The New Standard for Sales Coaching in the AI Era with Marcy Stoudt

(upbeat music) Welcome to the Revenue Builders Podcast with John McMahon and John Kaplan. This podcast is brought to you by the team of Forge Management. In this segment, Marcy Stout, founder of Rebel Companies, breaks down how AI is changing one of the most important responsibilities in sales leadership. Coaching. This conversation focuses on a simple but critical shift. For years, managers struggled to observe real customer interactions and give meaningful feedback at scale. With AI, that constraint is gone. At the same time, leaders are dealing with constant meetings and cognitive overload. Marcy explains how top operators are using AI, not to just increase productivity, but to create space to think, coach, and lead more effectively. For CEOs and frontline managers, this raises the standard. The tools are here. The question is, how you use them? Let's dive in. (upbeat music) - The lifeblood of organizations has always been frontline management and the ability to qualify and the ability to coach and develop individual. I always say, you gotta own your number. You gotta attract top talent to the company. You have to retain top talent and you gotta be a voracious qualifier. Those are four sentences. Those are really, really big deals. And coaching, I think, and Marcy, I'd like your opinion on this. I know as you've started Rebel, it was basically executive coaching and you're so good at it. I'd like your thoughts on this. But for me, automating and giving capacity to, you first have to tell somebody what's expected at that. You next have to show them how to do something. You next have to watch them do something. This is the one that typically where everything falls down in the planet. We can't watch, we can't replicate ourselves, we can't go on enough calls with technology today, you can. So you now have access to be able to validate what is happening with a customer in a conversation or what have you. And then the last thing is to give people feedback. So the ability to coach people, the ability to correct challenges and behavioral things, sales skills and sales knowledge has never, ever been this amazing. I mean, you used to have to be in the room, in the car, with the rep, and even then we didn't take advantage of that. There is no excuse on the planet now to not be a great coach. Those are just the tools. Now can you imagine when you put the technology, those tools together with incredible domain expertise like a Marcy, a John McMahon, a John Kaplan, or what have you. This is the utopia where you have that technology capability and you can build in the human factor of the domain expertise. This I think we're going to see some explosions in the marketplace. I think this is going to be a really fun time. Well, and hopefully, it should be the fun time. Like I know a lot of people have fear on AI, but if you can clear clutter, you are, I think the epidemic that you have going on in probably all countries, but America especially, is this state of overwhelm. It's like one meeting to another, you're no longer walking down the hall or to another building for your next meeting, getting any sort of break. It's like back to back to back. And I'm like those days have got to be over, like busy is basically going to sink your ship. So now that we have this AI thing, you should figure out where you can kind of find space in your calendar. And I know John, you mentioned the blog, like I wrote in the blog that I love finding time that typically I would sit and strategize with my computer. Like I'd kind of think about this and I think about that. I'd write it out, I'd prepare with my computer to try and have a good work document to make sure I'm doing it. But now with AI, I just use the voice feature. And instead of being, you know, in my office, I've been in all day, I can go sit outside and get like a fresh view, like your creativity, your brain is amazing when you actually feel it with like the right energy and focus. But you're just like, hey, this is what I'm thinking. My customer's struggling with this. I was thinking that and you just talk to it. And it'll kind of give you feedback. And if you do it right, like for what I did is what I didn't realize is initially when I was using chat to you, it was always give me, you know, add a girl's like, my chat to you, I thought it was really good. And so if you give me all this positive feedback and I was like, I'd eat it up. I was like, yeah, that's right. That was a good idea. And then I programmed my strategist and I, you do custom instructions, you know, hopefully by this point, everybody that is on this, do custom instructions for any of your projects, whether you use gem or your chat to you, but do your own projects. You can have closed loop instructions. So I have some that are closed loop. Like it's not allowed to go outside of the content I give. But I had to program one for me that basically. And I uploaded the strategy books that I follow. I uploaded like some main core thinkings. And then I say, have it challenged me. Never accept an answer based on what I say. Always thinking, but you can do that. So then I never am feeling stale. I feel like I can prep with my AI strategist to think bigger. And it pushes me harder. And nowadays it's kind of nice to get confronted because when your GPT is confronting you, you're like, yeah, I really do need to think a little bigger on that one. You're not alone. And then I think that's the main point of this. Like I'm not an AI technologist or a investor, like a big scale. But nobody should be left behind. You're only left behind because you lack. You have a limited mindset versus a growth mindset around this. And if there's one skill, you're really got to be great at. It's figuring out how to make it work for you in a way that feels fun. Like this is like the time. This is a time in business that's like no other. And it's just cooler when you're the top of the title wave, figuring it out versus at the bottom, waiting for like, wow, where are the jobs going to be in 20, you know, the year the people have fear over? I think that's big. I think that I remember I was telling my kids my son. I was at a wedding with my son this weekend. I said, I remember with my grandfather, I was sitting with my grandfather at the end of his life. And I was saying, Gramps, you rode in the horse and buggy. You rode in an automobile. You rode in an airplane. You saw computers. You saw them put a man on the moon. And I'm going through all this. And he's my grandfather's a real smart dude. And he listened to me in the end. And he goes, yeah, you're right. And he said, that's going to seem like a blink of an eye to you. When you-- and it's funny because when I was talking to my son, last year we created more data than in the entire history of the world of data. So the fantastic thing about that, if you have that mindset, Marcy, like, it's just a wonderful time. I love what you're saying, because I'm way more productive. I'll be working out. I'll be walking or riding a bike or working in the gym or what have you. And I'm using voice notes. And people will say to me, how much time does it take you to do the Monday motivations or whatever? Those are all a conglomerate of the things that I thought about during the week. And then it comes together for me on a Sunday. And I really enjoy that time, because it's like, OK. And you want it to be useful or purposeful. You just don't want it to be vomiting up ideas. These are conversations you're having with people. Embrace it and look for productivity. I mean, those things would have taken me hours to write in the past. They take probably less than 20 minutes now for me, which is fantastic. With no headspace, like, I should be doing this. I need to do it. The drag-- a lot of stress is because of a negative thought of what you should be doing. And now, if you use AI effectively, you can have more moments when you're in flow and just get it done. There's nothing better for me than being on a run or a walk. And I'm kind of in the flow. I've got the good ideas. And I just go to one of my projects of what it's about. So it knows what I'm trying to do already, because that's already programmed. I just kind of talk to it. By the time I get back to my office, it's a copy paste into my draft. And then from there, I can use my lens on it. But it really-- I mean, we're in a really cool age. Thanks for listening to today's episode. If you enjoy the content, please subscribe. Rate and review the show to help us reach more people. This show is brought to you by Force Management, where we help companies improve sales performance, executing the growth strategy at the point of sale. Check out Forcemanagement.com for more information. [MUSIC PLAYING]