Sam Collin

@barstoolsports That’s the wrong U. He just dissed Utah for no reason

Fletcher Loyer threw down the U after beating Miami today

Last week I had a great conversation with my friend who’s been in the BPO space for 15+ years. A few trends from our discussion stood out. The AI headcount narrative doesn’t match what he’s seeing. Based on conversations across his BPO network, Taylor isn’t seeing the mass support layoffs the AI headlines suggest. AI ROI calculations often miss key variables. When you add AI to your site, you’re often introducing an entirely new channel. That frequently increases inbound volume by 30%+, which must be factored into the ROI. Many CX leaders are being asked to deliver outcomes tied to AI hype cycles. That can put them in a difficult position when expectations don’t match operational reality. “Resolution rates” don’t tell the full story. Metrics often miss channel switching to human agents, drop-off, or silent churn. What’s the hidden cost of a frustrated customer who has a bad AI interaction and simply never comes back? Jevons Paradox will likely apply to CX. I’ve never spoken with a company that thinks they’re delivering too much great customer experience. Most want to do more, but cost is the constraint. If AI reduces Tier 1 issues, my bet is we’ll see more human support focused on higher-value interactions, not less.

@YahooSports @CBSSportsCBB Nobody calls BU Boston U

BOSTON U STUNS 1-SEED NAVY WITH A BUZZER BEATER 😱 The Terriers advance to the Patriot League championship game 💪 (via @CBSSportsCBB)

@GoodmanHoops Playing a 7 man rotation of mostly fresh and sophomores. Got crushed by early season injuries to 4 starters and the kids are learning how to play

Joe Jones and the Terriers clicking at the right time of year!!

@BarstoolBigCat True freshman too

MARCH

@MarchMadnessMBB @CBSSportsCBB Nobody calls BU Boston U

OMG BOSTON U AT THE BUZZER 😱 ARE YOU KIDDING!!! (via @CBSSportsCBB)

Proud to BU

When hiring sales reps, I think about three buckets. Knowledge, Skill and Will. Knowledge, your understanding of our space, buyer, product, competitors, etc. Skill, your ability to prospect, multi-thread, forecast, negotiate, etc. Will, your ability to handle change, deal with conflict, be resourceful, have a growth mindset. Over index on the Will bucket. Skill and Knowledge can be taught. Will can’t.

@LonimiOfLagos Thanks for the support of the idea. Here’s the first ep youtu.be/87MxRATybFw?si…

@sgcollin20 This is a great idea. Most podcasts focus on founders or VCs, so hearing from founding sellers and early GTM operators will be a really valuable perspective. Looking forward to the first episode.

Personal update: I’m launching my own podcast. It’s called Founding Sellers, and the idea is simple. I’ll be interviewing the best early stage GTM operators and IC's who help scale a product from zero to sixty. For those who know me well, you know I’m obsessed with podcasts. Top 1% of listeners on Spotify. Any moment of free time, at the gym, walking the dog, doing chores around the house, driving, I’m usually listening at 1.25x. Sometimes 1.5x if I’m feeling dangerous. It’s how I feed my obsession with learning, and it’s often the spark for my best ideas. A couple months ago at a team dinner, we asked each other what our ideal career would be if money didn’t matter. I said podcasting. My team looked at me like I was crazy. Eventually one of them said, “You know you can do that right now.” They were right. The only things getting in my way were fear and excuses. One of my themes for the year is getting comfortable being uncomfortable. So here we are. The goal of the podcast is to share lessons from people who have actually been in the arena. I’ve been lucky to be an early stage seller at three startups that eventually successfully exited to Zoom, Medallia, and Meta. Most podcasts focus on founders or VCs. I love that content, but it often misses what’s happening on the front lines. What actually works in the early days. What doesn’t. And what it takes to survive and succeed as a founding seller. The first episode with my good friend @TheRealMcHoy , early stage seller at Pendo.io and founder of Atlas, drops next week. In the meantime, enjoy this clip. And if you know someone who would be a great guest, submit them on the site or send me a DM.

I’m not one to bash competitors, and I actually have a ton of respect for @Intercom. They were incredibly fast to move after the ChatGPT launch, they breathed life back into a flat business, and they’re a standout example of a legacy SaaS company finding new momentum through AI with Fin. Their product is simple, the setup is easy, their design is clean, and their marketing (CEO storytelling, $1M guarantee, all of it) is usually top tier. But yesterday while scrolling Instagram I saw an ad claiming “Up to 93% of your Zendesk tickets automated.” I talk to multiple Heads of CX every week, and this exact expectation is what they are struggling with. CEO's see numbers like 90+ percent or more and assume that is what AI should deliver. So teams buy a tool, deploy it, and quickly realize that is not how reality works. It is harder, messier, and most CX leaders I know are not even chasing 93 percent automation. Automation is not the goal. Better customer experience is the goal. Sometimes that means automation. Other times it means a human. Ads like this do not help the industry. They set the wrong expectations and push teams into defending why they are not automating everything instead of focusing on what actually matters: delivering great customer experience.

