HITT – Telarus Team Introduces AI and CX Playbooks for Technology Advisors

I’m excited to go ahead and introduce our Telarus team today because they’ve been working directly with advisers and customers on CX and AI implementations. They are here to share some practical playbooks that you can use in your next client meetings. Joining us, we have Sam Nelson, VP of CX and AI, along with Michael Baillargeon, also known as Michael b. He’s our solution architect East, and Brent Welford, our solutions architect CX. Together, they are going to walk through how to turn communications and CX conversations in some measurable AI powered outcomes for your customers. So, Sam, Michael, and Brent, thank you all for being here, and I will hand it over to you.

Amazing. Well, thank you, Cass, and we very much appreciate the introduction.

And everybody, welcome, welcome, welcome. We are so excited to be kicking off this Tuesday call. I am traveling today, so you’re not going to see the lovely black light board. But I promise we’ve got some really, really exciting content for you guys.

We’re gonna make it well worth your time. And in true Sam fashion, I’m gonna call it out. Go ahead and chime in on the chat. I’ve got Brent as well as Mikey b chiming in there, stirring it up as we go, ask all the questions, say all the things.

It’s Tuesday, y’all, and we are almost to hump day. So with that said, let me start by sharing my screen here, and I am very, very excited for what’s to come because I have a couple of really, really exciting announcements. So I will start here.

K? Hopefully, the technology is working. It’s telling me it is. You should see a slide that says three key themes. So I’m very, very excited, because we are announcing today that we have a brand new CX resource page for all of you, which I will share at the end. I’m actually gonna go live and show you. And I wanted to just kind of start by framing what you’re about to get today because this is more than just your standard content.

So most of the technology advisors right now are getting pulled into a bunch of AI conversations, You all know. And the challenge is that those conversations are all over the place. So think of customers. Right? They’re asking about tools. They’re experimenting with different things. They’re hearing noise from pretty much everywhere.

And what is missing in all of these conversations is structure. So what we’ve actually built for all of you is a really, really simple way for you to lead the conversation with things like clarity and confidence going into these. And it’s built around these sort of three key themes that we’re seeing as sort of the most popular conversations, that we’ve had since we’ve kicked off twenty twenty six. It has been a minute.

So I am definitely going to be kind of summing you up on all the key learnings since, early January. So theme number one, this is where you tend to open the door with this AI conversation because the reality is the customer’s communication platform platform is the foundation. It’s the foundation for everything that they actually want to do with AI. And this is where most conversations actually need to start because AI does not work in isolation.

It depends on a few things. It depends on the data, the content, and the visibility. And all of those things come from your client’s communication environment if you really think about it. And so let’s say your customer’s voice chat, messaging, even CRM, say those are not connected.

Well, then AI doesn’t have anything to work with. Right? Instead of just starting with, hey. What AI tools should we look at?

Move the conversation to, is the environment even set up to support what you’re trying to do with AI? Right? This is a fantastic entry point, which is why CX and AI go so well together. This is a key door opener, and it really kinda naturally brings in every CX conversation that you’re already having. And then theme number two, this is where it starts to get really, really interesting.

Once the CX, the the communications platform foundation is in place, The conversation, starts to move into this concept of AI agents. So AI is no longer about simply understanding the conversations that are happening. It’s more about acting on them. It’s sort of taking that what is said in a conversation and turning it into action, not just within a communications platform, but now across multiple systems.

We give you examples. Think about scheduling. Think about updating records, triggering different workflows, driving other outcomes, other real outcomes. This is where customers start to see the real return on investment or the ROI.

And this is where your opportunity expands well beyond just the CX world into more of the broader business. So now you’re not just talking about improving the conversations that are happening in the communications platform, but you’re actually talking about automating work across the organization. So that leads us into the third theme, which is where you can really differentiate yourself. And this is where you’re elevating the conversation because as customers start adopting AI, things get really, really messy really, really quickly. Think about all the different AI tools that you’ve personally tried over the last, I don’t know, couple years.

It gets really messy. You’re interested in one thing, you lose interest, and then you’re interested in another thing, and it’s all happening at the same time. And then you realize, well, I gosh. I’ve got a a subscription here, a subscription there, and turns out you’re paying hundreds of dollars a year for AI that you may or may not be using.

Folks, that is the same exact thing that’s happening with businesses. Different teams are using different tools. There’s really inconsistent outputs everywhere. There’s no visibility into what’s going on.

