135 | Human Connection in an AI-driven world

Jon Busby: Welcome again to another episode of the Tech Marketing Podcast. I'm joined in the podcasting studio by a fellow podcast veteran. You've of course been on the Tech Marketing Podcast with us before. A  

Adam Brown: while ago now. It  

Jon Busby: was, yeah. Adam, Adam Brown:, Head of Channel Sales at Samsung. So welcome again, Adam. 

Pleasure to have you back. It's a pleasure to have you back. I think we've been excited to do this for a while. You've been incredibly active on LinkedIn. And one of the main things you've been active about, of course, is a The use of AI and artificial intelligence. Um, we're going to discuss kind of some of that today and then how that bleeds into human connections, aren't we? 

Adam Brown: Sounds good to me. Yeah.  

Jon Busby: As you got involved in, you know, that community, like, how have you found the meteoric rise of artificial intelligence? Like, tell me about, you know, your journey with it so far.  

Adam Brown: Well, I don't want to sound super cynical or be one of those people, but AI's been around for a lot longer than LinkedIn would just have you believe. 

I think what's really interesting is just how much, uh, attention it's got recently rather than necessarily it changing. Um, it's really interesting when you think about how embedded AI has been in so many of our lives for such a long time, like if you use Amazon, um, most of my studies, you know, the, the quality of the recommendations of those products. 

It's been a bit spooky at times. We  

Jon Busby: always, we all use the target. I mean, I don't know if you've seen it, but the target example where they predicted as a teenager was pregnant before their family knew. Um, so you're right. Product recommendations have always been there.  

Adam Brown: I mean, it's the cornerstone of, you know, good online marketing nowadays, right? 

Isn't it? Simming  

Jon Busby: up,  

Adam Brown: promptly targeted adverts slash recommendations.  

Harry Radcliffe: I  

Adam Brown: mean, that's, that's AI. Um, but it's hidden and it's not as, you know, fun or flashy as some of the examples, I guess, that have caught fire more recently. And it's been, yeah, it's been really fascinating to be, um, to watch it as an observer, like as a tech enthusiast and someone who loves that sort of stuff. 

It's, it's been great. Um, and of course I'm in a business as well, though, you know, it's been. Using it to sell products. It has embedded a lot of those things in its products as well. So yeah, it's been, it's been super interesting.  

Jon Busby: One thing that I found really very interesting as we've looked at the rise of AI is how much you mentioned it in marketing. 

Like there's a, someone's done a study of their inbox and their inbox was like this for a long time where it was going along on almost a flat line. And as soon as ChatGPT launched, it was like this. Um, like have you found being in sales that it's been, there's been a. Not just the meteoric rise of AI's usage, but its usage in your industry. 

The  

Adam Brown: fancy way to describe it would be the signal to noise ratio. Yeah. I  

Jon Busby: think there's a  

Adam Brown: lot of noise about it. I think the actual real usage of it in B2B, particularly in the commercial space where I am, I don't, not so much yet. I think a lot of businesses are really nervous. Yep. Um, about data integrity and about security and about, you know, how best to use it. 

I think consumers, I, I, I think it's a different thing. If you look at the, you know, the numbers of people using chat GPT or Gemini or search the stuff for our office, the numbers are incredible. Actually, the adoption rate consumer and the consumer space is, is incredible. Um, and it's gotten way faster than any of the other technologies before it. 

I think businesses are naturally risk averse, right? So it's been much, much harder to persuade businesses. Um, but that has a soccer lights of, you know, Microsoft and Samsung. Um, and you know, Qualcomm talking a big game about. Um, you know, co pilot and all that kind of stuff is coming. Yeah. And there's no doubt that it's going to cause, you know, lots of potential productivity increases. 

It's going to certainly, you know, for those of us in sales, it's going to involve a lot of new devices and new services, which is always helpful. Um, but there's no doubt. Yeah. It's going to change. It's going to change people's lives.  

Jon Busby: You mentioned productivity increase. Actually. I saw stats on this this week, which is. 

Kind of a bit controversial. It's something that I've been looking to for a while as well. But if you look at every, look at the market crash of the 1930s, you look at the market, market crash of 2008. And when you look at what we're going through today, we're actually at the lowest level of productivity gain in history, even, even throughout those, those events. 

So it may, it does make you wonder, like, despite all of the excitement around AI about the fact that, um, You know, we can now write emails five times longer and half the time we have. I don't think we quite reached the pinnacle of what we can achieve with it yet. I think we're still in that experimentation phase. 

Adam Brown: It's incredibly early. Um, we're definitely white at the cutting edge. Um, I don't know. I'm an internal optimist. I do believe, and I've always believed this, the technology is like a good force for good. Yeah. I think it's very easy to be caught up in a lot of the negative. Stuff that's happening. And for sure there are, you know, costs, the environmental societal impacts of any technology. 

AI is included in that. Um, but no, we haven't got a clue yet how AI is going to change the way we do business and the way we work, just as we didn't know, you know, we knew that the internet was coming in, that the online shopping would be a thing and it took a big burst of the bubble before that really established itself. 

But I mean, we've slept walked really into a world where everything is bought online all the time now. Yeah. And it's totally normal. And yet it was only a couple decades ago where it was not totally lawyer. But,  

Jon Busby: but, but you're right, like the, if I think about where we are, you know, where we're heading with AI and you compare that to the rise of, say, television, radio, television, online shopping, like, you know, we're definitely starting to, to reach that inflection point. 

But what, what do you think is missing? What do you think is the, is the bit that needs to happen next, especially when we look at B2B sales?  

Adam Brown: Any new tool that comes out, I think, um. You know, those of us whose job it is to make money out of selling the tools are usually ahead of the demand, right? We've got this shiny new thing and you've got to try and create a case study. 

You've got to try and create a use case for a business. Um, I think we've all got responsibility actually, particularly in my side of business to help others understand why you could use it. And I think it's really tricky. You need to persuade people that the risk is worth taking on a proof of concept or on a trial or on a, you know, rolling it out and seeing what happens. 

And they've got to do that ahead of the, of the knowledge of what it will actually deliver. There's the promise, but not yet the knowledge. So, it's really tricky. And every time you go to any sort of channel meetup, or you're in a room with lots of other channel people, um, there's a collective responsibility there to help business. 

To understand the point of the IT tools that we are all espousing as being the next big thing. So, it, you know, you ask me, what's missing? Well, it's, it's the actual proof. It can be more productive and it will help us as individuals and businesses. I don't think there's any doubt we will, um, it's just how do we actually prove it in an age where everything is measurable and ROI is, you know, you have to prove the ROI on anything nowadays before you can spend any money. 

