Sales Performance and AI: A Conversation with Superuser Matthew Lakajev
Recently, I had the pleasure of joining the AI Sales Revolution podcast, hosted by Matthew Lakajev, Sybill superuser and the CEO of Betterline. The conversation was a long time coming, with Matthew having discovered Sybill organically some months ago. As a long-time Gong and Chorus user, he was one of those people who bought Sybill during our first call. That’s right, the call wasn’t even over!
Matthew’s appreciation for Sybill, especially as an early adopter of all things sales AI, meant a great deal to our team. So this was a chat I was really excited about.
In our conversation, Matthew and I dove into the origin story of Sybill and how our product has evolved to become a powerful tool that empowers sales professionals to be more efficient and effective in their roles.
For me, personally, it was a great opportunity to look back at where we started, talk to an enthusiastic user like Matthew about how far we’ve come, how we have enabled our customer community, and what’s up ahead for them and us.
The Inspiration Behind Sybill
Our chat began with the backstory of Sybill, which started at Stanford in 2020.
My co-founder and CEO, Gorish, was a lecturer at the time, and we were all struggling with the transition to remote learning. Gorish realized how challenging it was to gauge student engagement during Zoom calls, which sparked the initial idea of tracking people's reactions to determine engagement levels during presentations.
And the rest is history 🙂
From Body Language Tracking to Sales Performance Enhancement
As we spoke with more people in the sales community, we found a strong appetite for a Behavior AI tool in the world of sales, to put the humanness and rapport building back into a workstream that was now drowning in tech stacks and CRM updates!
Keeping prospects engaged was more crucial than ever before, and that led to the development of a more holistic product that helps sales reps and leaders with call summary statistics and analysis, improving their teams and processes.
User Success Stories: How Sybill is Driving Results and Revenue for Sales Teams
Matthew shared immense excitement about implementing Sybill within his organization. He envisions that, after conducting numerous client meetings, he and his team will be able to use Sybill's summaries to identify the most common and critical pain points. By refining their sales process and incorporating AI-driven tools like Sybill, Matthew was confident that sales professionals can experience significant improvements in efficiency, communication, and deal closures.
I was of course glad to hear that! And had my own book of success stories to relate. For example, a SaaS company selling to HR teams used Sybill's AI assistant to provide accurate summaries of their calls, capturing the nuances and non-verbal cues, and pushing the summaries to Slack, CRM, and email. This saved account executives about 4-5 hours per week in note-taking and follow-up tasks.
Another sales leader discovered that Sybill completely changed the way they managed their team and monitored deals. By reviewing Sybill's summaries, they were able to identify coachable moments, create snippets and automatic video highlights, and ultimately improve their sales team's performance.
Yet another VP of Sales who had been using Sybill for six months claimed to have closed 10% more revenue in the previous quarter solely due to Sybill. By analyzing stalled deals and adjusting their messaging based on Sybill's insights, they re-engaged prospects with context, empathy and insight. And that did all the magic.
We discussed these customer stories in depth, which highlight not just the power of the product and experience that we are building at Sybill, but also the best practices around using it.
Sales AI and the Future of Integrated Offerings
The sales enablement world is an exciting place right now, with so many amazing tools out there and so many new ways of working for sales pros and AI’s early adopters.
Matthew and I also touched upon the potential of integrating Sybill with other tools like personality profiling systems and automating follow-up emails based on insights from the call.
As AI technology evolves and the sales AI tools ecosystem gets more integrated, the opportunities are truly endless for the sales process to get more efficient and streamlined for both reps and leaders.
Putting the Problem First: The Right Approach to Implementing AI in Sales
Matthew emphasized the importance of focusing on the problem first and then seeking out the right AI tool to address it. I couldn't agree more with him. I believe that the next few years will see a rapid rise of sales AI products and slowly, there will be consolidation across not just use cases but also entire tech stacks.
Meanwhile, bloating up the AI-based sales enablement stack doesn't make sense simply because new tools are available. The approach of putting the problem first ensures that sales leaders get the most value out of AI and make a genuine difference in their sales process. If every AE can become much more efficient AND much smarter, it could really make a big difference.
To More Insightful Conversations
My chat with Matthew drove home the point that over at Sybill, we’re doing something right!
I am really glad about the opportunity to engage with sales superstars and AI early adopters on the AI Sales Revolution podcast.
It's a pretty exciting time for AI in sales, and we're proud to be at the forefront of all things cool, new, and generational. Thanks, Matthew, for this reinforcement!
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