And then, of course, there’s a security conversation because nobody knows what’s happening. Nobody can audit anything, and it’s just a mess. And this is actually what we call AI sprawl or shadow AI. Right?

And this is where you elevate the conversation from tools to more of a strategy. You gotta help them think about governance, structure, scalability. So this is where you have to move from being seen as someone who just sells standard technology to actually someone who helps guide more long term strategy, if that makes sense. So I really encourage you all to think about it this way.

Theme number one opens the door. Theme number two expands the opportunity, and then theme number three kind of elevates the conversation. Right? Because what this does is it gives you a complete narrative that you can actually take to market, not just to talk about AI, right, but to actually lead the conversation in a way that your customers are not hearing anywhere else.

None of these other AI companies are painting the picture of how to actually absorb AI to how to actually adopt it and how to place it into really effective workflows. That’s all you guys. Right? And we’re here to help that that work for you.

Now what I’m gonna walk you through now is a brand new deck that we have created for you. I’m gonna walk you through exactly how to use it, how to position it, how to turn it into real conversations and pipeline. And then by the end of this call, I’m actually gonna show you live what the new CX slash AI resource page looks like and all the different resources that you can pull from there starting now.

So let’s go ahead and get into it. This is a resource that you can take. You can brand it as your own. You can, use it to open up completely different conversations with your customers.

And, again, before you all start asking me where do we get it, right, I’ll it it’ll be on the brand new resource page. I will share it with you. K? I know.

We’re gonna get all the questions. Where do I find it? What is she talking about? Guys, don’t worry.

I have got you. Alright. So we’re gonna dive right into it. Welcome to one of our brand new customer facing decks.

You could put your logo here, but gonna go ahead and walk you through this. Don’t be afraid. So going into this next slide, start here with every single customer. K?

AI doesn’t start with AI tools. It starts with what’s going on in your communication environment. How are you communicating with each other? How are you communicating with customers?

And then, honestly, guide them through these three steps. Hey. Where do the conversations live? Are the systems connected?

What, becomes possible when the systems, in fact, are connected? And the goal with this slide is to actually move a customer from tools to more of a foundation conversation because you gotta make sure that it’s there. And then slide three, it gives you this thought leadership kind of stance where you could say, hey. Many of the customers I talked to are actually dealing with very similar challenges.

And then just hit, like, two or three of these. You don’t have to hit every single one. But talk about, look. There’s too many tools out there.

There’s no single view of data. AI tools are just not delivering because nothing talks to each other. AI sprawl is everywhere. And and then pause.

Here, after you talk about this, pause, and let them confirm what is resonating with them because that will help guide you through the rest of how you present this deck. And what this slide does is it builds credibility for you really, really quickly. That’s the goal.

And so after this, once you let them talk a little bit, you talked about the problem that occurs in the communication stack. Look. Keep this really, really simple. There are a few stats on here. The joke is, yeah, eighty to ninety percent of stats are made up, but you all are listening to me, so I must be right. Right? Is that the reality is AI cannot act on data that it cannot see.

So you have to explain that disconnected systems, if not interconnected, is a real, real issue. It’s not actually the AI’s issue. It’s actually right? It’s like the whole conversation of it’s you, not me.

It’s me. It’s not you. Right? And then you transition that transition that to the help me, help you, help me, help you.

And, when you explain it this way, what you’re doing is you’re sort of setting aside the AI conversation for a second and saying, hey.

Let’s make sure your foundation is set up well because you try to build a house on a really terrible foundation. I it’s probably not gonna go well. Can’t speak from experience, but from other experiences. So, let’s make sure the communication stack is solid because all of that data is gonna feed artificial intelligence.

And this is where you can position yourself as solving this environment, and you’re not just selling another tool. You’re not just selling another ABC dot AI solution. Right? And after this, this is where you actually go into, hey.

What does a modern communication stack look like?

Frame the ecosystem for them because a lot of clients do not know what it looks like. Help them map out how communication actually works across the business. Walk through everything. Walk through how exactly they’re communicating with each other, with customers, talk about voice, potentially contact center if they have one.

They don’t have one? Folks, don’t bring it up. Nobody knows what that is. Talk about messaging.

Talk about how they collaborate. How do they work with each other? Do they work with documents? Do they work on collaboration platforms?

