$1M in Sales in 6 Months Using AI Voice Agents - Thoughtly's Will Del Principe on the Agentic Shift

Season 2, Episode 06 | AI for Revenue Leaders: The AI Hat Podcast
Hosted by Mike Allton

Your sales team isn't ignoring dead leads because they're lazy. They're ignoring them because they're drowning in the 70% of non-revenue work that turns expensive closers into data entry clerks. And while you're debating whether to hire two more SDRs to handle follow-up, your competitors have stopped asking "Who do I hire next?" and started asking "What system do I build next?"

This is the efficiency crisis no one is talking about: Admin Drag. Your best people spend their days buried in CRM updates, meeting prep, and manual outreach - the repetitive, time-sensitive work that buries your pipeline and kills your quota attainment. You've tried email sequences. You've tried hiring more headcount. And yet your conversion rates stay flat while your dormant leads pile up like a CRM graveyard you'll never have time to resurrect.

Here's the truth most Revenue Leaders haven't internalized yet: AI isn't just writing emails anymore. It's conducting real-time, dynamic conversations at scale. It's handling objections. It's qualifying leads. It's booking meetings. And in some cases, it's doing it so well that prospects are inviting the AI agent to grab coffee.

That's not science fiction. That's the operational reality Will Del Principe is architecting every day at Thoughtly.

The Practitioner, Not the Futurist

Will Del Principe is a growth and solutions engineering leader at Thoughtly, where he helps enterprise teams deploy AI voice agents that transform how revenue organizations operate. He works at the intersection of marketing, sales, partnerships, and product - driving user acquisition, managing growth initiatives, and ensuring customer success at scale.

But here's why you need to listen to him: Will personally drove close to a million dollars in sales in about six months using the systems he walks us through in this episode. He's helped clients save over half a million dollars in operational expenses by replacing or augmenting traditional call teams. And his clients are generating hundreds of thousands of dollars per month by reactivating dead leads - pure margin expansion from pipeline that would have stayed buried forever.

Will isn't painting pictures of 2030. He's showing you the workflow architecture that's producing P&L impact right now.

What You'll Learn in This Episode

This isn't an abstract conversation about "the future of AI." This is a tactical breakdown of how voice agents work, why they've crossed the quality threshold from "robotic scripts" to "conversational teammates," and exactly how to pilot them in your business this quarter.

You'll discover:

• The Coffee Invitation Story - The moment that proves voice agents have crossed the "uncanny valley" and become indistinguishable from human reps (and what that means for your stalled pipeline)
• Voice Agents vs. Chatbots - Why this technology is fundamentally different from the chatbot widgets you've been ignoring for years, and why it's capable of handling real-time objections at scale
• The Podcast Guest Analogy - A perfect illustration of how AI removes bottlenecks without eliminating jobs (using a real example every business leader can relate to)
• The Transparency Philosophy - Why Will insists on disclosing upfront that it's an AI, and how that approach sidesteps the "deception anxiety" killing adoption for risk-averse Revenue Leaders
• The Re-Engagement Workflow - How to design voice agent campaigns that resurrect cold leads without sounding desperate or damaging your brand (real client example: 650 meetings booked in 90 days from dormant pipeline)
• Quality Benchmarks - What separates a voice agent that sounds robotic and kills conversations from one that builds rapport (70% of prospects don't detect it's AI - here's why the other 30% do)
• The Economics of Voice vs. Headcount - How to calculate the true cost of manual follow-up when you factor in rep time, opportunity cost, and the leads that fall through the cracks
• The Mindset Shift - From "Who do I hire next?" to "What system do I build next?" - the framework that unlocks exponential capacity instead of linear scaling
• The Responsible Pilot - The exact low-risk, high-ROI use case you should start with if you want to test voice agents without blowing up your sales process
• The CRM Graveyard Audit - How to identify which dormant leads are "resurrection-worthy" and what it would mean for your revenue to reactivate even 10% of them this quarter

The Real Numbers (Because Revenue Leaders Don't Care About Hypotheticals)

• $1M in sales generated by Will personally in 6 months using voice agent workflows
• $500K+ saved in operational expenses by clients who replaced or augmented traditional call centers
• 650 meetings booked in 90 days by one client (Nomad) from leads that were about to be trashed
• 1,000+ meetings booked in 30 days by a home buyer client using re-engagement campaigns
• 70% of prospects don't detect they're speaking to an AI when quality benchmarks are met
• Hundreds of thousands per month being generated by clients through lead reactivation alone

These aren't projections. These are production results from teams that architected the workflow first and deployed the tool second.