Yeah. Um, it's really tough to do that ahead of the, of an adoption curve, really hard.  

Jon Busby: I actually thought you were going to go in a different direction there, but I'm going to, which I'm going to steer us towards because as I, as you try and bring channel is one of the slowest moving elements I think of any B2B organization. 

I get there always, I'm gonna be fairly controversial here. The people I see protective of the channel that I work with, no, we were like, I've spent 15 years operating the channel and so many of the conversations that I've had with channel leaders over the over the last decade, they're almost coming back to the same points. 

Like, how do we enable channel partners better? How do we get them using our tools? How do we get them marketing or sales? How do we get them to register deals better? Um, and those conversations really haven't changed. Uh, yeah. The couple of things that I'm kind of come back to, I think you're right with proof. 

I think we've reached a, that inflection point where we need to understand, you know, what are the best ways to deploy this new technology? You wouldn't, you wouldn't go back in time and start sending people memos. Now you're still going to send people, you know, you're going to use an email. You're going to use WhatsApp. 

Um, the cat's out of the bag with AI, but I think we need to figure out what the right use cases are. And that's where much of the challenges lie. But I also think. You know, I thought you, I was more thinking it's about people like as a technologist, I've come into these worlds thinking technology can solve this problem and actually I found that ultimately it's got to be a combination of enabling the right people, you know, to get there. 

And that's, it's technology is only a third of the actual issue. The rest of it has got to be this tool.  

Adam Brown: Yeah. And I think in exactly the same way that, um, we were all forced into video conferencing. Um, I'm working remotely, right? We were forced into that change. It happened a lot quicker than it would have otherwise. 

Um, and I think the debate post all of that has been fascinating, right? To watch people taking sides about which is best or better. Um, should I be in the office or should I be remote? Well, there's, it's a wrong question to be asking. That's just a tool. Remote working is just a tool, right? Set up your business in a way that allows your people to be the best of what they do. 

Um, don't try and replace them with a tool. And don't imagine the tool is going to solve the problem for you. AI. Like, you can't, you can't just imagine a copilot is going to suddenly make you better at, you know, being productive in your But like, if you rubbish a PowerPoint now, and you can't, you know, be good at storytelling and stand up and present well, well then, no amount of neatly summarised notes, or, you know, creative starter point for you is going to help you on that. 

That's a core skill you're missing. The tool isn't going to solve that for  

Jon Busby: you. I think, I think think That's exactly how we should be thinking about stuff like storytelling is actually one of the main things I see missing in B2B and AI is not going to make you better at doing that. As we, as I think about that example, would you say, would you say authenticity is going to be one of those challenges as well? 

Like, how do you bring, how do you make sure people are still being authentic with each other when so much of this could be written or expanded on by  

Adam Brown: AI? I mean, once you tune your eye into it, uh, AI generated content on LinkedIn, for example, is incredibly easy to spot. Um, I can't tell you as well how many in mails I've had from people, because I'm currently recruiting. 

So many people would message me with a, Can I talk to you about the job? But it's obvious that they've gone and chatted to your PT to voice it. You know, it's overly, overly formal, and it's got all the sort of hallmarks. And it's really depressing. I don't know who you are, if you're going to talk to me with a, you know, with a computer sat in the middle. 

Yeah, I think authenticity is going to be really important and, and ironically, I think being in real life like this, you can't, you know, there's going to be the one last part you can't fake it. You can't introduce an AI agent effectively into this conversation, right? And I think exact texting this fiercely holding on to this will be really important. 

Jon Busby: And that's why when I think about the channel and I say people are the third element, like there's a great example that we had last year on the, on the. Tech marketing podcast where it was a Cisco person and a partner and a charity got together to go and solve the big problem And it only happened because they happened to be out for dinner together. 

That's not something that can be Enabled through you know remote working it might have happened But it's not something that would have, would have happened if you would have just put your stuff into a big chat bot and got an answer. Like it only comes out through the savoring the surprises, I would say, through meeting people in person. 

Harry Radcliffe: Yeah.  

Jon Busby: Um, so I kind of completely agree, but like, how do you then blend? How do you blend those two worlds together to get the biggest outcome? I mean, if I could give you a  

Adam Brown: really good answer on this, I think I'd be rich. Mm  

Harry Radcliffe: hmm.  

Adam Brown: I think it's a funny, like the channel and it and a lot of this space, you was very relationship based. 

I think it's been massively professionalized over the last kind of 10, 20 years. Yeah. Much the same as the marketing side of things, right? Yep. We use, we use money and we use data and we use evidence to track how that money flows through, uh, um, through either a customer journey or, uh, or, um, or a campaign. 

Um, And we've almost forgotten about the relationship part.  

Harry Radcliffe: Mm hmm.  

Adam Brown: Um, and there are a lot of businesses now that, you know, I don't think have put enough effort and time into that. And I wonder if, ironically, we're coming back, in a way, to some of those old school, you know, relationship skills. Yep. Um, that are going to be ever more evolved. 

Jon Busby: It's, it's what I'm hearing a lot on the general side, but the other side, the other element I think is worth recognizing, where I'm just going to riff on this for a little bit, but I think it's where AI does have a place to play. There's this quote by Paul Bay from Ingram Micro in the US, and he came out last year that, A customer outcome needs on average seven different partners or products or solutions to grow, right? 

It's a fairly obvious crate when you think about it, right? You can't, if you're enabling, uh, even buying a laptop might be a laptop provider, a security provider. You know, you've probably got Microsoft somewhere in that, in that mix. Uh, you know, that's three just off the, off the bat before we think about everything else. 

Um, and one concept that we've, we've been talking about is this, is this idea that. In each of those different outcomes, you could be, you could be playing a different role, or your solution could be playing a different role. And how you're brought in and how that's coordinated is going to be one of the big challenges. 

And that doesn't, that, that lends itself a little bit to data and technology. But it's, it is the, is, is the blend of how you bring those different partners together. Yeah, we call them, this is a bit of a cheesy term, we call them like the burger or the fries. Like, are you like the main meal that, like, the laptop in this case? 

Or are you one of the add ons that then adds value to it? And how do you coordinate that ecosystem?  

Adam Brown: I mean, the chef is the important bit, right? Because without all that, it's just ingredients.  