How do they communicate? Where do they store all that data? Ticketing. Don’t forget about ticketing and workflows, folks, that they have a support team.

Yes. That does exist. Then talk about CRM and the data. Right? The key point here is that the value is not actually in the tools themselves.

Let me say it again. The value is not in the tools. In fact, the value is how the tools are connected and how they’re working with each other.

Alright? So hit that home with the customer. So you’re framing this all up. Now when you look at, okay, how do I how do you choose the right communication platform?

Well, this is a different totally different tactic. Right? We’re moving on. You have to guide the decision.

Not and be honest. Be really honest. Not every platform is actually built for AI. It’s not.

We have people who or customers who are using platforms created decades ago.

Right? And they do not wanna get rid of them because it’s proprietary. It works. They don’t wanna do it.

But you have to explain that, look. In order to establish this foundation, let’s make sure everything is talking to each other appropriately, and then think about how AI can augment everything. So focus on, number one, the integrations, the data access, the, any native AI capabilities, and scalability. When I talk about native AI capabilities, it’s so interesting because so many clients do not realize some of the solutions they’re using now actually have pretty neat and helpful and useful native AI capabilities.

They just don’t. They’ve never been exposed to it. You can’t always rely on the customer success team of suppliers. You just can’t these days.

And at the speed of which several suppliers are innovating these days, it’s even more crucial to make sure that clients understand what they’re getting and not getting. In fact, I’ll put a plug in here for several suppliers in the portfolio. In fact, many of them have opened up programs, special go to market programs for the tech adviser community to help them cross sell to existing accounts, where now you, tech advisers, can make money on helping these suppliers cross sell capabilities or into different department or, I’m sorry, business units at existing customers that they’re already working with.

Yeah. You heard me right. Suppliers have opened up programs for you to go in and help them cross sell to existing customers they’ve already sold to. Right?

Unheard of before. Yeah. Right? MyQBeast, you did it right. Right? The home alone app. Right?

Absolutely, folks. And that’s thanks to the speed of innovation, AI, and all that.

Then you move from the conversation of once we’ve figured out the foundation. Fantastic. Well, AI happens in a few different stages. Keep it really simple, folks.

Talk about starts with the foundation. You have to unify all the different tools, the data systems. It starts there. Then you head into execution, maybe, you know, a small pilot of some sort, really simple use cases.

And then you take that use case and you scale it. And a lot of customers try to skip step number one, which is the foundation. And this is really why they struggle. They struggle.

They don’t realize, oh, AI is not working. Why is it not working? And this is also where you would have the conversation of, hey. How how clean is the data in the from a foundational standpoint?

Gotta make sure it’s clean. You gotta make sure it’s classified and all that good stuff.

So you have this conversation. You start going down the road with AI. And by the way, if you don’t wanna use all these slides, folks, don’t use them. You have to be able to to completely customize this based on the client and your research that you’ve done prior to talking to them.

So then you head into some discovery questions. And this is a good mix up in the presentation, in the meeting because you wanna keep them talking. You wanna do this you wanna actually educate them while finding out more information from them. So this is sort of a pause slide.

Start leading the discovery right here. Ask them, you know, where are the conversations happening? What is connected or what’s not connected and sort of working on its own? Who owns the data across the organization?

And, also, where are your people spending the most time, or where are they wasting time?

And this is where you start to uncover where some potential opportunities are. And as salespeople, we love talking. We love it. Folks, ask them the question and be quiet.

In the most polite way possible, just be quiet and let them talk.

Because at this point, you’ve educated them about the foundation and the right way to approach AI initiatives. But this is a great point to just pause and let them talk, and you might uncover a lot more here, which will help guide you through the rest of this deck.

K?

Now we move from AI just assisting to executing. So this is where you’re gonna reframe the AI value. Again, AI is not just answering questions anymore. It actually can take action.

So, again, hone in on the piece of, hey. What tasks are super repetitive? What requires a lot of manual effort across the different systems, across the different departments, across people? And this is where the automation conversation starts to emerge in your conversation.

And you you head into use cases. What does this actually look like? And believe it or not, a lot of customers just have no idea. They’ve kinda played around with things.

And I could tell you for the first time in a very long time in a CX discovery call, we start talking about AI, and the customer says, look. I don’t know what I don’t know. Tell me. Tell me what you’re seeing out there.

Right? And that’s the great news about being in this space right now.

