Season 2, Episode 04 | AI for Revenue Leaders: The AI Hat Podcast
Hosted by Mike Allton

If your sales team is stuck at 25% conversion despite investing in AI tools, the problem isn't the technology - it's your sales process. In this episode, sales strategy expert Aleasha Bahr (author of Black Sheep Sales) reveals why most AI pilots fail to move the needle and walks through the 3-step Sales Methodology Audit every Revenue Leader should run before buying another tool.

You'll learn:

• Why "automating a broken process" is the #1 reason AI pilots end up in "Pilot Purgatory
• The difference between Admin Drag (tasks AI should handle) and Relationship Moments (where humans must stay in control)
• How to identify if your team is wasting capacity on leads that were never going to close
• Where AI actually fits in a high-converting sales workflow (hint: it's not messaging)
• The counterintuitive truth about sales velocity: Why taking fewer calls can lead to more revenue

Aleasha has helped clients achieve up to 80% lead conversion rates using her "Black Sheep Sales" methodology - built on clarity, authenticity, and a repeatable process. If you're tired of AI tools that promise magic but deliver more logins your team ignores, this is the pre-mortem you need.

🎧 Listen now to learn how to audit your sales process before your next AI investment.

📥 Download the free Executive Guide to Shadow AI: https://theaihat.com/shadow-ai

Learn more about Aleasha Bahr

• Connect with Aleasha Bahr on LinkedIn
• Black Sheep Sales

Resources & Brands mentioned in this episode

• Hiring Your First Digital Crew Member: The Sales Prep Agent - Season 2, Episode 3 of AI for Revenue Leaders: The AI Hat Podcast
• Sales Is Not A Dirty Word 
• Deal with Shadow AI: https://theaihat.com/shadow-ai
• Follow Mike Allton on LinkedIn and get more AI tips
• Explore past episodes of the The AI Hat Podcast podcast

Full Transcript

(lightly edited)

80% Lead Conversion Without AI: What Sales Expert Aleasha Bahr Knows That You Don't

80% Lead Conversion Without AI: What Sales Expert Aleasha Bahr Knows That You Don't

[00:00:00] Aleasha Bahr: If somebody is having anything more than six sales calls a day, that's very concerning for me. It turns into a blur. They can't remember who they talk to, they can't remember the details. They're not able to follow up. Stuff's falling through the cracks. Really, it's different for each person, and whenever I bring a salesperson on, I'm very clear with them that you need to be aware of what makes you the most quality? Because if you are doing more because you think that's gonna create a better result, but you're, as a result, since you're doing so much, you're actually performing at a 50% quality level, that's not gonna do anything. It's just gonna waste everybody's time, including yours.

[00:00:45] So is that. Is that amount of calls three. And then you can have the time to follow up in a quality kind of way and have time to research ahead of time or go through your AI report, or is it four or what is that for you? Because every experience I've ever had with over a hundred different companies at this point is taking less calls always equals more money.

[00:01:16] Always.

[00:01:17] 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.

[00:01:42] 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.

[00:02:05] Business growth, here we go. Cuttin' edge insights, that's the plan. With The AI Hat you'll understand.

[00:02:26] Your sales team isn't selling. They're updating CRM Fields, doing prospect research, chasing down meeting notes, spending 70% of their time on what I call admin drag. And here's the kicker. You probably already tried to fix this with an AI pilot, but six months later, the conversion rates are still stuck, the pipeline is still stalled, and you're wondering if you just wasted another chunk of budget on software that promised magic but delivered more logins your team ignores.

[00:02:55] Here's what nobody's telling you. The problem isn't the AI. The problem is that you're automating a broken sales process. You're trying to scale a methodology that never worked in the first place. And if you can't answer the question, what does a high converting sales process actually look like?

[00:03:12] Then no chat bot, no cadence tool, no AI SDR is going to save you, which is why I brought in someone who's going to challenge everything you think you know about sales efficiency. Aleasha Bahr is a sales strategy and messaging expert who's built a methodology she calls Black Sheep Sales and her clients convert up to 80% of their leads without acting like douche bags, without pressure tactics, and without a massive AI stack.