Jon Busby: Actually, that is a great analogy that I hadn't thought about.  

Adam Brown: Well, that's worked well. Yeah,  

Jon Busby: that has. Yeah, yeah. 

I'm gonna, I'm gonna use that now. Like, but you're right. Like, who is, how That's where AI can play is, could they play as the chef to help bring people together in the right order?  

Adam Brown: I was going to say the opposite, actually, that the chef would be the last, you know, last human role remotely, but actually in some respects, you know, an AI, and there's a really good example that was popped up, the bawdy one we were talking about. 

Jon Busby: Um, I mean, what, just for our listeners, what is, what is bawdy?  

Adam Brown: LinkedIn, it's been everywhere. Um, it's, it's an AI voice agent that you call up and you have a conversation with it. Uh, he's got a very disarming Australian accent, which is immediately somehow comforting.  

Jon Busby: I wonder how they picked that, by the way. 

Adam Brown: I think they wanted something that wasn't, uh, American, um, or wasn't British. They needed somewhere that sort of spoke English, but with a sort of Yeah, but that's the universal version. Anyway, he's very disarming, and he's very nice. Um, but you have, you have a very natural language kind of conversation with him. 

Mm hmm. Um, the point of Bawli, anyway, is to connect you to other human beings. Um, so for me, I was super excited about that because I think every other AI tool I've ever seen is like, here's how we can replace part of you, and here's how we can do what you used to do, or someone else would do, but we could do it with a computer. 

Um, this is the exact opposite. Baldi doesn't exist without the human beings. Baldi is designed to connect human beings together, so you can kind of give him a summary of what you're looking for, um, and yeah, he'll introduce you to other humans. And of course, you know, as the scale grows and the network grows. 

His ability to connect you to other people that you would have never met otherwise increases exponent exponentially. So, yeah, it's, it's, I think it's fascinating use of AI and it's, for me, it's a sign that like you don't have to, it doesn't just have to be a replacement for what we can do. It can be additive. 

It can be something to us as humans.  

Jon Busby: I, I did it straight after we talked for the, the prep call for this actually. Uh, and the. Apart from the Australian accent, which I hadn't considered as being disarming, but now I might try and retrain myself to have an Australian accent, just based on that comment. But, uh, it was the element of how he introduced a conversation with you to understand where your passions lie. 

Like, it's kind of similar to this, to what we're doing now, but to be able to The outcome that he had was very different to how I would describe myself if I just would have written a Right. You know, a  

Adam Brown: Really positive, right? Yeah. And he's like, off the end of the call, and you're like, wow, that made me feel good about myself. 

Like, what he was really complimentary about. My skills, my background, in a way that I would have never heard of.  

Jon Busby: How many calls have you done? Do you do daily body calls now?  

Adam Brown: We won't talk about that. Um, there's another, there's something else in the minute actually that's very similar. Um, there's a tool in Gemini called, um, notebook LM? 

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Have you used that? Yes. Have you put your CB into it? No. It's fascinating. Put your CB into it, and I don't want to scare you, but it does a podcast with two people, and they have an incredibly natural conversation about you, and it's, it's at once both very disturbing, But also really, like, reaffirming, like, some of the things, it's a 20 minute podcast and I sat there and I listened to the whole thing, and it didn't feel egocentric to do it, honestly, it felt, um, it felt like therapy in a way. 

I came off the end of the corner thinking, wow, that was me, and I felt really good about myself, and I was like, yeah, I am, I am successful and wonderful, and yeah, it was, It was a really positive experience.  

Jon Busby: I actually might do that straight after this because that's a, that's a great way of It's a good  

Adam Brown: Friday pick me up. 

Yeah, that is,  

Jon Busby: that's a good idea.  

Adam Brown: I mean, the, the, the technology behind it is amazing. Um, and it's amazing how quickly I've already got past like, it's taken my CV, it's read it, it's generated two people having a conversation about me in an in depth analysis. I mean, that's incredible on its own. And yeah, I'm, what I'm talking about is actually the impact having me as a person, not the technology. 

Jon Busby: I, I used to, I actually think Notebook LLM that that tech core tech have a very interesting case in sales. And I'm sure you probably had the same thinking, which is, could I introduce, could I take a deck, which is our products and then the client's personas. And then on the way to the sales pitch, I can, I can consume that in a very efficient way that allows you to, to ingest. 

Like it's not like just the fact that it's a conversation between two people and they add, you know, Um, little flourishes of language to make it much more engaging to listen to. Yeah. Um, There's  

Adam Brown: that, but I'd be much more interested in using it as a coach.  

Jon Busby: Yes.  

Adam Brown: Yeah. So like, yes, learning, but again, that's quite passive. 

I actually think you can do as good a job without summary tools elsewhere. But if I was to use that as a conversational coach, it understands the subjects faster and better than I could have ever done. It isn't just like passive learning, and it will actively coach me on the, on what I'm missing. That's what I'm, I don't think we're quite there yet. 

There are  

Jon Busby: some, there are some tools out there for B2B, so, and then, I know I'm going off a little bit off topic here, but we've been exploring, the, the call center market now is exploded with these tools, and they're really fascinating the way that you can take things like a BANT requirement, which we've lived and breathed in B2B for years, and fill, fill in their requirements and their needs, real time as you're having a conversation. 

Yeah. Um, and do things like suggest products or suggest accessories or help articles throughout the call. But that, we have now started to see providers that can offer that coaching service, where they'll take a call recording and then offer back, um, coaching advice. So that, I think that's, you're right, that's still allowing for the human connection. 

Like I wouldn't want a bawdy, we were talking about this just at the beginning, I wouldn't want a bawdy to go out and do my sales calls. Because I think that's going to frustrate your end customer any more. Um,  

Adam Brown: I, it's, I mean. Do I think there's a role for AI agents doing maybe, maybe first round of call on calling? 

Potentially. Maybe follow up calls, maybe like, maybe there's a role for it somewhere, but I mean, we've all had terrible experiences with call centers, right? And we've all been sat on the end wanting to scream into the void, because the irritating, you know, computer won't, won't give me what I need. So I can imagine that was Get grating quite quickly. 

You have to make sure it's,  

Jon Busby: I mean, it's been, if I look at the history of chatbots in B2B for a second, right? And back in 2015, 2016, when we started to see the explosion of companies like drift, the general feedback was most buyers didn't want to use them. And nowadays I would prefer to use a chatbot over something else. 

