Improving Sales Performance
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Improving Sales Performance
Closed vs. Open AI: Understanding the Difference for Sales Teams with Stephanie Downs
In this episode, we’re discussing the key differences between “closed” and “open” AI tools. We’ll also break down how Sales Accelerator AI, CSS’ own closed AI system, is designed to address the unique challenges salespeople regularly face.
And helping Matt explore it all is Stephanie Downs, SVP/Senior Consultant at The Center for Sales Strategy.
Stephanie offers so many awesome things to think about, like:
- How closed AI tools can offer more tailored responses by working solely from the information that you teach it
- How, when open AI tools don’t know an answer, they often produce “hallucinations,” filling in the gaps with inaccurate information
- And, finally, why sellers who are leery about embracing these tools need to understand that AI is not the future, it's the present
LINKS:
Welcome to Improving Sales Performance, a podcast highlighting tips and insights aimed at helping sales organizations realize, and maybe even exceed, their goals. Here we chat with thought leaders, experts and gurus who have years of sales experience from a wide range of industries. I'm your host, matt Sunshine, ceo at the Center for Sales Strategy, a sales performance consulting company. In this episode, we're discussing the key differences between closed and open AI tools. We'll also break down how Sales Accelerator AI CSS's own closed AI system is designed to address the unique challenges salespeople regularly face, and helping me explore it all is Stephanie Downs, svp, senior Consultant at the Center for Sales Strategy.
Matt Sunshine:Stephanie offers so many awesome things to think about, like how closed AI tools can offer more tailored responses by working solely from the information that you teach it. How, when open AI tools don't know an answer, they often produce hallucinations, filling in the gaps with inaccurate information with inaccurate information. And finally, why sellers who are leery about embracing these tools need to understand that AI is not the future, it is the present. With that, let's dive into the conversation. So first, for those who may not be familiar, can you explain the difference between what's called a closed AI tool versus an open AI tool?
Stephanie Downs:Yeah, yeah. So the simplest way to explain that, when you think about open AI tools, they're publicly available right Now. When you think about open AI tools, they're publicly available, right. Anything and everything is available. Anyone can view, anyone can modify, benefit of that is that they foster collaboration. Right, because people can build off other people's work because of it being an open environment. A closed environment is more access is more restricted. It's more proprietary. There's a security measure with closed walls because it doesn't pull from the outsides right, it's just from within your organization. There's also benefits of that right. We'll talk more about that, though, but that's just the high level differences between the two.
Matt Sunshine:So a closed environment only knows what it's been taught what it's told.
Stephanie Downs:That's right.
Matt Sunshine:And an urban environment will go out and look for answers and Cross all things, that's right. Got it. All right, so let's talk now about the CSS AI tool. It's called the Sales Accelerator AI. It is a closed system, so as a closed AI system specifically designed, in this case, for sales and all the parts of the sales process, how does that differ from something like ChatGPT in terms of both capabilities and the types of problems it can solve?
Stephanie Downs:Yeah, for sure, and some of it was how you were repeating back to me about the closed system. I mean, in concept, they function very similar, right? They function the same way. The biggest difference from like the sales accelerator AI is because it only knows what we've taught it. It knows our intellectual property. It knows you know our experience around sales process because we've told it everything that it knows. It also offers more tailored responses as a result of that specific to sales process. You know. You think about if a salesperson is doing an input that they're trying to get an appointment with a prospect using that as an example, they're trying to get an appointment. You know. If they're using chat, gpt, it'll still write an email. It'll still do the outreach, it'll still create the sequences. The difference about sales accelerator AI is it pulls from our institutional knowledge. It pulls for what we teach related to that part of the sales process of using valid business reasons and making sure that it's all about the prospect and not the organization that the salesperson represents. So there's a big difference in that.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah, I had someone explain it to me. Well, I was explaining it to somebody and they listened to what I said and they said, can I give you a sports analogy? And I said, sure, lay it on me. And they said it's kind of like football teams. They all have their own plays and you can ask a football expert hey, what's the best play to run in this situation? Lots of right answers, depending on what type of system you're running. Right, and one team system is different than another team system is different than another team system. So they were selling they were actually selling me on why sales accelerator AI is so valuable for their own company, because it's consistent with the system that they run.
Stephanie Downs:It's a good word for it.
Matt Sunshine:And I was like, ah, you know what, I had not thought about it that way, but you're right, it is consistent. It's maybe no better or worse than something else out there, but it's all consistent with each other.