[00:03:39] Now, Aleasha will be the first to tell you she's not an AI evangelist. In fact, she's openly skeptical, and that's exactly why this conversation matters. Over 15 years in the sales trenches, she's helped sell tens of millions in offers by focusing on what most teams skip. A repeatable, authentic process built on clarity and connection. She's gonna show us the sales methodology audit that most leaders never run. And that's why most AI pilots end up in pilot purgatory. So if you've been wondering why your last AI investment didn't move the needle, this is the playbook you should have run six months ago. Hey, Aleasha, welcome to the show y'all.

[00:04:18] Aleasha Bahr: Hi Mike. I'm so excited to be here. I,

[00:04:22] Mike Allton: I am thrilled to have you here. This is fantastic. Uh, we were having a great conversation in the green room. Probably should have started recording even sooner than we did, but I'm glad that you're here. And I want to start with that stat that I think probably made every VP listening either inspired or uncomfortable that 80% lead conversion.

[00:04:42] Walk us through what has to be true in a sales process to hit that number. What are most teams missing?

[00:04:50] Aleasha Bahr: Yeah, so I think that a lot of teams are missing clarity around who is a fit and more importantly, who is not a fit. So Black Sheep Sales is really based on fitting instead of that convincing selling energy that happens a lot in sales.

[00:05:09] A lot of the times, salespeople are focused on yes, as their only goal, and people can feel that. We call it commission breath. Mm-hmm. And they miss the trust building that is necessary for someone to feel comfortable saying yes. They ironically get less yeses because of that.

[00:05:31] And part of that is knowing how to set expectations with someone so they are not a nightmare client, and how to filter somebody out and ideally filter them out ahead of time, starting even in the marketing that somebody sees before they come in, the words you use matter. The framing and positioning matter.

[00:05:53] So a lot of times marketing and sales aren't even working together and there's just no sales training For salespeople. They have them sink or swim, figure it out on your own. If you were to ask the sales team, how do you position us, everybody would have a different way of explaining how they're different and how their services work and what they do.

[00:06:12] And that's gonna lead to a lot of unpredictability.

[00:06:18] Mike Allton: That makes a a lot of sense to me. I'm a certified NLP practitioner and coach. So I'm thinking about terms like rapport and, and persuasion, and making sure that when I'm communicating to somebody, I am speaking in their language the way that they prefer to learn and, and communicate, which means I'm mirroring and matching if I'm being very intentional about my communication.

[00:06:41] I, I know that's a lot and it's, and it's hard for people to kind of wrap their brains around that. So let's talk about what it means to be sales without being a douche bag and what that actually means, like operationally, and try to boil this down for what is an authentic high converting sales methodology.

[00:06:58] What does that like require from a workflow perspective?

[00:07:02] Aleasha Bahr: Yeah, so most people have a visceral reaction when they hear a sales douche bag. Like they have an image in their mind that comes to mind. And somebody whose only goal in the conversation is to get a yes, and every tactic, every trick, every line, every question is see-through. Like, I know why you're saying that. I know what you're leading me to. I know you're trying to manipulate me into something and I'm not having it. And so to have a sales process that is very clear upfront.

[00:07:37] So for example, one of the things that makes a huge difference for people is sending out something ahead of a sales conversation that frames the conversation, not like, please don't be driving and have a paper for notes.

[00:07:49] People sometimes do that, but really, I mean, I was talking to a client today, for example, who does paid ads for visibility. She has an agency and they focus on visibility, not necessarily lead gen, and it turns into lead gen if you have an offer that's already working, you also need to have. An amount of money that you're okay with investing in data without getting a return, and you have to be okay with a certain timeline before you start getting a return.

[00:08:19] Knowing that investing in this is going to accelerate your growth. However, it is not instantaneous. And so sending something out ahead of time that lets somebody know that. And if this is you, then I can't wait to talk. If it's not you, please let me know what you were looking for and I can link you up with the right resource.

