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The secret sauce to your sales success? It’s what happens before the sale. It’s the planning, the strategy, the leadership. And it’s more than demo automation. It’s the thoughtful work that connects people, processes, and performance. If you want strong revenue, high retention, and shorter sales cycles, the pre-work—centered around the human—still makes the dream work. But you already know that.
The Unexpected Lever is your partner in growing revenue by doing what great sales leaders do best. Combining vision with execution. Brought to you by Vivun, this show highlights the people and peers behind the brands who understand what it takes to build and lead high-performing sales teams. You’re not just preparing for the sale—you’re unlocking potential.
Join us as we share stories of sales leaders who make a difference, their challenges, their wins, and the human connections that drive results, one solution at a time.
Jarod Greene (00:00):
Welcome to V5 where we spend exactly five minutes getting on our soapbox with the widest range of hot takes and topics in all of B2B go-to-market. Got a fun one today, I promise y'all. This is Em Daigle, who is the Founder and Chief Automation Officer of OTTO-MATES. Em, how you doing today?
Em Daigle (00:21):
I'm doing great, Jarod. Thanks so much for having me.
Jarod Greene (00:24):
My pleasure. All right, so you know the rules, you know the game. What is on your mind? What's your take?
Em Daigle (00:29):
Okay. Mine is that most sales and pre-sales teams talk about value without ever really earning the right to use that word. And I think now more than ever that's needed because of AI. I think value is not a slide, it's not a feature list, it's not a demo or some clever ROI calculator, but I really believe that the value is built on trust and understanding and gaining the credibility of your customers. And that's why I think the personal trusted relationships that can be created is going to make sales folks more successful than ever in the face of AI. I think if you don't deeply understand your customer's real pain points, why it matters, what's the day-to-day impact to your customer, what's at stake for them, then you are not able to really provide value. You're just presenting. And so I think that's why so many sales processes or sales cycles really can feel more transactional and forgettable. But when sales teams take the time to really know and understand their buyers, listen to how they want to engage and they build those relationships that are really rooted in trust, the whole process changes and maybe buying could even be considered enjoyable.
Jarod Greene (01:50):
I love this take because the notion that value is not a slide and it is earned, not given, just cuts to the core. And I think you've alluded to this, but how does a seller earn the right to communicate value?
Em Daigle (02:05):
It really lies in two different ways from an organization perspective to help sales folks be able to do this. I think one is around enablement, and while sales teams are already deeply entrenched in the enablement, it's often focused on things like process and product, the playbook, if you will. And so while these are obviously critical components, I do believe that the know-your-customer aspect of enablement is either overlooked or deprioritized, the knowledge and understanding of the buyers exactly what is needed to build that credibility or trust. If you don't understand why something is a challenge for that individual, it's going to make it really difficult to tie the value. And instead you're just going to be going through the playbook of, okay, I know I need to ask these questions and not being able to know what's the next level question, why does this matter so that you can ask those good discovery questions.
(02:58):
And I think the other one is around KPIs. So I think as long as organizations make sure that they are also including the measurement and rewarding of depth and not just activity. So maybe it's around, I kind of brought up discovery, right? But maybe it's something with discovery quality scores, maybe it's customer validation. When you get to the end of a demo, did we show you the things that addressed your challenges? And being able to understand and allow those folks to give you that feedback and you can hear it, learn it, understand it. I think that's where it's incredibly critical and like I said, helps make those connections and those personal connections even stronger.
Jarod Greene (03:44):
Yeah, I love this. We've talked about this for days. You alluded to something I think we all feel. AI is making it worse, or AI is exasperating the problem. Maybe twofold. Where do you think AI makes it worse and where does AI have an opportunity to make it better?
Em Daigle (03:59):
Oh, I like that question. So I think AI can make it worse in the sense that if you rely too heavily, in the same conversation with sales and pre-sales, if you rely too heavily on that AI to be able to maybe understand your customer's pain points or understand what's going on, you are getting a very narrow view, tunnel vision on what is going on. But I think there is a lot of benefit to AI, especially when there are those repetitive tasks, things like agents that can help almost be a co-pilot to you and help you just be more productive. That's where I think AI is really helpful. But those personal relationships and really being able to make those connections and get that credibility, I don't believe that's anything that AI will ever take over. That's why I believe I hear sometimes that it's going to take jobs over and it will take some jobs over, but I think especially with sales and pre-sales, it's going to make the ability to connect with your customer even stronger because you're not spending time on all the process-driven stuff. Let AI take care of that, but really spend the time connecting with gaining that credibility, understanding those challenges from a personal perspective to be able to drive that value.
Jarod Greene (05:17):
Totally. Yeah. It gives you more time to be human. All the things you don't have time to do anymore, you got no excuse now because the AI do all the stuff you don't want to do so you can do the things that humans need done. So obviously could talk about this for days and I want to, but for the purposes of the show, we'll keep it short. This goes fast, doesn't it?
Em Daigle (05:36):
Really does. I feel like, to your point, I could do this for days and we should definitely chat online more because I'm very passionate about this.
Jarod Greene (05:45):
And then if you wanted to share that passion, other folks wanted to connect with you, where do they find you and how do they do that?
Em Daigle (05:50):
Best way is LinkedIn. I'm there all day, every day, so that is probably the best place to find me.
Jarod Greene (05:57):
Awesome. Thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.
Em Daigle (06:00):
Jarod, thanks so much for having me.