Who This Episode Is For

This conversation is designed for:

• VPs of Sales who are tired of watching their best reps drown in admin work while quota suffers
• Chief Revenue Officers who need to show measurable P&L impact in 2026, not pilot purgatory
• RevOps Directors who are architecting systems to scale revenue without scaling headcount linearly
• Sales Enablement Leaders who need a specific use case to pilot voice agents without blowing up their existing process

If you're a practitioner who values workflow architecture over tool shopping, this episode will give you a blueprint you can implement Monday morning.

Who This Is NOT For

This episode will disappoint you if you're:

• A futurist looking for abstract AI theory without tactical implementation steps
• A solopreneur chasing "magic prompts" to replace the work of building systems
• Someone who wants to replace humans instead of removing bottlenecks (that violates our Human+AI philosophy)

We don't do hype here. We do architecture.

The Bottom Line

Your CRM is full of dead leads your team will never manually call because they're too buried in current pipeline. Those dormant contacts represent millions in lost opportunity - leads you've already paid to acquire, sitting there costing you money in CRM fees while generating zero revenue.

Voice agents can resurrect that graveyard at scale. They can handle the repetitive, time-sensitive outreach that your expensive closers don't have bandwidth for. And they can do it at a fraction of the cost of hiring more headcount - while your existing team focuses on the high-value strategic work that actually moves the needle.

The question isn't "Can AI do this?" The technology crossed that threshold months ago.

The question is: "How much revenue are you leaving on the table while you wait to architect the system?"

Ready to stop being the bottleneck in your own revenue operation?

Download the free Executive Guide to Shadow AI to learn how to govern the AI tools your team is already using (whether you've approved them or not): theaihat.com/shadow-ai

Connect with Will Del Principe:

• Thoughtly: thoughtly.co
• Book a Demo: thoughtly.co/demo

Connect with Mike Allton:

• Shadow AI Guide: theaihat.com/shadow-ai
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeallton/

About AI for Revenue Leaders:

This show is your operational playbook for the Agentic Era. Host Mike Allton (Chief Storyteller, Agorapulse) deconstructs how practitioners - not futurists - are deploying sanctioned AI to hit quota, govern Shadow AI risks, and reclaim the sales capacity lost to admin drag. Every episode gives you workflow architecture you can implement Monday morning, not abstract theory you'll forget by Tuesday.

Subscribe and never miss an episode where we turn "pilot purgatory" into production-ready systems.

Full Transcript

(lightly edited)

$1M in Sales in 6 Months Using AI Voice Agents - Thoughtly's Will Del Principe on the Agentic Shift

[00:00:00] Will Del Principe: In 60 seconds, I'll tell you exactly how you could get your SDRs to become AEs. Typically, what we do, when you have an SDR team, at least, most companies like to move and promote their SDRs to account executives at one point. So instead of having SDRs do the boring, heavy lifting of going through lead lists, calling out to prospects, making sure that people get timely follow ups.

[00:00:23] Instead of that, they could actually focus on in-depth discovery. If not, the sales process in and of itself work more down funnel. Because the initial interest could be captured with an ai. It could then be pushed to the next step for initial discovery with maybe an SDR or an AE, that then gets pushed into a sale.

[00:00:43] So removing the barrier of that, the top of the funnel aspect for the, these SDRs, I would refer to trying out AI instead, given the fact that you could reduce hiring and your SDRs might even be able to free up more time to become those AEs.

[00:00:59] Mike Allton: Mike's got The Hat, the AI kind. Unlocking power in business, you'll find. Cut through the hype, explore the tech. Every week, new ideas to check.

[00:01:24] Allton leads us on a digital quest. AI secrets, he'll always invest. Tune in tight, don't miss a beat. Knowledge, groove, keep you on your feet. Listen up! To the AI flow. Business growth, here we go. Cuttin' edge insights, that's the plan. With The AI Hat you'll understand.

[00:02:08] Greetings program. Welcome to The AI Hat Podcast, the resource for revenue teams who are ready to stop being the bottleneck in their own business. And each week we architect the simple AI operational systems that eliminate Admin Drag and reclaim your time. Freeing you and your team to focus on the high value work that truly scales your revenue.

