6-Week AI Challenge for Sales Leaders

Towards the beginning of this year, I had a great conversation with a fellow sales leader,?Kevin Dorsey. He pointed out to me the potential of ChatGPT and generative AI for sales and sales leadership.

I had played around with ChatGPT a bit but it wasn’t until then that I realized AI was going to be way bigger than I had thought.

Intrigued and motivated by the conversation, this is when I decided to fully immerse myself into the world of AI.

In these past 6 months, it has changed how I work and how we (Skaled) work with clients. As you probably have already noticed, it’s changing how we think about sales, from outbound to quality conversations to onboarding.

Leveraging AI has completely transformed our productivity as well as expanded our knowledge base -?and if you’re interested in embarking on a similar journey, you’ll want to check out the article below where I share?4 rules to follow, so you can save months to years of work for your future self.

Better yet, consider this as a "6-week challenge," as one of my rules involves setting a time frame. But view it as a way to kickstart your AI journey and create a flexible plan tailored to your needs. It doesn't have to be ChatGPT specifically; any AI tool can be incorporated.

So let’s get to it. If you want to transform how you work, join the millions of people already benefiting from AI.?I guarantee you that other leaders and sellers are trying to achieve the same thing as you or similar.

“One of the most important parts of being a leader today is staying in front of innovation.”

Towards the beginning of this year, I had a great conversation with a fellow sales leader, my man?Kevin Dorsey, over beer and pizza, and he was telling me about ChatGPT and AI for sales and sales leadership.?

I had downloaded ChatGPT and started playing around with it and learning some of the basics, but after this conversation, I realized this was going to be much bigger than I thought.

So I put myself on this plan to start immersing myself in ChatGPT. It’s changed how I work and how we work with clients, and as you probably have already heard, it’s changing how we think about sales, from outbound to quality conversations to onboarding.

Through doing this myself, I’ve developed a set of rules for anyone who wants to do the same. In this session, I walk people through my steps, and I guarantee you – if you start doing this today, you will save your future self months to years of work.

This will be a “6-week challenge” because one of my rules is making it time-bound. But think of this as a way to kickstart your AI journey and as a flexible plan you can build specifically for yourself. And it doesn’t have to be ChatGPT. It can be any AI tool.?

If you want AI to change how you work and how it’s already changed how millions of people work, keep these four rules in mind when immersing yourself so you don’t get overwhelmed or off track.

Recap: Leaders – How To Immerse Yourself In AI Over 6 Weeks So You Don’t Get Left Behind

Skip ahead to:

• 2:48 – My number one advice before starting is to set a goal. For me, it was also a time-bound goal.
• 4:27 – Don’t chase the shiny object. You will hear about more and more advancements weekly. Write it down if it’s interesting but stay focused on the goal.
• 6:00 – My goal was to test the limits of what this could do for sales advice and sales leadership.
• 7:38 – I don’t worry about how people exaggerate the quality of AI and answers from ChatGPT because I know that the speed at which I get an answer is still faster than starting at 0, even if it isn’t perfect on the first try.
• 8:18 – My expectation isn’t that AI will fix everything for me. My expectation is that I will end up in a better place.
• 9:45 – ChatGPT isn’t going to be great at everything at once.
• 11:32 – What is a goal of something you want to get better at? Think about a process or skill you care about.
• 13:00 – You’ll face some challenges with ChatGPT, but don’t get frustrated. It isn’t perfect.

Related Content:?How ChatGPT is Changing Every Role in Sales?

My Four Rules: AI for Sales Leadership

#1 SET A GOAL

My number 1 piece of advice and rule is to start with a specific goal in mind. Everyone’s exposure to ChatGPT and AI is different, so it can be anything you want, even if you haven’t dipped your toe in. But I’ll suggest two things when creating this goal.

1. Connect the goal to a sales or business goal and how AI can help you achieve it.
2. Make it time-bound.

For me, I wanted to test the limits of what ChatGPT could do for sales advice and sales leadership. I wanted to see how frontline salespeople could use it in their day-to-day (did it give great answers) and are there ways it can be beneficial for sales leadership in conversations and coaching.