Cause I know I can get the answer. So I think we're on a, we're probably at that inf, Nexus point where we're going to see potentially people get frustrated with it until they get a good experience and then they'd be happy to, to use, to use them.  

Adam Brown: I think there's an age divide thing here as well. Like, it's already the case that, let's just say young folks, because Gen Z has a whole, uh, a whole thing is hasher, but like the younger, they don't want to make phone calls, right? 

Some fear phone calls and they'd much rather use messaging to communicate. Um, actually I can totally imagine a world in which talking to a, a, a bot, and knowing it's a bot, but still having a great conversation with her, and  

Jon Busby: resolving why she  

Adam Brown: always is a preferable,  

Speaker 4: Yep.  

Adam Brown: to having to talk to a scary actual human being, like, Uh, hey, we shouldn't apply our, uh, you know, old animal lenses to the, to the digital atheists. 

Perhaps we'll be more comfortable with that sort of stuff. I  

Jon Busby: think the stat is what, 81 percent don't want to speak to sales. So 90, like, putting it the other way, only 90 percent of the audience want to. Yeah. Like what, in the age divide, we're what, 74 percent millennials and younger as B2B buys? I'm, I'm coating it up on top of my head, it's probably wrong, it must be bigger. 

Adam Brown: Do you know why, like, my sense of that is that most pitches you get are, you know, broad, generic, massively just, you know, spray gunned into your inbox. Like, I get them myself, I get tons and tons of Um, you know. High, um, like, and it's such an obvious, you know, male merge.  

Jon Busby: I do enjoy when they get it wrong though, when it's like high. 

Insert first name here. And you're like, uh, I'm some cases. I open those more often than others just to see how bad they is a pro tip on  

Adam Brown: LinkedIn. Put an emoji into your name. And if you know they're using that, if the emoji comes into it, if they just use your name, it's been handwritten. If the emoji appears in the, in the mail wedge that you'll see me updating my LinkedIn after this. 

Now that's a sneaky is adding, um, adding the name of the company as your middle name when you sign up for a new account. So if you ever get spam mail, it's got that,  

Jon Busby: you know, you know, they've just  

Adam Brown: sold you a database. I can't remember where we went  

Jon Busby: with that. That is a good pro  

Adam Brown: tip. I'm going to use that. 

Sales being a scattergun approach, the reason why so many people don't want to take calls from sales is because they don't make the effort to actually personalise the pitch. And actually, if you had an AI agent perhaps that, you know, already done all the research and coached me in my approach and given me a better way to I mean, still, it doesn't change the fact that you shouldn't be lazy enough to pitch generically into something that needs a specific approach. 

Jon Busby: Yeah, I think one of the Best examples, I think, in B2B where there's an opportunity to bring AI into this to make a better experience is things like pricing. You know, we like having that little box that says, like, enterprise, you know, call us. And that really means you've got to go and spend half an hour on the phone to a SDR qualifying that you've got the budget and need and the timeline in there. 

And then you've got to go and spend another hour doing a demo before they finally give you a price. Yeah. Like, I think that's one of your biggest opportunities, which is most of your customers probably don't, Uh, are outside of the price range or, or you'll be going to be too expensive. You're just going to end up disappointing them at the end of two hours worth of calls. 

Um, what other opportunities, especially with a channel, what other opportunities can you see for AI?  

Adam Brown: I mean, I think far, far too often people start still with the products and the features, not worrying about what the outcome for the customer is. Yeah. And that's, that's a. Taylor's oldest time has always been the case that you should start with a customer outcome and work backwards. 

That's not  

Jon Busby: an AI thing, right? That's a,  

Adam Brown: but the reason why people don't do it is because it's hard work. The hard yards of that is the research that most, most sellers don't want to have to do. And most buyers, and I've been a buyer, right? Half of my career, I was a buyer and I've been approached by so many people who could not be bothered to do the research. 

I can't tell you how frustrating it is. Um, you want to be like challenge yourself for me is like the best model.  

Jon Busby: Have you, have you read his latest book on this? So Brent, is it Brent Adams Adelson? I'll look it up in a second. I've just, I'll send you his podcast straight after this because I was listening to it yesterday. 

His, just going in like Massive off tangent, but, uh, it's just so random how you just mentioned that. Like, there's a quote that he said on this podcast that's really sticking with me, which is, you're like the number one solution to their number three problem. So all you are is like, it's a great way of putting it, which is like, you are a good solution, but it's not the main problem they're having. 

And if you're just talking speeds and feeds or product features, you're never going to translate it to like, What that outcome means. I can tell you, I can tell you now  

Adam Brown: the sellers that are effective, the ones that tell me something I don't know, tell me something I don't know, I could, I know my business better than you do. 

Um, but come in here and tell me something that I couldn't have found out myself or I didn't know myself or it bring me insult, bring me a challenging insight. I love, I love that model because I do think for me, it really rings true. You have to bring a challenging insight and not be afraid of that difficult conversation. 

Rather than just coming in and, you know, hoping that eventually if you pitch enough times and you make the price low enough, they'll want to buy it.  

Jon Busby: But, but, and then coming back to AI for a second, I think that's where, if we rely too much on artificial intelligence, that's where we're going to fall down. 

Because we, and we were just talking about this as you came in, right? We're both dressed the same. Um, in our unique, in our unique outfits, yeah. But, uh, we've got different shoes on at least. The, um, the It would just become a sea of sameness, like it'd be the same message. If you use AI to generate a sales outreach message, it's just going to be exactly the same as whatever else. 

But creating more  

Adam Brown: generic messages isn't the answer, right? And I think the problem with AI at the minute is that a lot of people are using it to create generic in mails. Here's why my CV is great and here's why I want them, you know, and but they don't, that's one message they sent to a hundred people. 

Um, if you use AI instead. Conduct research on the role in the company and shortcut that presence, right? Um, there's a lot of hard yards there. That's really difficult to do. Most people don't want to do. Hey, I can make that a lot quicker. Um, so you've got to come try and I think we train yourself and thinking it as a way to, instead of, instead of doing better, what I'm already doing. 

You've got to do it. You've got to, you know, use AI to add to what you've perhaps been missing or haven't been doing. Um, and for me, research is like the one thing where AI I think works really well at the moment. His research, um, you've got to be careful. You've got to be careful resources. You've got to, you know, make sure it isn't making stuff up, but to get you started in a, in a, um, cycle of research where, you know, research is hard and it's expensive and it's difficult and it's time consuming and you can generate insight, you know, in a token button,  

Jon Busby: but on the flip side of that, I think AI has also got a place to play in helping to map out the solution against the products, because I know that may sound very mechanical, but. 