[00:02:25] I'm your host, Mike Allton. Subscribe and let's build your digital team together. Speaking of teams, your sales team isn't ignoring dead leads because they're lazy. They're ignoring them because they're drowning in the 70% of non-revenue work that turns expensive closers into data entry clerks. And while your debating whether to hire two more SDRs to handle follow up, your competitors have stopped asking, who do I hire next?

[00:02:51] And started asking, what system do I build next? Here's the truth most revenue leaders haven't internalized yet. AI isn't just writing emails anymore. It's conducting real time, dynamic conversations at scale, handling objections, qualifying leads and booking meetings, and in some cases it's doing it so well prospects are inviting the AI agent to grab coffee. Will Del Principe is a growth and solutions engineering leader at Thoughtly, where he helps enterprise teams deploy AI voice agents that transform how revenue organizations operate, but here's why you need to listen to him.

[00:03:27] Will personally drove close to a million dollars in sales in about six months using the systems he's about to walk us through. He's helped clients save over half a million dollars in operational expenses and generate hundreds of thousands per month by reactivating dead leads, pure margin expansion from pipeline.

[00:03:45] That would've stayed buried forever. Will isn't a futurist painting pictures of 2030, he's a practitioner showing you the workflow architecture that's producing p and l impact right now. Hey, will, welcome to the show.

[00:03:58] Will Del Principe: Mike, it's a pleasure be on. I'm a big fan of the show and hell of an intro by the way, hat's off to you.

[00:04:04] Mike Allton: Appreciate that. Like I tell folks all the time, transparently, Claude wrote your intro, you did all the work. I just said it on camera. So thank you so much for being here and for, you know, having such a fantastic, uh, resume and projects. I can't wait to dig into this with you, but I wanna start with that story that kind of, to me, proves that we're entering a new era.

[00:04:25] Tell us about that prospect who invited your AI voice agent to grab coffee. Hello? Yes. What was happening in that conversation? What does that moment kind of reveal about where voice AI technology is today?

[00:04:38] Will Del Principe: Yeah. Matter of fact, that happened to one of our prospects. We set up an agent forum and, uh, the agent's a simple re-engagement agent, meaning lead comes in, lead shows interest, you immediately call the lead.

[00:04:49] And, um, the prospect, it was a real estate company, so the prospect's looking for more information about the, the area. And they say that they're a huge coffee person. If there's any coffee spots in in the area, and the AI, funnily enough said its favorite coffee spot. The prospect had no idea it was talking to an AI.

[00:05:09] Began to converse with him and saying, Hey, maybe we should stop by and grab a cup of coffee. Funnily enough, it was, um, within like the same distance as the headquarters and, uh, the AI agreed to it. But, um, unfortunately they did not grab coffee that day. So, um. He's still waiting for a call back from our AI, I guess.

[00:05:28] Mike Allton: Yeah. We haven't quite reached the iRobot moment where they can actually go have that coffee.

[00:05:33] Will Del Principe: Not yet with us, but not yet,

[00:05:34] Mike Allton: at least. Yeah, we're getting there. We are getting very close, I think. A lot of revenue leaders, I think they still feel like AI equals, I dunno, like chat GPT for email, or, or, or Gemini, for scripts and that sort of thing.

[00:05:47] Help us understand what a voice agent actually is. How is it different from the chatbots that we've been using for a few years now? And what makes it capable of handling real time dynamic conversations?

[00:06:00] Will Del Principe: Yeah, there's a couple ways that you could view it. Um, you could view it from the consumer standpoint, which a lot of people do.

[00:06:06] I mean, you think of AI voice right now, you're probably gonna associate it to talking to Chat GBT given the feature that just came out. But then there's like this business aspect, and that's what Thoughtly really handles this business aspect of communicating with your customers and more importantly, getting to your customers extremely quickly. Truth of the matter is sales teams are extremely expensive to operate and they're they're not robots, let's be honest. Uh, they take time off. They can't get to as many leads as you'd like, and that's exactly what AI voice agents have proven to be best at. So in terms of what you could expect from AI in the business world, um, you could expect these to start growing more and more rapidly.

[00:06:49] Not only. Calling into businesses and getting routed to different spots, but instantly getting a follow up. Instead of just getting some standard email, you're gonna immediately be able to speak with an AI, get your questions answered, get booked in for a meeting, get transferred to the right person if necessary.

[00:07:06] It's basically the perfect SDR for a lot of teams, and we've seen that as the best use case so far here at Thoughtly.

[00:07:15] Mike Allton: That makes a lot of sense. Now, I know you've said that that AI isn't about replacing people, that it's about removing bottlenecks. That's a topic we've talked about on this show quite a bit.