At our company kickoff last week, we talked about how speed is the only moat left in technology. As the cost of building software trends toward zero, the barrier to entry disappears. You don’t need to be a trained engineer anymore. Even a guy with 15 years in sales and zero coding education. (Aka me.) This weekend I saw it firsthand. It’s territory season in sales. Historically, ops teams rely on enrichment tools like ZoomInfo, Clearbit, BuiltWith, etc. The problem? The data is often outdated. We’re targeting a specific competitor, so ops pulled a list of accounts tagged with that technology. When I started reviewing the accounts, a huge percentage were actually using competitive products. In the past, I’d either: 1.Spend hours manually validating 2.Or accept it as a limitation of scaling a sales org Not anymore. I opened up Replit. I gave it a prompt explaining the situation. Fed it 10 examples of sites I knew were using the tech. Had it identify variations of the relevant code snippets and confirming signals. Less than an hour later, I had a working prototype where I could: •Paste a URL to validate •Bulk upload URLs •Confirm whether they’re actually using the provider Over the last two days, my ops leader and I have been refining bulk uploads and export functionality. Total cost: $50 on Replit. Total time: a few hours. Outcome: A tool that saves AEs hours of manual work and allows marketing to more precisely target a competitor. If I can build this, anyone can. The only difference now is who moves. Start building. Control your own leverage.

What a succesful AI deployment in CX looks like. One that balances automation, efficiency and customer delight. CSAT up 40% since implementing. markets.businessinsider.com/news/1035783733

Querying data for insights through prompts is an incredible use case for AI. The next evolution, though, is removing the need for prompts altogether. Instead, AI should proactively surface insights as they happen. For example: “Based on historical close rates and average ARR, you’ll need 50% more pipeline coverage next quarter. Here are five accounts your team should prioritize to close that gap, based on past closed-won deals and current buying signals.” The next step beyond insight is action, where the agent doesn’t just surface the recommendation, but actually goes and books the meetings for you.

our last Board meeting was a major turning point. every single question... "let's ask the product". every single answer made sense. it's the closest thing to "God view" I've seen in a business. just watch the video... it's hard to put into words what @markitecht and @MichaelPici are building at @Day_ai_app

@jasonlk @tbpn For those selling technical software vs sponsorships in your case or other less technical offerings, how do you think this impacts the size of their sales teams?

"We went from 8 humans in sales to 1.25. We do about the same. Why? The agents don't mind chasing small deals. They never quit." @tbpn

@natolisnuggets Depends on what you value more: having control over your calendar and often higher earning potential, or the purpose that comes from helping others grow and sharing what you’ve learned as a top performer.

Should I stay an IC or pursue AE Leadership if the opp becomes open (same company?) For context: -Having some record months as an AE… things are great -But will I wasn’t to be an AE forever? Prob not. If I stayed the AE path, would prob start/do my own thing after long enough eventually -Always wanted to do AE leadership given my personal history and ability to get the best out of others -Would lead to a more direct path to Director+ Seems like I might have the chance to do leadership in the future based on recent convos. Not sure what to do… :D Pros and Cons?

@BrianLaManna_ Kudos to your rev ops team

@sgcollin20 yes we get them two weeks before EOY so we can get a #faststart

Our fiscal year ended. Today is now Saturday. A few things I'm doing immediately to get ready: -Tiering all my new accounts -Reset my account planning sheet -Wiped all my previous saved leads in Sales Nav -Set up new alerts in Sales Nav -Leaving old slack channels -Slotting out 1 account to deep on per day for the next 2 weeks (2-3 hours of research) Man I'm hungrier than ever. Let's do it again.

Yes and you left out Google, Amazon, Salesforce (service cloud is their largest product) and all the legacy CCaaS solutions (genesys, five9, NICE, etc) that are building their own AI. I’m biased, but my bet is companies will way a platform that can orchestrate the human and AI agent experience in one place. I think the common misconception is that AI will solve majority of customer service issues which is why these AI bolt ons are getting the valuations. A big chunk of issues are not cause the customer can’t find the “right answer” it’s cause they don’t like the answer and want to communicate with someone to complain in hope of that outcome changing. That is a human experience.

I struggle to get excited by customer support AI. The sheer number of well funded new players: Sierra Decagon GigaML Parloa Forethought Kore Cresta All of these have raised over $100M. and then oldies like Intercom Zendesk Talkdesk Ada And then wait for it, you speak to Navan and others, large public companies who are all building their own because their requirements are far too specialised for a horizontal service. Jeez… I scratch my head.