You know, I've been in thousands of pitches over the last 15 years for Together. There's no way that you can keep every case study in your head. You can map, you can map every product or every service to what the customer needs. And so just having the ability, in the same way that it helps with research, to get you a broad outlook in places that you probably hadn't considered. 

Um, it's the same thing as your products and services get more complex, you need to know how can you simplify that message.  

Adam Brown: One of the most disruptive places for AI is law. Because in the same way you can't remember all the case studies, you, you can't remember all the cases. And of course, being a big fancy lawyer was predicated on how many cases you could remember and how well you could, you know, recall them and apply them to the current situation. 

Of course, that's what an LLMO is designed, you know, assuming you remove the hallucination from it, which I know it has done with, with law, but it has, and I know there's been a few lawyers that have been caught out, um, but that ability to shortcut, you know, the learning, um, and to, I don't think it, I think it's very easy to. 

To get lazy, I mean that's the only danger, right? Like how do you, how do you guard yourself against, Oh, I'll just let the hair do it. From being lazy. I think it's going to be more and more difficult. As it gets smarter and sharper and, you know, more accurate. Mm hmm. Um, but then, you know, you could argue the same thing, Google searches have reduced us to, when was the last time you ever really truly didn't know something and then had to go and find it out? 

This is something, I mean, there's ruid pub quizzes, obviously, but like, we just, we can find anything out.  

Jon Busby: It's, there's, I mean, this is a big rabbit hole. Do we want to go down this rabbit hole? So there's two things, there's two things that are going around my head on this at the moment. You, you've got kids as well, haven't you? 

I have, yeah, two primary school aged children. So how old are they? So I've got a six year old and a three year old, two year old, two and a half year old. Um, and I'm at a stage with the six year old where Like, they're getting into, you know, gaming and devices and you kind of want to allow them to have enough, but then add enough of a reward scheme to it. 

So I'm trying to design something at the moment that means they have to go to an encyclopedia to go look something up. Like an actual book? Exactly. Wow. In real life. In real life, exactly. So, like, I'm sat there being like, I need you to understand how to go and look stuff up and the right questions to ask, because that's really relevant to me, you know, because Do you write though? 

Do you? Yes. And okay, this is a deep rabbit hole. We're going to go into, are you, are you ready for this? Cause there's the other side of it with things like notebook LLM, where think about how engaging that makes a learning example for a child. Like you can, if you've seen the latest Google demos with Gemini, you can give it a whole bunch of information on physics and then say, explain. 

Explain the, you know, uh, this law using basketball and it will explain something that it normally would have been quite a dull lesson in an analogy that children could understand, which I think is fascinating.  

Adam Brown: Here's the hot take on the opposite side, right? Which is I don't need knowledge anymore. I need the skills to navigate the knowledge. 

Yes. I need to do critical thinking and lateral thinking. I need to be able to think, you know, I need the same skills that you would perhaps learn during those learning experience, but I don't need the knowledge. Why would I waste my time going to an encyclopedia when I can get the, get the answer immediately? 

I must bear off spending my time, you know, learning critical thinking, um, or creativity that, um, that knowledge recall is pointless, what's the point of that?  

Jon Busby: On the Encyclopedia side, it's not about, you're right, it's not about knowledge recall, but it's about knowing how I truly believe that, yeah. But no, but I think it's a very, very good point, and we, I think we both went to the same university, actually. 

We both went to Nottingham, if I remember correctly.  

Adam Brown: University of Nottingham.  

Jon Busby: Yeah, um, I went to university not to learn what I learnt, although it was very fascinating. It was to learn how to learn. Quickly and I consume it. But that was my, if I, from the far four years I was there, that's what I came out with was like, how can I understand something? 

And so I, I, I don't disagree with your point of view.  

Adam Brown: I, I found the regurgitation of information that alls had to be cited. Yeah, I found it formulaic, to be honest.  

Jon Busby: There  

Adam Brown: was something missing in that for me. I didn't enjoy it fully.  

Jon Busby: If you were just doing management then there was a lot of regurgitations. 

Adam Brown: There was no value in original thought. Yeah. And maybe that came later if you wanted to be truly academic and go on and do masters or a PhD or whatever. But I found yeah, undergraduate studies to be quite  

Jon Busby: limiting. Um, in a way. I don't know, I definitely came out of it with that ability to maybe, I only really mastered it in the final years. 

The ability to consume something in my own, using my own mental models, and then regurgitate. But you're right, it was, it was a lot of regurgitation initially.  

Adam Brown: And it's funny, isn't it, to think about whether or not that skill will be of any use to your children whatsoever, in a world in which, not just, you know, you can't just goober the answer, but you can actually get a better structure, better research, better You know, better answer to any, any question that evolves recall of knowledge. 

Like at what point does that become not useful?  

Jon Busby: So let's, let's bring it back to obviously where we're working now. Um, like I, I agree with you about we need to understand not the knowledge side, but the lateral thinking side. How do you, as a leader in B2B and sales, like how do you bring that into your teams and into your day? 

What advice would you give to anyone else?  

Adam Brown: I mean, there's no doubt that, um, you know, those things we talked about are really important. Lateral thinking just means. I guess it just means not thinking of the obvious, right? Like trying to go for a more creative  

Harry Radcliffe: solution.  

Adam Brown: I think, um, everyone has the power to be creative, I believe that. 

Like, everyone is creative inside them and I don't mean your ability to be able to translate your thoughts with a pencil. I mean, your ability to think and output stuff that perhaps you wouldn't have been able to do, you know, using a using a PC. Um, I think encouraging us all to be more creative at work is really important. 

Um, creative workshops. Often I run very badly and, you know, you get people in whiteboard up and you give them a pen and you say, right, come up with some ideas and you freeze in the spot. Right? And it's, you've got to actually put effort into the process behind that. And I think teaching some basic principles about how to be creative is counterintuitive, but there is a process. 

Um, you know, we started this. Someone asked me, um, think of a film and I immediately went blank. Can think of any films. I've never seen any in my life, um, but that, you know, that's, that's your brain's response, right? When you're asked to be creative. So I think taking some time to actually learn how to create an environment in your office and often it's not in the office, by the way, leave the office, go somewhere else. 