Stephanie Downs:It's a great analogy.
Matt Sunshine:So what are some specific examples of how the sales accelerator AI can help salespeople to overcome those common challenges that might be difficult to address with and we keep saying chat GPT, but it could be copilot.
Stephanie Downs:It could be any AI tool.
Matt Sunshine:Or any of them, that's right.
Stephanie Downs:Yeah, yes. So I think there's a couple of things, but one thing that really resonates with me, when you think about more of a closed system like Sales Accelerator AI, is you avoid issues like with hallucinations. Yeah, I mean, that would be one. There's a lot of benefits, but that's a biggie because you think about open AI tools of benefits, but that's a biggie because you think about open AI tools when they don't know the answer or they don't have an exact example. It fills in the gaps, right. It generates outputs. It could be false, it could be misleading, it could just be wrong information, maybe outdated information, and you avoid that when you have like a sales accelerator AI, because it doesn't pull from outside across all platforms, across other things. It only knows what it knows and what we've taught it.
Matt Sunshine:For example, yeah, those hallucinations are real right.
Stephanie Downs:Oh, they're very real, but that's why so many companies are scared about having their sales teams other than the security factor I mean, that's another part of this conversation but that's why so many companies are really concerned about having their teams use open source AIs.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah, because the response that it gives is delivered quickly and articulately right. If you don't know, you don't know, and if you don't know you read it, You're like well, it must, must be right.
Stephanie Downs:Must be true.
Matt Sunshine:Because it says it so, and even sometimes we'll give examples, and but I mean there's the famous, you know the famous flub, I guess, of the lawyer that used chat GPT or one of the open AI sources I don't know if it was chat GPT or not and quoted a case, made reference to a case that didn't exist.
Stephanie Downs:Yeah.
Matt Sunshine:And I think that person was yeah lost his law license, so yeah, I get it, yeah. So let's go back to this. How, how does you know? I think, when people think about AI, and I think what they're trying to do is that they're trying to be more productive, yeah, create efficiencies. Yeah, sure. So how does the sales accelerator AI help salespeople to improve efficiencies, become more productive, all without sacrificing the fact that there's a human here that's doing the work?
Stephanie Downs:Yeah, yeah, a few different things on that. Ai should be seen as a supportive tool, like that. It is helping create those efficiencies. It is helping us do our job faster and even better in some cases. But it's a supportive tool, it's not a replacement tool. I guess it can be, but it shouldn't be seen that way. Right, it definitely improves efficiencies, but you have to have the human element. So you think about sales accelerator AI. It can draft tailor emails and messages that save time, but the seller, the salespeople or sales leaders or whoever you still need to add the personal touch. You still have to add the client-specific research. You still have to add you know the information you know based off the research you've done on the prospect or the research that you just have from the human side still brings the relationship. It still brings the engaging with clients and that interaction. The tool just helps us do it better. But you still have to have the people piece of it.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah, I would hate to lose the people element, for sure. But equally, it'd be wrong not to use AI. Right, it'd be wrong to not use it and wrong to overuse it. You got to find that sweet spot.
Stephanie Downs:That's right Salespeople in today's environment. Shame on them if they're not using it. I actually was on the phone. I was actually on the phone with a salesperson just in the last couple of weeks and we were having a conversation about AI. It was something very similar to this and she actually said to me I've never used it, I don't want to use it, and I I was pretty direct in my response to her in saying I appreciate why she feels that way. She's looking at what she interprets as the negative consequence of using AI. She's not seeing the benefits of how it really can help us do our job and our work and it can help us be better at it too, not just efficiencies.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah, I agree. So while we could go on and on about all the ways that AI can be incredibly helpful, incredibly useful help with efficiencies, help with ideation so many different things that AI can do, and I know we both think that smart salespeople and smart sales teams are using it effectively let's pause for a second and think about the limitations. Let's just let's slow down just for a second and think about the limitations of open AI tools that we've mentioned before, when it comes to things like writing those highly personalized emails or developing any sort of a nuanced strategy. Give some discussion. Let's talk a little bit about that.