For you, it may not be ChatGPT. Maybe you want to integrate X tool into ABC area, but before you can do that, you need to experiment with the steps in the process. Maybe you want to find two ways to make your team more productive. Maybe you want to decrease preparation time for meetings, etc. Another piece of advice I’d give here is to stick to one tool or one initiative.

I also dedicated an hour a day for six weeks. Now, you may be thinking you don’t have an hour a day to spare – make it 30 minutes. Make it 20 minutes. But you won’t be successful if you don’t set a consistent amount of DAILY time to immerse yourself.

#2 CRAWL, WALK, RUN

What do I mean by this? Don’t chase the shiny object. More and more content and advances are coming out around AI for sales leadership weekly, daily even. And once you get started, you’ll start thinking about more and more applications that you hadn’t thought of before. But don’t get distracted.

Write it down, and make a list so you don’t forget. As I said, this is a 6-week kickstart, but stay focused on the goal right now.?

And don’t feel that you’re falling behind because you’re not testing everything. The only way to fall behind is not to get started. And remember, you were already worried about dedicating 30 minutes a day, which means you definitely won’t have the time to chase shiny new objects, and it will just discourage you.

This leads me to…

#3 DON’T GET DISCOURAGED

Don’t overwhelm yourself. If you don’t start to see results, you won’t keep going, which is why rule #1 is so important. But I also mean “don’t get discouraged” in another way.

With my journey and ChatGPT, it took time to learn and understand the limitations and potential of the Learning Language Model (LLM).

Crafting prompts is becoming its own art and science, just like sales. The quality of prompts and the content you feed ChatGPT will determine the quality of your answers.

So don’t get discouraged and frustrated if it’s not outputting great answers or what you initially asked for. You just need to learn how to ask better questions.

#4 BALANCE YOUR EXPECTATIONS

In rule #3, you’ll notice how I specifically called ChatGPT as a Learning Language Model. I did this purposefully and not just to use fancy jargon to sound like I know what I’m talking about.?

I wanted to call out that people forget the?learning?in Learning Language Model. You have to build on your threads and teach ChatGPT to be your expert, your content creator, to follow specific rules, etc.

It’s pretty great at best practices and trends right off the bat, but you’ll have to train it for more advanced use cases.

The same will go for any other AI application or goal you set. I said it would save your future self months to years, but you have to put in the upfront work.

AI for Sales Leadership Example Schedule

I didn’t talk about this specifically in the live session, but if you’re a person who likes a set schedule versus an open-ended 30-minutes – 1 hour a day, here’s what this challenge could look like:

Week 1?

• Time commitment: 30 minutes a day (2.5 hours)
• Weekly Goal:
• Set a goal and pick your tool to help me achieve it (my examples will be around ChatGPT).
• Start experimenting with different types of prompts to see how the model responds.

Week 2?

• Time commitment: 30 minutes a day (2.5 hours)
• Weekly Goal:
• Experiment with asking more complex questions and evaluate the model’s ability to provide accurate and detailed responses.
• Practice asking follow-up questions and multi-prompt threads to engage in more in-depth conversations.

Week 3?

• Time commitment: 30 minutes a day (2.5 hours)
• Weekly Goal:
• Determine the most important 3-4 threads I want to build for myself/team.?
• Start building threads 1 and 2.

Week 4

• Time commitment: 30 minutes a day (2.5 hours)
• Weekly Goal:
• Keep building
• What are the limitations I’m finding?

Week 5

• Time commitment: 30 minutes a day (2.5 hours)
• Weekly Goal:
• Keep building
• What are the limitations I’m finding?

Week 6

• Time commitment: 30 minutes a day (2.5 hours)
• Weekly Goal:
• Keep building
• What are the limitations I’m finding?

#6weekAIchallenge

And that’s it. These are my four rules for your 6-week challenge and example schedule to immerse yourself in ai as a sales leader. But also…

This isn’t a set rule, but another great way to keep learning and hold yourself accountable is to talk about it with your community on LinkedIn.?

I guarantee you that other leaders and sellers are trying to achieve the same thing as you or something similar.

Created a great prompt? Post it.?

Found a workaround? Post it.?

Get stuck? Post it and ask for answers.

Then use #6weekaichallenge.