SALES TECH

Francis Scialabba

Whether you think cold calling is dead or consider it the only truly AI-proof sales discipline, a plethora of AI tools claim to help refine a task dreaded by many. But can AI cold calling tools ever really match the nuance or talent of a human seller? Revenue Brew spoke with two sales leaders on the current landscape.

A changing discipline

AI for cold calling tends to fall into two distinct categories, the first being conversational AI agents that simulate humans on a live call. According to a February 2024 FCC ruling, such calls are legally classified as “artificial,” making unsolicited outbound AI calls illegal under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) without prior express written consent. To comply, a cold call needs to be initiated manually by a human being or after a prospect signs an online form.

The second category is an AI tool that helps prep a salesperson to perform well on a cold call through specific coaching techniques; these kinds of tools will engage in anything from objection handling, to active listening and role-plays.

Emotions matter

“There’s so much judgment and emotional attunement that needs to happen when it comes to all parts of the sales cycle, even in the earliest part with qualifications and things like that,” said Angela Garinger Bennett, VP of AI GTM transformation at revenue orchestration platform Outreach. She says that it would be difficult for AI to understand the nuance of the human experience.

Andy Springer, chief client officer at global sales training platform RAIN group, thinks these tools are still in their infancy, meaning they’re not skilled enough to replicate a human seller on a cold call. As AI proliferates through daily life, he also believes that prospects are becoming aware of when they’re speaking to a robot, which can ultimately hurt the sales process.

Read how to leverage AI tools to your advantage.—LI

      

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REVENUE OPERATIONS

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Tariffs have posed a serious challenge to major industries across the globe, and with an estimated cost of around $35 billion since last year, automakers suffered some of the biggest casualties.

Many have had to pivot to mitigate the impact on their top and bottom lines. Nissan, for one, put more focus on its American-manufactured models like the Rogue, Pathfinder, and Frontier, to not only skirt the challenges of tariffs, but to boost overall growth.

According to Q2 sales figures, Nissan’s US retail sales grew 8% YoY; the carmaker has also experienced 16 consecutive months of YoY retail sales growth.

“Momentum is building at Nissan,” said Tiago Castro, Nissan’s US SVP of marketing and sales. “We like to say Nissan is back—and it’s consistently back.”

Made in America

Alongside its Mexican-manufactured Kicks and Sentra models, Nissan’s American-built models—which accounted for over 60% of its retail sales volume in the first half of this year—have become the center of the company’s inventory strategy. According to Q2 sales figures, the Frontier saw retail sales grow by 37% YoY, the Rogue by 29% YoY, while the Pathfinder delivered the best-ever quarter total volume.

“We just went back to, ‘What do customers want?’” Castro said. “They like the V6 [engine]. They like the frame-based truck, and they love our quality. Well, let’s put that together in a message that’s delivering a package that customers understand [and] the dealers understand.”

According to Jim Johnson, VP account planning and head of automotive industry solutions at advertising company VDX.tv, Nissan refocusing on its US-built models was a key component of its recent success.

Keep reading for more on Nissan’s retail strategy.—LI

      

REVENUE STRATEGY & LEADERSHIP

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Getty Images

Having one person preside over sales, marketing, and RevOps might seem like...a lot.

But those are just a few of the functions that the modern day chief revenue officer is responsible for coalescing into a unified revenue engine.

It’s a tall task—and the CRO role is only becoming more complex and in-demand amid rapid technological changes.

What was once essentially a head of sales role has transformed into a more strategic leadership position responsible for grasping the big picture and working toward long-term, sustainable growth.

The CRO acts as “a synthesizer…of many, sometimes conflicting, roles in the organization where sales may want one thing, whereas it may run counter to what marketing wants. It may run counter to what finance wants,” Raghuram Iyengar, a marketing professor and academic director for the Wharton School’s CRO program, told Morning Brew. “So the role of the CRO is thinking about all these different moving parts that might be driving revenue.”

History lesson

The CRO title cropped up in the late ’90s in the tech industry, then took off in the late 2000s and early 2010s, primarily among small- and mid-sized businesses and mid-market B2B SaaS companies, according to Dan Frailey, a three-time CRO and lead of the Chicago Booth School’s CRO Executive Education Program.

Companies “needed a more integrated approach to what they did because it was, for the first time, possible to be more integrated in what they do,” Frailey told us, “because the technology and the access to data about your marketplace and about your customer started to evolve.”

The CRO role was and remains more common at smaller companies, Frailey said, in part because of the complexities of large enterprises. As of 2023, only 11% of Fortune 100 companies had a CRO, per McKinsey, though an analysis by the consulting firm suggests that those with a CRO-like role have 1.8x the revenue growth of their counterparts.

Read more on the path to becoming a CRO.—JG

      

active pipeline

Stat: $2.9 billion. That’s how much 105-year-old snack brand Utz is being acquired for by Germany’s Intersnack Group. (Inc.)

Quote: “Every single job will change, and there will be a whole bunch of new jobs…The narrative of AI destroying jobs is exactly backward.”—Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (Business Insider)

Read: Big companies are starting to hire again, defying predictions of AI wipeout. (the Wall Street Journal)

Consumers are warming up to AI imagery, but only if retailers play by the rules (Retail Brew)

A recent survey from Caimera revealed that 70% of consumers are actually open to the use of AI imagery while 10% deemed it harmful.

Scaling AI: Is this the year it happens? (CFO Brew)

Getting past pilot state requires considerable effort from the C-suite, Tipalti exec says.

Tech stack changing as prompt requests shorten (IT Brew)

As AI increases its capabilities, there’s less of a need for users to give their chatbots lengthy directives—which is leading to some interesting changes.

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