Um, there's a reason why off sites exist. Um, it's because it does allow you to think differently. Um, and encouraging that kind of. Um, shaking people out of their rivers of thinking. Yep. Um, right? To get into a different river, it requires effort. Mm hmm. Um, it's a really simple thing, right? I bet you sit in the same seat, and if you have a regular meeting Yep. 

Do you sit in the same seat?  

Jon Busby: That's a good question.  

Adam Brown: Fight that urge, right? Yeah. It's that urge to sit in the same seat, to come in. You all sit in the same seats, you all say the same things, you're all thinking the same way. It's gonna lead to the same outcomes, right? If you, same input, same outcomes. Every time you go into one of those meetings, force yourself to sit somewhere differently. 

Jon Busby: It's, uh, my, my way of putting this in. This is just probably because I just like traveling is I'm always more productive in airport lounges. I don't know what it is. It might be the combination of booze and the fact that I know I'm going to tell my free Wi Fi. Yeah, but I tend to be, I think we have to get two hours work done in half an hour there, or four days worth work done in a couple of hours before flight. 

So like that's, I think it's important to mix up where you are occasionally. But how do you bring AI? And how do we now take advantage of some of the technology as part of that?  

Adam Brown: So I think that. One of the hardest parts of being creative and coming up with new ideas is starting. It's a bit like an exercise routine, right? 

Like once you actually get into the habit, it becomes a lot easier. When you first sit in that room together, and even if you've done it right, and you've gone somewhere off site, and it's somewhere creative, and it's cool, and you're relaxed, and you've worn different clothes, starting the process is often the hardest thing. 

And you can either start it very scientifically with insight, and of course we've already talked about how I think NLI could be a great source of insight, um, or you can start with random crazy things. Right. You bring in completely obtuse and totally tangential ideas in an effort to like shake yourself out of the thinking and the more, the more effective you are in your job and the better you are at what you do, the less likely you are, I think, in some respects, to think of those crazy things. 

Well, what better than an AI tool to be able to help you to think of crazy things. If you go into chatgpd and you ask it to solve a problem for you, it will come up with the most. Likely answers, right? That's exactly what an MMM does. It takes the average sum of all the knowledge in it. It gives you the most likely answers. 

We'll ask it to do the opposite. It can do that. Give me the least likely answers to this question.  

Jon Busby: So saying, talking about credit, I'm going to go back to my university days now. So my second degree, the first three weeks they just spent, it was called creativity and entrepreneurship. And I remember walking into that classroom the first time and they had incense burning on the side. 

They had like kids toys. Everyone's like, it just makes me think of those days. I went from being, and I'm going to admit to this, a fairly, um, Let's just say reading certain tabloid papers and being fairly, uh, set in my ways to being completely open minded as a result of that. Right. And that, and it's like, I completely agree. 

But it's so counterintuitive when you think about the way that our businesses are run, which is we need to get to the end of the quarter and show an improvement on the previous quarter. Like everything is hustle, hustle, hustle, run, run, run. Like to be able to tell people to stop. and think laterally, you know, in a different direction. 

Adam Brown: And, and we breed a corporate environment in which it's impossible to think creatively. Right. I think we, we design the place to be, you know, even if you're in a very nice office, it's usually very sterile. Um, it's usually very samey. It's very safe. Um, you know, nothing crazy or different or weird is ever going to happen there. 

Um, and you do get into a routine of thinking which stops you. I mean, if you're interested in science, there's lots of it. I don't understand it well enough. Um, but it's a proven scientific fact, you get yourself into a groove, you get yourself into a river of thinking, um, that becomes incredibly difficult to get out of. 

Um, and that's why the incense and the weird runes, it, it might feel weird, but it is actually effective.  

Jon Busby: I, I think the same is true for coming back to people and AI that we were talking about at the beginning for relationships.  

Harry Radcliffe: Yeah.  

Jon Busby: So if I, if I try and use an example. It took me a while to train myself out of this. 

Like when you have a catch up with someone, you think, right, here's the agenda we need to go through. You know, the items, the projects that we are working on at the moment. I mean, talk about budgets. Yeah. Like one of the things I had to train myself to do was to spend the first five, 10 minutes just being like, we're not going to have an agenda because it's important that we understand and have a common language that we're talking from. 

Yeah. But again, it sounds counterintuitive to basically say we've got to waste time to be more productive later.  

Harry Radcliffe: Yeah.  

Jon Busby: Uh, I just, and  

Adam Brown: again, one of the things that I think, you know, AI isn't going to help us with, um, is about a human connection in real life. And there's a lot of debate about whether remote work or in person work is the right model. 

Um, I think the truth is there's, there's no one like model for all of society and all of work, right? You're going to have to blend it. But there are certain things for me which will always be better in person. Um, and one to one catch ups by their very nature are, I think, better in real life. AI is never going to be able to replace that. 

Now, it might be able to help you, uh, you know, if you're a really busy manager and you've got lots of people and you're trying to catch up with them, AI might give you a really great summary of all the emails that they've sent you in the last month. And all of the things that are hot topics for them. 

All of the meetings that they've been in, because it goes through a calendar. Yeah. And it gives you some nice, you know, like, help me to understand what this person's been doing. Yeah. So you don't have to spend 20 it already. You can concentrate then on the human part of it. Um, where I was going to go with this, though, is that AI can't replace, um, to your point about how to make those one to ones better. 

I find for sure when the weather's nice, the best one to ones are the ones where we walk around the office. Yeah, outside. We go outside. You don't have the, like, slightly intimidating eye contact. You can be much more honest. It's like being in the car, right? Um, do you ever think back to, like, as a parent? 

The most honest your kids will ever be with you and the most information I ever get out of my kids is when we're in the car. Because there's no, it's not over dinner, I'm not asking them the intense questions right. It's a relaxed environment, it's noisy, but it's also different and it's, you know, physically put them out of their routine. 

Jon Busby: You're making me jump to another, like, thinking about kids and getting information out of them. I don't know what your kids are like. Also births. When you ask them, like, how was your day? It's normally good. Good. Nice. Slight. It was okay. Exactly. But the only way I've found, and I think there's a jump to AI using artificial intelligence here as well, is just to tell them nonsense stuff and get them to respond to it. 

So like, Oh, I heard a dinosaur came today and they're like, no, it didn't. We did this. We're like, okay, I found out where you did that. Um, and I think there's the same thing from what you were saying about getting AI to suggest different, you know, the non linear ways or the ways of not solving a problem. 

Yeah. I think there's a, there's a way that that breaks you out of that cycle as well.  