[00:08:39] So that's gonna take so much heavy lifting off a sales conversation. And it starts even with the the marketing that goes out ahead of time. I talked to another client who is a fractional CFO, and she was getting more startup clients than she wanted. She wanted people who were at a later stage of business, and it's because she was using the word entrepreneurs in her marketing.

[00:09:02] Hmm. So you wanna look at everything from the beginning down to the end and how you are setting a meeting. Right. Are you looking for somebody to generate leads? That would be the, the wrong messaging for a visibility play. And it's about carrying that transparent intention throughout the conversation of letting someone know who's a fit and who's not a fit.

[00:09:26] Because people usually get scared, and you might've talked about this, or have people on to talk about how niching down does create more business, but people are always so scared of it and they think the only way to niche down is by industry or demographic. However, you can niche down psychologically too.

[00:09:46] You can say, if you are looking to just check a box, that's not us. If you're looking for someone who's very buttoned up or proper, that's not us. There's so many ways to attract your person in a much stronger way than if you seemed like you were for everybody and you did it all.

[00:10:08] Mike Allton: Could not agree more.

[00:10:09] I was watching a video on YouTube that, that talked about that framing. And I gotta say, I had a visceral reaction when you talked about people reaching out, salespeople reaching out and framing the conversation by offering something or asking a question because that's what my LinkedIn dms and my Instagram dms are filled with today.

[00:10:27] And I'm thinking I need to come up with just an auto reply that just sends them to you. 'cause I don't wanna have that conversation with them. But they need your help, obviously, uh, because they're running a script on their ascent and then hoping that I'm going to respond a certain way to their questions, their cold outreach.

[00:10:42] And as much as I respect those people, that's just not the way. To go about it, but I know a lot of the revenue leaders that are listening, they're dealing with what I, I call pilot purgatory. In that introduction, they've bought an AI sales tool. Maybe they've invested in copilot Microsoft copilot or something like that, and they've run a pilot and six months later, nothing has changed.

[00:11:03] And I'd love for you to just weigh in from your perspective, if you've got one on why you think maybe some of these AI pilots are failing to move the conversion needle.

[00:11:14] Aleasha Bahr: Yeah, some of what we were talking about ahead of time plays into this. AI has a higher error rate than we would like. A lot of the time. It's also treating sales as a volume play.

[00:11:30] So there's a saying that sales is a numbers game, and it is a numbers game in the way that once you have a dialed in process, you can say, okay, I need this many leads with this conversion rate to create this much money. However, a lot of times when people say sales is a numbers game, they mean you just have to contact a hundred people to get one sale. So it's a numbers game when you treat people like numbers and AI still has that effect. It might be slightly more personalized, but for example I had somebody who is probably using AI reach out to me and say, Hey, have you ever thought about writing a book called Black Sheep Sales? How to Win More Sales without acting like a Douche Bag?

[00:12:12] Mike Allton: Have you ever thought about that?

[00:12:14] Aleasha Bahr: I'm like, wow.

[00:12:15] Mike Allton: For the folks listening, Audi audibly, she's literally holding that book in her hands.

[00:12:21] Aleasha Bahr: I'm like, yes, I have. And I did. And never heard from him again. Right? Yeah. So AI tries to do this personalized thing that's a template or something like that. It's just people require nuance and the more I you treat them like a human, the more likely they are to respond to you, so you don't have to have such a high volume. So I think it's that the personalization doesn't end up feeling personalized at all.

[00:12:52] Mike Allton: I, I couldn't agree more. I'm working on, uh, an AI agent that I see. I'm doing a bunch of sales kickoff meetings this quarter where I'm going in and I'm teaching these sales folks how to use AI.

[00:13:02] I'm, I'm showing them how they can use an AI agent to help them prepare for a call, where it'll do a lot of the research and heavy lifting for them and say, Hey, you're meeting with Aleasha in 15 minutes. She just posted about a new edition of her book, or something like that. Ask her about it. That's bringing the human into the conversation.

[00:13:23] Right. With a little bit of help from AI, but I I, I love where you were going with that, because I think one of the fundamental issues that a lot of people have with AI that they don't realize is that when they ask the AI a question, and we were kind of alluding to this in, in our green room conversation.

