com or anywhere, podcasts are found, Spotify, Apple, et cetera. And we're thrilled to have you, Jared. And until next time, thanks for joining us on Selling Intelligence.Jared Zelman

Thank you both. Talk to you soon.Mark Petruzzi