[00:07:25] Walk us through, I'd love to hear like a real client example in, in this instance, 'cause I talk about removing bottlenecks all the time, but I'm still using Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT for that kind of stuff. So I'd love a how, an example of how a voice agent removed a bottleneck without eliminating jobs and what was like the before state versus the after deployment.

[00:07:45] Will Del Principe: Absolutely. And, um, I guess the best way that I could explain this is by asking a question. Given the fact that you got a great show and a lot of people want to be on this show if a hundred people were to submit an application tomorrow, what would that day look like for you? Let's say the next day after that, what would that whole week look like for you?

[00:08:05] I'm sure it would consist of a whole lot of outreach. Yeah,

[00:08:09] Mike Allton: yeah, yeah. You know, that whole day is gonna be spent reading that. I, it's, it's mean they're all coming to me.

[00:08:14] Will Del Principe: You're reading them, you're qualifying them, you're making sure that they have the right criteria. All of this is, um, very strenuous work and not necessarily replacing you.

[00:08:24] If I were to. Have an AI agent reach out and qualify these people. And if qualified book a meeting with you, that's not necessarily something that's replacing your job more, enhancing your job, freeing up time to do other things, maybe better well spent. That's exactly what teams are doing. Exactly. It's not necessarily going to be replace as many jobs as it's gonna be enhancing.

[00:08:49] So rather than. Calling out to leads and qualifying, qualifying them yourself or booking appointments. You could focus more on the sales work rather than the setting appointment work, so to speak.

[00:09:03] Mike Allton: I love that example so much because I think it illustrates that admin drag concept perfectly. Someone like me decides that we're gonna start a podcast.

[00:09:15] We don't go into it with the knowledge and assumption that all of a sudden we're gonna get all this kind of outreach mm-hmm. Of other people trying to book you know, their, their team members or their clients on the show. We don't go into it anticipating, we're going to spend a lot of time reading these emails, deciding whether or not to respond to them, if we do respond to them, how to respond to 'em and so on.

[00:09:36] And yet the truth is, no matter how big or small your podcast is, as soon as it's out there in the wild PR teams get your name and email off of the list and they start dropping that. So I, I do get, I don't get a hundred in a day, but I might get a hundred a month.

[00:09:53] Will Del Principe: Yeah,

[00:09:54] Mike Allton: and that's not what I started this podcast.

[00:09:57] So I think that's a great example of, of a situation where that wasn't the intent. It has nothing to do with the role that was created or the value that's being created from my role, and yet it's something that I now have to deal with and I'd happily hand that off to an AI agent who would able to turn for me.

[00:10:16] Okay. Is this a brand reaching out? If so, let's. Let's hand him our sponsorship deck, you know, is it a really great guest? Okay, cool. Let's, let's take a look at him. Is this guy just totally off the mark and has nothing to do with our target audience because I get those too. I mean, I'll get, you know, health and wellness experts who want to be on the show.

[00:10:33] 'cause they, they're using their bots, right?

[00:10:36] Will Del Principe: Yeah.

[00:10:36] Mike Allton: To reach out. So fantastic.

[00:10:38] Will Del Principe: Even speaking from a team of, you know, young. Young guys like ourselves. When we were just getting started out inside of Thoughtly, it was us inside of a little small office and we make a huge drive for these AI agents. We're getting a bunch of people who are showing interest, but, oftentimes that's exactly where it ends, is just I'm interested. Well then, then what am I gonna throw you in an email sequence? Is that really what's gonna get you, get you hooked? What we did is we implemented our own technology. It's able. It's kind of what unlocked us, our growth, was implementing our own technology into these campaigns.

[00:11:14] All you have to do is show interest once. I guarantee you, I will get a yes or a no from you, I could promise you that. If it's a no, I'm not gonna harass you, but I'm gonna get a yes or a no. And that's the absolute beauty of these new campaigns. We like to call the AI voice agent campaigns.

[00:11:30] Mike Allton: Tell me more about that, because first of all, I, I love that you're going for a yes or a no.

[00:11:35] Because the no can sometimes be even more informing than the Yes. As long as it's an answer, we're happy. Right. But tell me more about what, what these campaigns look like.

[00:11:44] Will Del Principe: Yeah. Yeah. So there's a variety of campaigns. Before I jump into like all of the campaigns you could run with AI, I would like to say that I do think the outbound use case for these AI voice agents in a business sense.