[00:13:40] When they ask AI a question, they don't know if it's true or false. They don't know if it's right or wrong. They don't know if it's a great idea or a poor idea. But the problem is AI's confidence level is through the roof, right? If you're just reading the AI's response, Mike, that is a fantastic idea. You should absolutely do this.

[00:14:00] Run with this. Here's your script. Here's your email. And you're just sitting there as a user thinking, oh, okay, well I guess that sounds good. Maybe I'll run with that. And so it requires at the moment with today's systems. It requires, we customize 'em a little bit and we tell them, Hey, you know, don't be overly positive.

[00:14:20] Don't be overly syncophantic. Tell me when my ideas are bad. That's one of the things I shared with you. My AI has permission to tell me when I've gone off the rails with my ideas, and it does, it's a really effective guardrail for me when it's given that permission. But I, I wonder if we could do kind of a live audit.

[00:14:38] So like if a VP of sales came to you tomorrow and said, Aleasha. Our conversion rate, it's stuck at 25%. We don't know why. Mm-hmm. Irrespective of AI, what do you think are like the first three things that you would wanna diagnose in their sales process?

[00:14:57] Aleasha Bahr: Yeah, so the first thing that I wanna look at is what context do people have when they are a prospect?

[00:15:08] Joining a sales conversation, how have they been framed? What do they want? What do they think you do? That lines up with what they want, and then looking at how is your team communicating that you're different? Are they saying something similar? Are they saying different things? And then also understanding if they're following up.

[00:15:36] What does that look like? Because most salespeople are not following up, and if they are following up, they're just checking in, circling back, touching base, do you wanna buy my thing, which nobody's gonna respond to, so it's really a fundamental, I would wanna see how well the salespeople understand the product and how they're communicating it and how it's positioned, and if they're even addressing what the prospect really wants or what's so great about them.

[00:16:09] Because a lot of times, they're just focusing on deliverables. It's not the thing that someone actually wants. So, for example, have a client who was doing marketing for people and she was only closing like 20% of these people because she was talking about how she did their social media and she did their emails.

[00:16:31] But when we shifted to helping the team talk about how they offer fractional CMO services as an extension of your internal team, she started closing a whole lot more. She didn't even realize that that's what she was doing. So a lot of times sales leaders aren't, are really good at looking at numbers on paper and saying, oh, well let's look at this and that.

[00:16:55] Not so much looking at the positioning and the messaging, which is usually the issue, and that's what I would look at first.

[00:17:03] Mike Allton: That makes a lot of sense. Classically, trained marketers are told, you know, talk about benefits over features, and we have to repeat it to ourselves over and over again because it's easier to talk about features. We know the features. That's what we live and breathe. We don't live and breathe the benefits necessarily because that's what the clients are going through. The clients are going through the pains. The clients are hoping to reap the benefits of whatever it is that we're offering. Folks, we're talking with Aleasha Bahr about how important it's to have a solid process in place before you introduce new tools or ai, and I've got several more questions that you aren't gonna wanna miss. But first, a quick word about Shadow AI.

[00:17:42] 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.

[00:18:10] 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.

[00:18:33] Download the free guide today at theaihat.com slash shadow ai. That's the ai hat.com/shadow ai.

[00:18:46] All right, Aleasha, here's where I think it gets really interesting because you've been, you've been transparent about being in this kind of love-hate relationship with AI right now, but I know you've, you've talked about using it for prospect research. What, kind of, walk me through that. What is, what does AI handle, what would it handle in your workflow or one of your clients' workflows, and why do you think that's the right place for AI?

[00:19:07] Aleasha Bahr: So I have found that AI is incredibly helpful when it comes to research because research is time consuming. Now you need to double check the research, but it is much faster to double check certain things than to go and gather all the little details yourself and put them into an Excel spreadsheet or whatever.

[00:19:29] So being able to say, I want companies that are doing this. Like very specific parameters around what you want and what you don't want, and exporting them into a table with this information in it is a huge support. And then from there you can go and learn more details or double check the details or at that point, identify the ones that you really like and ask AI to give you more details.

