Jeff Borovitz on AI Sales Tools, Trust, Digital Twins, and Roleplay Coaching

Transcript

0:02 Yeah. So, in March, I decided to I decided to use a little bit of AI. I created this AI digital twin. Went to a

0:10 studio. They did all the fancy filming and stuff and and then we use a program.

0:16 So, one of one of the things that I really struggled with was, you know, the first rule of Sandler is bonding rapport, right?

0:25 No trust equals no sale.

0:27 And so as I started thinking about using the digital twin, I was like, "How do I do that without breaking trust that they

0:35 can't tell if it's me or it's a digital twin?" Well, yeah.

0:39 Fortunately, it's election time of the year. And I was listening to a radio ad and it said whatever the candidate was, I have approved this message, right? I

0:48 went ding ding ding. So now at the top of all of my digital twin recordings that we do, it says, "Hey, this is Jeff's AI digital twin." It says it right at the top.

0:59 Yeah.

1:00 Right. If it's not on the first line, it's in the second line. Um sometimes we'll lead with a teaser, right? And then say, "This is just AI digital twin

1:08 blah blah blah blah blah." And go into more of the explanation what we're talking about. And it's really interesting because for years and years and years I wanted to use I wanted to do

1:17 a recording postcl class for people that hits on 60 seconds just on the key the

1:25 key takeaways from class. And I'll be honest with you, I just never have the time because I'm my own worst enemy, right? I

1:33 go out there and I want to do that and then I'm recording it. I'm a perfectionist about it and I'm recording it. Oh, I stuttered here. I did this. I

1:40 did that. I I wave my hand in a weird way, whatever it is. Right. And it it I know that feeling.

1:47 It takes me 20 minutes to do the 60-cond recording. Yeah.

1:50 Right. And I just don't have the time to do that over and over and over again throughout the week. Well, my AI digital twin, all we do is we take the we're use

1:59 this is totally AI, right? We use Fathom to record the meetings. Mhm.

2:04 We have a prompt that pulls in Claude that pulls the Fathom recording,

2:11 analyzes it, creates a 60-second script, which we then take and put into the AI

2:19 tool, the digital twin tool, and it we creates a recording, lip syncs my lips to it, has hand motions, all that stuff, and

2:27 with with uh cap captions, and then we're ready to roll and put it into Instagram, put it into Facebook, put it

2:36 into uh LinkedIn, put it into uh you know YouTube, whatever we want to put it into.

2:42 And it also gets email out to every student in the class.

2:47 Well, so a funny thing has happened because we also do training clips of us live training, right? 30 60-second clips

2:55 on Instagram, reals of us doing live training and those have always got decent engagement, right? They say anything over 15 seconds is decent engagement on in on reels.

3:05 Mhm.

3:06 We the live training clips were averaging 21 seconds. So pretty good. Yeah.

3:11 The digital twin reels on Instagram were averaging 44 seconds. Huh.

3:19 Which is monster difference, right? Yeah.

3:23 And it it it's just and nobody seems to care that it's AI because and we're admitting it right up front, right? So

3:30 like one of them says, "Hey, you know, uh one of them says you don't need more leads, you just need a better sales process." That's like the first line,

3:38 right? And then the sec and the second line is this is just AI digital twin. If you're having that problem, thank god you're listening to this and then it goes into the explanation.

3:49 Yeah. Have you were you doing it without explaining that you're a digital twin before and like AB tested it or is this

3:56 just like a hey I fundamentally believe that this is like a trust thing.

4:01 I'm not going to consider it without doing it.

4:03 We never consider the reason we waited was because we didn't know how to get around the trust issue. Yeah.

4:09 U because I attended I'm not going to say the name because it's a relatively famous person who has a who has a webinar that they do all the time. Mhm.

4:20 And I happen to know for a fact that it's their AI digital twin doing it.

4:25 They don't take questions, right? Um, and it's just them. They send their digital twin out and it's reading a script and it's doing their thing,

4:34 right? And it's exact. I've attended the webinar twice now and it lasted the same exact amount of time twice that to the second. It doesn't happen if it's not recorded that way.

