Host Richard Ellis interviews Michael Stahl, CEO and founder of Wombat Data, about why executives still struggle to get real answers from data despite modern dashboards, data lakes, and BI tools.

Stahl describes persistent issues across industries: siloed enterprise systems, closed or monetized APIs, difficult and costly integration, and the need to incorporate external datasets (e.g., CMS, demographic, geospatial) that are hard to organize and keep current. He explains the “streetlight effect,” where teams analyze only easily accessible data, and shares a healthcare example where layering drive-time and geospatial data helped explain patient no-shows.

Stahl says new AI capabilities can automate access and integration without migrations, keeping data live and enabling leaders to focus on better questions, a clear data strategy, and a few vital business signals rather than KPI proliferation.

Soundbites

• "Every executive has dashboards. Almost none have answers."
• "The parable is if somebody loses their keys, they actually look where the streetlight shines, because that's where the light is. But even if their keys may not be there, they look where they have the most ready access and visibility, even if that's not necessarily the best place to find good answers."
• "It's hard to know what you don't know."
• "You've got a very expensive Ferrari that's in the garage or just going to collect groceries, and we're not getting the highest and best use out of it."
• "Most people ready, fire, aim, and what you're asking them to do is ready, aim, fire."
• "We take the how off the table for you, and you can just focus on the why."
• "One data point may be interesting, but is oftentimes not useful. It's the collection of data points that actually helps us understand relationships."
• "What are the fewest variables that have the biggest impact and produce the clearest signal of success, health, and function in the team?"
• "KPI proliferation or dashboard proliferation actually creates more confusion than clarity."
• "If you dig and come to a point where your business, your team doesn't have the data it needs, it's probably out there, and people can help you find it, and you can access it."

Host Richard Ellis and guest Brayden Young (co-founder of Slash Experts, formerly of Sendoso) discuss why B2B buying signals look contradictory (Forrester’s view that ~90% of executives want to buy without talking to sales versus AI-native firms hiring SDRs) and what this means for sellers and leaders. They argue buyers increasingly research via reviews, backchannels, and pilots, and mainly avoid unhelpful reps. AI and avatars can compress the traditional SDR/AE/SE chain so one technical AE can do more, shifting roles toward technical SDRs and go-to-market engineers.

They predict consolidation of point tools into all-in-one platforms while CRMs persist due to security and reliability. Practical advice includes partnerships (especially with consultants/agencies), in-person events, ignoring LinkedIn noise, and staying close to customers; they close by sharing personal fitness goals.

Soundbites

• "Every day there's a new B2B AI tool that someone vibe coded or created. It's amazing how fast the space is moving."
• "They bought you and all your competition, and they're testing all of you and seeing which one sticks. And then at the end of that pilot phase, they leave you."
• "I think the line's 10 grand. If it's over 10 grand, you need a human in the loop."
• "It's not that they don't wanna talk to a rep, it's that they don't wanna talk to a bad rep." (Richard, paraphrasing the buyer shift)
• "You've talked to six people, and the deal size is 24K. That's too many. Your AE, your SDR, and your SE needs to be one person."
• "I think the traditional SDR will go away. But the more technical SDR will be a new job that folks will have."
• "If you have your own CRM that you built with AI and it goes down, it's on you. That's why I don't think it's gonna happen anytime soon."
• "Selling through consultants and agencies is the best, 'cause they are far more trusted than your sales team. They talk about you on a phone call you're not on."
• "Try to do something crazy that's athletic at least once a year. When you're healthy and post-workout, I think way clearer, and that'll only help the company grow faster."

Host Richard Ellis interviews Jack Siney, co-founder of Front Race, on why AI needs activity/interaction data instead of biased “opinion” data entered by reps, and how rigid, linear CRM workflows miss the nonlinear reality and micro-details of sales, including timing between actions. Jack warns that automating only documented steps can fail because top performers execute additional undocumented steps, and that LLMs can mis-join data and hallucinate without hard metrics. He recommends leaders: consolidate and standardize company data, map the real end-to-end process (including losses), and use a measurement layer to benchmark and evaluate changing AI tools.

Soundbites

• "All the LLMs are using the same open data set. The magic is in your data. You have the answers. If you have a couple of years of legacy data, you've had some success, you've had some failures. The magic is in that data: uncovering what works and what doesn't."
• "We've been measuring metrics for four decades that have no direct correlation to whether we hit the goal."
• "We get rid of our SDRs to automate 20 steps. But the SDRs are actually doing 32 steps. We train the agent on 20 because we don't even know the other 12 exist. Then we wonder why the pilot failed."
• "The magic's in the micro details. Everyone knows the big things: the culture, the pitch, the pricing, the demo. That's not what separates your best reps from your average ones. It's 20 little things."
• "As soon as you rely on the sales rep to put the data in, we're in trouble. Their job depends on having a good pipeline. They're biased. Garbage in, garbage out."
• "Automate the interactions and you get what really happened. It's not someone's opinion."
• "Some of the magic is the time in between the steps. Letting it breathe. I don't know a system out there that tracks the time between each call."