[00:19:56] Like are there any upcoming events that we could pitch around? Are there any. Opportunities to compliment their services with ours or whatever it is that you're looking to do. Also, what you were mentioning about research before a meeting is very powerful because you are prepared to, if you were to ask ai, what are the biggest opportunities for us to boost whatever result, your service or product.

[00:20:22] Creates and have them give them back to you. And then of course go double check or correct it if AI is incorrect about what you would do or what the opportunities are for that person. But it's such a good thought partner in that way on a time crunch and allow you to, to show up and not have to do discovery on understanding the client, but actually show up with some ideas already for them.

[00:20:47] Mike Allton: Oh, that's exactly right. In fact, our, our previous episode, episode three, I, I walked through in the call. How to set that up with Zapier agents for free, frankly. Because yeah, you, you don't wanna walk into a call with a prospect that you've never talked about, never talked to before. And the best you can say, 'cause you were frantically searching LinkedIn five minutes before the call was, oh, I see you went to Ohio State or whatever.

[00:21:09] That's you, you're not gonna build rapport that way. You, you want to get them talking about themselves in a way that's, you know, tied to their professional career, their business, and it's a nice way for you to segue into whatever problem they're having that you can solve. One of the problems I talk about all the time, this is kind of related to that, is this admin drag.

[00:21:28] 'cause statistics have shown. 70% of the time that a, that a salesperson is spending in their day. It's non-revenue work, data entry, A CRM, moving things back and forth, uh, that sort of thing. From your experience, what, what do you think your three, like top three admin drag tasks, that, let's say they kill sales velocity, and which of those do you think might be able to be handed off to AI without that human connection?

[00:21:58] Aleasha Bahr: Yeah. So a lot of times the onboarding is a big drag depending on what you're selling. Handing it off to the onboarding team or the fulfillment team or whatever. There's a lot of information that needs to be communicated. So that one usually takes salespeople a lot of time. In a perfect world, salespeople just wanna show up, sell the thing, and move on.

[00:22:18] Mm-hmm. So the fact that they need to get payment, they need to get the contract signed. Then they need to communicate with the client delivery team, which is so important by the way. That is the first experience with your product or service, and your onboarding needs to be a great experience or you are gonna lose a client or get a refund.

[00:22:35] So they, they hate that kind of detail oriented stuff. And then of course, the CRM, everybody hates the CRM. AI could absolutely automate things in the CRM. If you had a note taker, for example, if you do virtual meetings, to be able to have it fill in that historical data in the CRM account so that when you go to follow up with that lead, you can see what the notes are setting up tasks that remind you to follow up at a certain date.

[00:23:07] If you haven't heard from them by a certain point. AI could be great for that Also, getting the, um, the contract signed and the payment done, and I think you could even do some AI for the client delivery. A lot of times salespeople just wanna talk. So it's the typing that's the problem. So if they could record a voice note about what client fulfillment needs or a voice note even if they, let's say that they do live in person meetings, so a notetaker isn't realistic.

[00:23:38] If they could just record a voice note of everything and then have that some sort of AI automate that into the CRM. That could be really helpful too.

[00:23:48] Mike Allton: Oh, I could not agree more. In fact, just last night I was, I was building an AI agent all around the, the post call steps. 'cause I've been saying for a while, I, I love that we now have automatic recording and transcribing of sales calls, because I know, I mean, I've been doing this for a couple decades now, whether it's sales or customer support or something. You're on a call with somebody and you're trying to sell them or help them, whatever it is. They're talking, you are listening, but you're also thinking about the next thing that you wanna say in response to whatever they're saying, and then you start talking and so on.

[00:24:23] And in my experience, it's really easy to miss certain things that people say, and sometimes the thing that you missed might have been the one key pain point that they're really just dying on, but they skimmed past it real quick and you were busy thinking about you some technical thing or how much you're going to charge them for this service and, and you missed it. The transcript won't miss it, so the AI won't miss it.