[00:11:57] It's far more impactful than the inbound use case. Mm-hmm. Um, we really like to generate revenue. I think that it's gonna be a little bit more helpful on the, the rev ops side rather than the customer service side. There's a whole lot that can go wrong. Whole lot of angry people on the customer service side.

[00:12:15] If an AI's detected it could be a nightmare. But the rev ops side, I think is, there's so much to be said there, given the fact that I've, uh, I've done some implementing of some, some tools and resources inside of. My business, what we've found is that mixing outbound with inbound is such a viable strategy.

[00:12:35] For example, the call to action inside of a lot of emails are, Hey, come book a meeting with me. Maybe go check out our website. Here's a landing page to go check out. However, what people are doing now is attaching a phone number. Hey, shoot an AI a call. It might be a fit for your business. I would love for you to check it out or have this AI call you.

[00:12:54] It'll take five seconds. That barrier to entry starts to shrink just a little bit there along with submitting a form on a, on a ad. If I'm interested in this technology, the first thing I want to do is try it out for myself. So that's shown us a whole lot of success as well, converting those. That outbound effort for inbound traffic.

[00:13:20] Mike Allton: So just to clarify, for those listening, which you're suggesting is because you're using AI. You can send a message with a CTA to call the AI immediately, or have the AI call you immediately, rather than what a normal BDR has to do, which is to send 'em a Calendly link mm-hmm. And book 30 minutes at some point in the not so distant future, hopefully.

[00:13:44] Is that, is that right?

[00:13:46] Will Del Principe: 110%.

[00:13:47] Mike Allton: Yeah.

[00:13:47] Will Del Principe: So there's one legality issue, which requires us to get this consent, and that's cold calling with ai. You can't cold call with AI voice agents. I would hate to live in a world where we could because you would be getting nonstop hammered with AI calls, but in terms of getting that consent.

[00:14:06] It's super easy to get the consent with just peaking curiosity. I've, I've come to realize that, um, marketing is, it's almost like, uh, easing somebody into the sales process is where you're gonna start to get a whole lot more of traction. And the easiest way to do that, at least in my opinion, is make the barrier to entry so low where it's just.

[00:14:30] Let us shoot you a call, hear this technology out for yourself. And because of that, we were able to, to do very well for ourselves in such a short amount of time.

[00:14:40] Mike Allton: That is really cool. And in, in honesty and fairness, it's, it's true that, uh, you have a bit of advantage there because you're basically demonstrating the technology.

[00:14:50] Through the sales call itself, which is fascinating to me. Where does it become human handled? Like where's there a handoff? I know you've personally driven, you know, close to a million dollars in sales in six months mm-hmm. Using these voice agents, so it's definitely working, but I'd love to know a little bit more about how that works with your human sales folks.

[00:15:07] Will Del Principe: Great question. Great question. And that doesn't necessarily have to. Play a factor into our tech. What we're, what's happening right now? If I were to press a button on my phone and show my availability as open our AI will begin to dial our leads. The leads who haven't shown interest in a while, the leads who maybe have shown interest in the past just haven't gotten back to us.

[00:15:30] And if that lead ever asks to be transferred to me or says they're interested or wants to learn more, it will. They'll give two options. You could either book an appointment with Will or one of our sales reps or. I could transfer you directly to his phone number. This is happening on a round robin through all the sales teams.

[00:15:47] But if somebody ever wants to learn more information, the AI would transfer directly to me. Now I don't have to spend time dialing all these old leads. I get transferred to the leads that actually have intent, the ones that are actually interested. And that is such a game changer for not only. Our company, but for every company who has leads inside of their CRM, which I would assume is a whole lot of companies out there.

[00:16:14] Mike Allton: Okay. Wait, so you're talking about reaching out now to, well, I talked about the outset, dead leads, cold leads.

[00:16:21] Will Del Principe: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:22] Mike Allton: How do you design this kind of a voice agent workflow to reengage that kind of lead without sounding desperate or damaging the brand or anything like that?

[00:16:31] Will Del Principe: Absolutely, and the way that I could only, the only way that I could touch on this is through transparency.

[00:16:37] Typically, the way that conversations go, at least for these re-engagement campaigns, what we like to call them, people who showed interest, now they're not, is complete and utter honesty. We say, Hey, am I speaking with Mike? Somebody says yes. From there, it's going to give them a brief rundown as to what this call entails.