Folks, nobody knows. You know that TikTok? It’s like, well, nobody knows. They’re gonna know. They’re gonna know.

Nobody knows. No. Nobody’s gonna know. Nobody knows.

And so what you need to do is come to them with actual examples.

Like, keep them really, really simple. So what we’ve done is we’ve put just a few examples on here where you could talk about taking in customer requests. You can, you know, handle internal ticket volumes. You can expedite the onboarding processes, whether that’s for end customers or internal employees. And then last but certainly not least, from a systems integration or connectivity standpoint, eliminating any any manual work that needs to, take place between the systems talking to each other.

So this kind of covers the AI agent for everything conversation.

Now this slide. This is where you start to talk about AI sprawl. So depending on where your client’s at, if you already know that your customer’s got the foundation set, you’ve sold that solution already, you know systems are good to go, and they’ve already automated some workflows, maybe you start here.

Because the way that this deck is built, it’s built to follow those three specific themes. So you can start wherever you want, but just make sure that everything is down pat as you progress through the deck.

So on this slide, create the urgency. So tell them, as companies are adopting AI, things are starting to break, and here is why. There’s too many tools out there. There’s really inconsistent results. There’s no visibility into what is going on. In fact, what I like to ask here is I pause and I ask the customer, what are you using today and for what?

You know, have you tried different tools? Great. What have you tried? And more importantly, what ROI did you experience from that? What did that get you? You know, what did it do for you?

And this is if they’re not here yet, what you could say is, hey. The next problem that you are gonna face is right here if you do not plan ahead.

So where do you go from there? Well, you educate them on exactly what is going to happen because it’s true. As AI adoption increases, well, these different capabilities become absolutely nonnegotiable. You have to have these. AI absolutely needs structure to scale. So highlight these four things. It’s the visibility, the guardrails, consistency, and a very clear road map or a very clear path.

So once we get past this, it’s great. Well, let let’s talk about the long term view and what this looks like. Right? Scaling AI is not necessarily about just structure. It’s not or I’m sorry. It’s about structure, but it’s not about more tools.

So, again, focus on the connected environment. Talk about workflows, but make sure that they’re outcome driven. So if you have not seen our outcome based selling, like, sales mastery content or any of that or med pay content, go check it out before you take on this conversation because they’re gonna be like, what do you mean outcome driven workflows? You wanna be ready to have that conversation immediately.

And then governance, road map. Let me walk you through a quick example here, folks. We have suppliers in the space who will quite literally, have the interface available, the g the the generative AI interface available for an employee. Employee puts whatever they want in there.

It will redact to any sensitive information, fish it out to fourteen plus LLMs with one license, and then repopulate all that data back into the interface for the employee. So it’s as if the employee were just to snapshot something and put it in super easy, and they never knew that any that secure data was actually hidden and masked as it went out to the interwebs and then returned to them. So the experience is great, and they’ve nailed it. But from a security perspective, now you’ve got security teams that can go ahead and actually audit the usage of generative AI capabilities.

Alright? Think of true story. Some of you have heard this story. Financial advisers at a at a bank, financial institution, I will not name names, financial advisers were taking screenshots of customer portfolios and popping them into ChatGPT and asking it, what should I recommend to my client next based on their portfolio?

My first question was, well, is this call being recorded?

Right? But from there, we determined was, hey. They actually need a solution. Yes. Yes. You’re chiming in firsthand.

Unbelievable. Yeah. Folks, it’s happening everywhere. So having solutions out there now that can solve for things like AI sprawl, where you can take advantage of multiple LLMs with a single license and open up those capabilities based on department type, role type, whoever, right, is really, really powerful.

So, folks, you can sell that stuff now. You absolutely can. And so the the ending slide is this. Make sure please make sure that you have a call to action of some sort.

Frame it as, look. This is what we do. We understand the environment. We identify really high impact use cases.

Then we’re gonna actually help you build a road map around this. Push for this next meeting. In other words, let’s get time on the calendar and map this out together. And you see the two rock stars that we’ve got on the call as well.

You’ve got Brett Wilford. You’ve got Michael Mikey b. Don’t look around like it’s not you. You got Brett Wilford and Mikey b here at the ready to help you tackle these conversations.

Right? And I’ve been personally taking on a lot of these as well. So reach out to all of us. We’re very passionate about all this great stuff.

Now a lot of you, I know the questions out there probably popped up. I wasn’t really looking at the chat because I’m working from one screen here.