The episode argues that relational capital is a strategic resource, citing a 2026 Forbes Human Resources Council article linking trust-based networks to stronger collaboration, faster decisions, and resilient teams. Host Richard Ellis interviews Eddy Arriola, founder of Apollo Bank (2009) and former chairman/CEO until its 2022 acquisition by Seacoast Bank, now a Seacoast board director and author of It’s All About Relationships. Arriola explains his realization that career successes and failures often hinged on relationships, distinguishes true relationship-building from mere charm, and emphasizes meeting people where they are by understanding their pressures and incentives. He introduces his CARPE framework (“seize the relationship”), highlighting “connect” and “prioritization,” including avoiding comfort-zone conversations.

Link to Eddy’s book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GP9TPQ1Y?tag=scribemedia0a-20&th=1&psc=1&geniuslink=true

Soundbites
"It's all about relationships." (the book title, and the line "that's resonated with people because so many of us have used that a zillion times")
"I really got things done through people... when I started to reflect even on the things that didn't go right in my life... it was because I didn't have the right relationships. I didn't have someone to help me, someone to fall back on."
"It's usually the people that really don't understand sales and marketing that say, 'Oh, that's the relationship guy.'"
"People that are really good at relationships just so happen to be really good with people. But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're good with all people."
"Carpe diem, seize the day, and I'm like, 'Seize the relationship.'"
"All your competitors have really, really, really good products... but it's really about a relationship that you build around."
"All sales is a process. One step logically follows another, and relationship building is very similar."
"You will go to your comfort zone. You will go to the easier conversations or the more fun relationships, and you'll be missing out on others."
"The best thing you can do is be a good listener and a good student and follow up."
"Dig a little deeper... just scratch, keep digging a little deeper and you're gonna get the right information."
"What relationships aren't serving you right now? What are just taking up too much of your time?"
"You are where you are because someone else helped pave the way."

Host Richard Ellis interviews Braydan Young, co-founder of Slash Experts and former Sendoso co-founder, about why most B2B companies rely on the same few reference customers late in deals and lack systems to operationalize social proof. Braden explains how social proof extends beyond reference calls to logos, case studies, reviews, testimonials, and especially short video testimonials, and argues prospects often complete much of the buying journey before talking to sales. Slash Experts addresses the “last-minute scramble” by letting prospects book calls with pre-vetted customers via expert pages, using AI to recommend the best match, automate follow-ups, and nudge buyers with relevant proof while capturing transcripts of customer language. Braydan shares practical CRO steps: test your own reference process, track and thank reference customers, and introduce customer conversations earlier to accelerate stalled deals.

Soundbites

• "80% of the deal cycle is done by the time they're actually hopping on the phone with sales."
• "Everyone has the same 40, 50 logos on their site. How's everybody working with the exact same companies?"
• "Typically it's a scramble at the end. It's, 'Who's the fastest person I can get on the phone so they can check that box?'"
• "You've gone from trying to sell a product to being consultative. All you're trying to do is empower your champion to get the deal done."
• "Social proof is just making someone not feel alone for taking a risk on buying your service." — Braydan Young
• "The way our customer was talking to a prospect about how they used our system was totally different than the way we talked about it. That's the conversation that is gold."
• "If you're a CRO, try to get a reference today for your own company. Go through the process you gave to sales and see what that's like."
• “There's not a lot of separation between work and life anymore. When it's blended well, that's the company everyone wants to work for."

This episode discusses why AI investment is outpacing real business impact, noting low AI production adoption among US firms, limited use cases reaching full production, and many initiatives being abandoned in 2025. Host Richard Ellis interviews Jack Siney, co-founder of FrontRace, about his white paper on “15 AI truths” sales leaders will face, arguing most companies are experimenting without executing with precision.

Siney says sales teams have spent decades optimizing the wrong metrics (calls, emails, pipeline) and remain poor at forecasting and replicating top-performer behavior. He argues AI’s value is measuring previously unmeasurable “20 small things” behind 3X performers, delivering clearer “signals” like Moneyball analytics. Key prerequisites are consolidating, normalizing, and cleaning company data and uncovering actual workflow behaviors, enabling better forecasting and guidance while preserving human roles in higher-value, complex sales.