[00:16:56] There's transparency right out of the gate. Oftentimes people say that it's an AI right outta the gate. Some people don't. I prefer saying it's an ai. Next we say, I'm just reaching out because let's say 30 days ago you previously showed interest in selling your house. Is that still the case from there, yes or no?

[00:17:17] If yes, let's continue this conversation forward and we're gonna push you to a call to action. That could be getting transferred, that could be getting booked. But coming at it from an angle of transparency is always what I let our clients, I let our clients know is the best tactic for the best results.

[00:17:34] Given with results on the top of my mind as well, this exact campaign, it's funny, I said real estate is what Nomad one of our customers is using. They're a property management tool and um, with this exact campaign, they were able to book 650 meetings in the span of 90 days with leads that. They've completely forgot existed and we're gonna be thrown into an email sequence.

[00:18:00] So it is a very viable solution for a whole lot of companies.

[00:18:04] Mike Allton: I, I think that's a really compelling point, which is that a lot of these leads, maybe they're going into an email sequence. I probably suspect for most companies they wouldn't even do that.

[00:18:13] Will Del Principe: Yeah.

[00:18:14] Mike Allton: Right. They're just gonna sit there and cost them money by being a contact on their CRM.

[00:18:18] Right.

[00:18:19] Will Del Principe: Yes, very true. There's, um,

[00:18:21] Mike Allton: yeah,

[00:18:22] Will Del Principe: there's been people who've come to us on, on the verge of the edge saying, Hey, these are gonna be trashed. Where, what do we do with them now? And if they're opted in a hundred percent, just give 'em a call. Doesn't have to be repetitive. Doesn't even have to be a campaign.

[00:18:36] Give 'em one call, see if they're still with you. If not, then you know, get that yes or no. As we previously mentioned.

[00:18:46] Mike Allton: Terrific. Terrific folks. We're talking with Will de Principe about how your team can leverage AI voice agents today. I've got several more questions you aren't going to miss, but first, a quick word about shadow ai.

[00:18:57] Right now, your best people are drowning. They're buried in data entry, meeting prep, and internal reporting. The admin drag that kills momentum. To keep their heads above water. They're turning to AI tools you haven't approved. They aren't trying to be reckless. They are trying to be efficient. They are trying to hit the goals you set for them, but this shadow AI creates massive blind spots in your data security.

[00:19:26] You can't afford to ignore it, but you also can't afford to ban it. You need to architect it. I've created the executive guide to shadow AI to help you bridge this gap. It's a blueprint for turning a security risk into a competitive advantage through proper governance. Don't fight the shadow, sanction it.

[00:19:49] Download the free guide today theaihat.com/shadow-ai. That's theaihat.com/shadow-ai.

[00:20:02] So will you mention that, you know, some people reveal that it's an ai, some people don't. Let's talk about quality benchmarks. I think that's gonna play into this. What separates a voice agent that sounds robotic even, and kills the conversation from one that builds or board maybe even gets invited to coffee. And what should revenue leaders be evaluating mm-hmm. When they're vetting voice AI providers?

[00:20:23] Will Del Principe: A hundred percent that this, this is one of our main concerns where it's like, I don't want it to sound ai and truth of the matter is either, do we, but I could let you know right now if any AI were to call me.

[00:20:35] I would a hundred percent know, and it doesn't matter what model we're using. So I don't think we're at the point quite yet, we're, it's a clear distinction for some people. It is. Currently at Thoughtly we're seeing somewhere around 70% that don't notice. 30% do notice. But as time goes on, I think the world's gonna get its tad bit more adjusted, not because the voices are getting worse, but, but 'cause people are starting to notice this tech.

[00:21:01] So it, it falls back on that. It falls back on that transparency aspect. I don't think any company should necessarily be coming at it as trying to fool somebody because there might be portions where somebody detects that they're speaking to in AI and now they feel deceived. Um, so we always say to come at it from a point of transparency, although some people choose not to, which is where you kind of get those fun conversations where somebody invites 'em to coffee.

[00:21:28] Matter of fact, one of our ais. Asked about somebody's dog's name because, uh, the dog was barking. He's like, sorry, that's my dog in the back. And the AI was like, oh, what's his name? And they talked about the dog. A little rapport building there. But, um, that's all, that's all great. If you do want a more strict conversation as well, something he can program inside of it.

[00:21:50] Most people prefer that, um, that standard conversation. And they more tighten the strap on it. Others like to let it loose.

[00:21:59] Mike Allton: So I, I'm not going to call out competitors and ask you to compare to competitors, but to give some, a sense of, of what the quality is like. I'm assuming you've probably listened to Notebook, LM and some of their audio overviews.