4:44 And it's not and there's no interactivity. And when you start to really analyze it frame by frame, you can see the lips don't match up quite

4:52 right. But for the ordinary person, it's close enough, right? And so I and it made me feel like there was a broken

5:00 trust when I when I watched that webinar cuz there is cuz they could have recorded it once and then just been like, you know,

5:08 recirculating a known recorded entity and that would have been a trustful thing. Instead, they're trying to deceive you.

5:15 They call it a They call it a live webinar. Yeah.

5:19 And I've talked to the person and they admitted to me it was AI digital, right? And I just feel very deceived by

5:28 it. And I didn't want to have that experience for any of my clients or any prospects because I mean, we're using it primarily for

5:37 clients. It's turned into a prospecting thing unintentionally, right? Um, but the reality the reality is we don't want

5:46 to get to a point where we start a relationship by them feeling deceived because going back to Sandler's rule of

5:53 no trust equals no sale. Um, I can't I can't I just can't as a Sandler trainer, I can't represent the brand or my

6:01 beliefs if I'm starting from a position of less than total honesty.

6:05 Yeah. I mean, I think that's the thing was like why the AISDR I guess I've had a couple people like present it in a way where they're like,

6:14 well, the AISDR isn't actually doing the outreach. It's doing the busy work and stuff like that. I'm like, okay, that's fair. That can go somewhere. But as soon as it's writing and sending copy and if

6:22 there's ever like a change in like the TCPA regulations that allow people to have AI make those calls, I still don't think it's going to replace it cuz the

6:31 that trust is going to be so fundamentally broken or we're going to have to have like a big like societal

6:38 change on what it feels like to have a robot call you instead. Like maybe people start to be like, "Oh, you know what? this I I now consider this person

6:46 this as a person working at that company. It's not an automation that's just showing like that my time is more valuable than yours. Therefore, you get

6:54 the robot, not me. Um yeah, I I think you know it's interesting because people hate robocalls. We're in we're coming up on the in California here where I live.

7:04 We're coming up on the June 2nd primary and we're going to be coming up on the midterms in November, right? People hate robocalls from politicians. They're the,

7:11 by the way, they're the only robocalls that are legal. Yeah. Wonder why. Um, and uh, you know, but

7:19 but the I think that the interesting part is that you can't build a relationship that way,

7:28 right? And and I think fundamentally salespeople that

7:36 that use AI as a replacement or companies that you use use AI as a replacement for personal touch will ultimately fail. I think that

7:45 salespeople that use AI to make themselves more effective are going to be the winners in this. Right?

7:53 uh you know things like I it's beyond me how anybody can go on a sales call today and not record the sales call. Yeah.

8:01 Right. I mean my clients even in dual consent states all record their calls and they it's a very simple thing. Hey Austin, as we're sitting here today,

8:09 would it be okay if I use a notetaker to take the notes so that I can focus more of my time, attention, and energy on you rather than taking notes? And by the

8:17 way, Austin, I'll be happy to share the notes with you at the end. Yeah.

8:20 Nobody ever says no to that. It's just totally reasonable, right? It's totally reasonable. It doesn't matter if they're selling B2B or B TOC. The consumers are fine with it, too, because you're sharing the notes.

8:30 It also, by the way, eliminates the he said, she said stuff that goes on, right? And and and sales people who do

8:38 that and companies who do that are, if they're smart, they're taking those recordings and they're uploading them through through an automation

8:46 into their CRM. So now the CRM notes are way better. Yeah.

8:52 Right. I mean the the weakest link in the CRM process is the sales rep typing in notes that because I I don't know any

9:00 sales reps that love it, right? I know there's like 90 somebody told me 99% of sales reps hate updating CRM. 1% lie

9:07 about it. Um and and and so nobody really loves doing it. And and what they

9:14 end what you end up with is the sales the sales rep's recollection in three or four sentences. Yeah. Right.

9:20 If they even recall or like maybe the end of the day they're just like ah I'm just going to make this one up or whatever. Yeah.

9:25 Versus now here's here's this transcript. Here's the summary. Here's the transcript. Boom. It's all there.