Adam Brown: Yeah. I mean, I, I firmly believe in, in the power of coming up with new ideas. Um, you know, in business, I think it's really important to constantly come up with new ideas us in the channel. We're very stuck in our ways in some respects, you know, people have been selling the same products to the same people for years and years and years and years. 

And then we're surprised when a really disruptive new technology comes along. So then all desperate to. to jump down our throats and buy it from us. Like, what a strange outcome that is. And so I think it's really important that we're continually, um, disruptive enough, not so disruptive that, you know, the business stopped working. 

They're disruptive enough that, um, new things are always possible. Um, but that only comes when you've got the effort in to be slightly disruptive and we all have it in us. And I think it's, you know, it drummed in to us as a kid is you're either good at art or you're not. You're either creative or you're not. 

You're either a chemistry student or you're an art student. No, chemistry students can't be creative.  

Jon Busby: Yeah, it was one of the biggest frustrations I had. Which will be. By the way, starting here, is we had a creative director who was, I'm gonna say, very old school back at that time. Sorry Matt if you're listening to what this is. 

And I was told, no, we're not creative because we haven't got it in our job title as a developer. And that was one of my frustrations, was everyone can be, if it's just a different type.  

Adam Brown: So I grew up, I grew up, my sister's very creative. She's a brilliant artist. You know, and we'll do lots of, and I was always very envious of her. 

Artistic ability. And so I put myself into the, I'm not creative box. And for years I was like, nah, I'm spreadsheets and wherever. And, and it's nonsense. And it's only much later in my life that I've realized I am creative in lots of ways. And I really enjoy it. All human beings, creative, all of us, we're all, we all have creativity in us. 

Um, it doesn't creativity. Isn't just painting and drawing. And I think in some AI is a really cool expression of that. And the classic thing is you go on and you ask it to write your poem, right? Um, but that's fun and creative. And if you, you know, you put words into it and then ask it to repeat it back to you in Jamaican Patois or like, you know, old school Chaucerian English, just that engagement with it, that's a creative process. 

Jon Busby: Well, you say that, well, I'm going to break the fourth wall here, Harry, cause I love bringing you on this. What's the phrase that you use, Harry, when you say we had AI, we, we wanted it. Well,  

Speaker 4: yeah, we had AI and I was told this bad boy is going to do all the drudgery and then we'll be painting and writing poetry. 

And then we get it, and we ask it to make pictures and write poems, whilst I still say nothing, you know.  

Adam Brown: Yeah. But do you know what that is? That's all the clever tech people who desperately wish they could be creative. And have been told they can't be creative and have gone out and created a set of tools for themselves and for the world that allow them to be on a level playing field of creativity with those that are truly creative from within. 

Speaker 4: Maybe it was at their vengeance and they've sought to smite the creatives from the world.  

Adam Brown: This is the optimism, pragmatism, you know, divide here but Um, everyone's creative, everyone's creative. I've loved using mid journey. So I'm really into photography. Um, that was how I probably, one of the first things I did to prove to myself that I can be creative, photography's creative endeavor is fun. 

You can take photos of, but I've also really loved using mid journey to create images, create photographs, basically. Um, you don't need any real skills to do that other than being able to put words in. For me, that's two halves of the same thing. But I think  

Jon Busby: it helps you be better at describing what you're looking for as well, because you can say, especially if you know about photography, like, I want this depth of field, you know, I want this, this type of background. 

Like it helps you understand how you might compose a picture.  

Adam Brown: Um, I think, I mean, there's a lot early on in, in the AI world, the prompt engineering would be this, you know, fancy job. And of course that's nonsense because the model evolved quickly enough that you would be able to use natural language. Um, so I think, yes, to a point, like, it's nice to know what depth of field is and how to apply it to get a certain look out of a photograph, out of a picture in mid journey. 

Um, I actually think that the greatest skill that you can have with that is, is being able to articulate with words what you see in your head.  

Jon Busby: Mm hmm.  

Adam Brown: Because if you can give a truly  

Jon Busby: So we should make, become better communicators, is what you're saying.  

Adam Brown: Right. Like, our ability to actually articulate the thoughts that we have. 

And part of it is about having a big enough vocabulary to do it. Part of it's also practicing, um, you know, articulating what's in your head and trying to get it out. And I think if you're a creative person, you've done that probably with pictures or with words, right? And if you can write a story, your ability to be able to take what's inside your head and put it on a page has got a good connection there. 

In business, a lot of the time, you know, maybe that's in numbers. Um, but maybe we've kind of shut ourselves off a little bit from that ability to take truly what's inside us and put it, put it outside. And actually interacting with AI forces you. So take what's from inside you and so, you know, to express it and maybe then it ends up as a different output So your words end up as pitches or as a song or whatever, but you still have to be able to articulate So in your feelings and your desires into the into the machine. 

Jon Busby: I think but by that Lens. I think we will be better commute. It should make us better communicators. I have a slightly different view on the prompt engineering side of things, which is, you know, because there's this very negative view that I was coming for all of our jobs. You know, as usual, we're still seeing rounds of layoffs as a result of, uh, you know, as a result, not just a result of AI, but result of the current market. 

Uh, I actually think in the future, we're going to need more smart people in order to know how to get the most out of it, which to your point might not be prompt engineers. They might just be better communicators.  

Adam Brown: Well, so storytelling isn't going away, right? Storytelling. Um, whether it's in business or I'm a, I'm not a marketer, so forgive me, but storytelling feels like the central proposition of what marketing actually really is, right? 

You tell a story on behalf of a brand.  

Jon Busby: Um, I hear the groan of hundreds of marketing. I'd cheer or groan on that.  

Adam Brown: Um, uh, so, but yeah, I don't think that that ability to tell a story, um, is, is, is, is, is really important. And for me, the exciting part is it's going to be more important in real life. By public speaking or one on one speaking. 

It's a skill that's going to become more important or less important because it's going to be one of the only places left, um, at least for a long time until we get the fancy, yep, uh, you know, constant lenses and earbuds that are feeding us the words to, until that happens and that's a long way away, our, our ability to express our emotions and our feelings and our, um, you know, what's inside us and, and impress that upon one or many people, That's, that's going to be really important. 

And  

Jon Busby: I think as part of that, you know, you need to make sure you include the empathy element. Like, are you building an emotional connection? Are you, are you understanding someone's feelings and how they might react to, which AI can approximate, but can't build that story and conviction.  

Adam Brown: It can fake it. And I think it will get to the point where it can fake it so convincingly you won't know the difference. 