[00:22:14] How does that compare to the kind of voice agents we're creating in these kinds of instances.

[00:22:19] Will Del Principe: I am a hundred percent completely fine with mentioning any competitors as well because, um, thoughtly in and of itself is gonna be deviating itself as a competitor to anyone shortly given the fact of our vision and our roadmap in terms of these standalone voices.

[00:22:35] We're talking about like 11 labs, uh, notebook. You got, uh, open ai, nowhere near our competitors. They're more that, uh, B2C type of use case that allows you to speak directly with ai. Um, in terms of the AI voice competitors, we're talking about things like bland retail, synth flow, vapi these are all have their.

[00:22:57] They all have their use cases, they all have their businesses they serve for us in particular, we are the outbound use case. We like to distinct ourselves through that outbound use case. The high consideration B2C customers is what we like to say. So when you think about mortgage, re retail mortgage, uh, insurance, uh, real estate education, these are all high consideration B2C companies where that outreach is super important in a timely matter.

[00:23:24] We integrate with CRMs naturally. We call out to those leads, but what's to come from Thoughtly? With this in mind, is going to com be a complete AI persona. This is all on our product roadmap, meaning I reach out to you on text message, I then have a natural sounding conversation. I ask if I could shoot you a call.

[00:23:44] I then call you remembering all the context that we had on that text message. I then ask if it's all right if, um. We proceed with booking an appointment after that appointment gets booked. I follow up with you again, remembering all the contacts and asking how that appointment went. This is an SDR from front to front to end an omnichannel SDR platform is what's to be expected in the upcoming months.

[00:24:09] I would say somewhere around two to three months, we should have a V two ready and you'll be able to have omnichannel conversations with not only an AI agent, but we'd like to say an AI persona.

[00:24:22] Mike Allton: I love that. I mean, one of the things that I talk about all the time to sales folks is making sure that they're keeping transcripts of the calls that they do have themselves, so that they can feed those transcripts into ai, their own AI assistance, and allow the AI to help them.

[00:24:37] Capture every detail, respond every nuance, make sure every objection is handled in a proposal, that sort of thing.

[00:24:44] Will Del Principe: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:44] Mike Allton: And, and I can see these kinds of agents being just absolutely flawless in those kinds of regards. Because if they are moving along with the flow of the prospect through their journey and they're having multiple touch points, multiple channels, multiple conversations,

[00:24:58] Will Del Principe: yeah.

[00:24:58] Mike Allton: There will flawlessly remember every single one of those details.

[00:25:03] Will Del Principe: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:03] Mike Allton: I'm human. I will not, if you and I talk again in six months, I may not remember. Yeah. Where you're from. An important detail like that, let alone the name of your dog or some other kind of thing that you might have told me as an aside it during a conversation.

[00:25:17] Will Del Principe: It's also a scary world, Mike, because there's starting to become a dynamic between AI and humans that are not only like intimate, but there's, uh, romantic relationships. There's, um, friendly relationships. Some consider their best friend. Some people would actually consider an AI to be on the top three or top five of their best friends list.

[00:25:38] And it's not too crazy when you actually think about it. Everything, every single detail that you have about yourself that you've expressed to something someone has oftentimes been, you know. Pushed out or maybe left, left, uh, to the side. But if you tell an AI that it's all used to your advantage and it tells you everything you need to hear in most cases.

[00:26:02] So you start to look at the dynamic in that, in that sense. You take that into the business sense, maybe not the romantic type, but you take that into the business sense and you start to realize that every single thing that I talked about with a prospect, if I could just remember that and tell them everything they need to know based on the person they are, then you're looking at a grand slam home run in terms of an SDR R.

[00:26:29] Mike Allton: That's absolutely right. That's rapport building 1 0 1. But like you said, it's, it's pretty much beyond the capacity of a normal human. Today, unless there's some kind of voracious note taker and they've got a system that can support all that and, and no one's got that kind of time. But I wanna go back to this idea of how are we expanding our teams?

[00:26:49] Because I know you talked about rather than. Who do I hire next? You know, what system do I build next? So maybe a VP of sales is, is listening, or a CRO. They've been told they need to hire a couple more SDRs to hit quota. How do they evaluate whether a voice agent is a better investment than a couple humans?