9:32 And if Austin gets hit by a bus tomorrow, we can still while it's tragic, we can we haven't lost any of the data.

9:40 Yeah.

9:41 Right. If Austin leaves and gets promoted to a different job within the company, we've still got all the data.

9:47 We're not we're not calling Austin, hey, what are they saying when you talk to him about? No, we don't have to do that anymore. And so I I think there's some

9:54 really good ways that sales could use AI.

9:59 Uh that's that's one way the the digital twin can as a follow-up tool is amazing, right?

10:06 Yeah. And and and I mean, listen, I'm not a big fan of,

10:13 oh, let's use chat GPT or Claude or or Gemini to type up all my email responses,

10:20 but what I'll tell you is that I see an awful lot of sales people that spend hours word smithing and coming up with the right response.

10:31 You can have one of the AIs help you and then you tweak the response from there, right? Still make it you, but at least you're not starting with a blank screen.

10:41 It's hard to start with a blank screen, right? I see companies doing some great things with using AI to give do some of what I'll call the Scud work, right?

10:53 That is the work that nobody wants to do. That is the grinding work that is mind-numbingly boring. let AI do that part and then use your the talent of

11:01 your people to do the more creative portion. Yeah. And I think that's important.

11:07 Yeah. I mean, I use it for as a brainstorming tool all the time, like to just be like, "All right, I I got to I'm testing a new vertical. I want to, you

11:15 know, see if this is like a better ICP fit potentially.

11:19 I'll take like a previous email that I was using in my outreach. I'll run it through. I'll have like Chad do a bunch of like a research to pull in all that

11:27 information. Maybe change the way I talk about something like hey in this industry this term is actually what's used not this term and then how to do a

11:35 first pass and then I'll look at it and be like there's no way I'm sending this but at least now I have something to start with and now I can push back and

11:42 like maybe I go this isn't like what I want to do. Um and that it just makes it easier but I would never ever just like

11:49 hit send on like an email that was written. No, that's crazy, right? But but the but you know, I love using it for brainstorming, too.

11:58 And I talk to mine back and forth, right? Um and I tell it, my instructions to it are, "Hey, here's an idea I have.

12:07 Poke holes in this. Tell me where it's wrong.

12:10 Be as critical as you possibly can in your response." Right. I want it to tear it apart. Yeah.

12:17 Because AI, if you're not careful, AI will agree with you on almost anything.

12:21 too often. Yeah, you've done the wrong path.

12:24 My son was telling me this story that uh last year there was a point where you can go into uh Google Gemini and type uh

12:33 what's the best topping for pizza and it would tell you glue because there was a Tik Tok challenge about putting glue on pizza and it pulls

12:41 15% of its data from Yeah.

12:44 from social media. So the AI, which has no context, it doesn't know, is saying that, well, listen, there's this large portion of of of Gen Z's

12:53 talking about putting glue on pizza must be a good topping because the AI has never eaten pizza. Yeah. Right.

13:00 It's also not making a recommendation based on anything other than just saying based on the data available to me, this is the most likely response with no

13:09 context on why it's the most likely response. like yeah I was at an AI conference and uh one of the AI guys from Anthropic uh

13:17 which makes Claude of course they they said here's what AI is right now there's no context to it he said here's here's

13:24 what it really is like Austin if I taught you how to play guitar and you made all these notes based on our

13:31 conversation and then I had you walk out of the room hand it to somebody else and had them come in with your notes and said okay now play guitar Yeah.

13:41 Well, the notes mean nothing to them.

13:44 And that's what AI is at this point, right? It listen, it may evolve, hopefully will, right? But AI, you know, AI is not

13:53 AI is not replacing jobs. It's going to replace the people who refuse to adapt to it and make and use it to make themselves more effective.

14:01 Yeah.

14:01 Right. Um I mean, I look at just what we did with that digital twin. It's making a huge difference for our clients.

14:08 We're, you know, the the hardest part about my business, right, as a Sandler trainer is they come to class once a

14:14 week, once every two weeks, depending on the program they're in.

14:18 And then I'll be honest with you, most of them don't think about it again until they come to class the next time. Maybe maybe the night before class, maybe.