Soundbites / Memorable Quotes:

• "If you're on social media, you'd swear every company is fully AI-enabled, firing their entire staff, making it all AI. The real world at a ground level is pretty significantly different."
• "We're no better today, four decades in, hundreds of millions if not trillions of dollars invested in all of these sales platforms. Companies hitting forecasts? We're worse at forecasting, shockingly, with all the tools we have today."
• "You have two reps, they have the same metrics, same calls, same outreach, same pipeline, and one is outperforming the other by 3X. When the CEO asks why, the head of sales simply makes something up."
• "The difference between these two people are 20 little things. It's not the big things. Everyone knows the pricing. Everyone knows the FAQs. Everyone knows how to do the demo. That is not it."
• "When you ask that person to train the rest of the team, it's like Michael Jordan trying to teach basketball. They just know they do it."
• "Everything we're doing today in the AI world is gonna look childish five years from now. We're still in the AOL dial-up stage."
• "If you take AI and you put it on a crappy data set, AI's already gonna have some hallucinations to it, but if the data's not right, you're gonna come out with bad conclusions and you're gonna get fired."
• "We've relied on the sales rep, who's very biased, to manage their own pipeline, put in the probability it's gonna close, the amount, and when. Are you kidding me?"
• "In Moneyball, the big shift was we're no longer buying players, we're buying runs. The same thing in sales: who cares how it gets closed? Do they close it?"
• "The more money a client's spending, the safer your job is. When rubber hits the road, they want someone to talk to."

In this episode, host Richard Ellis discusses how enterprise software companies face pressure from boards and markets to demonstrate AI progress, creating risks of overpromising, unnecessary product narratives, and eroding customer trust. Guest Rob Huffstedtler, Global Head of Pre-Sales Operations at Sitecore, describes varied customer readiness for AI and notes research suggesting AI more often automates tasks than eliminates entire jobs, enabling workflow redesign while preserving human judgment. They explore AI’s impact on RFP responses, where automation can improve customization but still requires locked-down, contextual answers and stronger storytelling than CRM data typically captures.

The conversation also covers how “show up and throw up” demos and excessive feature focus create perceived complexity and pricing objections, the value of confidently saying “yes” or “no,” and challenges in migrating installed-base customers through platform shifts without forcing RFPs. They conclude with leadership guidance on proactive involvement, coaching, and avoiding late-stage “super seller” interventions.

Soundbites

• “When companies over promise, force customers toward a future they didn’t ask for, or drag buyers through sprawling product narratives they don’t need, trust starts to erode.”
• “AI may speed things up, but it does not remove the need for discipline, honest positioning, and respect for the installed base.”
• “There are very few jobs where even in a fully agentic flow, you can eliminate the whole job. What it’s doing instead is simplifying or eliminating particular tasks of a job.”
• “There’s really an opportunity to rethink workflows and business processes and re engineer them to remove the slow friction parts.”
• “Some of the best RFPs are those that tell a story and they reiterate why do something different in the first place and why now and why with you.”
• “SAEs need to learn that yes is a full sentence.”
• “You coach rather than swooping in to save the day.”

The episode argues that B2B sales teams must stop treating solution engineers (SEs) as downstream demo support because buyers can self-educate and need help understanding what matters, quantifying value, and picturing success through storytelling, qualification, and commercial judgment earlier in deals.

Host Richard Ellis discusses with Rob Huffstedtler, Global Head of Pre-Sales at Sitecore, why SEs should be experts on buyers and their industries, leverage their trusted status to influence pipeline generation (especially in install-base motions), and coordinate intentionally with AEs through preparation, listening, and discovery to avoid overemphasizing features.

They cover hiring and onboarding gaps that leave SEs underdeveloped in sales skills, missed opportunities in customer storytelling, and how AI tools can speed research and call review but risk wordiness, fake empathy, and overreliance without human judgment and trust-building. They also address tight AE-SE coupling through deal stages, empowering internal champions, and effective handoffs to services for implementations requiring customization.

Soundbites
1. “The SE really needs to be as much of an expert on the buyer, that individual buyer, as well as generically the industry and the role as they are on their product.”
2. “At the end of the day, what they’re doing is helping the buyer through the buyer’s buying process.”
3. “Not being perceived as a seller becomes a superpower in sales.”
4. “The customer tends to inherently trust the SE more than they trust the account executive.”
5. “Listening is key, right? You learn a lot more when you have your mouth closed and your ears open.”
6. “You’ve got to learn to ask good, engaging questions and sit and give the customer time to think rather than pushing them forward and suggesting an answer for them.”
7. “There’s a little bit of a desire to appear smart rather than to make the customer the star.”
8. “If the AE and the SE, if they’re not having a good conversation before every customer conversation where they’re anticipating what the customer wants to get out of it and what they want to get out of it, it very easily turns into, let’s talk about all of our favorite features.”
9. “Some of the value is the process of building that summary rather than having the summary.”
10. “The biggest misconception I’ve seen is that there’s a path to getting to the unknown unknowns.”