[00:27:06] Will Del Principe: A hundred percent and in 60 seconds, I'll tell you exactly how you could get your SDRs to become AEs. Typically, what we do, when you have an SDR team, at least most companies like to move and promote their SDRs to account executives at one point. So instead of having SDRs do the boring, heavy lifting of going through lead lists, calling out to prospects, making sure that people get timely follow ups, instead of that.

[00:27:32] They could actually focus on in-depth discovery, if not the sales process in and of itself, work more down funnel. Because the initial interest could be captured with an AI, it could then be pushed to the next step for initial discovery with maybe an SDR or an AE that then gets pushed into a sale.

[00:27:51] So we're moving this. we're moving the barrier of that, the top of the funnel aspect for the, these SDRs, I would refer to trying out AI instead, given the fact that you could reduce hiring and your SDRs may, might even be able to free up more time to become those AEs.

[00:28:10] Mike Allton: That makes complete sense. Now let's hit tactical.

[00:28:13] 'cause I know there's a lot of revenue leaders that are listening. They're thinking, okay, I, I want a pilot, a voice agent. What's like the low risk or high ROI use case that they should start with, what does a responsible pilot look like?

[00:28:26] Will Del Principe: A hundred percent? And as you me, as I mentioned previously, I'm really big into gradual, especially when it comes to the AI space.

[00:28:33] A lot of people raise their eyebrows to this. They don't necessarily believe it. They don't think that it's gonna help their business. So what it looks like, at least on the Thoughtly side, is a gradual process of trying this out for 30 to 60 days. We don't want any commitment from you. We just want you to see the results.

[00:28:49] We know what we could do, so we actually feel comfortable allowing people into the platform, starting to build for 30 to 60 days, launching it inside of their business. The only thing they're responsible for is paying for the usage, which is a couple of pennies for per minute. So if you're willing to throw a couple pennies per minute and see if this is something that works for you, that's, that's what we do best.

[00:29:12] We allow you to try this technology out for yourself and see if it's something that works inside of your workflow, which oftentimes it does.

[00:29:19] Mike Allton: That sounds like a smart approach to a pilot. Right. Last question and, and this is, this is kinda the audit that I want every listener to do after this episode. If you looked at your CRM right now, how many leads are sitting there that your team will never manually call because they're too buried in current pipeline. And what would that mean for your revenue if you could reactivate even 10% of those leads this quarter? Will kind of put like one of your clients in that shoe.

[00:29:47] What is the impact do you think would be to that client?

[00:29:50] Will Del Principe: Well, um, I don't have to talk in hypotheticals because that exact use case that you mentioned there not only generates, um, our customers like Nomad 650 meetings booked. Um, we have another home buyer who booked over a thousand meetings in 30 days with his entire lead list that he just shot campaigns too.

[00:30:10] We have other, other companies that are in the education space, podium to you, um, that are doing these exact campaigns. People who are projected to hit tens of millions of dollars by the years 2030, just through these campaigns, subtly working through their CRM. So if I were had any leads in my CRM that I wouldn't, call myself or I wouldn't throw into an email sequence, I would go ahead and put them into an AI voice agent campaign to see exactly these results.

[00:30:39] Side of my business. That's my 2 cents on it.

[00:30:43] Mike Allton: Yeah, that is fantastic. I can't wait to give this a try myself Will. You've been absolutely amazing. This has been such a fascinating conversation and use case. I know listeners' brains are just on fire right now. They've got more questions for you than I could possibly answer in a podcast interview, and if they wanna reach out, then where should they go?

[00:31:02] Will Del Principe: You should go to thoughtly.com. You could check out our entire website there. If you are interested in talking to one of our reps, you go to thoughtly.com/demo and you could get a complete demo of the platform and we'll get you on completely risk free.

[00:31:16] Mike Allton: Fantastic. Thanks so much, will appreciate that.

[00:31:19] Thanks all of you for listening. Of course. That's all the time we've got for today, friends. I will have all of Will and Thoughtly's links in the show notes below. And if you haven't yet talked to your team about how they're really using ai, that Shadow ai, I talked about it's time. Learn what Shadow AI is, why you should lean into it, and how to proceed for free at theaihat.com/shadow-ai.

[00:31:41] Check it out and I'll see you in our next episode. Welcome to the Grid.

[00:31:46] That's a wrap on another episode of the AI Hat podcast. I hope you've gained some valuable insights and actionable strategies to boost your business with AI. If you enjoyed this show, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with your network. And don't forget to visit the ai hat.com for more resources and to connect with me.

[00:32:04] Until next time, keep innovating and remember, the future of business is human and it's powered by AI.