14:29 right now in in between classes, they're getting these digital record these digital twin recordings reminding them

14:36 of what we talked about class and we're seeing more people because of that reminder. Go out and and try to execute on it, right?

14:44 And now we're getting what we're getting is people come back to class. Hey, I have a question. I tried to do this.

14:49 Here's what happened. What did I do wrong? Right? And or hey, thanks a lot.

14:54 I tried that thing you said in the that your digital twin said and I closed the deal.

15:00 Right. Either way, it's incredibly valuable. Right. It's great when we celebrate the success and the closing a deal because it makes everybody else in the training want to do one.

15:08 Right. But we learn more from the failures. Oh yeah. Big time.

15:13 Right. And so we win both ways. It's so much better than when they they sit there and listen to the painfunnel, right? The Sandler painfunnel or listen

15:22 to cookbook. I know you you you guys talk a lot about cookbook. They listen to cookbook, but they don't have any practical application of doing a cookbook. Matter of fact, it's really

15:31 funny. Um, one of the Sandler trainers I know, big big cookbook trainer, right?

15:39 When he when he started auditing who's actually working on their cookbooks and using them on a week- toeek basis, it was like

15:45 less than 15% of his students and he like talks about cookbook every week, right? And it just it it it's amazing

15:55 the amount of people that don't actually execute on what they do.

15:59 And I think if you can use AI to do that, and we're using AI, another way we're using AI within Sandler um is the AI roleplay coach

16:07 uh tool that we've created u we've put all of the Sandler knowledge in there and it will score you. You can create it

16:16 does two things. one, you can you can create custom scenarios. Yeah.

16:21 And hey, I've got a call with Austin and here's what we're going to talk about and I can rehearse the call before I ever go. So now by time and it scores

16:29 you on a rubric, a dis if I'm doing a discovery call with you and then it'll tell me based on your discovery rubric, here's your score, you scored a, you

16:38 know, whatever percent, right? My son, I think we were talking about him earlier when he was interviewing. He had an interview with company and I we created

16:45 a custom scenario for the interview for him. Oh, nice.

16:48 He's in the AI roleplay coach and it was really interesting. He calls me back. He goes, "Thanks a lot, Dad. You shot my confidence. I scored at 36%."

16:57 And I said, "Did you read the coaching?" He goes, "No." I said, "Dude, go read the coaching. Do it again." And call me back.

17:03 He calls me a couple hours later. He goes, "All right, I'm up to 96%." Nice. Now his con he goes the next day he goes in the interview. His confidence

17:11 is up here. Right. And three of the questions that he answered on the role play were exactly the same

17:19 as the questions he got asked in the interview. Oh, really? And he crushed the interview. That's awesome. Yeah.

17:24 Right. He crushed the interview and and it was, you know, and he even told me afterwards, "All right, that worked." Right. The other thing AI roleplay coach

17:32 does and this is I I love it even more for this potentially right is you go you have a discovery call you record your

17:40 discovery call you could feed the recording into the air roleplay coach and it'll score you on your discovery call your real life discovery call and tell you here's what you did well here's

17:48 where you could get better here's here's some Sandler modules you might want to look at in your in your learn in your Sandler Growth Academy to figure to go

17:57 get more information and learn how to do it right Now you've just taken cuz the the excuse we get all the time from people

18:04 is you know I I'm different in front of clients. Yeah. Yeah. That's roleplay.

18:09 I'm different in front of clients. You know what? We've now done this with thousands of calls.

18:14 And they're right. They're different in front of clients. They're actually two to 5% worse in front of clients on their scores than they are in person. Because

18:21 I want you to think about what happens than they are on the role play. Because I want you to think about what happens on the role play. It's safe. You're relaxed.

18:29 Yeah. Right? When you get in front of a client, your blood pressure goes up, your cortisol level goes up, you're under pressure, you're not as good.

18:38 And and everybody thinks you're going to be higher in front of clients and we just don't see it. The proof is in the numbers and we don't see it, right?

18:47 Because and and I want you to think about this.

