IAM2450 – Unlocking Opportunities with AI

Gresham Harkless shares a lesson learned from his trainer about silent objections, which are when potential customers or clients stop responding or disappear without saying why.

Gresham explains that sales aren't just about selling a product or service. Everyone is involved in sales in some form—whether it's convincing a client to buy, persuading a team member to join, or even getting your kids to go to bed.

He discusses the BOSS CRM system that helps track and automate customer relationships. He was surprised to find that Google Ads wasn’t initially part of the system’s lead-generation strategy.

Gresham shifts the focus to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and emphasizes the importance of giving clear and specific instructions when interacting with AI. He compares AI to an intern—if you give vague instructions, the outcome can be unclear or completely off.

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Transcription:

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Intro 00:00

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:28

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast. And this is a special episode of our I AM CEO Podcast.

And this is actually going to be a snippet of a snippet, so to speak. I'm just doing an intro because I've been starting to document my journey into starting what is now called Blue Star Franchise.

We're also going to do a kind of sub site within CB Nation called Franchise CEO. So you'll see some links in the show notes related to that.

But just wanted to give you a little bit more insight, give you a little bit more color in some of the aspects of why I'm actually doing this.

Because one of the things I was doing as I was going through training to start up this new business was realizing and hearing from the founder of FBA, the Franchise Brokers Association, that it'd be really cool to document your journey going through and building this out.

I think it's something that would be super helpful, obviously for people that are looking for and thinking about starting franchises.

But frankly, if you're starting anything, any type of business, I think it's really cool to kind of just even see the journey and how it's been going from there.

So I'm going to share a few of those snippets from the, from the first couple of videos that have been created.

But definitely, of course, subscribe to our YouTube, check out a lot more where I figure out exactly where we're going to post this.

So I'll have that information that's available to you. But regardless, if you're a builder, continue to keep building, continue to do your thing.

The world definitely needs exactly what you're trying to build and needs you to be your unique self.

So make sure to run your own race, because nobody can run your race like you. This is Gresh signing out. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

All right, so I did a little bit of math and I realized I was day 44 from my training. Gave myself a weekend, but 44 days.

And I had my meeting with, the trainer and really learned a lot. One of the big things that came up with silent objections and how to work through silent objections.

Because I think one of the biggest things is people will drop off. You don't know where they're going, what they're doing, if they're going to call you back.

They just don't say anything. They disappear. So that may or may not have been the case and what has happened a lot.

You never know. And that's what makes it a little bit difficult. But to get a little bit more aware about what those silent objections are, it just gives you a better idea on how to navigate through those things.

So the good thing is he had already done a deck. So he sent me that deck, which is pretty awesome, get the opportunity to go through that.

Just again, get your awareness up when you're having these conversations, which I think is going to be huge for everybody that's starting a business because you're in some way, shape, or form in the sales business.

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Whether you're trying to bring somebody on, or you're trying to actually get on a new client or customer, or a new team member, or whatever that might be, you're in that sales business.

To be honest, even if you're trying to get your kids to go to sleep at night, you're in the sales business.

Don't forget that. But the really big thing that I think there were two big opportunities that actually came up.

One, we use this system called BOSS. So that's the CRM, basically. And it's really robust, lots of information, sequences, things to automate, which is super awesome. I had mentioned that I didn't see a day for Google Ads.

So we've started to get some leads here and there from Google Ads. We want to try to improve that.

But Google ads was not one of those lead sources, which I thought was crazy to me. And I was talking with him.

He said he'd added it in. And so it's there now. But he was saying that a lot of people don't create their own ads.

A lot of times people are doing organic stuff, but they're not actually creating their own ads, which was crazy to me because I'd always pushed advertising and advertising marketing together.

But Apparently within our organization, there's just not a lot of people that are doing it, which I thought was crazy.

So I really wanted to add that in, of course, and I really see that as an opportunity.

He said that that's an opportunity he's going to start mentioning as well, too, going into the next year.

So that's in and of itself crazy. If that was one thing, then I figured leveraging AI must be its own other thing.

And that's really what brought me to kind of thinking about this video, because one of the big things around AI is really around prompting.

And if we really think about prompting, like if we really look at AI, we look at their ChatGPTs, our Google Bards, our notebook element, which I did a podcast on that and published that.

It's really all in asking questions. If we look at AI kind of like it is an intern, which I've said on some podcasts that I've been on, we start to look at it a lot differently.

But what I think is probably the reality is that I think a lot of people struggle with communication.

A lot of people struggle with I'm really understanding what they're asking for. Now, don't get me wrong, like just as you might say something, AI sometimes will go off on a on a on a another place, a whole other zip code and maybe even another country sometimes with what you ask.

But I think for most, the art of prompting is really the thing that is missing. So what I really would say is that when you are thinking about AI, think about how you're prompting the questions that you're asking.

Think about being precise. If you say, go to the grocery store, get me a muffin, for whatever reason, last time I was dreaming about muffins, I don't know what it is, but go to the grocery store, get me a muffin.

If you tell that to your intern or a person that's working for you or working with you, that can literally open up so many different things.

You don't know what store, you don't know what muffin, you don't know what size, you don't know if it's just a small muffins or it's the big, huge muffin, just all those things.

But if you say, go to Giant, which is a big grocery store here, Go to Giant, get me the blueberry muffin that's made by Hostess. Make sure that it's a fresh one.

And if you could, make sure that you bring back a glass of milk with it so that I can wash it down.

That's a lot different. So the more precise you are in terms of asking those questions, the better off you're going to be.

You say, like, it should be one muffin. It should be a large muffin, not the mini muffins.

So you just really understand the questions that you're asking. You're being very precise in what you're asking.

So how does that help you out? Really think about how you're prompting. Really think about giving as much details as possible so that you can get to where you want to be. That's one of the things I think.

Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help. And of course, looking forward to giving you more and more updates.

Outro 06:42

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CBNation and Blue16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Want to level up your business even more? Read blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos at CBNation.co.

Also, check out our I AM CEO Facebook group. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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