But people are probably like, where do I find this stuff? Where do I go, Sam? This is all great, but I want it. I want it.

Do I get it in an email after this, or what’s going on? So I’m gonna reshare my screen here and just switch it up because I’m gonna go live to my browser. So nobody send me any DMs. I’m just kidding.

Alright. So I’m here in my browser and brand new, hot off the presses, Telarus University dot com slash c x. Folks, this is your CX launch pad for everything having to do with CX success as well as how it pertains to unlocking AI outcomes. So on this page, on the left side, you’ve got the core narrative pitch deck, which I just reviewed with you today here, includes the talk track.

You could download it, and there’s even a how to guide to help you walk through that and use it, appropriately.

Over here, I thought of this, folks. You always want a leave behind of some sort. So instead of sending your customer the actual pitch deck, we came up with a very kind of deck or PDF style deck that you can fully brand and customize. It looks like this, where you can send it to them as a leave behind as a result of the conversation that you just had with your customer.

So when you know where to start, well, we’ve also got sales discovery guides for you. So I came up with three cheat sheets for you talking about those three key themes. One, of course, the foundation for everything is in your communication platform. Then two, AI agents AI agents for everything.

And then three, it’s gonna end on the AI sprawl stuff. So when you look at these discovery guides, it’s very straightforward, folks. Right? It’s starting with the communication, the data foundation, and it heads into the AI agent for anything.

And then it ends with AI sprawl and talking about, you know, what they need to consider going into these conversations with you.

Alright. So in addition to all that, I’ve heard a lot of talk about, oh, the snippets, they’re really cool, and, I wish I could do something like that. I’ve gotten this request quite a bit. So we listen to all the feedback.

Yes. We do. We actually listen to all the feedback that you give us. So what we’ve actually done is we come out with what we call a campaign in a box.

So we’ve actually got some pre canned LinkedIn posts for you, some email nurtures on all the three themes that I talked about today as well as some short video scripts for you. Really, really simple, but just wanna give you a flavor of what we do here, but things that you can personally post or send out to your clients to grab their attention about these three key areas of opportunity. Even the email campaigns literally copy paste. Right?

What does the cadence look like? Email two, three, four, or going into the second theme. Let’s say your customer already has a communications platform. They’ve got the foundation.

You wanna start talking about AI agents and workflows. Great. Send out these these emails. Right?

We’ve got all the templates here for you. And then last but certainly not least, we’ve got all of our contact info down here for you just in case. Although I’m pretty sure you have a lot of us on speed dial. You know who you are.

And then we’ve also got some additional content at the bottom as well.

Now one quick plug is that the minute snippet dropping this week and for the next eight to twelve weeks or so, well, moving forward, is actually going to be customer facing. So if there’s ever any minute snippets or content there that you want to directly share with your clients, you can actually go ahead and send that. It’s not gonna mention, you know, tech advisers or suppliers or anything like that. It’s actually just gonna be anything that you could send to a client to gain their interest.

So with that, really, really excited to announce this, CAS, calling you back to the stage, but that sort of wraps up the overview of what we’ve got here for you, and moving forward and having these conversations around the foundation, AI agents, as well as addressing AI sprawl. So, again, wasn’t letting you have the chat. So, Cass, come on back if you’re there. I know the Wi Fi was rough for you a little bit, but come on back and lead the way.

Well, you guys did a fantastic job. There were a lot of questions in chat. And just to reiterate this all just again, a lot of the information that you guys were asking for, like, oh, how do I get introduced to suppliers, or how do I know where to go for this? All of this information is in Telarus hub.

All you have to do is log in under supplier directory. It will show you all of the suppliers. You can search by specific items. And now we have the supplier matrix pro, which even has better things that shows you comparisons of the supplier so you know who to go to for that information, which we did, in fact, drop links to all of that.

And if you didn’t get a chance, please scroll back up through the chat. We left links for the MEDDPIC course, the outcome based selling course, how to do both together, and the learning path. So there’s a whole learning path where you can learn all of it all at once. Or if you wanna take one each individually, you can do that as well.

But we have all these resources here for you guys because we want to see you succeed. So, yes, please take advantage of all of the tools that we’ve got.

And, of course, again, I will also drop the link everyone is asking about. But, yes, Telarus University dot com slash c x. You can see all of the great information that Sam also posted today.