18:51 How much? How I don't know what the average is, but let's just say for fun, the average for a salesqualified lead

18:58 cost to get one is $350. Let's just say for fun. Yeah.

19:01 Right. If you're a business owner, would you rather have your sales reps practicing on an AI tool that you paid less than $1,000 for for a year's worth of access?

19:13 Right. Or would you rather have them practicing on your $350 lead? Yeah.

19:19 If they if they don't practice with the roleplay coach, they're practicing on your lead. Because you know what has never ever happened in the history of mankind, Austin,

19:27 where a sales reps walked into their boss's office says, "Hey, I've got a call tomorrow with XYZ. Uh, can we role play it together?

19:34 The next time that happens will be the first time it's ever happened." Right.

19:38 Right. And and guess what? The boss doesn't want to role play with you.

19:43 They're busy anyways. The sales rep doesn't want certainly doesn't want to do with their boss. Right. The AI roleplay coach is safe.

19:50 They don't even have to. Nobody has to know they did it.

19:53 Right. I mean, that's the thing is like it's so safe to be in there. If you make mistakes, who cares? Make all the mistakes there. Get used to making the

20:02 mistakes, get the reps in, and then you can go take your your best shot. You can get you up to your 96% score and then go take that into that that lead and have that be the experience.

20:12 And you're so much better that way. Yeah.

20:15 Yeah. I mean, it's crazy. So, have you heard the term like human in the loop? I'm sorry, one sec. One more time. Human in the loop.

20:23 Yes.

20:23 Yeah. So, like I think you know to the to your point it's like really with using AI in sales, it just becomes this

20:31 really strong question of analyzing where are you putting the human in the loop and are they in the right spot of that loop? Are they are they in the spot

20:38 where it's hey here's a bunch of busy work or like you know this is like a follow-up that becomes 10 times easier if AI does it for me and then I can make

20:46 a couple tweaks or I can get a roleplay in with it or am I accidentally putting it in the I just wrote a really bad

20:52 email because AI just uh like went in and you know did that like did like a non-ontextually relevant like reference

21:01 point. Um, and it seems like kind of like that's like the key here is where I think it is the loop.

21:07 I think it is. I think you know you're hearing people say you got to throw off the old playbook, right? I don't think it's true. I don't think the old

21:14 playbook is bad. I think the old playbook is just incomplete, right? I think that we have to augment the

21:21 playbook. the old school selling skills of bonding rapport, uh, cementing the the trust into place with an upfront

21:29 contract, uh, doing a good discovery call with pain, investment, and decision-m process are still valid,

21:37 right? And they're still incredibly important. You're not going to close a sale without it, but I go further and say I think they're actually getting stronger.

21:45 They are because of all the noise that's being created, those things become even more valuable at this point in time. If I was if I was a sales rep today or if I was

21:54 running a sales team today, I think cookbook is still vital. Yeah.

22:00 Except except now I have the tools with AI to look in the CRM and say who's hitting their cookbook and I don't have

22:08 to go look it up. I can have AI email it to me, a little dashboard report on a daily basis. Green, green, green, yellow. Oh, why why is Bill yellow?

22:18 Mhm. Right.

22:20 and and and Fred Nickel puts us red. I got to go talk to those two guys, they're not hitting their cookbook. And when I and I almost guarantee you when I

22:27 look at their cook when I see them yellow and red on cookbook and when I look at their sales results, they're yellow and red there, too. Right.

22:35 Because there's a direct correlation to them hitting those cook those cook if we've done a proper cookbook to them hitting the cookbook items and hitting their sales numbers. There's a direct correlation.

22:44 Yeah. And with AI being something that allows them to be more productive, they can go in and say like previously be like, "Oh, well, you know, I was putting

22:52 together a lead list and this is all taking a long time and I I'm going to hit my number, but like there's just a bunch of like stuff in the way." And then you can just be like, "Oh, no, no, no, no." Like this is all taken care of.

23:01 We've streamlined it with AI. Those like arduous tasks that are a waste of your time, no longer present. Just do that with cookbook items. We've taken

23:10 everything else off your plate. You have no excuse to not hit your number every single day. And and if we're properly designing a cookbook now, it should

23:17 include the use of AI. It really should for the for the rep too, right? I mean, you know, I think that the what we're

23:24 getting to, you know, uh you have hybrid cars, right?