Like you can already create images that we can barely tell apart, videos not far away. Voice agents are also not far away, um, it's not going to be long until it's impossible to tell the difference between a real human and an AI agent. But, an AI agent could never truly understand the love of a human being. 

So, by definition, the one thing that will always separate us is, um, is our humanity. And that's very deep and very philosophical, but it does mean that in a world where You know, we're going to be surrounded by these things, this, this sitting in a room with another human being. You're the only other type of being that can truly understand even experience and how I feel. 

And you showing me that you're empathetic to how I feel is gonna be really important. That said, I mean, you know, there's already, um, AI, um, just to play the other side of that, there's already AI therapists. Apparently get much better scores and much better feedback than real life therapists.  

Jon Busby: That's kind of scary to know, I think about it. 

I'm not quite sure. I could imagine that  

Adam Brown: empathy would be like a central tenet of that sort of interaction, but  

Jon Busby: Maybe it is formulaic, coming back to it. Maybe therapy is, but yeah, connections aren't. So we've talked about storytelling, I think that's one of the key things. As a piece of advice would give anyone looking at the future roadmap for their business and how they're bringing some of this technology in, what would be, let's try to end on three points like we've got storytelling as one, what are some of the other elements that stood out for you? 

Adam Brown: So it has to be like critical thinking, right? The ability to think critically, um, and laterally about a problem, um, and to really question it.  

Jon Busby: I'm, I'm gonna be,  

Adam Brown: and the fundamental tell, I think that's gonna be,  

Jon Busby: I'm gonna be pointy on this one, and like, I try and we, I try and bring it into this podcast. 

Right. It's no fun listening to two people agree with each other. Right. That you, you have to have some disagreement. Yeah. And I almost think you. I'm not saying you should go into every business meeting disagreeing with the person next to you. Right. But I think you're exactly right. You need to have the ability to critically think about something. 

Yeah. Apply it, understand where the gaps may be. Yeah. Otherwise, you know, you're, you're not gonna create anything that's different from today. So  

Adam Brown: you've got to, you've got to build a team around you that's different to you. And the worst mistake you can make as a leader is to recruit people who look, sound, behave, says this is to say, sound like each other and come from the same university. 

It's a drift or. Plurality of thought is really important if you want to come to a good outcome that isn't just the same as everyone else.  

Jon Busby: Which is scary when you consider the direction of travel with DEI  

Adam Brown: today, right? Well, it's all built off the same data set, um, and so you can imagine them all coming to the same conclusions, which is why, in that world, building a team of diverse people who think and behave differently to each other. 

And the skill of a leader is to blend that into a harmonious, you know, disagree, private, commit in public.  

Jon Busby: Yep.  

Adam Brown: Kind of approach. Um, but, but that's going to be, that's going to be an absolutely fundamental skill. Yeah, so build those sorts of teams and to take them  

Jon Busby: I think I had a school I think I had a stab at something like 30 team Teams with a diverse set of thought can make decisions on average 30 percent better than those  

Adam Brown: Don't doubt it. 

Of course the you know issues if you bring people in who are totally off Different pages. Um, it can, you can never make any decisions. I think the key thing is like, you can have very different experience and a very different path to where you've got to. If you share the same values, um, and you have the same beliefs about, you know, what good looks like. 

Then that, that difference of experience is kind of filtered through that, you know, the, the value lens ends up with a good outcome, a blend of different, you know, experiences into a single harmonious.  

Jon Busby: And that's the challenge. The sausage maker. So that, and that's, that's what we need to bring as leaders to that space, which is how do we blend, blend those together into the  

Adam Brown: You gotta go find, find good people who think differently to you, um, and help, help bring them into that. 

Yeah, that world.  

Jon Busby: And so what's that, so compete. I've said we need to disagree and I agree with that point. So what's the third one that we've come out with from today?  

Adam Brown: So we've done the building of teams, I think critical thinking. And then the last one really is about empathy and actually caring about other humans. 

Empathy is the term we use to actually describe lots of different things. Empathy is that you feel, I can feel what you feel. It's actually not the core skill, it's caring about how you feel. And at least showing, you can pretend to be empathetic actually. And just the same, you could pretend to be confident, right? 

It's exactly the same thing to the other person. Yeah. As long as you show that you acknowledge the feelings and you show that you care and actually then do something about it. It's  

Jon Busby: like training active listening or, you know, those kinds of techniques.  

Adam Brown: You can teach yourself to be more empathetic or at least to pave more empathetically. 

Um, uh, but we've got to really focus on that. I think far too much business is, um, you know, talking again with people that don't actually deliver on it. And again, in a world where all knowledge is available immediately, you know, decision making is going to be super sharp. You, we've really got a double bang on caring about the people that we work with. 

And  

Jon Busby: I think that comes into B2B sales, talking about the challenge of saying again, like the latest research is showing the biggest gap we have is buyer confidence, but they're not confident in making a decision about a particular product, especially when they've got to sign something off that could be seven figures. 

And so. I coming right back to some of the themes that you put in there, like not knowing how your solution fits or solves their problem, not going in with something new that helps them understand the challenge they may  

Adam Brown: have and not caring enough in that instance. So like, if I come in, I'm just trying to sell you a thing. 

Maybe even I pitched exactly right. I've matched it all. You know, I've done the research. I pitched him right. You know that it's the right thing to do, but you're scared. Me acknowledging that fear, uh, As a seller and not just trying to ram it down your throat, but say, look, I know this is difficult. I'm also scared if I don't do this and we don't mess this up, like there's a whole load of issues for me as well. 

Like overcoming that, you get together as a pair of humans rather than a pair of chatbots. Um, you've, you've really got to work on that stuff.  

Jon Busby: Which I think you can also only build through in some ways face to face relationships or at least understanding each other as humans.  

Adam Brown: You've got to put the effort in. 

Jon Busby: Yeah, it  

Adam Brown: doesn't come for free and it doesn't come, um. It's not about being personable even. It's about actually caring about the other person's motivations. But you know, you do, you know, negotiation training, you often talk to get inside the head of the other person. Um, but that really just does mean making the effort to understand them as a human, not just their Don't just understand their spreadsheet, you've really got to understand them. 

Jon Busby: Mm. Completely agree. Adam, it's been a pleasure having you on the tech marketing podcast today. Even though we've talked a lot about sales, very little about marketing. Uh, this is always going to be shady that way. Right. So it's been a pleasure having you back on today and yeah. Hope to see you again soon. 

Thanks.