[00:24:50] So if you're using that transcript to help make sure you've got a a tethered proposal or an SOW or, or onboarding, whatever the case might be, right? The AI can flawlessly pick those details out and make sure that you address them. So I, I really appreciate that you brought that up.

[00:25:08] Now, if you're building let's say a sales methodology audit checklist, something for a revenue leader to run before they buy another tool. What would be on it? What would be some non-negotiables that you would wanna include on that audit?

[00:25:24] Aleasha Bahr: It's really important to know who the ideal client is and who the ideal client is not. So having an anti audience is just as important as an audience.

[00:25:35] So being able to look at how ideally, there's some information that you know about the prospect ahead of time, whether they're filling out a form to book a call or something like that, and to have AI analyze how many of these prospects were a good fit and how many weren't. How many of these ended up closing, and what patterns are there in them.

[00:25:57] So it's really about identifying patterns in people who say yes, and also patterns in people who say no, so that you can actively. Streamline your time which is going to equal more sales. And then also what patterns are there in the clients who are really happy with results. And what are the patterns in the clients who are not happy with results?

[00:26:21] Did they, it it, usually it's around expectations or infrastructure. So they didn't have the team in place to execute in order to get the best result from whatever you're offering, or they didn't have an offer. That was converting quite yet for you to put paid advertising behind it, or they needed a result in 30 days.

[00:26:45] And this is more of a six months thing. And that information is really gonna help you break out a clear process to start using AI in a prospecting kind of way.

[00:27:00] Mike Allton: Love that. Because it really reinforces your earlier point I think about how there's gotta be great communication between sales and marketing.

[00:27:08] If marketing's positioning your products and services one way and your sales team isn't following that same script, you're gonna have that disconnect. And by the same token, if sales is having conversations with folks that that don't sell and they're not sharing that data back with marketing, who could better then position the product or service as you're selling?

[00:27:28] Again, you're gonna have disconnects and that sort of thing. So let, let's talk about the human element, because I think. A lot of the folks listening are terrified that if they automate too much, whether it's AR or just plain automation tools, that they'll lose maybe some kind of relationship selling edge.

[00:27:46] How do you think about balancing efficiency with authenticity in in the human?

[00:27:53] Aleasha Bahr: Yeah, so I'm strongly against using AI for any kind of messaging. Mm. I have not seen an effective example of AI having good messaging in a sales context. Anything I've seen AI uses the oldest stylist sales advice for whatever they're recommending, and there's very little personality in you.

[00:28:24] So you would know more than me, Mike. There's probably a way to program. A bot to have a lot of your personality in it while honoring being professional and whatever. It really, it's concerning because of what we were talking about in the green room. If someone isn't experienced enough to say that would feel pushy.

[00:28:49] That would feel salesy, that would feel lame. That wouldn't move the deal forward. If they can't look at the AI messaging and say that, then don't use it. That's something that you need to learn ahead of time, and a lot of salespeople are using it to craft emails and outreach messages and different kinds of scripts without having the discernment to, to tweak it.

[00:29:16] And they are losing their authenticity. They probably are already somebody who just doesn't know enough about. Sales to even know how to be authentic in a sales conversation. Usually at first, people feel like they can't be themselves, even though humans love humans. Yeah. Um, that have, interests and hobbies and quirks and different language, and you're not supposed to sound like a stuffy logo.

[00:29:42] So it's, it's especially important for those people who are still figuring out that the more personality they have, the, the more sales they're gonna make. A seasoned person could look at some of that and say, Hmm, that doesn't work. That's not what I would say. But I think there is a real issue with AI taking out the authenticity.

[00:30:00] There. There are certain things that AI does that are so, maybe they were effective before everybody was using AI and now you can see it and it looks like ai. And so it's just like, there's certain phrasing. There's the em dash was a big thing for a while. The, the triplicates, like it says, we don't do that.

[00:30:21] We don't do this, we don't do like in threes. Um, yeah. Or what is the other, it's not this, it's that. And the rhetorical questions like, but the real benefit. Da da da, you know? So there's just these things that are really becoming obvious, and the second somebody knows that it's AI, they are turned off.