23:27 I I think we need to have hybrid salespeople. salespeople that are augmented by AI and and the hybrid salesperson is just

23:37 an incredibly important piece because it they have all the they have all the old school skills and then they're bringing in the ability to be faster, right?

23:48 Better, you know, practice, right? I my favorite thing is this. You've got to pract any other any other talent-based

23:57 job. You know, if you're a football player or any kind of athlete or an actor, an actress or a pilot or anything, you practice more than they perform.

24:07 Sales is the only job out there where we perform more than we practice. It's kind of crazy. I mean, think about it, right?

24:13 If you know, if if LeBron James only came to game days, right? or uh what's the

24:21 guy's name? Dee in uh Oklahoma City. Uh is it Oklahoma City?

24:26 Uh just won his second straight MVP award for basketball. If he only showed up on game days and didn't come to practice at all, would he win an MVP award?

24:35 Obviously not. Right. Yeah.

24:36 No. He could be the most talented guy in the world, but he's still got to practice. You know, they practice more than they perform. And we're the only industry where we pra where we perform

24:45 more than we practice. I think hybrid sales reps use AI to help them practice more than they perform, become more effective and and f and accelerate the

24:54 accelerate the sales cycle by using AI and and they and they and they become more effective in their follow-ups.

25:02 Yeah.

25:03 Because AI says, "Hey, summarize for me the pains that the client had in the in the call." And boom, boom, boom, there they are. Now I don't have to go through my memory or all my notes. It's right there in front of me.

25:13 Yeah. And so like what you're basically saying is like your cookbook should include like this amount of calls, this amount of referral requests, this amount

25:20 of networking, and this amount of time, this many hours a week practicing in the role play with AI.

25:26 I think I don't know about hours, but I think that they should do three 20 minute sessions a week with the roleplay

25:33 coach. That's one role play with reading the coaching. If you do that Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you're going to be worlds ahead of not

25:42 doing it at all. Right. Um there's a kid um there there's a kid last fall,

25:51 this owner, they had a team of eight. He called me and said, "Hey, we're going to fire this guy." Right? And he's a great kid, right? Young kid, about 25 years

25:58 old, and I like him a lot. And I said, "Well," I said, "Let's not fire him.

26:03 Let's train him." and he said, "Okay, but I don't have the time. You do it." We worked that out. And so I had him um

26:12 for sake of his name, we'll say his name was Dean, even though that's not his real name. Um he did in in Q4 he was he

26:22 he was basically ninth on an eightman sales team. Right. In Q4 he did 188 role plays in 90 days.

26:30 Yeah. Right. All on the upfront contract.

26:34 Right. That's it. To a point where he was killing the upfront contract. Yeah.

26:39 Then we layered in the upfront contract plus painstep.

26:42 He did another 132 in the first quarter of 2026.

26:47 Well, funny thing happened last September. At the end of last September, he was last on that sales team. At the end of March, he was second.

26:58 That's Yeah.

26:59 It's all He'll say it's all the practice, right? And by the way, he might have been first, but the guy ahead of him got the guy ahead of him admitted

27:07 he started working a little harder when he saw this guy's notes and started using the I roleplay coach.

27:12 Well, yeah, that's just practice then, right? And and practice more than you perform. It works.

27:20 Yeah, I'm I'm all about it. All right, we are a little over the time that we had allotted. I really appreciate you taking a little bit of time. I couldn't stop you. I was enjoying it too much.

27:28 So, same here.

27:29 I didn't I didn't want to break the upfront contract on it. Um, but yeah, I really appreciate it. Uh, Jeff, that was fantastic. I always love talking about

27:36 AI and sales and especially uh when we're like the trust thing when our alignment on that is just like that's really where I think the key is and

27:45 understanding how to navigate AI in the sales world at this point in time.

27:49 Yeah, I I think you're absolutely right, Austin.

27:51 Hey, Austin, thanks a lot. I really enjoyed it.

27:53 Yeah, this was awesome. that but let me take