Death of salesforce, birth of Leadbay.
Death of salesforce, birth of Leadbay.
Answer to a16z who titled “Death of a Salesforce”.
Now that I have your attention with this buzzwords title and front page, let’s put aside incumbents like Salesforce & HubSpot. I believe these big players will remain strong over this decade (M&A & innovation strategies will pay off). Also, set aside the crowded 300 “stealth B2B Sales x AI” startups, all in a war for market share with tech companies (tech companies have today low budget, already possess internal skills, and have a strong impression that their current sales stack is working well). Instead, we’ve decided with Leadbay to focus on REAL people selling PHYSICAL products or services to traditional companies. I used to call them “bricks-and-mortar B2B sales teams.”
What is a bricks&mortar B2B sales teams ?
A bricks-and-mortar B2B sales team operates in a physical, face-to-face environment rather than purely online or digitally. These teams work for companies with a physical presence, such as offices, warehouses, or stores, and typically meet clients in person to build relationships, negotiate deals, and close sales. Traditionally, these teams tend to be large, consisting of 50 to 300 salespeople in a region like France or a U.S. state like New Jersey.
I am Ludo, CEO of Leadbay (Leads prediction for traditional sales teams). For the past year, I’ve met with more than 300 sales reps, heads of sales, and company CEOs from both traditional and tech sectors. I also flew to San Francisco and New York this summer to deepen my understanding of the U.S. market. Initially, we focused on market research and identifying pain points, and then we began selling our product, Leadbay. Throughout the process, we continue to learn just how challenging this job is in a particularly difficult economy, driven by incredibly passionate sales reps.
AI will most benefit traditional sales teams.
First, here is my '2024 B2B Sales Teams on a Napkin’:
End of August, I was in the north of France, onboarding a large sales team selling paints to construction companies (like local homes paints companies, Carpenter, Manufacture). And here is the result of their workshop regarding their current workflow without Leadbay.
We see together that they were wasting a lot of time on various sources before actually selling and using their CRM. They waste time on:
Listing companies in their target market,
Qualifying companies from a target market to an “Ideal Customer Profile” company,
⇒ Thus wasting time on companies that will never buy their product or service.
They waste time on Google, government data, company websites, and social media. This information is rarely recorded in the CRM and is instead stored in the Reps' brains (instinct), physical notes, Excel spreadsheets, and phone photos...
To sum up, there is 3 value prop to tackle with traditional sales teams in the prospection process:
At the end of the kick-off day, using Leadbay, the sales team understood that Leadbay would handle the entire market exploration process. We help them “removing the guesswork”.
Leadbay knows all the companies in their local market well,
Leadbay has been trained on their company’s knowledge (CRM + ERP + Spreadsheet integration),
Leadbay predicts who their next customer will be:
Scores their current pipeline/inbound leads,
Suggests new companies the sales team wasn’t previously aware of.
Additionally, Leadbay continuously learns by leveraging any new updates (from the market, their CRM, and based on the interactions on the platform).
The sales team can now stop searching for and qualifying leads, and start focusing on the companies most likely to buy.
AI won’t take the job of traditional sales reps, but surely those of growth teams.
All the debates on the web, at the Salesforce Dreamforce Summit, and at SaaStr 2024 are about AI AGENTS versus AI SDR versus bla-bla-bla-bla…
At Leadbay, we never believed in a model of replacing sales reps. This will never be the case for traditional sales teams selling physical products, who build HUMAN-first relationships with a portfolio of leads, prospects, customers, colleagues, and other reps. Sales is a PEOPLE business.
We also do believe that only a small part of the population (the 20% tech sales teams) fully caught up with data-driven software and teams. Being data-driven today requires extensive skilled teams (data scientist, SDR, Growth Engineer), structured data, and considerable expenses. In the coming 5 years, it’s time for non-tech teams to finally catch up.
AI leads to rapid software adoption. First, because it is easy to use; second, because there is so much buzz around it that the market quickly becomes educated.
It comes fast, and I am increasingly surprised every day by the testimonials I receive from our traditional users. The best quotes are:
“When I saw OpenAI emerge, I immediately thought to myself that I had to become a 'ChatGPT tamer. ChatGPT is like a Lion to tame.” Martin, user at its Leadbay kickoff
“Leadbay is the first model teaching a machine what is a good lead and what is not, the same way I’m teaching my 22-month-old daughter what is a cat and what is not.” by Joris Seznec, Head of Google Workspace France & Benelux at Leadbay Keynote 1
“Leadbay will let us do 4 years of turnover in 1” by Guillaume Couet, Head of Business Growth at HomeSpirit
Importance for a domain specific-AI system to deliver AI to the last mile.
Specific learnings
AI model is a mater of learnings. And you can’t bring “hallucinations” when talking about sales and turnover. You must bring accuracy. To do it, Leadbay brings 3 types of learning to its model:
Adapted to specific workflows
The workday of sales reps in tech companies differs significantly from those in traditional businesses: different stacks, different customer interactions, and different emotions. Therefore, the software used must also be different.
LLM is technically limited for B2B sales specific tasks
LLMs are primarily designed to generate text (= answering questions or summarising content).
RAG is an early stage in AI development. It improves the accuracy of AI by adding data, but there is much more to add to expand the cognitive capabilities of AI models.
Our focus is on building a domain-specific model for B2B sales. Bringing AI to the "last mile" means enabling it to tackle more complex cognitive tasks, like helping salespeople with predictions, estimates, and deeper analysis, to truly assist in their workflow.
Conclusion
To conclude, AI will come to support the largest white collar market in the world: sales reps.
Support reps don’t mean replacing reps.
Sales, especially traditional sales, must implies HUMAN-first relationship. A world without sales reps representing companies values and product don’t exist. Sales is a demanding daily job that requires immense energy. Therefore, sales professionals deserve the boldest AI companion to minimize time spent on administrative tasks and prospect qualification, allowing them to focus more on selling the right product to the right lead : leadbay.
AI accuracy against AI hallucination.
AI for B2B sales means much more than text generation and summarisation. It requires specific models learning on the market, the company’s knowledge and the rep instinct to deliver value with the best accuracy possible: prediction.
It is time for traditional sales teams to finally catchup with technologies for growth.
Tech teams have done an outstanding job for the past 10 years by catching up with data-driven software and teams. Being data-driven today requires extensive skilled teams (data scientist, SDR, Growth Engineer), structured data, and considerable expenses. In the coming 5 years, it’s NOW the time for non-tech teams to finally catch up.
🤘🏽 Want to try out Leadbay (for large sales team in the US/FRA); request an access here.