[00:30:46] Mike Allton: Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's very true. And it's very much a, a cautionary tale, I think for revenue leaders who might be listening, they might be thinking about replacing their BDR team with a bunch of AI systems. That's, that's gonna be a mistake for sure. Because you're not just gonna, you're just not gonna have the same oversight and insight into what's being said and communicated.

[00:31:09] To your point, yes, there's absolutely ways that, that we can work with AI. We can do, uh, what's called deep research, which creates an assignment for the AI to go out on the web and vet sources of information and pull it all into a up-to-date report and use that for like sales strategy, for instance, if you wanted to work with your sales enablement team.

[00:31:30] And create a new round of sales messaging. Uh, maybe you wanna refresh your positioning for the year, which I'm sure is a, a great idea. You can use deep research to get the latest and greatest tactics and sales techniques and so on. What to do, what not to do. You can tell it I only wanna look at sources dated 2025 in newer, and you can feed it examples of your best performing messaging from the past and blog posts and emails and newsletters and all kinds of content.

[00:31:55] It gets a sense for the flavor of your brand voice and style, but are most teams doing everything I just said? No. Of course they aren't. So they're serving up what's commonly known as AI slop today, whether it's marketing or sales messaging or something else. But Aleasha, here's my last question and I, I want every listener to answer this for themselves after you stop listening to this podcast.

[00:32:21] But if you were looking at your sales teams or a client's sales team's calendar right now, what percentage of their time do you think is spent actually selling, having discovery calls, handling objections, closing deals versus doing research, updating the CRM, writing follow up emails, chasing down information.

[00:32:40] And if that number makes you uncomfortable, what's the first thing you fix?

[00:32:48] Aleasha Bahr: So if somebody is having anything more than six sales calls a day. That's very concerning for me. It turns into a blur. They can't remember. Mm-hmm. Who they talked to. They can't remember the details. They're not able to follow up.

[00:33:03] Stuff's falling through the cracks. Really, it's different for each person. And whenever I bring a salesperson on, I'm very clear with them that you need to be aware of what makes you the most quality. Because if you are doing more. Because you think that's gonna create a better result, but you're, as a result, since you're doing so much, you're actually performing at a 50% quality level that's not gonna do anything.

[00:33:32] It's just gonna waste everybody's time, including yours. So is that, is that amount of calls three. Then you can have the time to follow up in a quality kind of way and have time to research ahead of time or go through your AI report, or is it four or what is that for you? Because every experience I've ever had with over a hundred different companies at this point is taking less calls always equals more money, always.

[00:34:08] Mike Allton: That is fascinating. And Aleasha, you've been amazing. This has been such a critical interview. I am so tickled to share this with my audience, but I know folks, their brains are buzzing. They've got more questions for you. Where should they go if they wanna learn more and connect with you?

[00:34:25] Aleasha Bahr: Yeah, so Black Sheep sales.com is my website.

[00:34:28] I'm also on LinkedIn and I have a podcast called, sales is Not a Dirty Word. I recommend starting with the episode how to sell like a natural, and it's a really great breakdown. It's 10 minutes of what the approach and format is like, which is much different from the status quo, I'm sure. You've heard a lot of things that I've said that are very different from the status quo, like taking less calls and making more sales, and actively having an anti audience.

[00:34:56] And that's really only a piece of it. So going over there and, and seeing some different ways of approaching the sales conversation and taking what resonates with you, because really Black sheep sales is about, does that ring true for me? And then yes, take that piece. And take this piece. And it's not about adopting all of it as gospel.

[00:35:18] Mike Allton: I love that. Thank you, Aleasha. We will of course, have all of Aleasha's links in the show notes below, including her podcast. Definitely go listen to that. And if you haven't yet talked to your team about their, how they're really using ai, shadow ai. It's time. Learn what shadow AI is, why you should lean into it, and how to proceed for free@theaihat.com slash shadow ai.

[00:35:40] Check it out and I'll see you in our next episode. Welcome to the Grid.

[00:35:45] 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.

[00:36:04] Until next time, keep innovating and remember, the future of business is human and it's powered by AI.