Stephanie Downs:Yeah, it really raises concerns when you think about that. Personalized, I mean, if you're in an open AI situation and you're entering that, you're calling on a specific account and you're using a specific name of an individual that you're trying to reach out, it raises the concerns about data privacy. I mean there are security issues. I mean AI uses what we tell it. Right, it uses the information that is shared. It can also feel impersonal. You know AI can feel impersonal. It doesn't have that emotional intelligence to really that sellers can bring to things and this isn't specific to personalized emails, you know, based off, you know what you were asking me with that but AI can also. Really it doesn't do well with complex sales scenarios. It really doesn't I don't know what the right word is for it, but it doesn't deal well with those quite so much. It's not as nuanced as we would like it to be in sales.
Matt Sunshine:Not yet.
Stephanie Downs:Not yet. It's a matter of time, that's probably true, but sellers are more equipped to deal with those situations in real time and all of that. But the biggest thing to me is really the data privacy issue and the security issues that are out there.
Matt Sunshine:When it comes to that, and I think I'm right when I say this the majority of the companies that we work with, they care a lot about that.
Stephanie Downs:Oh, I think that is 100% accurate, right.
Matt Sunshine:I know that every company, almost every company that we work with, the legal department has had to review our sales accelerator AI to make sure that it is okay and passes their standards and all of that. And I do know that some have restrictions on what they will let their people use, even at the office, because of the security, and that's really important you got to look at that.
Stephanie Downs:That's the biggest thing.
Matt Sunshine:So last question for you. This has to do with. So there are people that are quick to jump on the bandwagon, like me, like I am, I am Right. I am first on the on the. Let's try it, let's see. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work, who cares? We'll give it a shot. Let's exclude those people from this conversation. First, what would you say to anyone, specifically in sales, who still might be leery or they haven't embraced AI? They're not using it as part of their daily routine? What's your message to these folks?
Stephanie Downs:Regardless of how they feel about it, it is not going away.
Stephanie Downs:It's not going away. It behooves them to leverage it, to understand it, to utilize it, to be able to discuss it, to find ways to incorporate it that works for them. It behooves them. If not, they're going to quickly get left behind. The things they're worried about for them personally is going to become a reality if they don't learn how to use the tool. Actually, one of our coworkers I just saw this on LinkedIn yesterday One of our coworkers used the phrasing that AI is not the future, it's the present, and I thought no truer words.
Stephanie Downs:I mean it really is, it's today, it's not coming, but truly I mean salespeople or anyone that is not really utilizing the tool for the ways that it can benefit them. They need to figure it out because it truly can help them create efficiencies. It can help them, you know, understand trends and look at data, insights and all the things that can just make them better at their job and more productive and have better you know customer relationships and improve their sales performance. They just need to figure out how to use it to benefit them.
Matt Sunshine:Yeah it's. You know, these things come along from time to time like the Internet, right Computers, Computers, right Computers, the Internet, the smartphone, right, and you said, oh, I'm not going to do that, I don't need that, I don't want. I mean, I would imagine when the car first came around, there were people like I'm not going to get in that, no way.
Matt Sunshine:It's not going away. Yeah, it's not going away. It's not going. I mean, there's a scene in one of the prequels to to yellowstone I can't remember which one one of the prequels to yellowstone. They, uh, they're walking down main street and there's a brand new washing machine being demoed and they say to each other, like who, who would want that? I mean, look what it's going to do to your clothes, who would ever use a washing machine? But that's probably true, right? That's the way I think about AI and all of those things. It's like people probably look at that and go, why would we ever do that? I can just do it myself and I get that thinking. I get it at surface level but it's not going anywhere and if you don't embrace it.
Matt Sunshine:So then the question just becomes which AI do I use and how do I use it? And I think that gets back to what you started off by explaining at the top of this podcast, explaining at the top of this podcast the difference between open AI tools and closed AI tools and the value of each of them, because they each bring unique value.
Stephanie Downs:They do yeah.
Matt Sunshine:You got to pick and choose. When do you want to use which one, and both have benefits. Exactly, I think that's a great place for us to wrap up. We could actually probably do a five-hour podcast on all of this.
Matt Sunshine:It could be all day, but I think we touched on some of the really important main topics. I have a feeling that anyone who listens to this is going to have some additional questions. So, stephanie, thank you for joining us. I'm going to drop your contact information, your LinkedIn information, into the show notes so that anybody that wants to reach out to you can reach out to you and for everyone that listened to this. Thank you so much for listening to the Improving Sales Performance Podcast and we'll look to see you on the next episode. Thank you so much, podcast, and we'll look to see you on thecom. There, you can find helpful resources and content aimed at improving your sales performance.
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